Anton Webern - Variations, Op. 27 (1936) [Score-Video]

Anton Webern - Variations, Op. 27 (1936) 00:00 - I. Sehr Mässig 02:02 - II. Sehr Schnell 02:47 - III. Ruhig fließend Krystian Zimerman, piano In the course of its genesis, Webern reshaped the material, the twelve-tone row, for his composition several times. The work process, which went hand in hand with the first sketches, can easily be reconstructed on the basis of the sketch leaves. Only after various adjustments did Webern find the final basic form, as can be heard in M 1-5 of movement III. On three sketch leaves, Webern thereupon notated all 48 forms of this row (basic row, inversion, retrograde, and retrograde inversion, each in twelve transpositions), and numbered them consecutively with ordinal numbers. These row numbers are also found in the sketches and the first draft; they provided Webern with orientation both for the correct sequence of the notes as well as for the systematic combination of the rows. Webern’s deliberations about the integration of the completed movement into a larger formal context are partially documented. In letters to David Josef Bach (15 July 1936) and to his friend, the poetess Hildegard Jone (18 July), Webern mentioned that the whole work was to be a “kind of suite”. Several weeks later, on 24 August 1936, and thus at a time when movement II had not yet been composed, it was however clear that it was to become a three-movement work which Webern wanted “to simply call ‘Variations’” (letter to Eduard Steuermann, as cited in Aus Dem...