As a culture, we tend to look back on shared tragedies. On the anniversary of some cataclysmic event, we speak in reverence and hushed tones, asking one another, “where were you when…” We remember where we were and what we were doing on 9/11. Those of us old enough to remember may recall where they were when they heard that Pearl Harbor had been bombed, when Kennedy was shot, when the Challenger exploded.
In our personal lives, however, we tend to remember and commemorate the good times. Birthdays, graduations, weddings, children.
And even if we can’t remember the exact date, we look back fondly on first loves, a first kiss, a job promotion, a last loan payment, and all sorts of other little, personal triumphs. It’s in this last category that I place my discovery of Anton Webern.
I don’t remember the day, but do remember the circumstances of my first encounter with Webern’s music. I was in 11th grade, taking a music theory course with four fellow students. (It blew my mind that the administration saw fit to approve of this class, even with so little interest from the student body.) As part of the class, we were going to enter a competition being put together by Minnesota Public Radio, called the “Music Listening Contest.” Really, the whole point of the contest was to expose high school kids to the vast world of classical music, from Medieval chant all the way up through postmodern absurdism. In a little subsection which explained some of the things going on in Germany during the Third Reich, entitled “Put Up, Shut Up, or Get Out,” Webern was the representative of the “Shut Up” camp: unable to publish or perform because his music was too outre for the Nazis. We read over the brief yet tantalizing description of twelve-tone music in the study guide, then the teacher put on the recording: Webern’s Opus 30 Orchestral Variations.
Description of this music is as impossible as trying to describe the sunken city of R’yleh. We humans lack the mental capacity to fully understand what is unfolding before, and our vocabulary is insufficient. We could talk about tone rows, about note cells and orchestration, but the music itself evades rational analysis. There is something other-worldly about it, something vaguely suggestive of unplumbed depths, unreachable summits, and untold aeons. I didn’t want to turn from this music, and could not had I wanted to. From the very first chords it was one with my soul.
I then proceeded to seek out whatever else I could from this Webern guy. Keep in mind this was before the internet made all available to all; this was in the dark era of mail-order music stores. I found one, and only one, CD of Webern’s music between the BMG and Columbia House music catalogues, but it would do. This collection was a survey of just about everything he wrote for orchestra, including his Passacaglia, the Symphony, and the aforementioned Variations, along with various & sundry other works.
So far, I have given you a fevered account of my descent into Webernism, but it wasn’t quite as complete as I have suggested. What really held me back was his Symphony in two movements, which sounded appropriately strange, but wasn’t anywhere near as compelling as the other works. So Webern was human after all.
Still, I love this guy’s music so ridiculously much. I loved it before I understood twelve-tone theory at all. I loved many of his pieces from the first listen on. Even the Symphony has grown on me, at least a little, at least certain performances of it. It is true that there are mountains of compositional detail and complexities to be discovered in his music. To see what I mean, track down a copy of Kathleen Bailey’s burglar-bludgeoning tome, “The Twelve-tone Music of Anton Webern.” But for me, that’s not the real joy of Webern’s music – or any music, really. No, I love the sound worlds he explored, the voyages through uncharted territory into realms where few have dared to follow, and fewer still have kept from stumbling. Like Alaska, like Antarctica, like Lovecraft’s unknown Kadath, Webern’s music is as seductive as it is forbidding. This sense of adventure is the best reason I can think of for exploring Webern’s music, and also serves as a reminder that you don’t need to “get” the theory to love the sound.
