Webern, Tradition, and "Composing with Twelve Tones..."

Abstract

Anton Webern's twelve-tone music displays many surface features in common with those of tonal forms, yet his works are based on a fundamentally different musical grammar. This has led certain analysts to conclude that there is a hiatus between his music's lan- guage and its large-scale structure. A closer reading suggests, how- ever, that Webern's forms derive in sensible ways from his under- lying pitch language, and that their similarities to tonal forms arise from the fact that both tonal and twelve-tone grammars permit sim- ilar narrative strategies. This point is explored in analyses of three movements that display similarities to tonal binary and sonata- allegro forms-the second movement of Op. 27, the first movement of Op. 22, and the finale of Op. 20. ton Webern's a proach to composition as well, and may en as g od advice to those who would analyze his work. i ore Webern's obvious debt t compositional tradition er to emphasize the radical nature of his twelve-tone age diminishes our apprec ation of his treatment of , as much as do analy es that ca only hear his use of i ional forms in terms of their surfac gestures, nd are to the ways those forms emerge from his reatment of structure. As the pr ceding analyses have attemp ed to est, ebern's twelve-tone compositions show a rich in- ation of details into their large-scale forms, employing ionships drawn from throughout the twelve-tone system. si ilarities in his music to tonal forms are not simply the lt of superficial modeling, but spring from a deeper level, at hich the relational properties of the two grammars si ilar na rative patterns to grow. In ways that should ti ue to engage an delight us, Webern from the very start s o n a d ep understanding of Schoenberg's new pro- e in musical construction w ich se med fit ed to replace e structural di ferentiations provided formerly by tonal 59Schoenberg, Composition with Twelve Tones, 217-18. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.172 on Fri, 07 Oct 2016 05:50:56 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms