webern and atonality_ the path from the old aesthetic

8/18/2019 Webern and Atonality_ the Path From the Old Aesthetic

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Webern and Atonality: The Path from the Old Aesthetic

Arnold Whittall

The Musical Times, Vol. 124, No. 1690. (Dec., 1983), pp. 733-737.

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2/7

Webern and Atonalitv

The path rom the

old

aesthetic

Arnold Whittall

A certain sort ofw orld-weary musical soph isticate has been

heard to remark with increasing frequency as the Webe rn

anniversary has approached that it seems more like the

centenary of his death.than of his birth. W ebern, it is im-

plied, is no longer a problem, and never has been for those

who 'really know' his music: less of a problem, anyway, than

Wagner, who did die in 1883.

Behind this attitude lies the assumption that, even if

We bern was not actually overrated as composer, inno vator

and influence in those heady post-war years ofto tal serialism

and intransigent, Darm stadt-promoted experiment, it is right

that his aphoristic, allusive creations should not, in these

mo re sensible times, make a very decisive imp act even

on the m ajority of modern-m usic enthusiasts. In any case,

Webernites cannot complain. There have been two com-

plete recordings of all the works with opus numbers; an

autho ritative as well as exhaustive Chronicle ofhis Life an d

Works has been written;' a volume of sketches2 and m any

of the works without opus n um bers have been published;

while for real specialists there is a Webern archive in

America, and an un ceasing flow of high-powered an d often

surprisingly digestible analytical articles, by G erma ns an d

Englishmen as well as Americans.

Webern will most definitely have disappointed anyone

who, in the early 1950s, expected the entire future of

Western m usic to hinge on the explorat ion and continua-

tion of his techniques. But simply because oft he sheer ease

with w hich later compo sers seem to have absorbed or by-

passed those techniques, it could be that W ebern has come

to be undervalued, even misunder5tood. In particular, tak-

ing W ebern for g ranted often seems to involve the evasion

of one of 20th-century music's most fundamental issues:

for the nature of wh at is commonly called 'atonality' is still

obscure, not least in its relation or non -relation to

tonality.

T h e attitude that Webern has never really been a problem

has a good deal to do with the widely-held view that the

Second Viennese School were not really radical at all, in

the sense of seeking and achieving a total break with the

past. Instead it was, in Scho enbe rg's familiar words, laying

claim to 'the merit of having written really new music which,

as i t rests on a tradit ion, is dest ined to become a t ra d i t i ~ n ' . ~

T h e tradition' to which Schoenberg was referring was not,

presumably, that of tonality, a principle he proclaimed 'no

H .

Moldenhauer :

An ion won Webern

(New York and Lo ndon,

1978)

Sketches 1926- 1945) (New York,

1968)

see

J .

Rufer: The W orks ofArnoldSchoenberg trans. D . Newlin (London, 1962),

nton Webern

w s

born

on 3 December 883

l o n g e r a p p l i ~ a b l e ' . ~ut the most essential function of

tonality was to provide an all-embracing un ity and coherence

at all levels of a compo sition, and it was this basic unifyin g

force, this fundam entally traditionalist aesthetic, rather than

the specific principles and practices of tonal harm ony as

such, that Schoenberg may have regarded as the only possi-

ble 'tradition'. T h e 12-no te method was so important, there-

fore, because it was able to provide a new kind of all-

embracing unity and coherence not necessarily severing

all points of contact with the old, but not depending on such

contacts in order to function effectively. Webern clearly

viewed his own 12-note compo sitions in this way, an d in

his lectures of the early 1930s, preserved in a studen t's short-

hand notes and published as Der Weg zur neuen Musik,j the

importance he attached to the traditional aesthetic and

technica l emphasis on uni ty i s ~nmis takable :~

Unity is surely the indispensable thing if meaning is to exist.

Unity, to be very general, is the establishment of the utmost

relatedness between all component parts. So, in music, as in

all other hum an utterance, the aim is to make as clear as possi-

ble the relationships between the parts of the unity: in short,

to show how on e thing leads to another.

