Anton Webern

In 1911, Anton Webern married his first cousin, Wilhelmine Mörtl, his mother’s sister’s daughter. However, the marriage could not be solemnized before 1915 because the union between first cousins was prohibited by the Roman Catholic Church. The couple had four children; three daughters and a son named Peter.

In February 1945, Peter was killed while the train he was traveling in was bombed in a strafing attack. Later in the same year, as the Russian Army was about to capture Vienna, Webern and his wife fled to Mittersill near Salzburg. His three daughters, sons-in-law and grandchildren were already living there.

On the evening of 15 September 1945, forty-five minutes before the curfew was to go into effect, Webern stepped out of his house in Mittersill to smoke a cigar, presented by his son-in-law. As he came out, he was mistakenly shot and killed by a soldier of the allied force.

Anton Webern was born on 3 December 1883, in Vienna, Austria. Named Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern at birth, he never used his middle names and later gave up ‘von’ to comply with the 1919 reforms of the Austrian government.

His father, Carl von Webern, was a mining engineer employed with the Habsburg government. He later reached the rank of chief of mining, the highest rank in his profession. His mother, Amelie (née Geer) Webern, was a competent pianist and accomplished singer.

Anton was born fourth of his parents’ five children, having two surviving sisters, named Rosa and Maria. His other two siblings, a brother and a sister, died in infancy.

Growing up in a musical environment, Anton began his education at Vienna, where the family lived until 1889. It was also at Vienna that he began his music lesson under his mother. at the age of five.

In 1890, his father was transferred to Graz and another four years later to Klagenfurt. At Klagenfurt, Anton attended Klagenfurt Humanistisches Gymnasium, studying traditional courses in humanities. By then, his musical talent must have started blooming for the school records show that he got high grades in music.

In 1902, Anton Webern graduated from Klagenfurt Humanistisches Gymnasium. He celebrated the event by attending Bayreuth Festival, hearing Richard Wagner's operas. They left a deep impression on his young mind.

In the autumn of 1902, he entered the Musicological Institute at the University of Vienna with musicology and composition, studying musicology with Guido Adler, harmony with Herman Graedener and counterpoint with Karl Navratil. All along, he continued to write, though at a much slower rate.

In 1903, he picked up the pace, writing twelve songs until 1904. During this period, he realized that he needed a true composition teacher and thought of studying with Hans Pfitzner in Berlin. But when it failed to materialize he decided on Arnold Schoenberg, who had just moved to Vienna.

From the autumn of 1904, Webern began to study privately with Arnold Schoenberg. Just before he joined the master, he wrote his first large orchestra, ‘Im Sommerwind’. Until then, he had mostly written short songs for voice and piano. The few orchestras he had created until then were very small.

At Schoenberg’s class, Webern met and subsequently became friend with Alban Berg. Under the guidance of Schoenberg, Webern and Berg began to experiment with music, eventually leading to the development of atonality and the ‘Second Viennese School’.

In 1908, Anton Webern began his career as conductor at a theatre in Bad Ischi, Austria. He was not very successful in his first venture because he hated routines, a prerequisite for theatre work, preferring to focus on free creative work.

From Ischi, he first moved to Teplitz (Teplice) and then to Danzig (Gdańsk) and finally to Stettin (Szczecin), conducting at theatres, until he joined the Austrian Army in 1915. Although he failed to make his mark as a conductor during this period, he now began to bloom as a composer.

Some of his most notable compositions of this period were ‘Five Movements for String Quartet’ (1909), ‘Six Pieces for Orchestra’ (1909), ‘Four Pieces for Violin and Piano’(1910), ‘Two Songs, Opus 8’ (1910), ‘Six Bagatelles for String Quartet’ (1911–13), ‘Five Pieces for Orchestra’ (1911–13), and ‘Three Small Pieces for Cello and Piano’ (1914).

These works, written between 1909 and early 1914, highlights a growing tendency to squeeze in highest intensity into very short space. But ‘The Cello Sonata’, written in the later part of 1914, shows that he was slowly returning to a more expanded form.

In 1915, Webern joined the Austrian Army; but was discharged by the end of 1916 because of his poor eyesight. In 1917, he moved to Prague, where he found employment as a conductor at the Deutsches Theater, remaining there until he returned to Vienna in 1918.