Something I love about the internet is you can find experts on just about anything and each one is deeply passionate about their respective subject. I love learning about 20th century and contemporary composers, and I'm glad I found a channel that can help me do that. Thanks!

i like how the red book right besides your right shoulder forms the number one due to the over books covering it..

I met his grandson some years ago and was invited into his home. Where I was shown various letters/paper/manuscripts and his furnishings that survived of his grandfather. I hope that there are still in the families possession. Thank you for this 'synopsis'

“You’re not going to throw on a Webern CD while you’re doing the dishes.” I beg to differ...

Webern was a great composer, I love his Symphony Op 21, specially the first movement, where he creates a very private, intimate and soft speaking world.

I have heard the story that Stravinsky, after intending to listen to Webern's music, quickly stopped listening, since he became worried that it would have too much of an impact on his own style. I kind of wish that you had gone into Webern's use of butterfly symmetry. I have also heard that Webern wrote short pieces since he believed that the human ear couldn't take extended serial music...

Beautiful and clear presentation of the vision of Webern. I'm a retired musicologist and wish my presentations on Webern in the classroom over the years had been as amazing! Keep up the good work!

Thank you for the information!

Been looking for a channel such as yours for a while, loving this stuff. Webern fucks with my head, many of his pieces I can't listen to in a single sitting due to its overwhelming intensity.... such a master

My favorite Webern work is the Cantata Opus 29. The second movement is extraordinary for its long line, which is like that of a Mozart aria. The best performance I've heard is with Günter Wand, now out of print, I believe. Webern remarked that in time children in the streets would be singing his music, and this cantata really is immediately appealing.

This is an excellent, and compelling explanation of Webern's later work. There may be an article, as far as I know, yet unwritten, that compares the notion of minimalism as contrasted by Webern and Phillip Glass. Were I to engage, the title might be, "Why the music of Phillip Glass and Anton Webern are two sides of the minimalist coin" The contrast being, Glass takes small events, and repetitively elongates them through constant but subtle repetition and instrumental changes, while Webern succinctly condenses numerous ideas.

Love the Slow Movement for String Quartet from 1905.

Thank you for this! I learned of Webern through a recent New Yorker magazine concert listing that described his music as "crystalline serialism". I had no idea what that meant, but it sounded interesting - and it is. You're right that I wouldn't put Webern on while doing the dishes, but I'm listening at work and, to my untrained ear, it is quite pleasing. (Quartet op. 22, Three Little Pieces, op. 11)

Instructions unclear, threw a Webern CD in the dishwasher.

I think "instants of almost limitless potential to signify" is the best in-a-nutshell description of Webern's music I've ever heard.

Thanks for that very nice enticing introduction!

Every few years I return to Webern and hear him anew. Yesterday it was Sinopoli's recording of the Symphony Op.21 that made me truly feel like I was "hearing" that piece. The interpretation by the performer really matters with Webern.

I'm so glad I found this channel! Thanks for the informative simplicity (if that makes any sense)

I love his music... so hauntingly beautiful! I like to say his musical style is "maximalism."

I love Webern. He was mentioned in a John Cage book I read and I was already prepared to listen to his work, also after having been an avid Schoenberg listener. I have also seen modern pieces performed at the Pierre Boulez concert hall in Berlin, I loved the crowd, we were all so thirsty for weird. 😂 It’s so good to see modern classical music live. It was conducted by Daniel Barenboim- amazing.

To be remembered at all is already a precious gift.

This is a very interesting channel, thank you! It is great to hear an expert talk about things we love.

Thank you for making this wonderful video….

'It's like eating Octopus' - wonderful!

For me, Webern was the only composer who understood totally 12-tone technique and its possibilities of creation for a 20th century musical language. Schoenberg and Berg was still "poisoned" with Romanticist pathos and way of expressions typicals from the 19th. century. After 2nd Vienese School, I also like Babbit and Pierre Boulez 12-tone compositions (Le Marteau Sans Maitre is a genius' work).

Absolutely brilliant explanation of such an exceptional composer. Thank you.

