# Alternative History for Classical Music



## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

Anton Webern doesn't get shot in 1945 but continues to compose in Austria for the following 20 years. How would classical music been different?


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Tough question... I will have to think about it and report back. I have a couple of different scenarios that I could see playing out.

Going to stick around to see others' answers in the meantime


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## paulbest (Apr 18, 2019)

Roger Knox said:


> Anton Webern doesn't get shot in 1945 but continues to compose in Austria for the following 20 years. How would classical music been different?


Webern's murder was the greatest tragedy of all WW2.
The biggest blot on American involvement. 
I have no idea ,,what could have been,,but we do have Elliott Carter taking ques from Webern's high genius, and perhaps , finishing what Webern began.

His untimely death makes his every work, even that much more super special.


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## WildThing (Feb 21, 2017)

After the unsuccessful Dresden uprising of 1849, Richard Wagner, who had played an active role in the failed revolution was unable to escape authorities and was imprisoned with his composer/conductor friend August Röckel for 13 years until 1962. Thus he was unable to spend those years composing the first three operas of The Ring and Tristan und Isolde.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

WildThing said:


> After the unsuccessful Dresden uprising of 1849, Richard Wagner, who had played an active role in the failed revolution was unable to escape authorities and was imprisoned with his composer/conductor friend August Röckel for 13 years until 1862. Thus he was unable to spend those years composing the first three operas of The Ring and Tristan und Isolde.


He might actually have faced capital punishment. That would have changed music so greatly that there would have been no Webern, who would not then have been shot, and this thread would not have been started.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Roger Knox said:


> Anton Webern doesn't get shot in 1945 but continues to compose in Austria for the following 20 years. How would classical music been different?


I don't know about what difference there might be in classical music in general, but I _do_ know I'd currently have even less space on my CD shelves had Webern lived and composed for 20 more years. (And, I would not regret that lessened shelf space at all!)


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Deleted. I should not take the bait.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

To the OP: well, he was almost 62 already, and had composed relatively little so far. Not much reason to believe that things would have changed so much.


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## paulbest (Apr 18, 2019)

Art Rock said:


> To the OP: well, he was almost 62 already, and had composed relatively little so far. Not much reason to believe that things would have changed so much.


Sometimes a composer's late works are the better, Scriabin. 
for instance.

Sometimes in their eariest yrs, Sibelius, for instance.
So the Q should be
Did Webern 's last works match the quality of his early/middle period?

This is what we need to figure out here.

Besides, life somehow knows ones future and so perhaps life too into acct this eventual tragedy and allowed Webern to complete his life in terms of actual achievements , before the tragedy struck.

And to consider all his works taken as a whole, its mountainous, standing over many other composers who perhaps lived longer, yet whose works only stand as mole hills next to Webern.

Take Stockhausen for instance, mole hill next to Webern, yet lived much longer yrs. 
That list could be extended.

Schoenberg has made a comment on one of Webern's works. Something to the effect *He writes a foot note and is more than a entire novel*…
Webern had a uncanny genius, unlike any other composer I know, who could write the fewest notes, yet say the most.
Just one tiny lieder from Webern , moves me more than one of Mahler's hour long symphonies.
So in this sense, perhaps , Webern had reached his zenith , and maybe not much more development was to come.

So we have to look post Webern and see which composers gave us some of his further developments. 
I would like to mention 2, but everyone can add in many others who were influenced by the great composer.

Elliott Carter
Henze

Varese(?)


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## paulbest (Apr 18, 2019)

and then , here 's another thought just crossed my mind
How many composers see their music represented in 2 separate box sets of recordings, from a great conductor?
Boulez Sony and Boulez DG sets.
How many composers can boast to have almost the entire 6 CD set from DG with nearly all masterpieces? If not all.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

paulbest said:


> and then , here 's another thought just crossed my mind
> How many composers see their music represented in 2 separate box sets of recordings, from a great conductor?
> Boulez Sony and Boulez DG sets.
> How many composers can boast to have almost the entire 6 CD set from DG with nearly all masterpieces? If not all.


Alban Berg has an 8-CD set on DG like that  Not quite up to par with the Webern box though.


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

Roger Knox said:


> Anton Webern doesn't get shot in 1945 but continues to compose in Austria for the following 20 years. How would classical music been different?


