Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-05T00:30:58.389Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Thus Spoke the Early Modernist: Zarathustra and Rotational Form in Webern's String Quartet (1905)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 August 2015

SEBASTIAN WEDLER
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The large-scale structure of Anton Webern's String Quartet (1905) is an ongoing conundrum in music scholarship. Initially inspired by Giovanni Segantini's Trittico della natura, the quartet has been interpreted by most commentators in terms of a tripartite episodic form. Through the lens of rotational theory, this article puts forward an understanding of the quartet that interprets it in dialogue with the sonata paradigm. Based on this reading, it will be argued that the quartet bears strong links to the early modernist discourse on musical form. This perspective will be further explored, with reference to Webern's manuscripts and sketches, in the way the quartet engages with the Zarathustra trope. In casting the quartet in this light, this article challenges the common historiographical interpretation that sees it merely as a precursor to the high modernism of Webern's later development.

Type
Articles
Information
Twentieth-Century Music , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , September 2015 , pp. 225 - 251
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press, 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Katalog der IX. Kunstausstellung der Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs Secession. Vienna: Adolf Holzhausen, 1901.Google Scholar
Anson-Cartwright, Mark. ‘Chord as Motive: The Augmented-Triad Matrix in Wagner's “Siegfried Idyll”’. Music Analysis 15/1 (1996), 57–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arnold Schönberg: Mit Beiträgen von Alban Berg [et. al]. Munich: R. Piper & Co, 1912.Google Scholar
Bailey, Kathryn. The Life of Webern. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Baker, James M. ‘Franz Liszt, Carl Friedrich Weitzmann, and the Augmented Triad’, in The Second Practice of Nineteenth-Century Tonality, ed. Kinderman, William and Krebs, Harald. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996. 153–77.Google Scholar
Bribitzer-Stull, Matthew. ‘The A♭-C-E Complex: The Origin and Function of Chromatic Major Third Collections in Nineteenth-Century Music’. Music Theory Spectrum 28/2 (2006), 167–90.Google Scholar
Clampitt, David. ‘Webern's Music for String Quartet’, in Intimate Voices: The Twentieth-Century String Quartet. Vol. 1: Debussy to Villa-Lobos, ed. Jones, Evan. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2009. 195–222.Google Scholar
Cohn, Richard. ‘Maximally Smooth Cycles, Hexatonic Systems, and the Analysis of Late-Romantic Triadic Progressions’. Music Analysis 15/1 (1996), 9–40.Google Scholar
Cohn, Richard. ‘Weitzmamn's Regions, My Cycles, and Douthett's Dancing Cubes’. Music Theory Spectrum 22/1 (2000), 89–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohn, Richard. Audacious Euphony: Chromaticism and the Consonant Triad's Second Nature. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Cox, Gareth. Anton Weberns Studienzeit: Seine Entwicklung im Lichte der Sätze und Fragmente für Klavier. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1992.Google Scholar
Dahlhaus, Carl. Analysis and Value Judgment, trans. Siegmund Levarie. New York: Pendragon Press, 1983.Google Scholar
Danuser, Hermann. Weltanschauungsmusik. Berlin: Edition Argus, 2009.Google Scholar
Darcy, Warren. ‘Rotational Form, Teleological Genesis, and Fantasy-Projection in the Slow Movement of Mahler's Sixth Symphony’. 19th-Century Music 25/1 (2001), 49–74.Google Scholar
Davis, Andrew, and Pollack, Howard. ‘Rotational Form in the Opening Scene of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess’. Journal of the American Musicological Society 60/2 (2007), 373–414.Google Scholar
Forkert, Annika. British Musical Modernism Defended Against its Devotees. PhD diss., University of London, 2014.Google Scholar
Forte, Allen. The Atonal Music of Anton Webern. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Frisch, Walter. ‘Thematic Form and the Genesis in Schoenberg's D-minor Quartet, Opus 7’. Journal of the American Musicological Society 41/2 (1988), 289–314.Google Scholar
Gerlach, Reinhard. Musik und Jugendstil der Wiener Schule, 1900–1908. Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1985.Google Scholar
