Anton Webern

Anton Webern (; 3 December 1883 – 15 September 1945) was an Austrian composer, conductor, and musicologist whose modernist music was among the most radical of its milieu in its lyrical, poetic

Bucolic#

Anton Webern, of the , was born on 3 December 1883 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, the only surviving son of Carl von Webern, a decorated army veteran, high-ranking civil servant, and mining engineer who owned the Lamprechtsberg copper mine. He grew up mainly in Graz (1890–1894) and Klagenfurt (1894–1902), with one stay in Olomouc and more in Vienna for his father’s work. He excelled only in the humanities and likely sang in choir at school. He began piano and sang opera with his mother Amalie (née Geer), a trained pianist and accomplished singer, danced with his sisters Rosa and Maria, and received drums, then a trumpet, and later a violin as Christmas gifts. Local musician Edwin Komauer also taught him piano, cello, and likely counterpoint from Bach’s music and cello suites. The family played chamber music, including Mozart, Schubert, and Beethoven, and Webern played in local orchestras. The children spent Easter holidays () and summer vacations () at the Preglhof, the extended family’s country estate near Schwabegg in Carinthia. They played in forests under the Koralpe and on a high meadow by the parish church, where cattle grazed pasture under the care of herders. Webern drove horses to a fair in Bleiburg, fought a wildfire, and saved Rosa from drowning in the bathing pond. In winter, they ice-skated the to the Wörthersee. These experiences, and reading Peter Rosegger, an Austrian contributor to the broader () movement, shaped his distinct and lasting sense of ().

University#

Before studying at the University of Vienna (1902–1906), Webern immersed himself in concerts, operas, plays, galleries, and cultural history, visiting the Bayreuth Festival, Musikverein, Neue Pinakothek, Prinzregententheater, and Wahnfried. He took counterpoint with Karel Navrátil, harmony with Hermann Graedener, cello with , and piano, in which he was less proficient, with an unidentified Theodor Leschetizky pupil. While enrolled, he kept attending many performances to learn the standard and emerging repertoire at the Burgtheater, Vienna Court Opera, and other venues, listening to many works by Brahms, Mahler, Schumann, Strauss, Wagner, and Wolf. He encountered singers like Theodor Bertram, Marie Gutheil-Schoder, and Hermann Winkelmann and conductors like Mahler, Strauss, Arthur Nikisch, and Felix Weingartner. He sang under Siegfried Wagner in Bruckner’s Te Deum as a Wagner Society member and visited the Munich Kammerspiele for Frank Wedekind’s Hidalla. At school, he analyzed Beethoven’s late quartets at the piano with classmate Egon Wellesz, took a Wagner seminar, and learned the historical development of musical styles and techniques mainly from Guido Adler, an acquaintance of Wagner and Liszt, pupil of Bruckner, and friend of Mahler. For his musicology doctorate under Adler, he edited the Choralis Constantinus II. As a composer, he would emulate its “subtle organization in the interplay of parts”, which he described at length: He also studied art history and philosophy with Max Dvořák, , and Franz Wickhoff, and joined the Albrecht Dürer Gesellschaft () in 1903, later serving on its board. His cousin , then a University of Graz art history student, may have introduced him to the work of Arnold Böcklin and Giovanni Segantini, which he admired along with that of Ferdinand Hodler and Moritz von Schwind. He prized Segantini’s landscapes as highly as Beethoven’s music, diarying in 1904: Finally, Webern studied Catholic liturgy and nationalism, shaped by his upbringing. He first found those in his new milieu smug, alien, and distinctly Jewish amid antisemitic reaction to the December Constitution’s 1867 Jewish emancipation. By 1902, he had close Jewish friends like fellow student Heinrich Jalowetz, likely altering his views.