And W ebern also made the large claim that 'composition

with twelve tones has achieved a degree of complete unity

that was not even approximate ly there b e f ~ r e ' . ~

Writers on Webern have not normally felt it necessary

to question the various assertions and assumptions in these

reported remarks. Nor have these writers questioned the

evaluation of his own musical development that Webern

offered in his later years, when he seemed to regard his

ear l ier , pre-12-note atonal composit ions simply as

preliminary, primitive steps on the path to the true new

music. And although it has quite often been argued that,

in its relative freedom, the pre-12-note atonal music of

Schoenberg, Berg and W ebern has m ore to offer the post-

12-note generation than the 12-note works themselves, this

argument usually carried the implication that such

'freedoms' are interestin g precisely because they seem to

be 'beyond analysis' : they confirm th e right of composers

not to be boun d by all-determining rules and systems; and

they pu t those interfering busybodies, th e technical com-

mentators, firmly in their place.

As far as

I

am aware, no writer o n We ber n has ever taker1

Lerrers ed. E. Stein (London, 1964),

104

(Vienna, 1960), Eng, trans.,

The Parh ro rhe A-eew Music

ed.

\Y'.

Reich (Bryn Mawr,

1963

op cit

(1963),

42

op cit,

8

4 7 - 8


3/7

literally the most frequently quoted remark about his

pre -12-note music f rom the lec t~res :~

About 191 1 I wrote the Bagatelles for String Quartet (Op .9),

all very short pieces, lasting a couple of minutes perhaps

the shortest music so far. Here I had the feeling, 'when all twelve

notes have gone by, the piece is over'.

Not even the most aphoristic of Webern's early miniatures

for example, the fourth of the five

Stuckefur Orchester

op.10 (191 l), or th e third of the Drei kleine Stucke op.11

(1914) for cello and piano consists simp ly of a single

12-note statement with no repetitions of any kind. But a

compo sition for which th e remark is in one sense complete-

ly true is the third of the

Vier Stucke

op.7 for violin and

piano (1910), reproduced opposite, whose five principal

segments have the following pitch-class content:

T A B L E

Segment

(a) A B flat

(b) A

B

flat A flat

E

flat

D

C sha rp

(4

A A flat E flat D

C

sha rp E F C F sharp

B

(d)

A A sharp

G

sha rp C

B

(4 E flat C sha rp E

C

G flat G

1 2 4 6 7

8

9 10 11 1 2

Expressed in such summ ary terms, the principal 'rationale'

of op.7 no.3 seems to be a single statement of all 12 pitch-

classes, whose gradu al unfolding is embedded in a sequence

of repetitions which do not appear to obey a single, consis-

tent stru cturing principle: as Tabl e 1 indicates, th e collec-

tion is not built up by the simple addition of adjacent

semitones, or by any other evidently invariant 'motivic'

method. T h e repetitions do nevertheless con tribute to the

piece's thematic content it is mo re than a merely ' tex-

tural' composition and, as will be argue d more fully later,

it may well be possible to demonstrate an underlying

thematic unity, even ifthat involves nothing more substan-

tial than the recurrent 'composings out' of the initial

semitone: for example, the piano chord w hich ends the piece

in a register in which th e violin cannot participate can be

read as three pairs of augm ented octaves:

CIC

sharp; E flat/E;

G flat/G. But before pursu ing such matters it is desirable

to ask whether the search for a consistent motivic process

in such music is any more valuable than the search for

12-note orthodoxy.

T h e most influential developments in analytical techni-

que over the past 25 years or so have tended, however im-

plicitly, to support the assumption that all worthwhile

music, tonal or atonal, has unifying forces at work which

are more imp ortant, aesthetically and technically, tha n any

contrasting, diversifying elements; but the position is not

quite as uniform or as unthinkingly conformist as sum-

mary accounts occasionally suggest. One ambitious attemp t

at a history of all significant developments in earlier 20th-

Webern's op. 7 no.3; reproduced y permission of Universal Edition

(Alfred A Kalmus)