That depends. If at the same time Beethoven lived 15 years longer and Bach died at 22, Schubert finally got married and met some interesting patrons and Liszt died at 120 years of age, finishing his last work at 119 years old, it probably wouldn't be that different! :lol:


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## paulbest (Apr 18, 2019)

Beethoven;s 0th, was evidence his creative powers were on the,,,wane….had he lived another 15, had he not poor hearing,,,i mean its a mute point...


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

paulbest said:


> Beethoven;s 0th, was evidence his creative powers were on the,,,wane….had he lived another 15, had he not poor hearing,,,i mean its a mute point...


I would have loved to listen to a Beethoven's 10th symphony. His late works seem so different and yet still so effective musically when compared to what came before them that it's difficult for me to imagine how he would develop further his style. How would he react to new music like Berlioz's _Symphonie Fantastique_? Would he incorporate romantic elements into his new works, or would he turn back from the style of people like Chopin, Schumann and Mendelssohn?

These 15 years of increased lifetime would probably have given us at least a requiem, a string quintet and an opera by him, so it would have been extraordinary for people that acknowledge his genius like me.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

I think that (judging by the trend in Beethoven's late works toward classical proportions) he would have taken a reactionary stance toward people like Schumann and Berlioz, but that perhaps that reaction could have pushed him in a direction toward an even higher transcendence. It seems to me that his music was increasingly out of step with the world of modern music towards the end of his life, but that didn't stop his music from becoming greater. 

What makes you think he would have written another opera...? Maybe you know something that I don't know, but Fidelio took a lot out of him even as a young man, and it seems like he was less than wholly satisfied with its execution. In any case, he had decades to write a follow-up and never seemed to have any interest. A requiem I could see happening. A quintet would be cool, but I think he would have more likely honed his craft of the string quartet even further. He seemed to have an obsession with proportionality and symmetry toward the end. I think a quintet would have thrown everything off.


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

flamencosketches said:


> I think that (judging by the trend in Beethoven's late works toward classical proportions) he would have taken a reactionary stance toward people like Schumann and Berlioz, but that perhaps that reaction could have pushed him in a direction toward an even higher transcendence. It seems to me that his music was increasingly out of step with the world of modern music towards the end of his life, but that didn't stop his music from becoming greater.
> 
> What makes you think he would have written another opera...? Maybe you know something that I don't know, but Fidelio took a lot out of him even as a young man, and it seems like he was less than wholly satisfied with its execution. In any case, he had decades to write a follow-up and never seemed to have any interest. A requiem I could see happening. A quintet would be cool, but I think he would have more likely honed his craft of the string quartet even further. He seemed to have an obsession with proportionality and symmetry toward the end. I think a quintet would have thrown everything off.


I read somewhere that Beethoven had plans to compose an opera, a requiem and a string quintet just before he died (he even made some sketches for the latter if I'm not mistaken), that's why I said that. I can't remember the source of this now, but I can look for it if you want.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Well now I'm curious for sure, definitely share if you come across it, but no rush.


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

Had Webern survived the war I think he would have felt the strong pull toward living in Argentina.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Room2201974 said:


> Had Webern survived the war I think he would have felt the strong pull toward living in Argentina.


He survived the war. He was shot four months after Germany capitulated.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Allerius said:


> I read somewhere that Beethoven had plans to compose an opera, a requiem and a string quintet just before he died (he even made some sketches for the latter if I'm not mistaken), that's why I said that. I can't remember the source of this now, but I can look for it if you want.


Beethoven had worked on an opera (Macbeth) some years earlier but abandoned it. He had SFAIK no opera plans at his death, not any plans for a requiem. I've read of a planned string quintet, but all we have TMK is his 1817 fugue for string quintet, published after his death as Op. 137. He certainly had plans for a grand oratorio, already commissioned, but I don't think there are any sketches.


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## Guest (Jun 23, 2019)

paulbest said:


> Beethoven;s 0th, was evidence his creative powers were on the,,,wane….had he lived another 15, had he not poor hearing,,,*i mean its a mute point*...


Beethoven was deaf, not dumb. I wonder whether, had he been mute, the course of classical would have been different?

Now I'm off to find out something about Webern - which pieces should I start with?


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

MacLeod said:


> Beethoven was deaf, not dumb. I wonder whether, had he been mute, the course of classical would have been different?
> 
> Now I'm off to find out something about Webern - which pieces should I start with?


The Passacaglia, op.1, the 6 pieces for orchestra, op.6, the 5 movements for string quartet, op.5, and if you're feeling adventurous, the Symphony, op.21.


