Five Movements for String Quartet (Fünf Sätze), Op. 5

ANTON WEBERN'S Five Pieces for Orchestra Opus 10 (1913) is one of three of his opuses (9, 10 and 11) that embody, in their purest form, his unique musical aphoristic style. All five pieces are remarkably short, the fourth of them being a record-breaker with its duration of a few seconds and score of 6 bars. They have been called "little gems of expressive distillation." Subsequently, years later, in his lectures on music, Webern explained his aphorism and this extreme reduction of thought: "I can tell you something from my own experience: /.../ I wrote /.../ very short pieces, lasting two minutes... I had the feeling that when all twelve tones were lined up, the piece was finished. /.../ In my sketchbook I wrote the chromatic scale and crossed out individual notes. /.../ It sounded grotesque, incomprehensible and was incredibly difficult. The inner ear decides absolutely correctly that the person who wrote the chromatic scale and crossed out individual notes was not acting randomly. As long as all twelve notes do not appear, none of them should reappear... We did not realize the principle then, but we felt it for a long time." What Webern emphasizes is intuitively "heard" rather than constructively composing in 12 keys. Schoenberg gives a description of Webern's aphoristic style in his preface to the score of Webern's Six Bagatelles: 'One must realise what restraint is necessary to express oneself so succinctly. /.../ But to express a novel in one gesture, joy in one breath - such concentration can only be found where self-pity is absent." Webern is one of the major figures of 20^th century European modernism and a composer of global influence. On the one hand, he was a bold innovator, ahead of even Schoenberg and Berg within the New Viennese school, and giving impetus to the second avant-garde after the 1950s. It is no coincidence that Pierre Boulez described him as "the only forerunner of the music of the future". On the other hand, it preserved Christian values and the high ideals of truth, goodness, purity, moral firmness, and timeless beauty shared by his predecessors, including Kant and Goethe. His music combines moments of extraordinary tenderness with extreme sonority, of austere sonic asceticism with grace of line and timbre. Webern's style in its most general characteristic is utterly devoid of entertainments, excesses, it is maximally synthesized, refined, complex and with crystal-accurate found forms. His first compositional attempts date from 1899. Between 1902 and 1906 he studied at the Institute of Music History of the University of Vienna, wrote and successfully completed his dissertation on the music of the Dutch Renaissance composer Henry Issac. His first compositions until 1904 were symphonic idylls. Until 1908 he was a student of A. Schoenberg, whose landmark words The Faith in saving technique alone must be destroyed and the pursuit of truth encouraged he followed through. After a period of training, his innovative style was finally formed. In parallel, Webern worked as a symphony and opera conductor. His first serial-decaphonic piece was in 1913. It was only after Opus 17 that he wrote only in a dodecaphonic style out of 31 opuses. With the onset of Nazism his life became extremely difficult, and he stopped composing in order to avoid being influenced by fascist doctrine.