Gerlach, Reinhard. ‘Mystik und Klangmagie in Anton von Weberns hybrider Tonalität: Eine Jugendkrise im Spiegel von Musik und Dichtung der Jahrhundertwende’ (1976), in Die Wiener Schule, ed. Rudolf Stephan. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1989. 334–69.Google Scholar
Grimley, Daniel M.Carl Nielsen and the Idea of Modernism. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Grimley, Daniel M. ‘Landscape and Distance: Vaughan Williams, Modernism and the Symphonic Pastoral’, in British Music and Modernism, 1895–1960, ed. Riley, Matthew. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. 147–74.Google Scholar
Hailey, Christopher. ‘Defining Home: Berg's Life on the Periphery’, in The Cambridge Companion to Berg, ed. Pople, Anthony. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. 5–23.Google Scholar
Haimo, Ethan. Schoenberg's Transformation of Musical Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Harper-Scott, J. P. E.Edward Elgar, Modernist. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harper-Scott, J. P. E. ‘“Our True North”: Walton's First Symphony, Sibelianism, and the Nationalization of Modernism in England’. Music & Letters 89/4 (2008), 562–89.Google Scholar
Harper-Scott, J. P. E. ‘Review of Tonality 1900–1950: Concept and Practice, eds. Felix Wörner, Ullrich Scheideler and Philip Rupprecht’. Music Analysis 33/3 (2014), 388–405.Google Scholar
Heilbut, Emil. ‘Giovanni Segantini’, in Kunst und Künstler: Illustrierte Monatsschrift für bildende Kunst und Kunstgewerbe, ed. Heilbut, Emil and Flaischlen, Cäsar. Berlin: Verlag von Bruno Cassirer, 1903. 47–68.Google Scholar
Hepokoski, James. Sibelius: Symphony No. 5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Hepokoski, James. ‘Clouds and Circles: Rotational Form in Debussy's “Nuages”’. Dutch Journal of Music Theory 15/1 (2010), 1–17.Google Scholar
Hepokoski, James. ‘The Second Cycle of Tone Poems’, in The Cambridge Companion to Richard Strauss, ed. Youmans, Charles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 78–104.Google Scholar
Hepokoski, James, and Darcy, Warren. Elements of Sonata Theory: Norms, Types, and Deformations in the Late-Eighteenth-Century Sonata. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Hyer, Brian. ‘Tonality’, in The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory, ed. Christensen, Thomas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 726–52.Google Scholar
Jensen, Eric Frederick. ‘Webern and Giovanni Segantini's Trittico della natura’. The Musical Times 130/1751 (1989), 11–15.Google Scholar
Johnson, Julian. ‘Review of Webern Studies ed. Kathryn Bailey’. Music Analysis 17/2 (1998), 247–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Julian. Webern and the Transformation of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Karnes, Kevin C.A Kingdom Not of This World: Wagner, the Arts, and Utopian Visions in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Katalog der Siebenten Kunstausstellung der Berliner Secession. Berlin: Paul Cassirer, 1903.Google Scholar
Kramer, Lawrence. Music as Cultural Practice, 1800–1900. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Krause, Andreas. Anton Webern und seine Zeit. Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 2001.Google Scholar
Lichtenhahn, Ernst, ed. Briefe an Heinrich Jalowetz. Veröffentlichungen der Paul Sacher Stiftung, 7. Mainz: Schott, 1999.Google Scholar
Metken, Günter. ‘L’élevation en musique: Anton Webern et Segantini’. Revue de l’Art 96 (1992), 82–4.Google Scholar
Metzger, Heinz-Klaus. ‘Über Anton Weberns Streichquartett 1905’, in Anton Webern I: Musik-Konzepte Sonderband, ed. Metzger, Heinz-Klaus and Riehn, Rainer. Munich: edition text + kritik, 1983. 76–111.Google Scholar
Miller, Lynus P. ‘The Relationship Between Compositional Technique and Scoring in the Works for String Quartet by Anton von Webern (1883–1945)’. Master's diss., University of Kansas, 1967.Google Scholar
Moldenhauer, Hans. Anton von Webern: A Chronicle of his Life and Work. London: Victor Gollancz, 1978.Google Scholar
Monahan, Seth. ‘Mahler's Sonata Narratives’. PhD diss., Yale University, 2008.Google Scholar
Monahan, Seth. ‘Success and Failure in Mahler's Sonata Recapitulations’. Music Theory Spectrum 33/1 (2011), 37–58.Google Scholar
Monahan, Seth. Mahler's Symphonic Sonatas. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Nietzsche, Friedrich. ‘Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen’, in Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe VI:3, ed. Kolli, Giorgio and Montinari, Mazzino. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co, 1969.Google Scholar