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

KenOC said:


> Beethoven had worked on an opera (Macbeth) some years earlier but abandoned it. He had SFAIK no opera plans at his death, not any plans for a requiem. I've read of a planned string quintet, but all we have TMK is his 1817 fugue for string quintet, published after his death as Op. 137. He certainly had plans for a grand oratorio, already commissioned, but I don't think there are any sketches.


You're probably right. But I'm almost sure that I've read somewhere that he considered the possibility of composing a requiem aswell. I looked for a source and didn't find it though, so I may be mistaken.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Beethoven did speak of writing a requiem, but in an entirely hypothetical way: "Among all the composers alive Cherubini is the most worthy of respect. I am in complete agreement, too, with his conception of the 'Requiem,' and if ever I come to write one I shall take note of many things."


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

I realize now that over my lifetime I've veered back and forth, _obsessively ambivalent_ about Webern's great posthumous influence during the 1950's-1970's, my youth. But that was a long time ago. The era of Boulez and Stockhausen, of Babbitt and the Princeton School, of their like-minded contemporaries, is over. Not my favourite era.

Having considered all the replies I realize it's time for me to let go of my "Webern-influence thing," of what would/would not have happened if he'd lived into his eighties. Who knows? What I most appreciate is how considerate and insightful your replies are -- thank you.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Roger Knox said:


> Anton Webern doesn't get shot in 1945 but continues to compose in Austria for the following 20 years. How would classical music been different?


This is all conjecture of course, he probably would still have become a figurehead to the post-war avant-garde. I'm thinking he may have turned out like another Varese, a father figure to those who went in the direction of electronic music. At the same time, Webern would have been appalled at Boulez's "Schoenberg is dead" diatribe. Webern would have considered it to be in poor taste, since to him Schoenberg was a father figure and a bit of a god. It is also conceivable that had Webern lived until the 1960's he would have seen not only the decline of the total serialist fad but also that of modernism as a whole.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Sid James said:


> This is all conjecture of course, he probably would still have become a figurehead to the post-war avant-garde. I'm thinking he may have turned out like another Varese, a father figure to those who went in the direction of electronic music. At the same time, Webern would have been appalled at Boulez's "Schoenberg is dead" diatribe. Webern would have considered it to be in poor taste, since to him Schoenberg was a father figure and a bit of a god. It is also conceivable that had Webern lived until the 1960's he would have seen not only the decline of the total serialist fad but also that of modernism as a whole.


I think this as well. Were he alive to defend himself, perhaps he would not have let Boulez and his rowdy friends run off with his ideology and methods, allowing them to pervert everything that he was about. Yet this would have the consequence of drastically changing the course of music history. There may not have been the big split between the ultra-serialists in one camp, and everyone else in the other. I imagine Boulez's initial Webern recordings would have sounded much different with input from the composer.

This probably comes off as if I hate Boulez, I really don't. He wrote some phenomenal music. I just can't help but wonder what might have happened if Webern himself stuck around to remain an influence for generations, rather than Boulez's idealization of the deceased Webern.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Roger Knox said:


> I realize now that over my lifetime I've veered back and forth, _obsessively ambivalent_ about Webern's great posthumous influence during the 1950's-1970's, my youth. But that was a long time ago. The era of Boulez and Stockhausen, of Babbitt and the Princeton School, of their like-minded contemporaries, is over. Not my favourite era.


it must be said that he influenced also very different composers like Arthur Berger who used the pointillism used Webern in beautiful (and tonal) neoclassical music or a "impressionist" (for the lack of a better word) like Toru Takemitsu or even improvisers like Taku sugimoto or Derek Bailey in the use of space. I mean, I think his influence more than in the use of twelve tones has to be seen in those aspects, pointillism, space, silence and in the detachment of his music more than in his use of pitch (I would look at Schoenberg for that).


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Just before his tragically untimely end, Webern had been appointed to a major conducting post in Vienna if I remember correctly , not the Vienna Phil. or the state opera . Possibly the radio orchestra there . 
He was considered to be an outstanding conductor in his day , but this fact is not very well known .
So he might have become better known as a conductor if he had lived longer , and become even more active as one . Possibly he would have visited the US and conducted leading orchestras there .


