Bibliography

Anton Webern. 04 May 2009 .

"Drei Jone Lieder, Op. 25 (1)." Drei Jone Lieder. By Dorothy Dorow/Rudolph Jansen. Anton Webern.

Webern, Anton. Lieder, OP.25. English and German. Universal Edition.

[3] Songs, Op.25 Anton Webern. All Music Guide. 4 May 2009 .

Conclusions

Though this piece is short, it certainly packs a punch. Much of the importance of the piece lies in how the music interacts with the poetry of the vocal line. The lyrics to piece, by Hildegard Jone, are as follows

What great delight!

Once more now all the green's unfurled and shines so bright!

An still the world is over grown with flow'rs!

Once more I in creation's portal live my hours,

and yet am mortal.

The poem suggests that the writer is so happy to be on earth and that beauty abounds. What a great place to live, in "creation's portal", the doorway to what came before and what is natural. the last line is where both the text and the music take a turn. With the line "and yet am mortal", the music slows and becomes markedly more eerie and less optimistic. The major 7th interval performed in the whispery voice of the soprano creates a very uneasy sense to the end of the piece.

Analysis

To analyze Drei Lieder no. 1, I will explore the 12-tone nature of the piece. I will figure out how each pitch in the piece fits into the matrix and the different motives and pitch class sets that are present throughout the piece. I will finally explore the interplay between the piano and vocal lines to try to find how the two interact.

The piece is based on this 12-tone row:

G E D# F# C# F D B Bb C A G#

Here is the Matrix based on that row.

The piece begins with one plus measure piano introduction, during which the piano plays the retrograde inverse of the prime form. With the first three notes, F# F D, we see the beginning of a common theme in the piece, the 0 1 4 pitch class set. Here, as it is throughout the piece, the idea is played in a 16th triplet. In m. 2 through the first beat of m. 3, the piano plays the prime form of the row. We again see the 16th triplet 0 1 4 set to begin and end the prime form, first with the pitches G E D# and C A G# (both in retrograde form of the 0 1 4 idea). This idea is present throughout the piece as I will highlight on the score. From there, the piano plays the retrograde of the prime form from beat two of m. 3 through the end of m. 4. Here we have a transition between sections and it behooves us to examine the vocal line in the first half of the song.

The vocal line begins after the two bar piano introduction and sings through the prime form of the row. It does so beginning in m 2 and ends in m 4. With a pick up into measure 4. and for the first beat of m. 5, the vocal line sings the first four pitches of the prime form which is then completed in the piano line for the remainder of the bar. Here we see two repeated pitches, the F# in the vocal line is repeated in the chord that follows in the piano line and the D in that same chord is repeated in the first note of the 16th note triplet that comes after (another retrograde 0 1 4, D Bb B). The next bar (m. 6) in the piano is spells the inverse of the prime form, as do the three in the vocal line (m. 6-8). M. 7 to the first beat of m. 10 in the piano highlight the retrograde of the prime form and then plays the retrograde inverse from the last half of m. 10 through m. 11. During the second playing of the retrograde form and the retrograde inverse in the piano, the vocal line is singing the prime form. This prime form takes us to the end of the piece. In the last measure of the piece, the piano places the Inverse of the prime form.

By using the retrograde of the inverse to begin the piece and the inverse to end the piece in the piano, Webern uses a palindrome as book ends of the piece. This is especially highlighted in the 16th note triplets that begin and end the piece, the first being F# F D and the last being D F F#.

The vocal line throughout the first half of the piece has a graded register. It begins low, gets higher, than comes back down. This creates a flow to the first half of the piece that is absent from the second, which has a much more abrasive vocal organization. It tends to jump from high to low and back without very many pitches in between.

In the piano, we see two main motives, the 16th note triplet and tetrachords. The 16th note triplets, as I said, are mostly variations of the 0 1 4 pitch class set. The tetrachords, on the other hand are mostly combinations of m2 intervals and m3 intervals. Again, many of these are groups of that frequent semitone and minor 3rd intervals that create the 16th note triplets.

Dynamically, the piece changes very abruptly, switching between F and P. Even within a 12 measure piece, Webern manages to create a complete dynamic landscape with the changes. The way that the piece is performed by the singer, the P sections have a very whispery tone to while the F sections have a very pointed and clear tone. All of these contrasts help give the listener the impression that the piece is much longer than 12 bars and that it is a very complete work despite the short length.

Context

Anton Webern (1883-1945) was an Austrian composer best known for his work with atonal and serial music.

Webern began studying both piano and cello before studying musicology at the University of Vienna in 1902. By 1904 he was studying under composer Arnold Schoenberg. Together with his teacher and Alban Berg, a fellow Schoenberg student, Webern began to explore a new musical idea: Atonality. This new music, unlike almost any music before it, was written without a tonal center. It rejected the idea of a diatonic scale and chords based around it. It began to explore more subtle relationships between pitches. Though it was seemingly the rejection of all the musical ideas that came before it, it was in fact, the culmination. As music progressed, it had gotten more and more chromatic and farther from the more simple diatonicism that preceded it. The Second Viennese School, as the three composers have been dubbed, followed the lead of composers like Wagner who had been exploring the very limits of tonality before them.

As the exploration of Atonality progressed, a new way of writing this music was developed by Schoenberg and his students. In 1924, they began writing based on the 12-tone row, an ordering of all 12 pitches of the chromatic scale placed in a specific order. The 12-tone row was then expanded to include the rows for the original's inverse, retrograde (original backwards), the inverse of the retrograde, as well as transpositions of each form. The pieces composed in this serial manner use the 12-tone row and its various forms as a guide musical material. Music written this way became more and more about musical textures and timbres and exploring different sound landscapes. Webern began composing using the 12-tone method in 1925 and continued to do so for much of his remaining career.

In 1935, Webern finished his Three Songs on Texts by Hildegard Jone. The work is a set of three songs that are set to the poetry of Jone, an artist and poet of the time. Jone's words were used for all of Webern's vocal works after op. 25, something Webern decided upon first reading the poet. The three songs are quite short (no. 1 being only 12 measures) and are strictly serial works. The piece came in a time when Webern was writing exclusively using Schoenberg's 12-tone technique.

I will be analyzing the first song in the set of three.