century culture has included the argument that what

distinguishes 20th-century modernism from all previous

manifestations o ft he radical spirit is the strength o fth e 'urge

to fragmentation'. Th is urge can lead to total aleatory chaos,

but may also foster the development of techniques for bring-

ing diverse elements ' into the most intimate relationship

with each other whilst at the same time p reserving the validi-

ty of the contradiction between them'.9 This formulation

is not unlike Stockhausen's declared intention 'to modulate

one event with another without destroying it, really discover-

ing those original qualities of som ething which are the m ost

characteristic, and which are strong enough to be m atched

with the stronger characteristics of something else leading

to real symbiosis'.1° And Stockhausen distinguishes this

'symbiosis' the mutually beneficial partners hip between

elem ents of different kinds from a crude, random collage

on the o ne hand and what he calls 'a synthesis in the old

sense where the components disappear' on the other.

At this level of generality it is all too easy to be temp ted

to dally in a warm b ath ofvag ue abstractions; but the distinc-

tion between a m usic which is essentially, and in the best

sense, synthetic and a music wh ich is symbiotic is not to

be dismissed as academic theory-making when so mu ch con-

fusion still exists as to how, and in what way, valid and

J. McFar lane : 'The Min d ofModernism ' , Modernisnr

1890-1930

ed. M . Brad-

bury and

J.

McFar lane (Harmondswor th , 1976),

81 88

lo Srockhausen: C onversarzonswith fir Composer, ed. J Cott (London, 1974),

191


4/7

perceptible distinctions between a music called tonal and

a music called atonal can be made. Th e persistence of the

latter term, despite all the assaults on it from Schoenberg

himself onwards, is an indication that it may, after all, be

describing something real. But such is the force of tradi-

tional aesthe tics that even those who recognize th e logic of

the a rgumen t that, by definition, atonal music is quite like-

ly to negate most, if not all, of the most basic features of

tonal music may still instinctively resist the proposition that

a m odernist balance of discontinu ities, avoiding the ran-

dom disparities of collage but functioning more in terms

of polarities tha n of centralities, can function as a positive,

constructive aesthetic principle, creating new kinds of

coherence rather tha n a single kind of incoherence.

Ma ny w riters have responded to th e analytical challenge

of such highly compressed, expressionistic miniatures as

the Webe rn op.7 pieces simply by adapting fining down

traditional methods ofthe ma tic analysis. Single intervals,

even single notes, may be held to possess motivic signifi-

cance, and th e pieces to be built from interacting and varied

recurrences of these motivic elements. In op.7, for exam-

ple, one writer refers to extreme ly brief motifs of only a

few notes, sometim es only highly expressive isolated single

notes acting as motifs ,ll and anot her remarks that from

the technical point of view op.7 seems to be even more

strongly built on minor second relationships than the earlier

works .12 Th e most importan t a nd influential of recent

theorists of atonality, Allen Forte, has provided an inter-

pretation ofop.7 no.3 as what he terms a connected struc-

ture, w ith all the diverse elements interrelated throug h their

connectio ns with four basic collections of pitch-classes and

interval-classes which Forte term s Nexus Sets .13 It would

be grossly unfair to F orte to accuse him of a simple-mind ed

concern with unity-at-all-costs, and of a corresponding

failure to take due note of the symbiotic forces at work in

this piece. But the aesthetic principle that underlies his

analytical method clearly aims at the most refined explana-

tion of all the different levels and types of interactio n an d

interrelationship throughout the atonal repertory; and a

method concern ed specifically with surface formations may

complement Forte s approach without necessarily contradic-

ting its insights into the background .

T he m ain difficulty which stands in the way of develop-

ing a workable Th eo ry of Atonality as distinct from

developing ideas of thematic process which can apply equally

to tonally struc tured comp ositions is precisely that of

demo nstrating a convincing positive princ iple which atonal

pieces have in com mon. T h e very idea of analysis itselfseem s

to require something more than the mere description of

diverse surface details. Analysis involves interpretation in

terms of fundamental forces which persist from work to

l 1 F. Wildga ns: Anron IVebern (Lond on,

1966),

124

l 2

W. Kolneder: Anion Webern, trans. H. Searle (London,

1968),

64

l 3

The Srruciure of Aronai Music (New Have n and L ondon, 1973 , 126 31

work: hence the power o fth e Schenkerian concept of tonali-

ty, in which substructure is the purest kind of structure.

