# 20th Century Symphonic Masterpieces: Part Fifteen - Webern's Symphony



## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

20th Century Symphonic Masterpieces: Part Fifteen - Webern's _Symphony_



















The Symphony, Op. 21, was the first large-scale orchestral work Webern had written since the Five Pieces, Op. 10, 15 years earlier. The work marks the beginning of a period of extreme compression in Webern's music. Dedicated to his daughter Christine, the Symphony is a work of severe economy and restrained expression. Its symmetrical structure and pointillistic texture are quintessential hallmarks of Webern's mature compositional style.

Scored for clarinet, bass clarinet, two horns, harp, first and second violins, viola, and cello, the Symphony is widely regarded as a masterpiece in miniature: Webern's teacher and mentor Arnold Schoenberg was astounded and moved by the work's concision. Like most of Webern's 12-tone works, the Symphony is based on a single series dominated by semitones. The work consists of two short movements. The first is in two parts -- statement and development -- and begins with a double canon in four parts; the second movement is a theme with seven variations and a coda, and also includes the use of canon.

The Symphony is perhaps most remarkable for its use of symmetry, which in some quarters has stirred accusations against Webern of a certain excessive pedantry. That symmetry takes several forms, from the work's palindromic series to the canonic variations that work in both directions from the exact center of the piece outwards. The astute listener can spend a lifetime hearing an intricate web of such structural correlations within the Symphony, which is a sort of super palindrome.

[Article taken from All Music Guide]

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Such an outstanding work, but I'm sure I'll be met with some hostile responses (or not). I'm not sure what I feel exactly when I hear this symphony other than marvel at its construction and how all of the instruments are interacting with each other. Of course, the symphony only lasts around 9-10 minutes, but the textures Webern gets out of the musical material is amazing and so concise. I would say my favorite performance is the Karajan/Berliner one on DG. He somehow is able to give this work a certain edginess that many other performances lack. Interesting fact about Karajan's Second Viennese School recordings, they were completely funded by him --- now _that's_ advocacy folks! Anyway, what do you guys think of the work?


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

I think it's a piece of crap. I've studied it in an analysis class. I've conducted it (it's very, very difficult). I've tried for almost 50 years to hear what some people think makes it so great. When you need a PhD in musicology and maybe perfect pitch to understand a work, how "great" can it be? Webern and his ilk are largely responsible for the destruction of classical music; their path was clearly the wrong one. But the "experts" told us that it was the way of the future. They were wrong. I still get a bit of smug satisfaction that there is not one work of Webern that has entered the mainstream repertoire. And very, very little of Schoenberg or Berg.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I respect mbhaub's experience with the piece, so my response will be subjective, regarding my personal feelings. Personally, I like his use of time, timbre, and space. I think that is the best use of the 12-tone technique rather than throwing out rows superimposed on each other at maximum speed. 

I came to Webern after encountering the Netherlands Renaissance composers, and I was familiar with composers using canons as a structural device, so of the Second Viennese School, he was the first one I connected with. I posted this quote last year, and I still feel this way: The piece sounds to me like Heinrich Isaac found a time machine, ended up in Webern's living room, took a crash course in dodecacophony, and brought the Renaissance into the 20th Century.


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

mbhaub said:


> I think it's a piece of crap. I've studied it in an analysis class. I've conducted it (it's very, very difficult). I've tried for almost 50 years to hear what some people think makes it so great. When you need a PhD in musicology and maybe perfect pitch to understand a work, how "great" can it be? Webern and his ilk are largely responsible for the destruction of classical music; their path was clearly the wrong one. But the "experts" told us that it was the way of the future. They were wrong. I still get a bit of smug satisfaction that there is not one work of Webern that has entered the mainstream repertoire. And very, very little of Schoenberg or Berg.


Of course, I disagree. You know, there are actually people out there in the classical world that _like_ Schoenberg, Berg and Webern. I'm one of them. Your argument has been around since the critics and musical public became aware of any of their music during each of these composers' own lifetimes. I don't have a PhD in music nor do I have any particular training in classical music, but you know what, one doesn't need to have these things in order to enjoy their music. I enjoy the textures, colors and just the general atmosphere that each of these composers were able to create.

You're free to dislike them all you want, but the fact that you've gotten all riled about one little post about Webern's _Symphony_ gives me a smug satisfaction in knowing that The Second Viennese School are still as radical and challenging as they were during the early 20th Century.

