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On the Horizontal and Vertical Presentation of Musical Ideas and on Musical Space (III)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2010

Regina Busch
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Extract

An important factor in understanding the two kinds of presentation is that – seen historically – one or other has at different times moved into the foreground; moreover, that in connexion with the development of music and as a consequence of the continually progressing ‘conquest of the pitch-domain’, a mixing of the two kinds of presentation was arrived at. Here Webern above all follows Adler, who speaks in his book Der Stil in der Musik (1911) of ‘immensely multifarious intermediate and transitional stages from homophonic to polyphonic voice-leading’, of their mixing, of a ‘to and fro rich in variety, … continual exchange of the two basic kinds, homo – and polyphony’ (p. 246). As has already been said, Webern, going beyond this, assumes that the mixing up is caused by a tendency, on the part of the two kinds of presentation, ‘mutually (to) permeate each other more and more’ (Lecture IV).

Type
Research Article
Information
Tempo , Issue 157 , June 1986 , pp. 21 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

64 See footnote 51 (TEMPO 156, p. 11)

65 The analytical terms ‘period’ and ‘sentence’ are not used as commonly, nor distinguished from one another as unambiguously, in English writings on phrase-structure and form as they are in German ones; e.g. in Ratz, Erwin, Formenlehre (Study of Form), Vienna, 1951 (2nd edition 1973)Google Scholar. In this sense, the typical model of an 8-bar period consists of a 4-bar antecedent, ending with an imperfect cadence or other less-than-final close, and a 4-bar consequent (motivically, and especially rhythmically, similar to the antecedent), ending with a perfect cadence, or otherwise more finally than the antecedent: a question-and-answer pattern. A typical model of an 8-bar sentence, however, begins with a 2-bar statement and its (exact, varied, or transposed) repetition; then follows a one-bar phrase (usually derived from the initial statement) and its repetition (almost always transposed) and a final 2-bar closing statement which may or may not return to the content of the opening: i.e. exposition with repeat – development (fragmentation and acceleration) – recapitulation or other concluding statement. – M.G.

66 ‘Entwicklung’, ‘Entwickelnder’. Literally ‘unwrapping’, but used for ‘developing’ in the photographic sense, for example. Can also mean ‘evolving’ (as in an argument or speech). This is not the usual German musical term for ‘development’ (as in the middle of a sonata-form movement, i.e. as used in the previous sentence of the above text), which is ‘Durchfuhrung’ (literally ‘conveying or leading through’, ‘carrying out, accomplishing’). Schoenberg preferred ‘elaboration’ to ‘development’, on the ground that the material in a ‘development’ section rarely develops into anything new. – M.G.

67 ‘Abwicklung’. Apart from enjoying the verbal parallel (Entwicklung/Abwicklung), Schoenberg seems to be implying that in homophonic music the process to which he refers is one in which something is revealed and its full meaning then elaborated, while in polyphonic music it is unrolled, stretched out in time. – M.G.

68 Or ‘elaborated’; ‘developed’ in the conventionalized musical sense, not in the sense of growing into something else. – M. G.

69 Gesammelte Schrijten 1, pp. 399 and 401 (M. G. translation). For Schoenberg's English version, originally a lecture delivered at the University of California on 29 November 1949, see ‘My Evolution’ in Style and Idea, pp. 81 and 84. (Ed.)

70 Formenlehre (1973 edition), p.43.

71 ‘Gestalt’

72 ‘Entwicklung’: see notes 66 and 67.

73 Formenlehre (1973 edition), p.43

74 Literally ‘scherzo and trio without the developmental middle section’ – M. G.

75 Most recently reprinted in Hans and Rosaleen Moldenhauer, Anton von Webem, p. 751 ff. (analysis translated by Zoltan Roman). All quotations in the present article translated by M. G.

76 ‘Satztechnik’: not a close translation, but Webern means the choice of polyphony as a way of composing locally, as opposed to compositional technique in the extended, formal sense. – M. G.

77 ‘mit 3 Durchführungen (bzw. Exposition und 2 Durchfuhrungen)’. ‘Durchfuhrung’ is not used here in the sense of the development section of a sonata or the scherzo-form referred to above. English and German usages differ in the designation of those sections of a fugue in which the subject is presented whole, in one or more voices. In fact, it is the episodes that often come closer to the character of a sonata development. – M. G.

78 ‘Durchführung’: see preceeding note.

79 ‘Entwicklung’. See Note 65.

80 M. G. translation.

81 In his essay ‘Anton Weberns Kantate Nr. 2, Opus 31. Die Formprinzipien der kanonischen Darstellung (Analyse des vierten Satz)’ in Schweizerische Musikzeitung 101 (1961)Google Scholar.

82 ‘Satzkunst’: ‘Satz’ can mean musical texture (see note 76), mode of composition, way of putting notes together; also movement, in the sense of ‘first movement’. – M. G.

83 Webern to Eduard Steuermann, 21 June 1939; printed in Musik-Konzepte: Sonderband Anton Webern I, Munich 1983, p.49 Google Scholar.

84 The Path to the New Music, p. 61.

85 ‘Instrumentationswitze’. Literally ‘jokes’ or ‘pranks’ of instrumentation. – M. G.

86 Dallapiccola, Luigi, ‘Meeting with Webern (Pages from a Diary)’, TEMPO 99 (1972), p.5 Google Scholar.