Webern: Quartet Opus 22, 1st movement

Question 1

What style is Weburn’s Quartet Opus 2022 (1st movement)?

Answer 1

Expressionist

Question 2

Structure

Answer 2

• The only traditional aspect of this piece is the structure, which is loosely based on sonata form.
• The exposition and development use the same forms of the tone row presented slightly differently
• The introduction and coda are exactly symmetrical mirror versions of each other (the same row forms but coda uses retrogrades)
• Repeats and slight rit. to help mark the changes from one section to another

Question 3

Harmony and tonality

Answer 3

• Maximally chromatic (12 tone row)
• Row eliminates the traditional hierarchy of scales and chords – no note sounds more or less important in the harmony than another
• Lack of sense of key or tonic
• Lots of dissonance - seconds, sevenths and tritones

Question 4

Melody and rhythm

Answer 4

• Large and awkward leaps in the melody (e.g. the violin leaping down two octaves and a 3rd at the beginning of the development before leaping back up a major seventh).
• The melody is also highly fragmented, with single notes and pairs of notes separated by rests.
• The most notes played consecutively is three
• Melody rapidly switches from once instrument to another
• Melody is highly repetitive (e.g. the saxophone melody in bar 6 is a transposition of the opening violin material) but these repetitions are not obvious to the listener

Question 5

Texture and sonority

Answer 5

• Polyphonic - piano treated as two melodic lines
• Extensive use of imitation e.g. mirror cannons, staggered repetition of prime row with its inverse
• Sparse texture - made up of overlapping fragments (’pointilism’ texture)
• Each instrument only takes a couple notes of the melody at one time. Melody is subject to rapid changes of timbre and is very fragmented.