LONG LIVE THE SECOND VIENNESE SCHOOL!!! HURRAH!!!


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## HenryPenfold (Apr 29, 2018)

mbhaub said:


> I think it's a piece of crap. I've studied it in an analysis class. I've conducted it (it's very, very difficult). I've tried for almost 50 years to hear what some people think makes it so great. When you need a PhD in musicology and maybe perfect pitch to understand a work, how "great" can it be? Webern and his ilk are largely responsible for the destruction of classical music; their path was clearly the wrong one. But the "experts" told us that it was the way of the future. They were wrong. I still get a bit of smug satisfaction that there is not one work of Webern that has entered the mainstream repertoire. And very, very little of Schoenberg or Berg.


Of course you have the right to call anything that scares, threatens or upsets you ''a piece of crap'', but you should ask yourself if it is virtuous to exercise that right.

Being 'smug' is a character weakness.

'The way of the future - they were wrong'? What's wrong with being aspirational?

One can respond to music in many different ways. My response is mainly on a visceral level, not a cerebral level. I therefore have no need for a PhD - speak for yourself.


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## HenryPenfold (Apr 29, 2018)

Neo Romanza said:


> 20th Century Symphonic Masterpieces: Part Fifteen - Webern's _Symphony_
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I first came across this work with the Karajan self-funded box set on DG. This set was a key milestone in my love for classical music and I, and many others, are in Karajan's debt for his courage, commitment and foresight in this enterprise.

Webern remains my favourite of the 3 2VS masters and the Op. 21 contains a lot of the reasons why. Even if I heard the work a thousand times, I'd still marvel at the light and shade, timbre and spacing of the music and interrelationships between the instruments. As Morton Feldman might say 'he has great moves'. And Webern does indeed have great moves! 

Every time I listen to it, I'm on a never ending road of discovery. I find this with most of Webern's output and all of his orchestral works.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

mbhaub said:


> I think it's a piece of crap. I've studied it in an analysis class. I've conducted it (it's very, very difficult). I've tried for almost 50 years to hear what some people think makes it so great. When you need a PhD in musicology and maybe perfect pitch to understand a work, how "great" can it be? Webern and his ilk are largely responsible for the destruction of classical music; their path was clearly the wrong one. But the "experts" told us that it was the way of the future. They were wrong. I still get a bit of smug satisfaction that there is not one work of Webern that has entered the mainstream repertoire. And very, very little of Schoenberg or Berg.


Isn't that a bit silly? You say that some people (quite a few, actually) like the work and you also say that you would need a musicology PhD to "understand" it. Then you imply that those who like it, far from having a PhD, are just being told what to like by "experts". That seems to be extraordinarily rude to those of us who enjoy it as music rather than as an academic exercise - to imply that we just like what we are told is good. 

And then you go on to say that no Webern, and nearly no Schoenberg and Berg, have entered the mainstream repertoire. Presumably that repertoire is what you believe gets played in American orchestral concerts - a repertoire that must also exclude a lot of Mozart, Haydn and so on as well? If you want to know how popular a work is (as if that mattered very much) it would probably be better to look at recordings. Or you could even take a look at what European orchestras play. Sorry if that threatens your smug satisfaction.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

mbhaub said:


> I think it's a piece of crap. I've studied it in an analysis class. I've conducted it (it's very, very difficult). I've tried for almost 50 years to hear what some people think makes it so great. When you need a PhD in musicology and maybe perfect pitch to understand a work, how "great" can it be? Webern and his ilk are largely responsible for the destruction of classical music; their path was clearly the wrong one.


If anyone wanted to compose music of traditional melody/harmony, they were free to do so. No one was stopping them. Blaming on guys like Webern for the lack of such music seems a bit illogical to me. Was there really such a thing as "destruction of classical music"? I doubt it. Webern could be seen as one of the guys who made expression of feelings of the modern era (such as "mysteriousness", "horror", and "grotesqueness") possible. Consider the Scene of Horror from Handel's Jephtha, for comparison. Which is more "relevant" to our era? To each his own.



mbhaub said:


> But the "experts" told us that it was the way of the future. They were wrong. I still get a bit of smug satisfaction that there is not one work of Webern that has entered the mainstream repertoire. And very, very little of Schoenberg or Berg.


Maybe they're just not as "entertaining" or "crowd-pleasing" as the usual favorites. I don't get a smug of satisfaction fooling myself things like Mozart's requiem, 40th, Beethoven's 5th, 9th, which have garnered billions of views on youtube, are intrinsically "music for intellectuals", whereas some other things such as www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJrIPyhgdtY (The opening of Ordinary People, which people have called "incredible") are "pop classical".


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## Waehnen (Oct 31, 2021)

mbhaub said:


> I think it's a piece of crap. I've studied it in an analysis class. I've conducted it (it's very, very difficult). I've tried for almost 50 years to hear what some people think makes it so great. When you need a PhD in musicology and maybe perfect pitch to understand a work, how "great" can it be? Webern and his ilk are largely responsible for the destruction of classical music; their path was clearly the wrong one. But the "experts" told us that it was the way of the future. They were wrong. I still get a bit of smug satisfaction that there is not one work of Webern that has entered the mainstream repertoire. And very, very little of Schoenberg or Berg.


I wouldn´t call it crap but for me the predictability of the piece is close to maximum. I am not capable of getting excited about the tone colours because I can think of so much music where there are tone colours *plus* melodically, harmonically, texturally and dramatically more interesting material.

For sure, I have appreciation for dodecaphony as a necessary phase of music history but in an artistic way I am not interested in it. The huge amount of symmetry does not particularly warm me. The modernist stuff that I am interested in and love, came later, after the dodecaphonic phase.

Anyway, this piece of music doesn´t take anything away from anybody so I am not against it. There is room in the history of music for this piece. I am happy that this piece of music exists. And I am happy if people like it.

I´d rather listen to this than Webern´s Symphony, talk about tone colours and expression, oh my:


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Waehnen said:


> Talk about tone colours and expression, oh my:


Love it! Thanks!


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## Waehnen (Oct 31, 2021)

Manxfeeder said:


> Love it! Thanks!


Wonderful! What Saariaho writes about the piece also makes sense and most importantly -- can be heard in the piece!






Lichtbogen « Kaija Saariaho







saariaho.org


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

HenryPenfold said:


> I first came across this work with the Karajan self-funded box set on DG. This set was a key milestone in my love for classical music and I, and many others, are in Karajan's debt for his courage, commitment and foresight in this enterprise.
> 
> Webern remains my favourite of the 3 2VS masters and the Op. 21 contains a lot of the reasons why. Even if I heard the work a thousand times, I'd still marvel at the light and shade, timbre and spacing of the music and interrelationships between the instruments. As Morton Feldman might say 'he has great moves'. And Webern does indeed have great moves!
> 
> Every time I listen to it, I'm on a never ending road of discovery. I find this with most of Webern's output and all of his orchestral works.


Same here. It was HvK's pioneering recordings of these composers that got ball rolling for me, too.


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## Lisztianwagner (2 mo ago)

I didn't know Karajan himself funded the DG set of the Second Viennese School, but I'm very glad he did it, the results were definitely more than brilliant, especially in Schönberg's pieces! I think his perfect control of the orchestral colours and his accuracy for the sound fit this music extremely well.
I don't like Webern as much as Schönberg or Berg, but I recognize his music has great quality; it is very tense, raw and fragmented, but at the same time, it is very thoughtful and reflective as well as able to concentrate a great expressiveness in a very brief structure, with a spare, but rigorous and geometrical counterpoint; it gives me the impression to visualize nature cell by cell. I also like Webern's use of timbres, rhythms and space as silence would be another tone to use.


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## HenryPenfold (Apr 29, 2018)

Waehnen said:


> I wouldn´t call it crap but for me the predictability of the piece is close to maximum. I am not capable of getting excited about the tone colours because I can think of so much music where there are tone colours *plus* melodically, harmonically, texturally and dramatically more interesting material.
> 
> For sure, I have appreciation for dodecaphony as a necessary phase of music history but in an artistic way I am not interested in it. The huge amount of symmetry does not particularly warm me. The modernist stuff that I am interested in and love, came later, after the dodecaphonic phase.
> 
> ...


I enjoy Saariaho's music bigly and I have 9 CDs of her works in my collection, including Lichtbogen. While I love that work and as wonderful as it is, it cannot be considered as a peer of Webern's Op. 21. By comparison, the soundstage is cluttered, lacking the distance, time and space and economy of expression of Webern. It's why as much as we love him, Ligeti is not spoken of in the same breath as Webern.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

_Webern and his ilk are largely responsible for the destruction of classical music; their path was clearly the wrong one. But the "experts" told us that it was the way of the future. They were wrong_

That may be true but plenty of other tonal composers including famous ones like Samuel Barber, Sibelius, Shostakovich, Stravinsky and even Richard Strauss composed into or near the 1950s, a quarter-century past the introduction of the Second Viennese School.

It was more likely the Boulez crowd that changed music since beginning in the 1950s they acted out a tyranny on tonal and post-anything music. But the composing crowd went along, later came minimalism, and people like Steve Reich and Elliott Carter were declared geniuses.

I think the point is you can't rewind history or tell composers to write music the way it was written yesterday. To be called conservative is a badge no composer wants to wear.

The Webern symphony, all 8 minutes of it, is a pleasant little excursion in my opinion, a way to pass time between more substantial works. To call it a masterpiece or masterwork is stretching it, I'd say.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

It's more than 50 years since I encountered Webern's music. Other new developments I was experiencing were stream-of-consciousness writing, concrete poetry, expressionism and several varieties of abstract art. So it wasn't Webern's novelty that was "astounding" but rather the concentration of many strands of musical thinking in his works. I became intrigued studying the Symphony and Concerto and performing the Piano Variations.

We now know more about the Second Viennese School composers. The decline and fall of the old-fashioned, authoritarian Austrian Empire left a brittle political situation with extremist tendencies. There was resistance to the dominance of the Roman Catholic Church in Vienna. Numerology, magic squares, and nature mysticism were important to Webern as was common in early 20th-century avant-garde circles. What bothers me now is creepiness. When I think of Austrian expressionist poetry, for example, there is an intransigence and darkness that I also associate with Webern's music, despite its brilliant, finely-wrought countenance.


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## feierlich (3 mo ago)

Interestingly this work makes one of the greatest encounters in music history (following from Wikipedia):

In early 1950 Feldman heard the New York Philharmonic perform Anton Webern's _Symphony_, op. 21. After this work, the orchestra was going to perform a piece by Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Feldman left immediately, disturbed by the audience's disrespectful reaction to Webern's work. In the lobby he met John Cage, who was at the concert and had also decided to step out. The two quickly became friends, with Feldman moving into the apartment on the second floor of the building Cage lived in.​
For me, both the 1950 audience's disrespect and some of the hostile reactions in this thread, along with the fact that "Webern hasn't entered mainstream repertoire" precisely show how great this composition is.



mbhaub said:


> When you need a PhD in musicology and maybe perfect pitch to understand a work, how "great" can it be? Webern and his ilk are largely responsible for the destruction of classical music; their path was clearly the wrong one.


You don't need a "PhD in musicology" (most of the time that doesn't help - I'm in fact against the whole academic practice of musicology, as Beecham said "A musicologist is a man who can read music but cannot hear it") or perfect pitch (of course this helps, but not necessary - you have the score) to understand it. And if you think Webern's path is the "wrong" one, what about all the composers like Messiaen, Boulez, Stockhausen, Nono, Maderna (the five being arguably the most important figures in 20th-century music), Cage, Feldman, Zimmermann, Ligeti, Ferneyhough or even Lachenmann (the two being the living proof that classical music hasn't been "destructed" - it's thriving) who all cited Webern's influence on them? Or if they were "wrong" as well, why was there never a composer "right" and creatively powerful enough to overturn this trend?


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

One of favorite of the 2nd Viennese school.

It's compact, but conveys so much.

Webern and his ilk are responsible for leading the way to the only classical music that holds any interests for me.

My knowledge of music theory goes just slightly further than a moderately decent rock drummer. Years ago, I used to play in a rock cover band that used to play parties around LA.

I have a good friend who attended Julliard, but ended up opting for Berklee. He is a top LA studio musician, arranger for the movie and TV industry, who probably knows about as much about music theory as anyone here, and our tastes in classical music parallel almost exactly.


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

Waehnen said:


> I wouldn´t call it crap but for me the predictability of the piece is close to maximum. I am not capable of getting excited about the tone colours because I can think of so much music where there are tone colours *plus* melodically, harmonically, texturally and dramatically more interesting material.
> 
> For sure, I have appreciation for dodecaphony as a necessary phase of music history but in an artistic way I am not interested in it. The huge amount of symmetry does not particularly warm me. The modernist stuff that I am interested in and love, came later, after the dodecaphonic phase.
> 
> ...


Count me as another big fan of Saariaho.

The thing to take note of here, is that this Saariaho piece was composed about 60 years after the Webern piece.

Not to take anything away from her, and I am sure she would admit it, but she is standing on the shoulders of those that came before, and adding her own voice.


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## Waehnen (Oct 31, 2021)

HenryPenfold said:


> I enjoy Saariaho's music bigly and I have 9 CDs of her works in my collection, including Lichtbogen. While I love that work and as wonderful as it is, it cannot be considered as a peer of Webern's Op. 21. By comparison, the soundstage is cluttered, lacking the distance, time and space and economy of expression of Webern. It's why as much as we love him, Ligeti is not spoken of in the same breath as Webern.


Yes, I am of the 'globalist school', like many Finns are, where Ligeti is the way to go rather than the way set by Webern.

It can be seen even earlier if you compare Mahler´s and Sibelius´ orchestration. Mahler is very neat in my opinion and the sections work together as though I was working at a mixing console and had already checked that the frequences of different track groups do not overlap each other too much. Mahler was really good at orchestration.

Whereas Sibelius´ Oceanides has a wonderful buzz and hum to it all over that acts as a gravy between the elements, making the dish delicious. I prefer the Sibelian 'global' orchestration although it is not as controlled as Mahler and not many conductors get the Oceanides right.


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## unhandyandy (May 18, 2019)

Here's an interesting performance by the Nuremberg Symphony, perhaps along the lines of Webern envisioned.



https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFpRCPcCHVmlMaaClmaW8ww


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

Since @mbhaub made that initial post, he hasn't come back to defend his position. I suppose he doesn't want to face the modern music mob. Perhaps a smart idea on his part?  I'll never understand how someone believes that just because The Second Viennese School were essentially atonal composers and composed cutting edge music that this killed tonality. Boulez and the Darmstadt crowd didn't kill tonality either --- tonality has never died. It only died in the imaginations of those that want to believe it.


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## Lisztianwagner (2 mo ago)

Neo Romanza said:


> Since @mbhaub made that initial post, he hasn't come back to defend his position. I suppose he doesn't want to face the modern music mob. Perhaps a smart idea on his part?  I'll never understand how someone believes that just because The Second Viennese School were essentially atonal composers and composed cutting edge music that this killed tonality. Boulez and the Darmstadt crowd didn't kill tonality either --- tonality has never died. It only died in the imaginations of those that want to believe it.


I agree.  The Second Viennese School was a crucial step and the peak of a natural development taken by music since the beginning of the 20th century (or even since _Tristan und Isolde_), to try to overcome a musical system at that time mostly perceived as satured or too tight for the artistic necessities of the composers; but tonality has always been present anyway, before, together and after the twelve tone method.
Boulez and the Darmstadt crowd didn't kill tonality, but they certainly showed a rather dogmatic and harmful attitude, rejecting as useless any musician who hadn't experienced dodecaphony or even saying provocatively that Schoenberg was dead because he had still been tied to tradition.


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## Nawdry (Dec 27, 2020)

mbhaub said:


> I think it's a piece of crap. I've studied it in an analysis class. I've conducted it (it's very, very difficult). I've tried for almost 50 years to hear what some people think makes it so great. When you need a PhD in musicology and maybe perfect pitch to understand a work, how "great" can it be?


In my own perception, the psychical mood of Webern's Symphony (op. 21) qualitatively resembles that of Schoenberg's _Five Pieces for Orchestra_, a composition that I find rather rewarding particularly by processing it as a musical rendering of a kind of typically crazy dreamscape as concocted by the human subconscious. But Schoenberg's _Five Pieces_, for me, is a masterfully constructed suite of five miniature symphonic poems of aspects of that dreamscape (or perhaps it might be considered a symphonic poem of the subconscious with five sections). Schoenberg adroitly deploys serialist atonalism – "Angstmusik" – laden with anxiety, longing, confusion, fear, foreboding, uncertainty, and similar dark or "twilight" feelings, as a suitable compositional tool for such an undertaking. Webern's symphony seems to convey, for me, a similar atmosphere of a subconscious process, but in a wander of less wonderment and more uncertainty and disorientation. 

But a musical idiom confined in a surrealist subconscious netherworld has a tendency to quickly become boring rather than revelatory or transformative. This, in my view, may reveal an inherent psychical limitation of Angstmusik. This came to mind in MBHaub's additional comments:



mbhaub said:


> Webern and his ilk are largely responsible for the destruction of classical music; their path was clearly the wrong one. But the "experts" told us that it was the way of the future. They were wrong. I still get a bit of smug satisfaction that there is not one work of Webern that has entered the mainstream repertoire. And very, very little of Schoenberg or Berg.


Angstmusik, sometimes regarded as innovative and avant-garde, as a compositional tool seems constrained to communicating only the darker psychical experiences of the subconscious and other aspects of human experience, to the point of monotonous dreariness. I don't fault the composers for this, but I see this as a serious limitation that may have detrimentally affected attitudes toward classical music, both among classical audiences and the public in general.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I don't really know what to think of Webern's symphony, because I don't understand it.

It's with works like this and also his _Concerto for 9 Instruments_ and O_rchestral Variations_ that I, as a listener, reach the limits of my understanding. It seems that regarding pieces where the technique was more rigorously applied, I lose the thread which goes through the piece. I may as well be listening to morse code.

To some extent, this also applies to pieces like Berg's _Lyric Suite_, where I have little clue as to how the parts relate to the whole. I've had a bit more luck with Schoenberg's _Violin Concerto_, partly because I get glimpses of the old school thematic unity, and it just hits me at that visceral gut level.

I say this with the proviso that I've listened with music guides which explain the content and structure of these works.

The piece by Webern which I feel I can appreciate the most is his _6 Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6_. One critic said that Webern's music is like whispers, shadows and reflections in the still of night, and I can understand what he was getting at. It's like entering a world where every thought is concentrated, yet at the same time you're surrounded by a thick fog where everything is unclear.

Perhaps the application of serialism (particularly later, as in the symphony) led to such radical change in Webern's music to the extent that it cancelled out the qualities I respond to in the _6 Pieces_? Or perhaps I can accept the diffused nature of the _6 Pieces_ as opposed to that of the symphony, which I expect to read as such, a work with at least some loose sense of unity? I'm not overly concerned about this, even though it's an interesting question.


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## Knorf (Jan 16, 2020)

The first time I heard Webern's Symphony I thought it strange: very strange, in fact, but also very beautiful. I knew absolutely nothing at the time about its structure or theoretically underpinnings, only that it was mesmerizing; simply stated, one of the most perfectly exquisite compositions I had ever heard, and now know, will ever hear. To this day, it stirs my deepest emotions about music; I feel frisson just thinking about Webern's Op. 21 Symphony, remembering it's delicate textures and colors. 

I agree with those who appreciate Karajan's recording with the Berliner Philharmoniker. It was clearly a deeply heartfelt project for him, and fully committed. But for me, it's Boulez's performance of this great work with the same orchestra that I turn to the most. Abbado, Mehta, Craft, and others have also done well with this sublime masterpiece, this ineffable work that is among the rarest creations, the purest, perfect distillation of what is expressive in music. But Boulez for me is supreme.


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

Knorf said:


> The first time I heard Webern's Symphony I thought it strange: very strange, in fact, but also very beautiful. I knew absolutely nothing at the time about its structure or theoretically underpinnings, only that it was mesmerizing; simply stated, one of the most perfectly exquisite compositions I had ever heard, and now know, will ever hear. To this day, it stirs my deepest emotions about music; I feel frisson just thinking about Webern's Op. 21 Symphony, remembering it's delicate textures and colors.
> 
> I agree with those who appreciate Karajan's recording with the Berliner Philharmoniker. It was clearly a deeply heartfelt project for him, and fully committed. But for me, it's Boulez's performance of this great work with the same orchestra that I turn to the most. Abbado, Mehta, Craft, and others have also done well with this sublime masterpiece, this ineffable work that is among the rarest creations, the purest, perfect distillation of what is expressive in music. But Boulez for me is supreme.


Thanks for the feedback, @Knorf. I haven't heard the Boulez/Berliner recording in quite some time, but since you're enthusiastic about it, I'll give it a listen tomorrow. It's Boulez, so I know I'm going to enjoy. I recall his earlier performance with LSO on Columbia also being quite good.


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## Knorf (Jan 16, 2020)

Neo Romanza said:


> Thanks for the feedback, @Knorf. I haven't heard the Boulez/Berliner recording in quite some time, but since you're enthusiastic about it, I'll give it a listen tomorrow. It's Boulez, so I know I'm going to enjoy. I recall his earlier performance with LSO on Columbia also being quite good.


Yes, for sure the Boulez LSO Webern Op. 21 is also excellent. And I don't wish to take away anything from the Karajan; it's the recording I heard first and still deeply cherish. It is essential to a critical Webern discography.


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