Schoenberg and his circle#

Adler pupil Karl Weigl brought Schoenberg’s Pelleas und Melisande to class in 1903, riveting Webern, who attended performances of his songs and Verklärte Nacht in 1903–04. In 1904, Webern tried Hans Pfitzner’s composition lessons in Berlin but left over attacks on Mahler and R. Strauss. Adler admired and may have recommended Schoenberg, or Webern may have seen his Schwarzwald School newspaper ads before starting lessons in fall 1904, perhaps as his first Vienna pupil. Thus Webern met Berg as another Schoenberg pupil, and Schoenberg’s brother-in-law Alexander Zemlinsky, through whom he may have worked as an assistant coach at the in Vienna (1906–1909). Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern became lifelong friends following similar musical paths. Adler, Jalowetz, and Webern played Schoenberg’s quartets under the composer, accompanying Gutheil-Schoder in rehearsals for Op. 10. Also through Schoenberg, who painted and had a 1910 solo exhibition at ’s bookstore, Webern met Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, Max Oppenheimer (with whom he corresponded on terms), Egon Schiele, and Emil Stumpp. In 1920, Webern wrote Berg about the “indescribable impression” Klimt’s work made on him, “that of a luminous, tender, heavenly realm”. He also met Karl Kraus, whose lyrics he later set, but only to completion in Op. 13/i (“Wiese im Park”).

Marriage#

Webern married Wilhelmine “Minna” Mörtl in a 1911 civil ceremony in Danzig. She had become pregnant in 1910 and feared disapproval, as they were cousins. Thus the Catholic Church only solemnized their lasting union in 1915, after three children. They met in 1902, later hiking along the Kamp from Rosenburg-Mold to Allentsteig in 1905. He wooed her with John Ruskin essays (in German translation), dedicating his Langsamer Satz to her. Webern diaried about their time together “with obvious literary aspirations”:

Early conducting career#

Webern conducted and coached singers and choirs mostly in operetta, musical theater, light music, and some opera in his early career. Operetta was in its Viennese Silver Age. Much of it was regarded as “low-” or “middlebrow”; Kraus, Theodor W. Adorno, and Ernst Krenek found it “uppity” in its pretensions. In 1924 Ernst Décsey recalled he once found operetta, with its “old laziness and unbearable musical blandness”, beneath him. J. P. Hodin contextualized the opposition of the “youthful intelligentsia” to operetta with a quote from Hermann Bahr’s 1907 essay Wien: “What benefit … if all operettas … were destroyed”, Webern told Diez in 1908. But by 1912, he told Berg that Zeller’s Vogelhändler was “quite nice” and Schoenberg that J. Strauss II’s Nacht in Venedig was “such fine, delicate music. I now believe … Strauss is a master.” A summer 1908 engagement with Bad Ischl’s was “hell”. Webern walked out on an engagement in Innsbruck (1909), writing in distress to Schoenberg: Webern wrote Zemlinsky seeking work at the Berlin or Vienna Volksoper instead. He started at Bad Teplitz’s Civic Theater in early 1910, where the local news reported his “sensitive, devoted guidance” as conductor of Fall’s Geschiedene Frau, but he quit within months due to disagreements. His repertoire likely included Fall’s Dollarprinzessin, Lehár’s Graf von Luxemburg, O. Straus’s Walzertraum, J. Strauss II’s Fledermaus, and Schumann’s Manfred. There were only 22 musicians in the orchestra, too few to perform Puccini’s operas, he noted. Webern then summered at the Preglhof, composing his Op. 7 and planning an opera. In September, he attended the Munich premiere of Mahler’s Symphony of a Thousand and visited with his idol, who gave Webern a sketch of “”. Webern then worked with Jalowetz as assistant conductor in Danzig (1910–1911), where he first saw the “almost frightening” ocean. He conducted von Flotow’s Wintermärchen, George’s Försterchristl, Jones’ Geisha, Lehár’s Lustige Witwe, Lortzing’s Waffenschmied, Offenbach’s Belle Hélène, and J. Strauss II’s Zigeunerbaron. He particularly enjoyed Offenbach’s Contes d’Hoffmann and Rossini’s Barbiere di Siviglia, but only Jalowetz was allowed to conduct this more established repertoire. Webern soon expressed homesickness to Berg; he could not bear the separation from Schoenberg and their world in Vienna. He returned after resigning in spring 1911, and they attended Mahler’s funeral in May 1911. Then in summer 1911, a neighbor’s antisemitic abuse and aggression caused Schoenberg to quit work, abandon Vienna, and go with his family to stay with Zemlinsky on Lake Starnberg. Webern and others fundraised for Schoenberg’s return, circulating more than one hundred leaflets with forty-eight signatories, including G. Adler, H. Bahr, Klimt, Kraus, and R. Strauss, among others. But Schoenberg was resolved to move to Berlin, and not for the first or last time, convinced of Vienna’s fundamental hostility. Webern soon joined him (1910–1912), finishing no new music in his devoted work on Schoenberg’s behalf, which entailed many editing and writing projects. He gradually became tired, unhappy, and homesick. He tried to persuade Schoenberg to return home to Vienna, continuing the fundraising campaign and lobbying for a position there for Schoenberg, but Schoenberg could not bear to return to the due to his prior experiences in Vienna. At the same time, Webern began a cycle of repeatedly quitting and being rehired by Zemlinsky at the in Prague (1911–1918). He had a short-lived conducting post in Stettin (1912–1913), which, as all the others, kept him from composing and alienated him. On the verge of a breakdown, he wrote Berg shortly after arriving (July 1912):

