Concerto for Nine Instruments (Webern)

Anton Webern's Concerto for Nine Instruments, Op. 24 (German, Konzert für neun Instrumente, op. 24, 1934) is a twelve-tone concerto for nine instruments: flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, trumpet, trombone, violin, viola, and piano; containing three movements: I. Etwas lebhaft, II. Sehr langsam, and III. Sehr rasch; and composed with a derived row, "often cited [such as by Milton Babbitt (1972)] as a paragon of symmetrical construction"^[1]:

Webern's Concerto Op. 24 tone row,^[2] composed of four trichords: P RI R I

In the words of Luigi Dallapiccola: "a work of incredible conciseness . . . and of unique concentration . . . . Although I did not understand the work completely, I had the feeling of finding an aesthetic and stylistic unity as great as I could wish for. [Prague, September 5, 1935]".^[3]

The second movement, "limits quite severely the values of many domains," for example featuring, "only two durational values (quarter and half note[s])," and, partly as a result, "features great uniformity in texture and gesture".^[4]

The tone row may be interpreted as:

019, 2te, 367, 458[5]

The opening displays, "its [the Concertos] distinctive trichordal structuring," four of which, "comprise an aggregate," or partition.^[6] "The six combinations of [the partition]'s trichords generate three pairs of complementary hexachords".^[7] "Webern takes full advantage of this property [its fourfold degree of symmetry] in the Concerto," that under four appropriate transformations (T₀T₆I₅I_B), the tone row maintains its unordered trichords (j=019,091,etc., k=2te, l=367, and m=458). The hexachord featured is sometimes called the 'Ode-to-Napoleon' hexachord (014589).^[8]

"The Latin square...clearly shows the built in redundancy of [the] partition," four, and, "needless to say, Webern takes full advantage of this property in the Concerto"^[5]:

j	k	l	m
l	m	j	k
m	l	k	j
k	j	m	l

For example, I₅ =

548, 376, 2et, 109

Further reading

• Gauldin, Robert (1977). "Pitch Structure in the Second Movement of Weber's Concerto Op. 24.", In Theory Only 2 (10): 8-22. cited in^[9]
• Gauldin, Robert (1977). "The Magic Squares of the Third Movement of Webern's Concerto Op. 24." In Theory Only 2 (11-12): 32-42. cited in^[9]
• Rahn, John. 1980. Basic Atonal Theory. New York: Longman, Inc. ISBN 0-582-28117-2.
• Stockhausen, Karlheinz (1963 [1953]). "Weberns Konzert für neun Instrumente op. 24". In his Texte zur Musik 1, edited by Dieter Schnebel, 24–31. DuMont Dokumente. Cologne: Verlag M. DuMont Schauberg. [First published in Melos, no. 20 (1953), 343–48.]
• Wintle, Christopher (1982). "Analysis and Performance: Webern's Concerto Op. 24/II.", Music Analysis 1: 73-100. cited in^[9]

Sources

1. ^ Bailey (1996), p.246.
2. ^ Whittall, Arnold. 2008. The Cambridge Introduction to Serialism. Cambridge Introductions to Music, p. 97. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-68200-8 (pbk).
3. ^ Bailey, Kathryn (1996). "Symmetry as Nemesis- Webern and the First Movement of the Concerto, Opus 24", p. 245, Journal of Music Theory, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Autumn), pp. 245-310.
4. ^ Hasty, Christopher (1981). "Segmentation and Process in Post-Tonal Music", pp. 63-64, Music Theory Spectrum, Vol. 3, (Spring), pp. 54-73.
5. ^ ^{a b} Alegant (2001), p. 5.
6. ^ Alegant (2001), p. 2-3.
7. ^ Alegant (2001), p. 4.
8. ^ Van den Toorn, Pieter C. (1996). Music, Politics, and the Academy, pp. 128-29. ISBN 0520201167.
9. ^ ^{a b c} Alegant, Brian (2001). "Cross-Partitions as Harmony and Voice Leading in Twelve-Tone Music", p. 38, Music Theory Spectrum, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Spring), pp. 1-40.