ABSTRACT: Anne Shreffler's recent book on Webern is a breath of fresh air in the antiseptic laboratory of more traditional Webern studies. Challenging his conventional image as a "cerebral master of control," she paints an intimate portrait of a lyrical composer of Lieder in the line of Schubert and Wolf, whose intellectual concern for logical coherence is tempered by an intuitive appreciation of the expressive potential of ambiguity. This book presents detailed musicological evidence about Webern's life and compositional process to substantiate analytical assertions about his music in support of this lyrical reappraisal. There is important new information about the composer's sketching routine, the precise nature and sequence of each compositional step, the aesthetic criteria invoked in revisions, and the essential character of his creative decision making. Contrary to analytic approaches that ignore or devalue ambiguity as a flaw, Shreffler praises the richness of multiple associations it implies. Poignantly, it is the quintessentially structured music of Webern, the paragon of analytic formalism, in which the author asserts this theoretical imperative. Her musical insights and interdisciplinary methodology merit careful attention and considerable praise.
[2] Shreffler's lyrical Webern is no longer the calculating Mr. Spock of "sparseness, severity, and control" like the familiar logical one, an "intellectually driven genius" (p. 4) determined to extricate himself from the lugubrious excesses of musical Romanticism. The meticulous musical engineer who memorized train schedules, once revered for "building structures from sound itself," is transmogrified into Shreffler's "champion of the lyric genre" (p. 4), an expressive humanist invoking a keen poetic sensibility to avert an aesthetic crisis caused by an arid and overly mechanistic compositional technique.
[3] Lyrical Webern appeals to our heart, not our brain. He implores us to hear his music not as "Chinese puzzles" to be deciphered and unraveled, but as emotional experiences to be felt and savored. Shreffler conceives of these neglected compositional traits as manifesting a latent tension within musical modernism itself. She dubs Webern's setting of Trakl's poetry in op. 14 the centerpiece of her study, a "quintessentially modernist work" (p. 19). Although the author does not propose this realignment, however, lyrical Webern can be filtered through a postmodern, poststructuralist lens as well.{2}
[8] The analytic as opposed to musicological value of sketch study, of course, has come under attack from those considering it irrelevant to the autonomous structure of the finished work. Shreffler's methodological debt to Lewis Lockwood, a leading sketch advocate and editor of the Studies in Musical Genesis and Structure series in which this book appears (based upon Shreffler's 1989 dissertation under Lockwood's direction), is evident from her unflinching archival commitment. {6} Unlike Lockwood, however, Shreffler attempts to circumvent rather than refute the controversy by disclaiming any objective assertions about the music itself, and modestly asserting that sketches merely enrich our own subjective apprehension instead. She thus leads with a striking neo-Kantian curtailment of claims: we can never know music anyway, but only our perception of it. The value of sketch study, Shreffler disarmingly confesses, lies in the work's "reception rather than elucidation" (p.12).
[9] Despite Shreffler's epistemological disclaimer, however, like most theorists she continues to make what still sound like objective propositions about the music itself--not simply about her subjective impressions. The legitimate distinction Shreffler is driving at, though, entails a fruitful shift of focus in sketch study away from the compositional intent of a revision to its compositional effect. Instead of trying to burrow inside the composer's head to divine the subjective reasons for his choices, we can discern their objective consequences in the structure of the music itself.
[10] Whatever the vicissitudes of sketch study, the fact remains we are still interested in the underlying issue itself, that is, the complex relationship between the creative process and the work of art. Analysis of the score as an isolated entity can sometimes present a narrow, stoic view that may feel incomplete, contrived, or unsatisfying. Sketch study, like the companion issue of compositional intent, is controversial precisely because it breaches this modernist requirement of aesthetic autonomy. In this sense, sketch study has a postmodern bite, insistently anchoring analytic abstractions in the terra firma of creative reality. In the hands of a skilled practitioner like Shreffler, who not only makes it her academic business to gain access to archival sites in remote sectors of the scholarly universe, but also possesses the musicological and theoretical skills to construe them in enlightening ways, sketch study can be a valuable analytic tool.
[12] Shreffler's attitude toward the creative process parallels her rejection of the modernist view of music history as a teleological progression between different styles, in favor of a postmodern conception that is de-centered, discontinuous, fragmented, and pluralistic. History as evolution is replaced by history as synchronic tension. Webern's atonality is not an embryonic, inherently flawed stage of unsystematic musical chromaticism, eventually shedding its structural deficiencies and blossoming into the rational totalization of serialism. Serialism can claim no structural superiority over atonality simply because it came later. These are both independent and fully developed musical languages, premised upon equally valid but merely different aesthetic criteria. If anything, atonality's more ambiguous theoretical premises might account for its greater longevity in surviving serialism into the postmodern era.
[14] This contrapuntal layering of successive parts is visually evidenced by discernible vertical misalignments between individual lines in the sketches shown in the book. It is also conspicuously reminiscent of similar vertical misalignments between successively conceived voices in the music of Heinrich Isaac, whom Webern notably admired. Shreffler construes this cumulation of independent melodic strands as revealing a predominately linear approach to polyphony, which she in turn attributes to the essential lyricism of Webern's musical conception. She further extrapolates that the composer's lack of interest in combinatoriality in his later serial works manifests this same lyric orientation, inducing him to conceive of rows primarily from a horizontal and melodic perspective rather than a vertical or harmonic one.
[15] Other crucial aspects of the sketches support Shreffler's revised conception of a lyrical Webern as well. Instead of deliberating intensely over each painstaking note as one might imagine, he actually seems to have jotted his musical ideas down rather quickly, fluidly, and intuitively, revising if at all on the spot. In fact, there is virtually no evidence that he ever reworked or even revisited previously sketched material during this atonal period at all. His entire approach to composing appears to be based instead upon free transformations in a through-composed, "stream-of consciousness-like fashion" (p. 234), as opposed to any rigorous, intellectual, systematic procedures that might appeal to logical Webern.