“Old song” of “lost paradise”#

Webern’s father sold the Preglhof in 1912, and Webern mourned it as a “lost paradise”. He revisited it and the family grave in nearby Schwabegg his entire life, associating both with the memory of his mother, whose 1906 death profoundly affected him. In letters to Schoenberg, he recalled the countryside, forests, garden, cemetery, and his daily walks to her grave with intense longing, describing their enduring emotional warmth. Webern sought spiritual and personal connection with the past in the surrounding Alps, whose landscapes he associated with memories of his mother and lost childhood homeland (). This nexus of nature, memory, and spirituality recurs throughout his diaries, letter, and music, appearing explicitly in sketches and, at times, in texts and programs. Summering in resort towns like Mürzzuschlag and sometimes summitting the Gaisstein, Grossglockner, Hochschober, Hochschwab, and Schneealpe, among others, he was fascinated by the alpine climate and föhn, glaciers, pine trees, and springs “crystal clear down to the bottom”. He treasured this time “up there, in the heights”, where “one should stay”. For Christmas in 1912, Webern gave Schoenberg a copy of Rosegger’s (Forest Homeland), with its passages on nostalgia for childhood paradise: Rosegger’s account of his mother’s death at the book’s end (“An meine Mutter”) resonated with Webern, who connected it to his Six Orchestral Pieces, Op. 6. In a January 1913 letter to Schoenberg, Webern revealed that these pieces were programmatic reflections on experiences associated with his mother’s death. Writing Berg in July 1912, he linked several other works to her death as well, including his early songs and Passacaglia, the Five Movements for String Quartet, and the Five Orchestral Pieces, Op. 10. Webern also collected and pressed alpine herbs and cemetery flowers, and cultivated gardens throughout his life (first at his father’s home in Klagenfurt, and later at his own homes in Mödling and then Maria Enzersdorf). Inspired by Goethe’s Metamorphosis of Plants, he treated gardening like composition: a disciplined way of engaging with nature. Gardens, like cemeteries, were enclosed spaces of renewal, memory, and contemplation. These concerns endured throughout his life and music: in 1933, he spoke of sensing “Pan” in a meadow (a sentiment likely by way of Mahler’s Third); and in 1934, he described his work as transforming the past into childhood memory.

Psychotherapy#

In 1912–1913, Webern had a breakdown and saw physician Alfred Adler, who noted his idealism and perfectionism. There were many factors involved. Webern had little time (mostly summers) to compose. There were conflicts at work (e.g., he emphasized that a director called him a “little man”). His ambivalence toward sales-oriented popular music theater contributed (“I … stir the sauce”, he wrote). “It appears … improbable that I should remain with the theatre. It is … terrible. … I can hardly … adjust to being away from home”, he had written Schoenberg in 1910. Miserably ill and alienated, he first had sought medical advice and taken rest at a popular sanatorium resort in . Adler later evaluated his symptoms as psychogenic responses to unmet expectations. Webern wrote Schoenberg that Adler’s psychoanalysis was helpful and insightful.