While hitch hiking around The U.S. 79 to 81, I spent some time at I. U. Hanging out around with Dean of Jazz David Baker and the Composition dept. The music Dept was then a huge circular multi-story building. In that time before magnetic keys I was always mistaken for a student. Anyway the absolute reverence with which all the composers I met at that time held Anton Webern in really caught my attention. So I have to admit even though l love Berg (whose life wasn't as tragic) I sit up and pay strict attention when I listen to Webern cause its so distilled; if you don't it's vanished in the air.

I loved your vid. I listened to the Op.11 example at .25 speed. Still incredibly dense. Listening to Webern while food shopping was fun.

Loving your lecture! Thank you!

What a riveting presentation! Brilliant! Thank you!

Excellent short summary and good rebuttals to those who don't show respect for serial music.

In 1998, I used Webern's Op. 5 to accompany the dance piece I choreographed after translating into movement those of Charles Baudelaire's poems that use cats as metaphors for sexuality. *insert deep breath - whew!* That work got me into the MFA program for dance at UCLA! Webern has been my favorite of all composers for a very long time. I think hearing you talk about his music existing outside of time and narrative has finally helped me understand why. You mentioned moments of ecstasy - or something to that effect - and that is the moment when it all finally fell into place for me (as the 30-second section of Op. 11 was on the screen). I was interested in presenting Baudelaire's maximum of intoxicated addiction and luxuriating sensuality against Webern's maximum of sober efficiency and ascetic logic. That intersection has been the place where I live artistically. I have Bipolar II Disorder, and for many years I was undiagnosed and/or improperly medicated. My emotions and thoughts were exhausting. I'm also very obsessive about layering nuanced perfection into everything I make. Comparing their lives, these two men were exact opposites in many ways, yet both ultimately ended tragically under circumstances that would have extinguished lesser artists' inspiration. I have always felt a deep kinship to both of them, from a creative perspective. Thankfully, I have found ways to establish stability that these two never enjoyed. In this video, you just helped me understand (after 25 years) why I felt/sensed so deeply that Webern's music is "perfect," even though researching him in the past has not helped - reading books that explain 12-tone rows is definitely a good way to gut my enjoyment of his compositions (and yet, I love it when they get past the math, and just highlight what has happened). Your point: It's not meant to be a narrative, or a sequence necessarily. It's made of individual cells that evolve in complex ways that might or might not be obvious, even under intense scrutiny. That was my mindscape for the 38 years while I was untreated. I experienced constant rapid cycling in my emotions and ideas. Every moment was simultaneously surrounded by everything else in a general context, but also detached, unpredictable, and inexplicable. Terrifying, yes; however, also very exhilarating. Whereas for "normal" people his music is offputting nonsense, to me it was matching pace with my shifting colors and outbursts. By the time I lost interest in a movement idea, Webern had already shifted focus to a new sound idea, too. Webern played to my mind and soul, and Baudelaire spoke to my body and heart. I have always heard music lovers say Webern's work is unlistenable. To your point, maybe they were trying to lose themselves in the structures and themes/variations/motifs/developments? I think all of this is different for dancers. We inhabit and manifest the music, without necessarily knowing/understanding the score and its underlying technical nuances. Perhaps we respond to it, rather than about it? All I know is that, regardless of whether it is listenable or not, Webern's music (despite itself/perhaps ironically) is extremely danceable.

Webern actual minimalism no repitition distilled condensed elegant chilling important I like it.

There’s a remarkable poem by Drew Milne called ‘A Broken Cast,’ dedicated to the memory of Webern. It can be found in Milne’s collected poems, In Darkest Capital (2017). Read it to see how the poet finds prosodic and other linguistic and poetic ‘equivalents’ for Webernian modes of expression. A great video, btw.

A fascinating discourse on this composer, very articulate and persuasive...

Well said.

Totally agree with what you say here, especially about the fact that the post war composers mistook his means for 'ends'. I've loved listening and being challenged by his music for most of my adult life...I think my kids will look at life more forgivingly and patiently because I listen to Webern with them now.

