The Passacaglia for orchestra, Op. 1, is a musical composition that

Anton Webern Anton Webern (; 3 December 1883 – 15 September 1945) was an Austrian composer, conductor, and musicologist. His music was among the most radical of its milieu in its lyric poetry, lyrical, poetic concision and use of then novel atonality, aton ...

completed in 1908. It was his first published work and is among his earliest music for symphony orchestra. It is in

passacaglia The passacaglia (; ) is a musical form that originated in early seventeenth-century Spain and is still used today by composers. It is usually of a serious character and is typically based on a bass- ostinato and written in triple metre. Origin Th ...

form and marks the culmination of his studies with

Arnold Schoenberg Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian and American composer, music theorist, teacher and writer. He was among the first Modernism (music), modernists who transformed the practice of harmony in 20th-centu ...

Composition

Background

Webern's Passacaglia (1908) was his first major orchestral work since ''Im Sommerwind'' (1904). He wrote several preliminary sketches, including three short movements in

A minor A minor is a minor scale based on A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. Its key signature has no flats or sharps. Its relative major is C major and its parallel major is A major. The A natural minor scale is: Changes needed for the melodic ...

for orchestra. The 1906 death of his mother, he suggested, affected his music from this time.Julian Johnson: 'Webern and the Transformation of Nature', p.87. Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Form

As the title suggests, the work adopts the passacaglia form, in which a

ground bass In music, an ostinato (; derived from the Italian word for ''stubborn'', compare English ''obstinate'') is a motif or phrase that persistently repeats in the same musical voice, frequently in the same pitch. Well-known ostinato-based pieces inc ...

pattern, the

ostinato In music, an ostinato (; derived from the Italian word for ''stubborn'', compare English ''obstinate'') is a motif or phrase that persistently repeats in the same musical voice, frequently in the same pitch. Well-known ostinato-based pieces inc ...

, supports changing

melodies A melody (), also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most literal sense, a melody is a combination of pitch and rhythm, while more figuratively, the term ca ...

above it, typically in eight-bar

phrase In grammar, a phrasecalled expression in some contextsis a group of words or singular word acting as a grammatical unit. For instance, the English language, English expression "the very happy squirrel" is a noun phrase which contains the adject ...

s. Webern's approach honored this tradition while pushing it forward in a manner recalling the passacaglia finale of Johannes Brahms's Symphony No. 4. According to Hans Moldenhauer, these passacaglias of Brahms and Webern share a somewhat restrained

decorum Decorum (from the Latin: "right, proper") was a principle of classical rhetoric, poetry, and theatrical theory concerning the fitness or otherwise of a style to a theatrical subject. The concept of ''decorum'' is also applied to prescribed lim ...

punctuated by outbursts. Webern innovated by writing in

time Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...

, not conventional

triple meter Triple is used in several contexts to mean "threefold" or a " treble": Sports * Triple (baseball), a three-base hit * A basketball three-point field goal * A figure skating jump with three rotations * In bowling terms, three strikes in a row ...

. In an increasingly

modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

idiom, he used silence structurally and wrote for small groups of instruments, creating more diaphanous

texture Texture may refer to: Science and technology * Image texture, the spatial arrangement of color or intensities in an image * Surface texture, the smoothness, roughness, or bumpiness of the surface of an object * Texture (roads), road surface c ...

s as in

chamber music Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of Musical instrument, instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a Great chamber, palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music ...

. The main theme of the Passacaglia is an eight-bar

D minor D minor is a minor scale based on D, consisting of the pitches D, E, F, G, A, B, and C. Its key signature has one flat. Its relative major is F major and its parallel major is D major. The D natural minor scale is: Changes needed ...

pizzicato Pizzicato (, ; translated as 'pinched', and sometimes roughly as 'plucked') is a playing technique that involves plucking the strings of a string instrument. The exact technique varies somewhat depending on the type of instrument: * On bowe ...

strings marked . Webern described its 23 variations in program notes from a 1922

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in the state after Cologne and the List of cities in Germany with more than 100,000 inhabitants, seventh-largest city ...

concert. There are eleven variations in minor keys, four in

major Major most commonly refers to: * Major (rank), a military rank * Academic major, an academic discipline to which an undergraduate student formally commits * People named Major, including given names, surnames, nicknames * Major and minor in musi ...

keys, and then eight more in minor, followed by a coda with some

development Development or developing may refer to: Arts *Development (music), the process by which thematic material is reshaped * Photographic development *Filmmaking, development phase, including finance and budgeting * Development hell, when a proje ...

Instrumentation

The work is scored for a large orchestra comprising two flutes, piccolo, two oboes, cor anglais, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (cymbals, bass drum, triangle, tam-tam), harp, and strings.

Premiere

Seven or more of Schoenberg's pupils organized their own first public concert (after their 1907 invitation-only concert) at Vienna's

Musikverein The ( or ; ), commonly shortened to , is a concert hall in Vienna, Austria, which is located in the Innere Stadt district. The building opened in 1870 and is the home of the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra. The acoustics of the building's 'Grea ...

on 4 November 1908, hiring the

Tonkünstler Orchestra The Tonkunstler Orchestra (German: ''Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich'', ) is an Austrian orchestra based in Vienna and Sankt Pölten, Lower Austria. Origin of the name The orchestra's name has its origins in the ''Tonkünstler-Soziet ...

. Webern conducted his own Passacaglia and performed O. de Ivanov's Suite for

piano four hands Piano four hands (, , ) is a type of piano duet involving two players playing the same piano simultaneously. A duet with the players playing separate instruments is generally referred to as a ''piano duet, piano duo''.Bellingham, Jane"piano du ...

with Marietta Jonas-Werndorff. Invited

music critics Music journalism (or music criticism) is media criticism and reporting about music topics, including popular music, classical music, and traditional music. Journalists began writing about music in the eighteenth century, providing commentary on ...

condemned the music. The ' reviewer wrote (5 November) that Erwin Stein and Webern chased dissonance for effect like Schoenberg, and that the Passacaglia showed " spect for form, without content". Only Elsa Bienenfeld, writing for the '' Neues Wiener Journal'' (9 November), praised the Passacaglia. She singled it out as mature, likening it to that of Brahms's Fourth, while noting its "original"

timbre In music, timbre (), also known as tone color or tone quality (from psychoacoustics), is the perceived sound of a musical note, sound or tone. Timbre distinguishes sounds according to their source, such as choir voices and musical instrument ...

s. She called it a compelling example of music and emotion, describing the

harmony In music, harmony is the concept of combining different sounds in order to create new, distinct musical ideas. Theories of harmony seek to describe or explain the effects created by distinct pitches or tones coinciding with one another; harm ...

as "free" and Webern's use of

imitation Imitation (from Latin ''imitatio'', "a copying, imitation") is a behavior whereby an individual observes and replicates another's behavior. Imitation is also a form of learning that leads to the "development of traditions, and ultimately our cu ...

as unconventional but deliberate in its "manifold interlacings of

counterpoint In music theory, counterpoint is the relationship of two or more simultaneous musical lines (also called voices) that are harmonically dependent on each other, yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. The term originates from the Latin ...

" and "peculiar melodic inventiveness".

References

External links

* Compositions by Anton Webern 1908 compositions Compositions for symphony orchestra Variations {{classical-composition-stub