Anton Webern: biography and creativity

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Anton Webern (photos are presented in the article) is an Austrian composer and conductor. He is one of the founders of the New Viennese School. Born in Vienna on September 15, 1883. In his youth, the future composer lived in Vienna and Graz.

Biography

The father of the future musician, Carl von Webern, was a mining engineer and an official from the Ministry of Agriculture. Mother, Amalia Ger, was the daughter of a butcher. She was interested in art, and she showed herself as an amateur pianist. The biography of Anton Webern is closely connected with music. The future composer began to study it seriously in 1895.

At Edwin Komauer's he learned to play the cello and piano. The young man also attended a gymnasium located in Klagenfurt. After that, he studied under Guido Adler at the University of Vienna as a musicologist. In the period from 1904 to 1908, the musician studied composition with Arnold Schoenberg.

This fact had a significant impact on the formation of him as a person, and also determined his creative direction. Webern in Schoenberg's class met Alban Berg,composer, who became his close friend. From 1908, Webern performed as a symphony and opera conductor in the cities of Germany and Austria, he also worked in Prague.

The musician was the leader of the Vienna Working Singing Society. In the period from 1928 to 1938 the composer served as a conductor at the Austrian radio. When the Nazi regime established itself in Austria, Webern was removed. His life was tragically cut short in Mittersill in 1945, when the city was already occupied by American troops.

Creativity

Anton Webern was a student and follower of Arnold Schoenberg, the creator of the so-called "atonal" school. The composer brought to the extreme forms of expression the principles inherent in it. He used serial and dodecaphone technique in his compositions.

The music of this composer is characterized by the utmost concentration of expressive means, unreality of images, loftiness, rigor, economy and laconism, brevity and aphorism. Exceptional sound refinement in Anton Webern's music is combined with abstract thinking and a rigid constructive scheme.

He is the author of choral, chamber-instrumental, symphonic and vocal works. The maestro created literary works, including poetry, the drama "Dead", musical studies and articles, analyzes of his own works, a series of talks called "The Path to New Music".

The work of this composer significantly influenced the currents of the post-war musical avant-garde in the West. It was reflected in the works of such composers asLigeti, Maderna, Nono, Stockhausen, Boulez, Stravinsky. Russian music composers Volkonsky, Denisov, Schnittke, Gubaidulin, Knaifel, Vustin were also influenced by him.

Quotes

Anton Webern said:

New music is unprecedented music. In this case, the new music is equally what arose a thousand years ago, and what exists today.

According to the composer, the new one is:

The kind of music that feels like it's never been made or said before.

The composer called music a language in which a person conveys what he cannot say otherwise. He wrote that there was a certain need, a need that brought to life the phenomenon that people call music. The Creator claimed that some thoughts can only be expressed by sounds:

Obviously, there was a need, a need, that gave rise to what we call music. What is the need? The need to say something, to express a thought that cannot be expressed otherwise than in sounds.

Philip Gershkowitz called Webern the last master of German music.

New Viennese School

Composer Anton Webern was one of the founders of the Zweite Wiener Schule. The aesthetic principles of this phenomenon were historically developed in Vienna in the first third of the twentieth century.

The school of composers was the result of active organizational, pedagogical and creative activityArnold Schoenberg and his students. In addition to Webern, Rene Leibovitz, Hans Erich Apostel, Theodor Adorno, Egon Welles, Heinrich Yalovets, Viktor Ullman, Hans Eisler, Alban Berg made their efforts to found this institution.

Compositions

Anton Webern created the sonata movement for piano (Sonatensatz - Rondo) in 1906. He also authored the following works:

• "Escaped on light boats";
• "This song is just for you";
• "In the Blow of the Wind";
• "On the bank of the stream";
• "By the morning dew";
• Naked Tree;
• "Login";
• "Fidelity also makes me";
• "Praise and thanks to you";
• "I'm so sad";
• "You have come to the hearth";
• "You I always hide from";
• "I'm alone with you";
• "The day has passed";
• "Mysterious Flute";
• "It seemed to me when I saw the sun";
• "Lawn in the park";
• "Lonely";
• "In a foreign land";
• "Winter Evening";
• "Sun";
• "Evening landscape";
• "Night";
• "Caught Thrush Singing";
• "Cross";
• "Morning song";
• "Get up with God's name";
• "My way";
• "Go, oh soul";
• "Poor sinner";
• "Holy Virgin";
• "Savior";
• Zolotko;
• "Salvation";
• "The lilies of the candles turn white";
• "A herd is grazing in the meadow";
• "Dark Heart";
• "Rushing from the heights";
• "My Lord Jesus";
• "How glad I am";
• "Purpleheart bird";
• "Stars";
• "The Light of the Eyes";
• "Incendiary Lightning of Life";
• "Little Wing";
• "The beatific strings of Apollo sound";
• "The world is silent";
• "The Deeply Hidden Inner Life";
• "Drawing from the fountains of the sky";
• "The Lightest Burden of Trees";
• "Welcome word";
• "Released from the Womb";
• "In the summer wind".

And one more saying of the master: "What is the point for lovers to study the elements of music, the 'mysteries of its rules'? The point is precisely to teach to see the abysses behind banalities! And yet - and this would be salvation - to be active spiritually".