T o nter pret , and therefore to analyse, is not just to describe,

but to categorize, and it may be, to reiterate a formulation

made above, that an atonal composition can be usefully

analysed through the demonstration ofcontrasting categories

through polarities rather than centralities. (The relative-

ly new techniques associated with the application of

semiotics to musical analysis may eventually prove to be

ofva lue here, in view of their concern w ith all those features

that contribute to the textural character and structural

significance of an event.14)

Web ern s op.7 no.3 can provide a relatively simple model

for the analysis of polarities, not least because it is not one

of those early 20th-century works which in habit a twilight

world between tonal and atonal . Anyone who looks hard

enough for evidence of residual tonal features will probably

be able to find them in any piece: but to my ears the recur-

rences of A and the placement of elements fundamental to

an A tonality in op.7 no .3 are simply not organized in ways

to suggest that We bern wished to create suc h associations.

Th ey are stronger in other later pieces, such as the

op.12 songs, but that is another story.

Any com position of any period for violin and piano is likely

to exploit the evident and substantial differences between

the instrume nts, and op.7 no.3 is no exception, despite the

uniform ity o ft he extremely soft dynamic s. An d at least one

other of the basic textural polarities evident in th e piece could

equally well be present in a tonal compo sition: that involv-

ing sustaining and punctuatin g elements. Tab le 2 points

T BLE

Segtnenr

(a )

violin sustains a single note

piano punctuates (one note 3 times)

(b)

piano sustains: a legato statement

In RH

violin pu nctuates (4-note shudder ) :

piano punctuates 3 separate

semiquavers)

(c)

piano sustains: a legato phrase

with sustained bass note

violin punctuates with repetitions of

an ostinato and its transposition

(a )

piano sustains a 3-note cluster

violin punctuates: 2 statements of a

4-demisemiquaver group

(e)

piano sustalns a RH chord

piano punctuates:

2

LH statements

of E flatIG flat

up the distinctions. Th is analysis, using only minimal ver-

bal description, focusses on the superimposition and suc-

cession of surface events. It is so laid out that o nly the final

segment

e

involves one instru me nt alone, a nd this stresses,

in the simplest possible way, the sense in which the piece

may be said to end with its strongest contrast. Table 3,

describing further polarities, pursues this matter in rela-

tion to the registral and rhythmic profiles of the five

segments.

Althou gh T ab le 3 does not seek to divorce the final seg-

ment from all connectio n with its predecessors it shou ld by

l

see in particul ar J:J. Nat tlez: Varese s Densziy 21 5 a Study In Semiological

Analysis , Music Analysis, i

1982),

243 340

735


5/7

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and so on. In W ebern we are more likely to hear the

lack

of tonal func tion occasionally even some devious allu-

sion to tonal function rather than an actual atonal func-

tion whic h relates every event distinctly to every other event.

An d it follows that even the most patently un iform, un ified

atonal composition, whe ther 12-note or not, cannot be con-

sidered in term s of such a universally accepted and perceiv-

ed grammar or syntax as exists for tonal music. However

persistent the elements of the old techniques, the old func-

tions, and with them the old aesthetics, cannot possibly

survive.

T h e early part o fth is article included the suggestion that

a little respectful scepticism ab out W ebern s view of his own

musical development might be salutary. It is certainly my

own belieftha t we are too ready to make assumptions about

the presence of the kind o funi ty which keeps contrasts strict-

ly subordinate, not only in th e pre-12-note music which has

been discussed here but in the 12-note music itself, where

polarities may be even more significantly deployed. If

Mireille Revisited

Steven Huebner

Charles Gouno d s career as an opera composer was marked

by some of the greatest successesbfthe 19th-centu ryFrench

repertory and by some of its most abysmal failures. Wh ereas

Faust,

first performed at the Thi.i tre L yrique in 1859, went

on to garner an international audience, suc h long-forgotten

efforts as

L a nonne sanglante

(1854) or

Polyeucte

(1878) belong

among the un fortunate works that received the fewest per-

formances at the 0pi.ra in the last century and have never

been revived. E ven th e initial success of a

Faust

or a

Romi o

et Juliette

(1867) did not preclude modifications for

revivals. So when a work that had a poor reception on its

premiere was given a second or even a third chance, it is

not surprising that the upheavals effected by Goun od were

almost always massive. Except for his first opera,

Sapho

(1851),

Mireille

(1864) has had th e most turbulen t history

oft he works in this category. But unlike most ofth ese operas,

it eventually obtained a place in the repertory and is now

the third most frequently performed of Gounod s operas.

