with Webern, when it is really speaking to you, you really have to put everything else aside. I can't say this about composers that are closer to my heart. I would be having a domestically reliigeous experience to Strauss's "symphony domestica", having a mild climax to those epic mundane broad brushstrucks.... but.... I'm going to go to work still. Webern somehow freezes me in this weird eternal, this metaphysic mystery where I simply want to dissolve and become this piece. beyond thought and entertainment
This is really great and profound, but how is anyone supposed to hear, much less enjoy, all of this in an actual performance? It seems nearly impossible without years of musical training and dissection of the score.
i wonder if you would say the same about high classical music? it has the same amount complexity/detail. i think that webern was using methods/algorithms as a compositional device, which, in terms of process as a tool, is not that different than the high classical composers.
Why does it matter? Does all music need to be readily accessible by general listeners? Who says music needs to be so just by first hearing? Who says the appeal of music needs to start and end with what is audible and ascertainable just through the listening experience without looking at a score? Is music "only" sound? I've thought a lot about these questions and I happen to think that Webern's brand of serialism was overall a failure and was probably the biggest influence in a heavy misstep in the Western "academic/art music" scene (meanwhile I think Berg actually had a much more sophisticated and comprehensive form of serialism that's genius took far longer to understand and was unfairly written off simply for having a more audible connection to the past) All that being said, I still think it's fallacious and trite to think that music should be written for people of your particular understanding and commitment to music whatever arbitrary level that might be. Frankly, your comments could just as easily apply to Bach or Beethoven who wrote pieces of such subtlety and complexity that few, if any, listeners could fully grasp their grasp simply from a listen or three. Yet no one is making these comments about such composers because as many technical details as can be glossed over, the dramatic impetus can nonetheless be *felt* prima facie. It's no different for Webern once you learn to adjust your ears a little. His music is quite dramatic, expressive, and overall romantic (especially when you compare it to the later much colder, much more "intellectually minded" serialism of composers like Stockhausen and Babbit.) And at that point, it certainly doesn't matter whether you can hear every note of a klangfarbenmelodie retrograde inversion canon. Some composer, I'm not sure who (though I remember it was attributed to Lachenmann even though I can't find the quote) described Webern's Sinfonie as if "a Mahler symphony heard high up above from a helicopter." And I think what that lacks in accuracy, it makes up for in evocation and how one should go in approaching Webern's music.
I don't think that the point is to be able to "hear" the analysis, but I think you are not far off by suggesting that we need to "train" our ears to appreciate this music.
with Webern, when it is really speaking to you, you really have to put everything else aside. I can't say this about composers that are closer to my heart. I would be having a domestically reliigeous experience to Strauss's "symphony domestica", having a mild climax to those epic mundane broad brushstrucks.... but.... I'm going to go to work still. Webern somehow freezes me in this weird eternal, this metaphysic mystery where I simply want to dissolve and become this piece. beyond thought and entertainment
Thank you very much! Your review clearly helped me understand!
Thank you, Jordan. Very well put together.
Thanks! ❤
Fantastic video
this music is so beautifull
Could you please post a link to a pdf of your grand staff reduction of this marvelous piece?
Sorry, but I only made grand staff reductions for fragments of this work.
An extension of Kindertotenlieder.
This is really great and profound, but how is anyone supposed to hear, much less enjoy, all of this in an actual performance? It seems nearly impossible without years of musical training and dissection of the score.
i wonder if you would say the same about high classical music? it has the same amount complexity/detail. i think that webern was using methods/algorithms as a compositional device, which, in terms of process as a tool, is not that different than the high classical composers.
Why does it matter? Does all music need to be readily accessible by general listeners? Who says music needs to be so just by first hearing? Who says the appeal of music needs to start and end with what is audible and ascertainable just through the listening experience without looking at a score? Is music "only" sound?
I've thought a lot about these questions and I happen to think that Webern's brand of serialism was overall a failure and was probably the biggest influence in a heavy misstep in the Western "academic/art music" scene (meanwhile I think Berg actually had a much more sophisticated and comprehensive form of serialism that's genius took far longer to understand and was unfairly written off simply for having a more audible connection to the past)
All that being said, I still think it's fallacious and trite to think that music should be written for people of your particular understanding and commitment to music whatever arbitrary level that might be. Frankly, your comments could just as easily apply to Bach or Beethoven who wrote pieces of such subtlety and complexity that few, if any, listeners could fully grasp their grasp simply from a listen or three. Yet no one is making these comments about such composers because as many technical details as can be glossed over, the dramatic impetus can nonetheless be *felt* prima facie.
It's no different for Webern once you learn to adjust your ears a little. His music is quite dramatic, expressive, and overall romantic (especially when you compare it to the later much colder, much more "intellectually minded" serialism of composers like Stockhausen and Babbit.) And at that point, it certainly doesn't matter whether you can hear every note of a klangfarbenmelodie retrograde inversion canon.
Some composer, I'm not sure who (though I remember it was attributed to Lachenmann even though I can't find the quote) described Webern's Sinfonie as if "a Mahler symphony heard high up above from a helicopter." And I think what that lacks in accuracy, it makes up for in evocation and how one should go in approaching Webern's music.
I don't think that the point is to be able to "hear" the analysis, but I think you are not far off by suggesting that we need to "train" our ears to appreciate this music.