Paul, Annabelle. ‘Natur als Spiegel seelischer Erfahrungen: Analogien zwischen Giovanni Segantini und Anton Webern’, in Wie Bilder Klingen: Tagungsband zum Symposion ‘Musik nach Bildern’, ed. Christensen, Lukas and Fink, Monika. Münster: LIT Verlag, 2011. 71–84.Google Scholar
Peltzer, Alfred. ‘Giovanni Segantini (Betrachtungen bei Gelegenheit der Ausstellung zu Ehren des Verstorbenen in Mailand)’, in Die Kunst für alle, ed. Pecht, Friedrich. Munich: Verlagsanstalt F. Bruckmann A.-G., 1900. 289–94.Google Scholar
Puffett, Derrick. ‘Gone with the Summer Wind; or, What Webern Lost’, in Webern Studies, ed. Bailey, Kathryn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 32–73.Google Scholar
Puri, Michael J.Ravel the Decadent: Memory, Sublimation, and Desire. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Rampley, Matthew. Nietzsche, Aesthetics and Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Rathgeber, Eike, Heitler, Christian, and Schwartz, Manuela, eds, Conrad Ansorge (1862–1930). Von den Mühen der Zeitenwende – Eine Dokumentation. Wiener Veröffentlichungen zur Musikgeschichte. Vienna: Böhlau, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Rexroth, Dieter, ed. Opus Anton Webern. Berlin: Quadriga, 1983.Google Scholar
Rode-Breymann, Susanne. ‘“. . . gathering the divine from the earthly. . .”: Ferdinand Avenarius and his Significance for Anton Webern's Early Settings of Lyric Poetry’, trans. Marry Whittall, in Webern Studies, ed. Bailey, Kathryn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 1–31.Google Scholar
Sams, Eric. The Songs of Hugo Wolf. London: Eulenburg Books, 1983.Google Scholar
Schmidt, Matthias and Ahrend, Thomas, eds, Der junge Webern: Texte und Kontexte. Webern-Studien: Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe, 2b. Vienna: Lafite, 2015.Google Scholar
Servaes, Franz. Giovanni Segantini: Sein Leben und sein Werk. Vienna: M. Gerlach, 1902.Google Scholar
Shreffler, Anne C. ‘Anton Webern’, in Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern: A Companion to the Second Viennese School, ed. Simms, Bryan R.. Westport, CT, and London: Greenwood Press, 1999. 251–314.Google Scholar
Springer, Jaro. ‘Giovanni Segantini’, in Die Kunst für alle, ed. Pecht, Friedrich. Munich: Verlagsanstalt F. Bruckmann A.-G., 1900. 70.Google Scholar
Stephan, Rudolf and Hohmaier, Simone, eds, Briefwechsel Anton Webern – Alban Berg. Briefwechsel der Wiener Schule, 4. Mainz: Schott Music, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Todd, R. Larry. ‘The “Unwelcome Guest” Regaled: Franz Liszt and the Augmented Triad’. 19th-Century Music 12/2 (1988), 93–115.Google Scholar
Villari, Luigi. Giovanni Segantini. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1901.Google Scholar
Webern, Anton, The Path to the New Music, ed. Reich, Willi, trans. Leo Black. Bryn Mawr: Theodore Presser Company, 1963.Google Scholar
Weitzmann, Carl Friedrich. Der übermäßige Dreiklang. Berlin: Verlag der T. Trautwein'schen Buch- und Musikalienhandlung, 1853.Google Scholar
Weitzmann, Carl Friedrich. ‘Two Monographs by Carl Friedrich Weitzmann: Part I: “The Augmented Triad” (1853)’, trans. Janna K. Saslaw. Theory & Practice 29 (2004), 133–228.Google Scholar
Wellesz, Egon and Wellesz, Emmy. Egon Wellesz: Leben und Werk, ed. Endler, Franz. Vienna and Hamburg: Paul Zsolnay, 1981.Google Scholar
Williamson, John. Strauss: Also sprach Zarathustra. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Wolter, Franz. ‘Erinnerungen an Giovanni Segantini’, in Die Kunst für alle, ed. Pecht, Friedrich. Munich: Verlagsanstalt F. Bruckmann A.-G., 1900. 295–7.Google Scholar
Wörner, Felix. ‘“Nachahmung” und “Überbietung” durch Webern: Aspekte einer komplexen Interaktion’, in Autorschaft als historische Konstruktion: Arnold Schönberg – Vorgänger, Zeitgenossen, Nachfolger und Interpreten, ed. Meyer, Andreas and Scheideler, Ullrich. Stuttgart and Weimar: J. B. Metzler, 2001. 189–220.Google Scholar
Youmans, Charles. ‘The Development of Richard Strauss's Worldview’, in The Richard Strauss Companion, ed. Schmid, Mark-Daniel. Westport, CT, and London: Praeger, 2003. 63–99.Google Scholar
Youmans, Charles. Richard Strauss's Orchestral Music and the German Intellectual Tradition: The Philosophical Roots of Musical Modernism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005.Google Scholar