I am so ancient that the only access to all the known music of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern was through the Robert Craft CBS recordings. Now, on KZfaq, the performances of the opus 10 pieces run into double figures. At the time of writing I am back looking at those pieces but I am still absorbing the first movement, which is more surprising than ever. The final gesture (F repeated four times) sounds more and more like a cadence. It also subtly harks back to the opening three notes with the colouration. In between there is a journey, albeit some twenty odd seconds, but a journey it is. I admit that Webern is't for everybody, but everybody a least has the chance now to hear his music. I cannot tell you my glee when, on a TV serial, one character pulled out an LP of the the then quite new Boulez CBS set, which I bought almost as soon as it hit the shelves. I'm not 100% sure, but I think it was the opening of the Symphony, opus 21. My mind followed the contours of the canons and I had to snap out of it to concentrate on the dialogue.

A great intelegent review. Thanks

thank you so much for your video. I remember attending in La Rochelle (France) in a music festival a conference about opus 10, with an orchestra demonstrating each measure of this wonderful jewel, how it was built and made sense. Great memory! I'm about to film a concert with pasacaille n°1 and your comment will help me a lot I'll try to see more of your videos

thank you for uploading about anton webern

Thank you for making this video.

Thank you Samuel

my opinion on atonalism is that it is very interesting and beautiful but only if it is short. So I think he was right creating short movements in his work.

very interesting and, especially, helpful. thank you

Good stuff mang, Keep up the good work.

Bravo, very well done, 10 minutes very wel spent. Webern will always be my favourite composer. Dutch composer Willem Pijper had a similar comment as Schoenberg's (Sigh-Novel) by claiming that a single note of Webern is like a Mahler symphony.

Nicely done!

This is a great video, thank you!

Brilliant! I loved it.

The first time I heard Webern, I was in Awe of the absolute Intensity. It has the same effect, now after 40 some odd years. There is nothing quite like it. Thanks for your short documentary. Can you imagine an hour long documentary on the originator of Minimalism? Although, I'd watch that too, considering how much I love his music.

Thanks for this.

Great video, thank you. Webern is one of my favourite composers. I hope you make more videos like this. Can you comment or make a video about who you think are the most innovative living composers?

thanks so much for the video

Thanks again . I need this channel !I need to find some papers on opus 10. How many people recognized the importance of his work before and during WW2. Sad we lost so much . But what we do have is awfully difficult to hear . Betsy Jonas in your interview with her mentions this was the first work of Webern (Boulez championed him) she had a chance to hear . I've seen the score . He's famous for being a perfectionist and writing these miniatures full of "ideas,worth noticing " A few seconds of Boulez even to a deaf guy is eventladen and unforgettable . Webern -I've yet to discover but have owned a few scores over 30 years . Maybe now , I'll start the work (deciphering ) .What can be heard I wonder . "Months to unravel it all " The challenge will spur many to discover ...

amazing video!

Amazing channel man! Never been able to appreciate classical music before I started watching your videos. Any chance of seeing some Jazz analysis?

Subconscious motives wrote behaviors not to be confused with observership. I dearly love what came through the man. Thank you so much.

LANGSAMER SATZ, a string quartet written in 1905, is his finest work! It's TONAL!!

The Op.7 4 pieces for Violin and Piano is a very affecting composition. I first heard it on a recital disc of Anne-Sophie Mutter w/Lambert Orkis. The program also included Prok.'s Sonata for Violin Op. 94a, Four Nocturnes by George Crumb, and Sonata for Violin by Respighi. I really like the Crumb composition.

great video

Nice summary! No, 10 minutes or 10 years won't do justice to Webern and his achievements, but what's presented here is the sum of a great effort. I've been enamored by Webern's work since the mid-80's when I got the six LP set of Boulez's famous compendium. Since the age of 19 I couldn't stop listening, and the sense of discovery with every gesture in all of Webern's pieces is like walking into a cathedral and marveling at the architects and masons who made it all possible. If anything, his music teaches the art of restraint.

It wasn't until I read the book of conversations between Robert Craft and Igor Stravinsky that I understood the true difference between early and 'middle-period' (as he was never granted a true late period) Webern- namely, that Webern was going through his own Neo-Classical phase. Webern wrote his String Quartet Op. 28 around the time Stravinsky wrote Dumbarton Oaks, and while vastly different in scale and musical grammar, both look backwards towards Classical forms, and we can describe both using terms we'd use to generalize capital-'C' Classical music- stately, architectonic, and perhaps the slightest bit dry. There was also the tempering influence of Schoenberg's method, whose deployment I'm convinced was largely motivated by the fact both Schoenberg and Webern were struggling with extended forms in a free atonal musical grammar, despite Schoenberg's high-minded rationalizations otherwise. My own preferences lean towards Webern's early miniatures, even if I find myself listening to the later works more often. His interest in early music makes sense to me, as I can hear fleeting suggestions of plainsong in parts of those early works, and ostinato sections that remind me of Perotin. On the other end, in the second Cantata, I almost hear him reconnecting with Romanticism- but a florid, love-of-God-and-nature Romanticism, rather than the tortured expressionism of Mahler and Schoenberg.

