IX. Twelve-Tone Music
Analysis Examples – Webern Op. 21 and 24
Mark Gotham
Key Takeaways
- When approaching twelve-tone music, it’s easy to get bogged down simply identifying row forms and lose sight of the bigger picture.
- A list of row forms used in a twelve-tone work is similar to a list of keys in a tonal work—useful, but not enough on its own to be called an analysis.
- This chapter considers two iconic works of early twelve-tone music – Webern’s Op. 21 and Op. 24 – with analysis of both the
- technical details of constructing symmetrical row and composing serial canons, with
- wider issues about the work to consider, such as the meaning of a “Symphony” and “Concerto” in this context.
- Scores may be found on IMSLP.org (Op. 21; Op. 24)
Webern: Symphonie Op. 21 (1928)
Even the title of Anton Webern’s Symphonie Op. 21 raises questions. Why would Webern choose to call this a symphony? If we think of a symphony as having certain types of key relations, then is an atonal symphony an oxymoron? Commentators have a range of reactions to this question:
- “in choosing the most resonant of classical titles Webern stressed the extent to which it could still be relevant to a work in which only certain structural principles remain valid.” (Whittall 1977, 163).
- “There is little or nothing in its formal procedures to compare with those of the traditional symphony.” (Taruskin 2010, 728).
Keep these questions in mind as we consider the nuts and bolts of the work.
Row form
Webern frequently chooses what you might think of as “neat” row forms, and this work is no exception (see ). The row breaks up neatly into two equivalent hexachords that are instances not simply of the same pitch-class set but of set 6-1 specifically: half a chromatic scale. In short, each fills the total chromatic collection of half the twelve-tone space.
Further, those hexachords are each set out with one instance of trichord (013) and one of (014). Altogether, the four trichord cells map out as (013), (014), (014), (013). These two trichords are further linked by their shared melodic shape: each involves a third (major or minor) and a semitone.
Here is the row matrix, with the symmetry of P0 and R6 highlighted by showing the first six notes of each in bold. [1]
| I0 | I9 | I10 | I11 | I7 | I8 | I2 | I1 | I5 | I4 | I3 | I6 | ||
| P0 | 9 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 4 | 5 | 11 | 10 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 3 | R0 |
| P3 | 0 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 7 | 8 | 2 | 1 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 6 | R3 |
| P2 | 11 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 6 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 5 | R2 |
| P1 | 10 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 5 | 6 | 0 | 11 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 4 | R1 |
| P5 | 2 | 11 | 0 | 1 | 9 | 10 | 4 | 3 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 8 | R5 |
| P4 | 1 | 10 | 11 | 0 | 8 | 9 | 3 | 2 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 7 | R4 |
| P10 | 7 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 2 | 3 | 9 | 8 | 0 | 11 | 10 | 1 | R10 |
| P11 | 8 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 3 | 4 | 10 | 9 | 1 | 0 | 11 | 2 | R11 |
| P7 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 11 | 0 | 6 | 5 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 10 | R7 |
| P8 | 5 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 7 | 6 | 10 | 9 | 8 | 11 | R8 |
| P9 | 6 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 8 | 7 | 11 | 10