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

We would certainly have more pieces by Webern on our CD shelves -- but so many musical currents foliated and flourished in the decades after the War that I suspect the end result would not have been markedly different. People's musical personalities tend to express themselves how they will, and there was certainly enough Webern out there when he died that his influence was what it was.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

Quote Originally Posted by Sid James View Post

This is all conjecture of course, he probably would still have become a figurehead to the post-war avant-garde. I'm thinking he may have turned out like another Varese, a father figure to those who went in the direction of electronic music. At the same time, Webern would have been appalled at Boulez's "Schoenberg is dead" diatribe. Webern would have considered it to be in poor taste, since to him Schoenberg was a father figure and a bit of a god. It is also conceivable that had Webern lived until the 1960's he would have seen not only the decline of the total serialist fad but also that of modernism as a whole.



flamencosketches said:


> I think this as well. Were he alive to defend himself, perhaps he would not have let Boulez and his rowdy friends run off with his ideology and methods, allowing them to pervert everything that he was about. Yet this would have the consequence of drastically changing the course of music history. There may not have been the big split between the ultra-serialists in one camp, and everyone else in the other. I imagine Boulez's initial Webern recordings would have sounded much different with input from the composer.
> 
> This probably comes off as if I hate Boulez, I really don't. He wrote some phenomenal music. I just can't help but wonder what might have happened if Webern himself stuck around to remain an influence for generations, rather than Boulez's idealization of the deceased Webern.


In the OP my thinking was similar to the above two posts. In contrast to the mathematical Webern we were learning about in the 1970's university music school, there is the Webern who wanted the first movement of his _Piano Variations_, op. 27 played expressively, like a Brahms intermezzo. And the Webern who walked in the Alps, the air purer than in Vienna, with beautiful Alpine meadows and the wintergreen of Hildegard Jone's poetry that he set to music. In the _Variations _ I always was puzzled by the third movement, the actual "variations" -- how could you make them cohere with all the very short phrases and pauses? But from my own hiking in the mountains, I started to think of these phrases as short-breathed motions forward followed by rest, as if the air was getting thinner and the climb more arduous. Completely fanciful on my part but the image has stayed.

Also I learned that Webern's "mathematics" was mysticism with numbers formed into magic squares (the Second Viennese School composers had occult interests), and that magic squares influenced his composition of the _Concerto_ that I taught in music theory class. I can't emphasize enough how significant Webern's influence on composers was after World War 2, while we really didn't know Webern at all!


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

flamencosketches said:


> I think this as well. Were he alive to defend himself, perhaps he would not have let Boulez and his rowdy friends run off with his ideology and methods, allowing them to pervert everything that he was about. Yet this would have the consequence of drastically changing the course of music history. There may not have been the big split between the ultra-serialists in one camp, and everyone else in the other. I imagine Boulez's initial Webern recordings would have sounded much different with input from the composer.
> 
> This probably comes off as if I hate Boulez, I really don't. He wrote some phenomenal music. I just can't help but wonder what might have happened if Webern himself stuck around to remain an influence for generations, rather than Boulez's idealization of the deceased Webern.


I think that his death - particularly the manner of it - did make him a martyr for the succeeding generation. At the same time, the development of a kind of Webern cult had more to do with the Boulez and the avant-garde than the deceased composer. As far as I know, Webern didn't have much of a forceful personality and I'm quite sure he left all the ideology to Schoenberg. Its clear that the 1950's saw modernist experimentation at its peak and Darmstadt was the centre of it all. If Boulez's extreme tabula rasa view of music at the time had any advantages, I think that the main one was to approach music in a totally fresh way that mean removing any residue of pre-serial (or pre-Schoenberg) approaches. As norman bates notes above, it wasn't only Boulez or others usually associated with post-serialism who where impacted by this, there where others (Cage and Feldman primarily come to mind, who I think met at a concert of Webern's music).



Roger Knox said:


> In the OP my thinking was similar to the above two posts. In contrast to the mathematical Webern we were learning about in the 1970's university music school, there is the Webern who wanted the first movement of his _Piano Variations_, op. 27 played expressively, like a Brahms intermezzo. And the Webern who walked in the Alps, the air purer than in Vienna, with beautiful Alpine meadows and the wintergreen of Hildegard Jone's poetry that he set to music. In the _Variations _ I always was puzzled by the third movement, the actual "variations" -- how could you make them cohere with all the very short phrases and pauses? But from my own hiking in the mountains, I started to think of these phrases as short-breathed motions forward followed by rest, as if the air was getting thinner and the climb more arduous. Completely fanciful on my part but the image has stayed.
> 
> Also I learned that Webern's "mathematics" was mysticism with numbers formed into magic squares (the Second Viennese School composers had occult interests), and that magic squares influenced his composition of the _Concerto_ that I taught in music theory class. I can't emphasize enough how significant Webern's influence on composers was after World War 2, while we really didn't know Webern at all!