It was in a version that featured, among other changes,

a reduction of the o ~ e r a s imensions from five acts to three,

with the attendan;removal of more than a quarter of the

original music, the conflation of two subsidiary roles (Tav en

and V incenette), the addition of an

ariette

in the manner

of the

Faust

Jewel Song, and the replacement of the tragic

ending with one in which the heroine suddenly recovers

from sunstroke, that

Mireille

first gained favour in a pro-

duction at the Opera Co mique in 1889. Between this revival

and the first rather poorly received performances at the

Th eit re Lyrique from March to Ma y 1864, the opera under-

Web ern really believed that composition with twelve tones

has achieved a degree of complete unity that w as not even

approxim ately there before , it may suggest nothin g more

than that he needed a good dose of Schenker to teach him

the real tru th about tonality. But in any case there is nothing

in his remarks to undermine the possibility that atonality,

whether or not expressed through the background controls

of the 1 2-note system, is truly a nd positively complem en-

tary to tonality a music ofarchitec tural dispositions rather

than grammatical functions, w here coherence and stability

are created throug h the com plemen tary balancing or juxta-

position of separate events, and where in the absence of

tonal, contrapu ntal voice-leading symmetrical factors may

have a decisive struc tural role. Th e W ebern centenary is

a good time to raise and explore such matters, however incon-

clusively, and to suggest that comp ositions we thou ght we

had digested painlessly may in fact be rather more subv er-

sive, and less eager to show ho w one thin g leads to another ,

than we had previously thought.

Gounod s Mireille is

revived y the E N at the

Coliseum this month

went other unsuccessful attempts to enhance its appeal.

A Covent Garde n production in sum mer 1864, for which

Mireille s ultimate recovery was first instituted, was followed

that December by a The it re Lyriqu e revival that introduc-

ed most oft he modifictions to be adopted in 1889. In 1874

there was an additional, ill-fated attempt at the 0pi.ra Com -

ique to restore many of the original features. Although h e

sanctioned the 1889 production, G ouno d was never ha ppy

about the truncated

Mireille.

Only after it had become a

perennial favourite would a director of the Opera Comi-

que, Albert Carri., risk a return to the five-act framework

on the suggestion oft he composer s w idow, in 1901. Carri.,

however, retained the infamous

valse ariette

and, because

Goun od s orchestration for parts of the Air de la Crau and

the tragic finale (both printed in full in the first edition of

the vocal score) had been lost, he staged these num bers in

abbreviated form. In 1939 Henri Busser and Reynaldo H ahn

launched another revival, which purported to be as close

to the M arc h 1864 version as the available docum entation,

including the au tograph full score, would allow. Th e miss-

ing orchestration had still not been found either in the

autograp h or in the 0pi.ra Com ique archives, so Busser filled

the lacunae himself. H is edition has been used for all subse-

quent performances at the O pera Co mique and elsewhere,

as well as for all complete recordings.

see J G Prod homme and

A Dandelot:

Gozrnod

sa

vr r

ses oeuures

(Paris,1 9 1 I),

ii 220


7/7

You have printed the following article:

Webern and Atonality: The Path from the Old Aesthetic

Arnold Whittall

The Musical Times, Vol. 124, No. 1690. (Dec., 1983), pp. 733-737.

Stable URL:

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[Footnotes]

14 Varese's 'Density 21.5': A Study in Semiological Analysis

Jean-Jacques Nattiez; Anna Barry

Music Analysis, Vol. 1, No. 3. (Oct., 1982), pp. 243-340.

Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0262-5245%28198210%291%3A3%3C243%3AV%272ASI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Y

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