Le 29 juin 2017
de 10h00 à 10h30
Le Patio (université de Strasbourg)
22 rue René Descartes, 67000 Strasbourg
amphithéâtre 5
Séance - The Second Viennese School (II): Pairing Schoenberg and Webern
Pré-acte / Acte
Auteur : Sebastian Wedler
Completed in June 1905 as one of the earliest compositional studies which Anton Webern produced under the tutelage of Arnold Schoenberg, the Langsamer Satz has been made subject to scholarly inquiry only inasmuch as it provides early evidence of Brahms’s influence upon Schoenberg’s musical thought and didactics. Yet to locate the importance of Webern’s Langsamer Satz only within the ‘Brahms fog’ (W. Frisch), whether for historiographic or stylistic convenience, would be to misunderstand the work. Rather, as I shall argue, Webern interpreted the ‘Brahmsian techniques’ that Schoenberg had introduced him to (the traditional Formenlehre, functional harmony and developing variation) as expressive means and devices by which to reformulate his pre-existing idiosyncratic concern for ‘lyrical temporality’. The starting point of my interpretation is the work’s pairing of C minor and E-flat major, set up already in the first eight bars, as tonics operating on the same hierarchical level. Through a combination of Schenkerian analysis and neo-Riemannian transformations, as well as a study of the manuscripts and sketches archived at the Paul Sacher Foundation, I will explore the compositional strategies that Webern utilized in order to maintain this tonal pairing throughout the work, in contradistinction to the more common conception of tonal pairings as instances of ‘directional tonality’. As such, the Langsamer Satz invites us not only to see the early Webern entering into dialogue with, rather than (as is commonly heralded) a one-sided adoption of, Schoenberg’s ideas; but also proves a pertinent place to think through the genealogy of Webern’s lyrical physiognomy.
