Fifteen - As Above, So Below

Summary

Anton Webern's interest in the Sator square was so well known that it was later engraved on a plaque attached to the Mittersill house in which he last lived. He quoted it in his Path to the New Music lectures, conveyed his reading of the square to long-time collaborator Hildegard Jone, and wrote its words into the sketches for his 1934 Concerto for Nine Instruments (op. 24). Where Webern first saw the Sator square is not known, but he wrote to Jone about it in 1931 after he had begun to work on opus 24, and biographer Hans Moldenhauer suggests that by this time, the square “had long intrigued the composer.” While there was a great deal of contemporary interest in the square, Webern's fascination with it, and its function as compositional impetus for his opus 24, must be understood in the context of Webern's broader esoteric thought world. In particular, the influence of Goethe's doctrine of immutable laws of nature, and the central esoteric construct of microcosm reflecting macrocosm—or, “As above, so below”—need to be taken into account. After a brief consideration of the esoteric background central to Webern's thinking, and a look at Webern's reception of Goethe's natural laws, this chapter will examine the extent and nature of the influence of the Sator square—and of magic squares more broadly—on opus 24. The composition of the row and patterns in the matrix will be considered, as well as symmetric and unifying patterns in the music itself. A last look at two contemporary statements on the square's history and meaning will clarify the uniqueness of Webern’s understanding and use of the square.

By the time he wrote the op. 24 Concerto for Nine Instruments in 1934, Anton Webern's attraction to esoteric thought, as well as its significance for his music, had been well established. Already in his 1905 string quartet, concepts central to Webern's thinking had appeared in the Jakob Bohme quotation that he wrote as a motto at the top of the score:

The sense of Triumph that prevailed within my Spirit I cannot write nor speak about; it can with naught be compared, save only where, in the midst of Death, Life is born, like unto the Resurrection of the Dead.