It's fabulous music is old Webern. As an improvising composer my earlier days were full of long pieces and as I've matured the pieces have become shorter, in many respects I have no control over that.

This video was very enlightening. I've enjoyed op 7 Vier Stucke played by Isaac Stern and Webern's op 11 for cello and piano. I have not yet been able to warm up to the variations for piano. I'm going to play them on the piano until they make sense to me. I'll give every piece of Webern involving piano the attention it deserves. (Takemitsu's Rain Sketches are based on Webern so I'll relearn those pieces too. ) . Thanks for the excellent video.

Really good 👍

You should add suggestions with regards to the chronology, i think. Or actually just more annotation in general: every time i'm watching your lectures -- there are names of works mentioned, frequently in multiple languages and it's sometimes hard to catch or to keep track of them once i'm through the video and want to look them up. Maybe type them out in the description of the video as if in "Works mentioned" or something! A bit narcissistic of me, probably, but it's just jaw-dropping how you know them all by heart and the specificity. Great insight, thank you!

Thank you for this insightful video. One thought that came to mind while listening to Webern was that my appreciation of his music might partly stem from my experiences with other music: his music feels so concise because the sounds reference other music with precision, so that they act as tokens of other music. Though I can't test if this is really the case, since I can't forget the music I've heard in the past. Some of the most powerful music I've heard either way.

Samuel Andreyev, Thank you for this . Well done. Well thought out and well explained. Are you a pianist? Repertoire on KZfaq ? Much appreciated.

Beautifully put together video Samuel. Thank you. You make some very relevant points. I particularly think your thoughts on how musical events happen in a mature Webern composition very significant. Especially in regard to temporal perception. The music of Webern is profoundly emotional and you highlight this fact. Far too much time is spent IMHO examining the process and not the visceral effects of A W's art. I think Webern's own comment about his early opuses ( "They are all about the death of my mother") is indicative of an emotional reaction. So why do so many people still want to approach this music as if they were in a composition analysis class? Or to put it another way don't other people have mothers too?!? Exposure is clearly the starting point and (as you rightly say) repetition. In fact a composition like Op. 11 would probably benefit from being performed and heard twice at a recital. Eventually (well hopefully) the penny will drop and these magically condensed musical worlds will reveal themselves to the attentive listener for what they are: Superbly constructed tapestries of sound. Exquisite in their miniature detail. It is (I cannot stress enough) highly emotional music. Almost tragic at times in its pathos. Explosive moments followed by profound silences. But also graceful and tender at other times. The novel in a sigh comment by Schoenberg really says it all. Some may believe elitism and the ivory tower to be the true home for Webern and his art but I think not. It speaks for and of humanity and the human condition as much as say Van Gough, Euripides, Tarkovsky, Shakespeare et al.

Thank you for this, Webern is the composer who influences me the most. I consider all of his work to be a romantic gesture. Everything is incredibly beautiful once the aesthetic is understood. Hearing the first chord in the piano part of his "4 pieces for violin and piano" was the exact moment I understood it all, seems strange but it's true.

I like Webern's brand of "minimalism". All the spaces in between the sounds seem to give me time to process wtf just happened. The lack of repetition keeps me on my toes. When there is repetition, it is subtle. As opposed to the minimalism of Reich, Riley or Glass where the repetition is constant and deliberate; the repetition serves a purpose but my brain gets bored af. The way I see it, Webern's music offers a challenge or an mental exercise while still being concise and substantive. Again, as opposed to composers in the 80s who exploited the complexity of Webern's work in their own compositions, of which I view to be "complexity for the sake of complexity". There's more to Webern's music than just it's compositional difficulty. There's some serious emotions to be found... That's just my opinion :) Love you, Samuel!

