Leopold Spinner's Later Music

Abstract

Leopold Spinner is one of the outstanding inheritors of the traditions of the Second Viennese school, not only by virtue of his direct relationship (as Webern's pupil), but also because his music builds upon and extends that school's achievements. In my first article (TEMPO 109) I isolated two fundamental characteristics of his style. First, Spinner continually makes use of intervallic asymmetries in the polyphonic combination of motifs and lines which, through their similarities of shape, set up expectations of symmetry. Secondly—and contrary to the practice of Schoenberg and Webern—he frequently exploits the duplications which arise (often in the same register) from the proximity of the same notes in two or more simultaneous set-forms. The close relationship of Spinner's music to Webern's late works—with their avoidance of note-duplications and their predominantly homogeneous and symmetrical textures—allows these Spinnerian characteristics to stand out against an immediately recognizable Webernian background, and thus to acquire their peculiar expressive and dramatic tension.