An Analysis of Anton Von Webern’s Concerto for Nine Instruments

Abstract

Anton Webern's (1883Webern's ( -1945 largest project of the early the 1930s, the Concerto for Nine (solo) Instrument's Op. 24, is for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, trumpet, trombone, violin, viola, and piano. This serial work's analysis became almost as famous as the concerto itself. Highly economical, short, concentrated and free relationship between the intervals take over from tonality as the main organizational principle "pontillistic" style. The clear and transparent frame "Klangfarbenmelodie", is a row, that was distributed among different instruments. So that, several notes can be heard in the same timbre. Like most of Webern works, there are quiet special effects like a whisper, string harmonics, pizzicato, muting, and athematic intevalic cells as the basic structural element. Concerto for Nine Instruments has succeeding series of twelve-tone works. Webern worked for a long time on the Concerto's raw, trying to arrive at an equivalent to the Latin word-square palindrome which reads the same left to right from the top, right to left from the bottom, downwards from the top left, or upwards from the bottom right.