[16] Given the intricate structure of the musical outcome, it is nothing short of astonishing that Webern's atonal sketches, like Schoenberg's, reveal absolutely no precompositional aids, schemes, charts, plans, or diagrams suggestive of any systematic approach whatsoever.{8} They also suggest as much concern with purely expressive elements on the musical surface, such as contour, register, texture, and orchestration, as they do with underlying pitch structures. Rehearsal and performance materials confirm Webern's preference for an expressive performance style far removed from antiseptic precision of Boulezian modernist performance practice. Finally, of greatest interest to theorists, contrary to the hallowed image of the composer in single-minded pursuit of rational order and coherence, Shreffler's study reveals that Webern at times deliberately sought out ambiguity and disorder for their lyrical potential.
[18] Shreffler detects a subtle shift from the static pointillistic textures of free atonality in Webern's early pre-war instrumental pieces to the more extended linear counterpoint in the later works after 1924. She attributes this transition not to Schoenberg's serialism, but rather to Webern's discovery of lyricism during the intervening vocal period. The crisis in Webern's career was not his later stylistic confrontation with his mentor's methodology and his need to develop a personal serial voice, but rather his more elemental need to develop a basic contrapuntal and melodic technique. The specific manner in which Webern confronted this fundamental challenge--by learning how to write a flowing lyrical atonal line in a vocal setting--set the stage for how he later addressed serialism as well.
[19] According to Shreffler, Webern's initial atonal period from 1908-14 hit a dead end in musical miniaturism because his compositional technique was basically incapable of sustaining an extended melodic line, and thus generating bona fide counterpoint. These early aphoristic pieces from opp. 5-11 are "not contrapuntal and could not be," in the sense of combining independent, self-sufficient horizontal melodies (p.107). They have an essentially vertical construction based upon the static "juxtaposition of non-overlapping musical ideas" and "isolated gestures," creating more of a timbral mosaic than a contrapuntal web. Even in those works that "seem contrapuntal" like op. 5/3, Shreffler contends that the apparent parts are really only "quasi-independent layers rather than truly autonomous, self sustaining polyphonic melodic voices." In short, Webern really didn't know at this stage "how to maintain the total chromatic in a contrapuntal context" (pp.107-08).
[20] Shreffler argues that the composer turned in desperation to song as a way out of this musical cul de sac. The continuity of the words in a poetic text necessitated horizontal thinking and a more fluid melodic approach. Writing vocal music in a declamatory style, to which Webern exclusively devoted himself for ten years, led to a more integrated linear style, as opposed to the fractured juxtaposition of autonomous cells in the earlier instrumental pieces. Projecting the long lines of a poem with a sustained melody, from which the other parts organically derived, not only led out of the atonal impasse, but eventually blossomed into a linear, melodic, or "lyrical" approach to serialism. Webern's experience in writing through composed vocal music thus "predisposed" him to "writing rows melodically and accompanying them with similar linear figures" (p.18).{9}
[22] Shreffler places op. 14, Six Songs on Poems by Georg Trakl at the musical juncture between these opposing lyrical and logical approaches. But it was only the latter impulse of the first and last periods, without the opposing melodious, lyrical impulse of the middle vocal period that tempered it, that the Darmstadters seized upon and reified in trimming Webern's aesthetic to fit their own formalist conceit. Armed with empirical evidence from the composer's newly discovered sketches, Shreffler seeks to redress this historical imbalance by elevating lyrical Webern to a level of parity with his logical counterpart.
[24] Given the ambitious methodological scope of her endeavor and the controversial nature of her allegations, however, a broader analytic pallet might help at times. The author's analyses essentially are confined to foreground relationships on the musical surface. They could be enhanced by penetrating to deeper structural levels and adopting a more "transformational attitude." For the most part, though, Shreffler makes an able case with the means she invokes. The book's technical limitations also assure that there are no intimidating theoretical impediments to its apprehension by the expanded audience of musicologists and theorists it is designed to address.
[25] One of the inherent consequences of Shreffler's interdisciplinary approach is the relinquishment of excessive technicality in either direction. While some musicologists may find her invoking analytic "babble-prose," some theorists may discern insufficient analytic evidence to substantiate her claims. To anyone who values communication beyond increasingly narrow occupational walls, however, Shreffler's style is exemplary. A more complex theoretical apparatus might easily compromise not only her hybridized methodology, but her thesis of an approachable, less systematic, lyrical Webern.
[26] Still, Shreffler's discussion of op. 14/4's Abendland III is one spot where a heftier analytic toolchest would help. Her contention is that the piece reflects a significant change in compositional technique away from the fragmented juxtaposition of cells towards an integrated, linear contrapuntal web. Attempting to show the organic derivation of instrumental parts from the lyrical vocal line, she extracts a handful of disparate referential sets from the initial vocal gesture--(56E), (3456), (456E), (E056), and (E3456)--which she then designates as a single collective referential motive.
[27] Acknowledging that these constituent sets are "not formally equivalent," Shreffler nonetheless argues that they "are functionally so because of their common origin" in the vocal phrase (p. 163). Her analysis here, as well as throughout, could be reinforced by identifying prime forms, instead of merely normal orders. Boiling these down to (016), (0123), (0127), (0167), and (01237) makes things a lot clearer, and highlights their invariant subset relationships. More seriously, however, she restricts herself to locating local recurrences of these different sets on the musical surface, which she then submits as evidence of an organic contrapuntal style manifesting Webern's lyric impulse.
[28] But Shreffler casts too wide a net. