Fließend: A Brief Insight Into Anton Webern’s Opus 9, No. 6
Anton Webern’s Six Bagatelles for String Quartet, Opus 9, is a set of pieces for two violins, viola, and cello. Composed in 1913 in Vienna, each bagatelle is brief, spanning a single page, varying from seven to thirteen measures.
The composition reflects Webern’s yearning to mirror some of the ideas of his mentor, Arnold Schoenberg. One of the most prominent concepts throughout the six movements is the lack of any contrasts that call for resolution in the music. This portrays the new style of writing brought to light by Schoenberg in the development of atonal music. In addition, the movements are all through-composed. In other words, there are no clearly defined sections that mark a beginning or an end to a specific musical idea or motive.
No. 6 is titled Fließend, which translates from German to “flowing.” This last bagatelle is a vivid example of continuity in Webern’s music. The title, itself, reflects its structure. There are only two places in the nine measures that have a moment of complete silence, when none of the instruments are playing: the eighth note rest at the downbeat of measure 1 and the eighth note rest on the downbeat of measure 3. It may seem that each of the four instruments is sounding out random pitches, either separately or simultaneously, yet each of them also has an independent line which interweaves constantly with the other instruments. For example, in measure 7, even though the three lower parts have a rest on the downbeat, the first violin is still holding the tied F-sharp from the previous measure.
As many composers of his day, Webern very often constructed his compositions with the golden ratio in mind. “The golden ratio, also known...
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...le of His Life and Work (New York; knopf, 1978). Looking into Webern’s life between 1908 and 1913, he writes that “[Webern’s] compositions of that period reveal a growing tendency to compress the highest intensity of expression within the greatest formal brevity.”
This is true of all six of the bagatelles in Opus 9 and clearly expressed in No. 6. The score is packed with constantly interchanging indications (plucked, bowed, muffled, on the bridge, at the fingerboard) for the stringed instruments, thus creating different sound effects, as well as causing emphasis on specific pitches or phrase fragments. Almost every single note has multiple instructions accompanying it, and yet, the whole piece is only nine measures long. Such detail reflects the scrupulous attention that Webern gave to every note: he wanted to express the most in the minimal amount of music.
Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) played a significant part in the evolution of twentieth-century music, influencing a number of other composers with his innovative compositional techniques. The Quartet for the End of Time, is not one of Messiaen’s typical works due to the circumstances in which it was composed (his main outputs were organ, orchestral and choral works), but it marks the start of the significant use of some of these techniques.
William Henry Hadow and Charles Rosen are two historians who talk primarily about musical context. Hadow sets his discussion in the framework of classical composers' movement away from Baroque forms. He says that when Beethoven and his contemporaries chose ternary form over Baroque binary, typified in the dance suite, they chose a structure that was then used successfully into the twentieth century. This was only poss...
Themes and Variations of the Trout Quintet A quintet is a work for five instruments, in this case piano, violin, viola, cello and double bass (piano quintet). The fourth movement of this quintet is a theme and variations on Schubert's song 'Die Forelle' (The Trout). Schubert (1797-1828) was a prolific song / lied composer. Many of his songs took their inspiration from the beauty of nature; 'The Trout' being a good example. Much of his 'lieder' display pictorial word painting effects in either the vocal or piano writing - note the piano 'ripples' of the brook in the accompaniment of 'Die Forelle'.
‘Sonata’ at this time referred to instrumental music while ‘pian’ means soft and ‘forte’ means loud. The title of the work indicates that it is an instrumental work that has soft and loud sections. Gabrieli's composition is special because it is the first to show dynamic markings in an ensemble setting. Some sources will say that it is the first piece to portray dynamics in general, but other sources provide evidence that dynamic markings appear in solo literature composed decades beforehand. “Deeper acquaintance with the music shows that they [the dynamics] also have an emotional function, for they occur so irregularly that the listener is never certain if he will be overwhelmed with sound, or when he must strain his ears for some more subdued phrase.” Gabrieli felt that dynamics can help portray or alter the audience’s perception of a pattern of music towards a particular mood.
First of all, the text is well organized in terms of its unity. The piece has seven movements. According to Fuller, "The first and last movements adopt the text of an established mid-seventeenth-century chorale by Johann Rist. The middle movements have new text by an unknown poet who occasionally quotes or paraphrases middle stanzas of the chorale." Moreover, this unknown pot himself repeates some words in the text.
As a youth, Shostakovich believed that he was to be the successor to Beethoven's throne as the compositional genuis. It is safe to assume that no composer until Shostakovich had been so central to the history of his time, or had so consistently sought to symphonically express the sufferings and aspirations of his contemporaries as had Beethoven. Dmitri S...
Xenakis was hired at the studio of Le Corbusier in 1947. While under the tutelage of Le Corbusier, Xenakis composed during his free time, and took lessons from many different composers. For Xenakis, none of these composers would let him compose in the manner which he felt the most comfortable. This was the case until he was encouraged by Le Corbusier to study with Olivier Messiaen. Messiaen was unlike his previous teachers, he “advised him not to take conventional theory lessons but to continue to bring in his expert knowledge of architecture and mathematics.” There are three notable factors that contribute to the initial incorporation of numerical proportions within the compositions of Iannis Xenakis: he was already familiar with the Golden Section from his studies of Greek architecture; the encouragement he received from Messiaen to further pursue his incorporation of mathematics and architecture into music, and the many references to music made by Le Corbusier with his Modulor. The Golden Section and the Fibonacci series appear multiple times throughout the compositions of Xenakis. This paper will only discuss three specific instances: Le Sacrifice, Psappha, and Metastasis.
In the following paper I will be exploring the beginning of Leonard Bernstein's career and his family background. I will also look into the influences he had in his life and look at two pieces that he composed, "Jeremiah Symphony No. 1", and "Candide". My reasons for choosing these two pieces is due to the fact that they are contrasting in genre, one being a symphony with orchestration and the other being an operetta, and that they were written at different stages in Bernstein's life. They both produced a number of responses and displayed his wide range of musical ability.
...ers and the audience. The dramatic nature of this piece alone is something to be reckoned with as it is extremely passionate. The symphony is presented in 4 movements as is common and begins with a Poco Sostenuto- Vivace, followed by a Allegretto movement, Presto movement, and finally ends on an Allegro con brio movement. the central theme of this piece is introduced in the first movement by a flute playing in tripple meter continuously ascending up the scales rising in dynamic contrast, continuing to grow into a louder and more stark contrast between it’s highs and lows. Consistently dance like, the piece is celebratory of its roots buried in historical Austrian music that has been present in the culture for years. The accomplishments of the soldiers for which the piece was composed for are easily told of simply by the energy and power present throughout the piece.
...re was very interesting transitions between the variation, for example, string section plays the variation from low to high, when they reach the highest note, the brass family takes over and continue with the scale and make it more higher. Tremolo style was used in this piece, which is a quick ups and downs stroke mode. The music were very soothing and attracted the audience. Lastly, they end the piece with the same variations that was played at the beginning.
A sinfonia (Italian for symphony) broadly refers to a number of instrumental works from the Baroque period, including symphonies, sonatas, canzonas, concerti, and Italian opera overtures. Even J.S. Bach titles his “three-part” inventions for harpsichord “Sinfonia”. Torelli’s Sinfonia in D (G.8) is a four-movement “concerto” for trumpet, strings and harpsichord continuo. Unlike a concerto grosso, where a main theme is presented and then reappears in fragments, the main themes of Sinfonia in D are developed rather freely. The second movement (Adagio) is a very short, slow, interlude without trumpet that introduces the third movement (Allegro). Hence, the program shows these two movements as “adagio-allegro” joined together.
Historical. This brilliant composition is considered as one of the two most important violin concertos of the German Romantic period, with Mendelssohn’s vi...
Liszt was a pianist who played a piece one time and then he “began to transpose simple passages into octaves and thirds, trills into sixths and to add phrases on his own until, in Brorodin’s words, what emerged ‘was not the same piece but an improvisation of it’” (Perenyi 205).
Varèse, Edgard and Lewis Alcopley. “Edgard Varèse on Music and Art: A Conversation between Varèse and Alcopley.” Leonardo,1.2 (1968): 187-195.
The golden ratio is a term used to describe proportioning in a piece. In a work of art or architecture, if one maintained a ratio of small elements to larger elements that was the same as the ratio of larger elements to the whole, the end result was pleasing to the eye.