World War I#

As World War I broke out and nationalist fervor swept Europe, Webern found it “inconceivable”, he wrote Schoenberg in August 1914, “that the German Reich, and we along with it, should perish.” Yielding in his distrust of Protestant Germany, he compared Catholic France to “cannibals” and expressed pan-German patriotism amid wartime propaganda. He cited his “faith in the German spirit” as having “created, almost exclusively, the culture of mankind”. Despite his high regard of French classical music, especially Debussy’s, Webern revered the tradition as centered on counterpoint and form, and as mainly German since Bach. Webern served intermittently for nearly two years. The war cost him professional opportunities, much of his social life, and the necessary leisure time to compose (he completed only nine ). Moving frequently and tiring, he began to despair, explaining to Schoenberg in November 1916 that the reality of war was “Old Testament” and “‘Eye for eye’”, “as if Christ had never existed”. Webern was discharged in December 1916 for myopia, which had disqualified him from frontline service. In 1917, amid the aftermath of World War I, he reflected on his patriotism and processed his sorrow in . He treated the loss of life and, with the 1916 death of Franz Joseph I of Austria, the end of an era. In “Fahr hin, o Seel’”, he selected a lament sung at a funeral in a Rosegger novel. In “Wiese im Park”, he selected a text from Kraus recognizing that the day was “dead”, (“and everything … so old”). Webern also set several disturbing poems by Georg Trakl, some of which are unfinished, having first read his work in magazine or perhaps Kraus’s promotion of it in his magazine, . With uninterrupted contrapuntal density, by turns muscular and murmured, Webern word painted Trakl’s “great cities” and “dying peoples”, “violent alarm” and “leafless trees”, and “falling stars” in setting “Abendland III”.

Austrian defeat and socioeconomic strain#

During and after the end of the war, Webern, like other Austrians, contended with food shortages, insufficient heating, socioeconomic volatility, and geopolitical disaster in defeat. Since 1917, he had considered retreating to the countryside and purchasing a farm as an asset better than war bonds at shielding his family’s wealth from inflation. He even proposed to Schoenberg that they might be smallholders together. (In the end, he lost all that remained of his family’s wealth to the Austrian hyperinflation by 1924.) Despite Schoenberg’s and his father’s advice that he not quit conducting, Webern followed to Schoenberg to Mödling in early 1918, hoping to be reunited with his mentor and to compose more. But Webern’s finances were so poor that he soon explored a “voluntary exile” to Prague again. Nonetheless, he continued to raise funds, including his own, for Schoenberg, with whom he spent every day. Yet soon after he arrived, Webern broke his friendship with Schoenberg. The break was multifactorial but involved Webern’s dissatisfaction with his career and financial turmoil. Berg learned of the Weberns’ ill temperaments and “latent antisemitism” from Schoenberg, and noted that Schoenberg “wouldn’t explain” further than “‘Webern wants to go to Prague again’”. Bailey Puffett argued that Webern’s actions in and after the 1930s suggested that he was not antisemitic, at least in his maturity. She noted that Webern later wrote Schoenberg that he felt “a sense of the most vehement aversion” against German-speaking people who were. After meeting with Webern, Berg saw “the matter in a different light”, considering Webern “by and large innocent” in light of what Webern said was Schoenberg’s “kick in the teeth”: after laying plans for a New Music society, Schoenberg angrily called Webern “secretive and deceitful” upon learning that Webern was instead considering Prague again. They reconciled in October 1918, not long before Webern’s father died in 1919. Webern was changed by these events; he slowly began to grow more independent of Schoenberg, who was like a father to him. For his part, Schoenberg was not infrequently dubious of Webern, whom he still considered his closest friend.

