Anton von Webern's Funf Satze, Five Movements for String Quartet
written in 1909, is the case of a composer rebelling
against length itself. For example, against such works as
Mahler's 9th Symphony lasting an hour and twenty minutes,
or a Wagner opera four hours in duration.
Webern's Five Movements boil everything he had to say down to mere seconds
or minutes rather than hours. This was a new and highly evocative world
of expression in which bits and pieces of sound scream or whisper and
violent extremes of time and space envelope the listener.
And all of this set in the new Schoenbergian suspension
insisted that his pupils have an intimate knowledge
of traditional harmony and structure, as he did, before embarking on their
own paths as composers. Yet, to Schoenberg's credit, neither Webern
nor Alban Berg, his most renowned students, composed works sounding remotely like his.
Webern's Five Movements shrink music into miniature gasps and sighs, strange effects,
violent outbursts, and evocative whispers. In the first movement, Heftigt bewegt,
strongly moved, Webern asks for extremes of loudness and softness, quirky rhythms,
and bizarre effects- yet in a carefully controlled world.
The second movement, Sehr langsam, very slow, is muted and as if seen
through a semi-transparent veil, with instructions such as "especially tender"
and "hardly audible". The third movement, Sehr bewegt, "very moving", begins with
restless, almost frantic heartbeats in the cello, abrupt
hissing sounds from the other instruments, and manic outbursts of sound that
get louder and faster before exploding in a single
last note. All the movements are short but this one tells a fascinating story
in hardly more than 30 seconds. By contrast, the fourth movement,
Sehr langsm, "very slow", creates an eerie and
intimate atmosphere before ending with seven fleeting
notes in the second violin that disappear into thin air. Poof.
The last movement, In zarter bewegung, in tender movement, begins slowly,