That decontextualized view of music was a problem for modernism but has since been addressed by postmodernism. Joseph Kerman's article "How we got into analysis, and how to get out" was a seminal text of the emergence of the new musicology that sought to create a balance between formalism and context.


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## Rach Man (Aug 2, 2016)

Over the past two years I have finally started to enjoy Shostakovitch and his big works. Although I would not like to lose those pieces, I wonder what direction he would have gone if he didn't have to write music to please Stalin.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Rach Man said:


> Over the past two years I have finally started to enjoy Shostakovitch and his big works. Although I would not like to lose those pieces, I wonder what direction he would have gone if he didn't have to write music to please Stalin.


It's impossible to say for sure but I would look at the works that Stalin had a negative reaction to. Shostakovich might have continued to go in that experimental direction with a greater freedom of expression had he not been interferred with:



> _Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District._ Shostakovich had been forewarned by a friend that he should postpone a planned concert tour in Arkhangelsk, in order to be present at that particular performance. Eyewitness accounts testify that Shostakovich was "white as a sheet" when he went to take his bow after the third act. In letters written to Sollertinsky, Shostakovich recounted the horror with which he watched as Stalin shuddered every time the brass and percussion played too loudly. Equally horrifying was the way Stalin and his companions laughed at the love-making scene between Sergei and Katerina. The next day, Shostakovich left for Arkhangelsk, and was there when he heard on 28 January that Pravda had published a tirade titled Muddle Instead of Music, complaining that the opera was a "deliberately dissonant, muddled stream of sounds...(that) quacks, hoots, pants and gasps." This was the signal for a nationwide campaign, during which even Soviet music critics who had praised the opera were forced to recant in print, saying they "failed to detect the shortcomings of Lady Macbeth as pointed out by Pravda". Shostakovich also withheld the initial release of his 4th Symphony for many years. [unquote]


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

"The power of good music to infect the masses has been sacrificed to a petty-bourgeois 'formalist' attempt to create originality through cheap clowning. It is a game of clever ingenuity that may end very badly."

https://sites.google.com/site/kenocstuff/muddle-instead-of-music


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

paulbest said:


> Webern's murder was the greatest tragedy of all WW2.


Definitely a greater tragedy than Hiroshima, the siege of Stalingrad, the firebombing of Dresden, or Auschwitz. No comparison.


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## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

paulbest said:


> Webern's murder was the greatest tragedy of all WW2.
> The biggest blot on American involvement. .


I would question the accuracy of the second point as well. Not that American shame in WW2 Is widespread or anything.

Webern was NOT murdered. He was shot for going outside during curfew. The American soldier responsible, Raymond Norwood Bell, was an army cook, and hardly the most experienced in terms of dealing with such situations. Drank himself to death because of what he had done. Sounds to me like a tragic error, if not accident. Tragic for music, but other lives were irrevocably changed forever too.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

CnC Bartok said:


> I would question the accuracy of the second point as well. Not that American shame in WW2 Is widespread or anything.
> 
> Webern was NOT murdered. He was shot for going outside during curfew. The American soldier responsible, Raymond Norwood Bell, was an army cook, and hardly the most experienced in terms of dealing with such situations. Drank himself to death because of what he had done. Sounds to me like a tragic error, if not accident. Tragic for music, but other lives were irrevocably changed forever too.


Wasn't he outside his house? I'm not sure that counts as going out after curfew, and given the self destructive reaction of the soldier responsible, it seems he would likewise question this. It's not like the guy was provoked at all.


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## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

flamencosketches said:


> Wasn't he outside his house? I'm not sure that counts as going out after curfew, and given the self destructive reaction of the soldier responsible, it seems he would likewise question this. It's not like the guy was provoked at all.


Obviously the accounts of Webern's death are far from crystal clear, but I am sure Bell did not go to said house with the express desire to shoot someone. And from his army background, as a cook, his experience of dealing with "the enemy" would have been limited. Panicked response most likely? The war may have been over, but I somehow doubt being in late-1945 Austria was Shangri-la......

I am emphatically not saying Webern deserved it or anything quite so daft, but it simply has to be seen as a tragic accident, definitely not murder.


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