Society for Private Musical Performances#

Webern stayed in Vienna and worked with Berg, Schoenberg, and Erwin Stein at the Society for Private Musical Performances (1918–1921). They promoted new music through music competitions and performances sharing the music of Bartók, Berg, Busoni, Korngold, Mahler, Novák, Reger, Satie, Strauss, and Debussy (who once wished for a “Society of Musical Esotericism”), among others. Webern wrote Berg about Stravinsky’s “indescribably touching” Berceuses du chat and “glorious” Pribaoutki, which Schoenberg conducted at a sold-out 1919 Society concert. In 1920, at a Society concert dedicated to Maurice Ravel, he met the composer, whose Mallarmé songs he loved (especially the last). There was likely some degree of reciprocal influence among these composers. Amid worsening inflation in Red Vienna, he feared the Habsburg monarchy’s restoration, warning his cousin against a Hofburg apartment in 1920. For a 1921 “waltz evening” fundraiser, Webern arranged J. Strauss II’s Schatz-Walzer (Treasure Waltz) for salon orchestra (string quartet, piano, and harmonium). He made other Society arrangements (some now missing), including of his Passacaglia, Op. 1 (two pianos, six hands); Six Pieces, Op. 6 and Five Pieces, Op. 10 (chamber ensemble); and Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1, Die glückliche Hand (The Lucky Hand), and Four Orchestral Songs. The Society dissolved amid hyperinflation that year, having boasted some 320 members and sponsored more than a hundred concerts.

Mature conducting career in Red Vienna#

On Schoenberg’s recommendation, Webern saved the 1920 Gurre-Lieder (Songs of Gurre) performance by the (Vienna Schubert Society) from failure and became their music director in 1921, conducting Brahms, Mahler, Reger, and Schumann. Citing low salary, mandatory concert tours, and resistance to long rehearsals, he left in 1922. He also directed the Mödling Men’s Singing Society (, 1922–1926), leaving in controversy after hiring Jewish soprano Greta Wilheim for Schubert’s Mirjams Siegesgesang (Miriam’s Song of Triumph). He won repute with a 1922 Workers’ Symphony () performance of Mahler’s Third, prompting Berg to hail him as “the greatest conductor since Mahler himself”. It earned him the trust of Social Democratic Arts Council () Director David Josef Bach, with whom he co-founded and -led the Arts Council’s amateur Singing Society (, from 1923). In 1924, he made arrangements of Liszt’s Workers’ Chorus (, c. 1848 or earlier; shelved amid the Revolutions of 1848), with its message of solidarity, including for bass solo, mixed chorus, and orchestra. The Wiener Zeitung (Vienna Times) touted its March 1925 premiere under his baton, and he then regularly led the Workers’ Symphony Concerts. His Mahler interpretations continued to be lauded, and from 1927, Austria’s main radio network RAVAG () aired twenty-two of his performances. He premiered Berg’s Chamber Concerto with Rudolf Kolisch and Eduard Steuermann in 1927 and led Stravinsky’s Les Noces with Erich Leinsdorf in 1933. He also led Brahms’s German Requiem in 1931, followed by Berg’s Der Wein, Mahler’s Second, and Schoenberg’s in 1932. for Der Kampf (The Struggle) slammed Webern’s programming as ambitious and bourgeois in 1929, and Armand Machabey called him a meticulous conductor of contemporary music comparable to Willem Mengelberg in 1930. Webern generally avoided politics and seemed uneasy relying on the Social Democratic Party for conducting work, perhaps on religious grounds, though he aligned with their cultural and educational objectives, and saw his roles with the working class as a Christian duty (after they performed Bruckner’s Mass No. 3, a singer carved him a music stand inscribed “Art is service to God”). He was addressed as “Doctor”, not “comrade”, though he used the term to address others in the movement and served on administrative committees. He remembered his family’s minor-noble heritage, which old friends respected by using his nobiliary particle “von” long after the 1919 social-democratic nobility abolition law, and reclaimed his nobiliary particle in the 1930s.

