program - SVIZ

‘historical’ stance can undoubtedly be found in Webern’s study of musicology
– in 1908 he completed a doctoral dissertation on the works of the master of
early music, Heinrich Isaac. A decisive event in Webern’s compositional development
was most certainly his meeting Arnold Schoenberg, who became
both his compositional mentor and a close friend. Just a few weeks before
this fateful meeting Webern had completed his youthful orchestral work Im
Sommerwind (In the Summer Wind), a composition that did not receive its
first performance until 1962. The manuscript of this work was found by the
composer’s biographer, Hans Moldenhauser, while investigating the estate of
the widow of Webern’s son. This early work sheds particular light on the development
of the composer’s musical language. It is written in the characteristic
style of the modern: the composer employs the rich colours of an expanded
symphony orchestra, the harmonies are tonal but extremely extended and
a rich expressiveness prevails. In his work the composer relies a great deal on
the extensive poetry of German social philosopher and liberal thinker Bruno
Wille. However, various musical influences seem even more important than
these poetic impulses: in the rich orchestration it is possible to distinguish the
fingerprints of Richard Strauss, the subtitle (‘Idyll’) and atmosphere bring to
mind the ‘Forest Murmurs’ from Wagner’s Siegfried, while the fragmentary
working with melodic material is similar to procedures employed by Gustav
Mahler. Nonetheless, even in this youthful work – the composer completed
it at the age of only twenty – it is still possible to discover certain traits that
mark his mature opus: the orchestration is grandiose but contains certain
special features (Webern calls for five clarinets but only two bassoons, as well
as six horns but no trombones), while even more striking is the incongruence
between the intermittent melody and the overflowing orchestration. Thus
even at the beginning of his creative path Webern’s attention is focused on
the melodic fragment and sonic colour.
It is precisely between Brahms and Webern that Gustav Mahler takes his
place in the historical development of music. The composer’s First Symphony
has a special position in this development, as it marks the beginning of the
era of the modern, a period in which composers had already taken on board
the new aesthetic postulates but not yet the new compositional techniques.
Mahler began planning his first symphonic work in 1885 while working in
Kassel. It was completed in 1888 in Leipzig and given its premiere performance
one year later in Budapest. He initially planned the work as a symphonic
poem in two parts with the subtitle ‘Titan’, taken from the novel of the same
name by Jean Paul. However, the composer later modified the construction
of the work to a large extent: he discarded the second movement (‘Floweret’),
changed the orchestration and rejected the poetic programme, although we
nonetheless cannot deny certain extra-musical associations. Thus even the
slow introduction, with its floating tone of ‘a’ spread throughout the entire
orchestral spectrum, presents us with a picture of a static natural landscape
in which resound the echoes of bird calls and a distant fanfare, a series of
fourths that will later reveal themselves to be the main thematic material
of the work. There follows a faster section in which Mahler makes use of the
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