I don't think so much of the very short pieces being outside time but as the last left overs. vestuges of time In particular the example you gave above. I think it opens a wrench into the bowels of time. time. It comes from that whole process of removing extraneous formaily in time until a last shred of development is left over in Webern Once when introducing Webern to friends witha very brief piece It is dark - imagine a flash of lightning which permits you to catch a glimpse of a leaf, a twig and .he feathers of a bird This helped to fix the musical images. Webern was a self-a effacing man. I hear this even in the Passacaglia But Ithink he got to the pinit where he thought he could withdraw and let the twelve tones speak for themselves, a fetish I prefer the atonal works of Webern and Schoenberg, before getting stuck in the twelve tone system, Alban Berg never did get stuck in them. It's true that Webern had a great influence after the war, But Boulez who started as a Webernian, changed his mind and prefered the freeer structures of Alban Berg. All open to dicussion

Thanks for making this video, it was great. I prefer his early works, his later works can be really hard to listen to. I recommend you to listen Takashi YOSHIMATSU - Threnody to Toki , there are some elements of Takashi's music that remind me of Anton von Weberns later works.

I am appreciating Your comment about Herr Anton von Webern and , humbly saying that , I would rather follow Your indication, in order to try and understand his compositionsBest Rgards by the way : I would be since some decade, a humble book pupil of Herr Arnold Schoenberg

My octopus in music is the singing in piece like Wozzeck or Lulu; all the rest tastes good to me

my record store guy highly recommended i pick up a of Webern album he just came across. i love unusual atonal music, but didn't love Webern all that much. given this video though, i will defiantly listen to it harder. nice video.

Try the Passacaglia. It's great!

Which recording of Webern's work made by Boulez do you prefer, the one from 1991 or the one from 2000?

Great video! Hey, that map looking thing on the wall (what is it? Transylvania?), behind your right shoulder is a centimeter or two off of being perfectly straight. Please attend to this. Thank you.

Frank Zappa brought me here.

What books you got in your background?

I wish it were possible for someone to explain what is going on in pieces from such as Webern for a general listener with no theoretical musical background. Indeed, given the brevity of the second movement discussed in this post, Webern may be the ideal candidate for such an explication. From this post I can extrapolate why Webern composed as he did but not how. I would like to know WHAT is going on musically in his work. For example: what is going on harmonically in, say, this second movement: both in regards to the relations between the individual instruments and also in the piece as a whole. Again, what is going on temporally within such work? One thing has always puzzled me in particular about the Avante Garde: I understand the Modernist thrust to "make it new" and can clearly see how this would work in fine art or literature but, given that musical intonation is governed by physics - ie: that consonant relations between intervals on the Western Major Scale are governed by "sympathetic" vibrational frequencies at key points along that scale weren't composers such as Webern tilting at windmills? Take 12 tone music: excuse my crassness but, does such a system "work" purely because someone said it does and then runs with it? Again, if this is the case isn't it being obtuse for the sake of it? For a literal example of what I'm getting at: Won't a b5 triad chord always produce that tri-tone dissonance because the physical laws governing the harmonic relations between the notes of the chord produce this dissonance? If this reading is correct I could get with someone composing music that is knowingly dissonant - ie in order to represent harrowing or traumatic experience or abstract concepts for example but what I struggle with is when composers devise systems seemingly in order to theoretically legitimise such dissonance as being harmonically sound. Again, if one was to take, say, a suspended chord, the overall affect produced is generally felt to be unresolved and, thus, begging a final "solid" chord to achieve resolution. Do composers such as Webern believe such chordal functions / affects as this to be due to nothing more than tradition and familiarity as opposed to a quirk of Human psychology? (Indeed, I'm not certain which is true myself! Do we commonly hear suspended chords as unresolved because of hundreds of years of convention or is it something that is hard wired, so to speak? If it is purely due to convention then I "get" what Schoenberg, Webern were up to. If it IS "hard-wired" however, what was the point?). Alright, I'm playing Devil's Advocate somewhat here; I do enjoy the work of many Modernist composers but I do think that there would be much to be gained if someone were able to explain to the layman in simple, none technical language, what is going on, not philosophically but MUSICALLY with someone like Webern. Somebody once claimed something along the lines of this: logic and theory can be extended to THEORETICALLY prove just about anything on paper; even that an elephant can hang suspended from a cliff side with its tail being attached to nothing more than a daisy. Our lived experience does not re-in force this however. I guess what this statement suggests is that "The map is not the territory" and, In our current discussion, this then begs the question: what constitutes music? Is any organised sound valid as music as long as it "works on paper", theoretically and intellectually irrespective of the aural result? Is work from such as Schoenberg and Webern given the time of day purely because the composers were trained musicians coming from conservatories and could demonstrate an intellectual framework underpinning their work? Would such an intellectual framework be discernible to an audience if asked to discern between a work by Webern and that of a completely untrained musician producing dissonant sound on a stage? When does "music" dissolve into "noise" and vice versa? What's the sound of one hand clapping? I think Tom Cruise as Jerry Maguire (I think!?!) said it best: "Explain it to me as if I were a child"!