Relative success in a destabilizing society#

Webern’s finances were often precarious, even in his years of relative success. Relief came from family, friends, patrons, and prizes. He twice received the . To compose more, he sought income while trying not to overcommit himself as a conductor. He was not very ambitious or astute in business and contracted with Universal Edition (U.E.) only after 1919, reaching better terms in 1927. Even with a doctorate and Guido Adler’s respect, he never secured a remunerative university position, whereas in 1925 Schoenberg was invited to the Prussian Academy of Arts, ending their seven years together in Mödling. Social Democrat–Christian Social relations polarized and radicalized amid the . Webern and others signed an “Announcement of Intellectual Vienna” published days before the 1927 Austrian legislative election on the front page of the Social Democrats’ daily newspaper, the Arbeiter-Zeitung (Workers’ Times). On Election Day in , Ignaz Seipel of the officially applied the term “Red Vienna” pejoratively, attacking Vienna’s educational and cultural institutions. Social unrest escalated to the July Revolt of 1927 and beyond. Webern’s nostalgia for social order intensified with increasing civil disorder. In 1928, friends fundraised for him, partly to fund a rest cure at the for his exhaustion and (possibly psychosomatic) gastrointestinal complaints. That year, Berg celebrated the “lasting works” and successes of composers “whose point of departure was … late Mahler, Reger, and Debussy and whose temporary end point is in … Schoenberg” in their rise from “pitiful ‘cliques’” to a large, diverse, international, and “irresistible movement”. But with few exceptions they were soon marginalized and ostracized in Central Europe, and in 1929 Webern wrote Schoenberg that “it is getting worse and worse here”. He declined a RAVAG executive role that year, citing time constraints and fearing further affiliation the Social Democrats. His music was performed more widely starting in the latter half of the 1920s, but he found no great success as Berg enjoyed with Wozzeck nor as Schoenberg did, to a lesser extent, with Pierrot lunaire or in time with Verklärte Nacht. His Symphony, Op. 21 was performed as a chamber piece in New York by the League of Composers (1929) and separately in London at the 1931 International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) Festival. Violinist Louis Krasner said he sensed some resentment, as Webern had “very little”. Krenek’s impression was that Webern resented his financial hardships and lack of wider recognition.

Marginalization at home#

Financial crises, complex social and political movements, pervasive antisemitism, culture wars, and renewed military conflicts continued to shape Webern’s world, profoundly circumscribing his life. Shortly after Webern conducted the Brecht–Eisler Solidaritätslied in 1933, Engelbert Dollfuss saw the passed, and choir singers’ homes were raided. In the 1934 Austrian Civil War, Austrofascists executed, exiled, and imprisoned Social Democrats, outlawed their party, and abolished cultural institutions. Stigmatized by his decade-long association with Social Democrats, Webern lost a promising domestic conducting career, which might have been better recorded. He eventually abandoned efforts with what remained of the workers’ choir in the form of the much constrained in 1935, instead working as a U.E. editor and board member and president (1933–1938, 1945). By the late 1920s, antisemitism had become epidemic, and the socioculturally mixed milieu of Vienna’s modern arts and entertainment, including the music of Webern, Schoenberg, Berg, and Mahler, was mocked as foreign and Jewish in a racialized sense, contrasting with what was touted as truly German (and typically conservative, traditional, or rural). Webern’s admission to the Prussian Academy of Arts was withdrawn as Adolf Hitler rose in Germany, and an Austrian labeled Berg and Webern “Jewish” on in 1933. In the late 1930s, theirs was exhibited as in Nazi Germany and later at the Vienna Künstlerhaus in Nazi Austria. Webern delivered an eight-lecture series The Path to the New Music () at ’s and her physician husband Rudolf Kurzman’s home (February–April 1933). He attacked fascist cultural policy, asking “What will come of our struggle?” He observed that “‘cultural Bolshevism’ is the name given to everything that is going on around Schoenberg, Berg, and myself (Krenek too)” and warned, “Imagine what will be destroyed, wiped out, by this hate of culture!” He lectured more at the Kurzmann-Leuchter home, privately in 1934–1935 on Beethoven’s piano sonatas to about 40 attendees and later in 1937–1938. Persevering, Webern wrote Krenek that “art has its own laws … if one wants to achieve something in it, only these laws and nothing else can have validity”; upon completing Op. 26 (1935), he wrote D. Bach, “I hope it is so good that (if people ever get to know it) they will declare me ready for a concentration camp or an insane asylum!” The Vienna Philharmonic nearly refused to play Berg’s Violin Concerto in 1936. Peter Stadlen’s 1937 Op. 27 premieres were the last Viennese Webern performances until after World War II. The critical success of Hermann Scherchen’s 1938 ISCM London Op. 26 premiere encouraged Webern to write more cantatas and reassured him after a cellist quit Op. 20 mid-performance, declaring it unplayable.

Besieged milieu and political uncertainty#

Webern’s milieu comprised increasingly vast differences. He and his family were Catholic, like most Austrians, but not church regulars; Webern was perhaps devout, if unorthodox. They became politically divided. His friends (e.g., then Zionist Schoenberg, left-leaning Berg) had belonged to a mostly Jewish milieu from late Imperial to “red” (Social Democratic) Vienna. Alma Mahler, Krenek, , and Stein began to favor the Fatherland Front or aligned with Italian fascism as lesser evils to Nazism. Shy and private, Webern was politically naive, easily swayed by family and friends, and confused about how to resolve Austria’s problems. He mediated among friends’ competing viewpoints with optimistic or self-soothing complacency (and later, perhaps, growing cognitive dissonance), presuming power would moderate Hitler to the exasperation of those at risk. He sometimes seemed to project his ideals onto the Nazis, and his views of Nazism, in audience-tailored, inconsistent statements and accounts, were nebulous. He generally maintained an enigmatic, perhaps utopian or practical apoliticism, pan-Germanism aside. He found himself surrounded mostly by one side as Schoenberg left for the United States (1933), Rudolf Ploderer died of despair by suicide (1933), Berg died of sepsis (1935), and D. Bach, among others (e.g., Greissle, Jalowetz, Krenek, Reich, Steuermann, Wellesz), fled or worse. He considered following Schoenberg, who sought U.S. opportunities for him but discouraged it amid the Great Depression, knowing he was deeply attached to home.

Visiting conducting career#

Webern conducted nine concerts as a BBC Symphony visiting conductor (1929–1936). A talkie on his first visit inspired him to ask Steuermann about writing film music (Steuermann wrote his relatives in the film industry, Salka Viertel and Berthold Viertel, for their suggestions). He led then little known Mahler, including both nocturnes from the Symphony No. 7 in 1934. He insisted on rehearsing at the piano with vocalists and was criticized for coaching musical phrasing. In Barcelona, he withdrew from the 1936 world premiere of Berg’s Violin Concerto, grief-stricken after Berg’s death and overwhelmed by difficulties. He “pleaded and exhorted the players to feel the inner expressive content of one, two, or three notes at a time”, Krasner recalled, “rehearsing repeatedly a single motif, one bar of music and only finally, a two- or four-bar phrase.” The two then played the concerto in London with BBC musicians, who rehearsed before Webern arrived. Kenneth Anthony Wright noted Webern’s “funny little explanations of the varying dynamics and flexibility of tempo”, but, said Krasner, “every syllable and every gesture of Webern was understood and lovingly heeded”. Sidonie Goossens recalled they “all admired and respected Webern”, but Berthold Goldschmidt remembered him as " Zig-Zag". Goldschmidt, Felix Aprahamian, and Benjamin Britten criticized his conducting, and BBC management did not invite him back after 1936.