It sounds fine while doing dishes! But water & dish clatter noise do interfere w/ clarity.

The truly consequential question is: _Can Humor Belong In 12-tone?_

I have a peculiar request for you. Have you ever read Adorno's Philosophy of new music? If so, would you care to comment on it? I'm a philosopher and I invested a lot of efforts in his work, but the musical aspects of it are sometimes beyond my grasp. I'm curious if it has any resonance with contemporary composers. I assume a lot of what he says is common ground now, but still, I don't know of any philosopher who has talked of music so extensively. I'm posting this here because of course Adorno was very interested in Webern's music. What you said about it in this video gives me a clearer picture why. I personally have a lot of problems getting beyond Mahler and romanticism in general. I can barely see the subjectivity in something like Webern's music. In fact, I seem to remember that Adorno stated one of the goal of the second Viennese school was to eliminate subjectivity from music altogether... and he would say this ultimately results in the most subjective of musical pieces. I understand the dialectics of it but I have no idea what this means from a musical standpoint.

Is there a biography of him that you like? Please leave a note. Ty.

Now I'm hungry for octopus

I'm watching this video because I just saw the video of The Mike Douglas Show where the legendary musician Frank Zappa said he liked listening to Anton Von Webem. No surprising to me, now that I see this video and see the correlation between the two in being unusual composers. Here is the link of that interview and Frank mentions Anton at the ten minutes and eight seconds point of that video. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/obmAl8pl3rbbcZs.html

Interesting commentary, BUT, this composers name is Anton Webern NOT Anton von Webern as you call him in 1st second of vid. Hard to confuse him with (1786 - 1826).

Or Webern described in one word: Prophet

The American soldier who accidently shot Webern committed suicide because he could not live with what he had done.

Bach and Webern are my gods

The problen with Webern is that his music is so reduced that it does not give the average listener much to hang on to. If one goes far enough in that direction only sceintific analyses remains to unearth the subtlety and then such output, on average, becomes music for scholars. It's the age old problem of weighing originality against accesibility.

I quite like his music, but just that lack of linear trajectory is main problem with Webern´s music for me. For me music must have drive and must go from point A to point B. Fortunately Webern was smart enought and know, that this kind of music music is bearable only for short period of time so his compositions is often very small.

I'm sure this is obvious, probably even intentional, but if you took the name "Webern" out of this analysis, this video is almost indistinguishable from your analysis of Frownland.

I have loved Webern my entire life and you sir, made a damn awesome video!! Your choice of orchestral piece was a very good one, it shows how you can be overwhelmed by the lush beauty which washes over you. I don't really understand how people couldn't fall in love with his works. I actually *like* using his music behind processes, like oil painting. You have a stark room with a bright light and you play his entire works on a loop. Wow! it really gets up into you and affects the painting. Thank you again for a video I really enjoyed! If you find the time please listen to my new form of music, Omni in Spirit melody 3. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/bM6Dl7J3qtLek4E.html

I'm always surprised that nobody mentions that Webern was a convinced Nazi, while in much "greyer" cases like Furtwängler it is mentioned all the time. This doesn't change that he is one of the most significant composers of the 20. century. However , it is also part of who he was, there is a great deal of ideology also in his music.

KZfaq why are you advertising a TV wrestling match before this program? Hulk Hogan performs to Webern!

This guy is the Ben shapiro of the second. Viene ese school. who agre ? And watching in 2022?