Anschluss#

Krasner’s last visit with Webern was interrupted by Kurt Schuschnigg’s broadcast speech that the Anschluss was imminent. Krasner had been playing some of Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto for Webern and trying to convince him to write a sonata for solo violin. When Webern turned on the radio and heard this speech, he urged Krasner to flee. Because Webern’s family included Nazis, Krasner wondered whether Webern had already known that the Anschluss was planned for that day. He also wondered whether Webern’s warning had been solely for his safety or whether it had also been to save Webern the embarrassment of the violinist’s presence in the event of celebration at the Webern home. Much of Austria did celebrate. But Webern made only a terse note of the Anschluss in his notebook without registering any clear emotion. In fact, he wrote Jone and her husband Josef Humplik asking not to be disturbed as he was “totally immersed” in work on Op. 28. Thus, Bailey Puffett suggested that Webern may have received Krasner’s visit as a distraction. By now, Hartmut Krones wrote, Webern likely realized his error in anticipating the Nazis’ self-moderation. Bailey Puffett proposed that Krasner, with the benefit of hindsight from the perspective of his 1987 account, may have resented Webern for “refusing to see the reality of Hitler’s antisemitism”, at least until after 1936. That year, Webern had insisted that Krasner and he travel through Nazi Germany to stop at a Munich train station café, where Krasner said “anything untoward was the least likely to happen”, in an attempt to demonstrate the lack of danger. Support for the Anschluss rested on antisemitism, economic prospects, and the old idea of a Greater Germany. Under some duress, Theodor Innitzer ushered in Catholic support. The Austrian Nazis and Social Democrats, both outlawed, were linked in opposition to the Austrofascists. Before the Austrofascist years (1933–1938) of and Nazi soft power, Karl Renner supported unification as a matter of self-determination. Now he and others supported or accepted the Anschluss as inevitable. Otto Bauer, in exile, expressed some acceptance with profound resignation and misgivings, having worked toward Austria’s German incorporation since Provisional National Assembly’s 1918 vote. Webern had long shared in common pan-German sentiments, especially during wartime. He also likely hoped to conduct again, securing a firmer future for his family under a new regime proclaiming itself “socialist” no less than nationalist. According to what Josef Polnauer, a fellow early Schoenberg pupil, historian, and librarian, told the Moldenhauers, Webern’s optimism was not dispelled until 1941. Krasner emphasized Webern’s “naiveté” but acknowledged that he himself had been “foolhardy” as to the danger of antisemitism, recalling “read ing in the papers … denials” and “want ing to see for myself” in 1938. Consensus had emerged on the center, left, and in some mainstream Jewish organizations that antisemitism was only a means to political power since its 1890s definition as the “socialism of fools”. The Frankfurt School first treated it within the rubric of class conflict (Adorno began to consider it otherwise in his 1939 “Fragments on Wagner”), and Franz Neumann briefly contended that the Nazis would “never allow a complete extermination of the Jews” in his 1942 Behemoth (before revisions in 1944).

Kristallnacht and recoil#

shocked Webern, who thought that reports of Nazi atrocities were politicized, unreliable propaganda. He visited and aided Jewish colleagues D. Bach, , Polnauer, and Hugo Winter. For Jokl, a former Berg pupil, Webern wrote a recommendation letter to facilitate emigration. When that failed, Webern served as his godfather in a 1939 baptism. Polnauer, whose emigration Mark Brunswick, Schoenberg, and Webern were unable to secure, managed to survive the Holocaust as an albino; he later edited a 1959 U.E. publication of Webern’s correspondence from this time with Humplik and Jone. Webern moved Humplik’s 1929 gift of a Mahler bust to his bedroom, having told Felix Greissle in 1936 or 1937 that Mahler’s time would come within a German and D. Bach that “not all Germans are Nazis”. With “almost all his friends and old pupils … gone”, Webern found himself increasingly alone, and his financial situation was poor. He talked to Polnauer about emigrating but was reluctant to leave home and family. He entered a period of “inward emigration” and focused on composition, writing to artist Franz Rederer in 1939, “We live completely withdrawn. I work a lot.” He corresponded extensively to maintain relationships, imploring his student George Robert to play Schoenberg in New York and expressing his loneliness and isolation to Schoenberg. Then war limited postal service, disrupting their direct correspondence completely by 1941.

Era: 20th Century
Lived: 1883–1945
From: Austria
Born in: Vienna · died Mittersill
Known as: classical composer, conductor, musician, composer, music arranger
Instruments: piano
Genres: impressionism in music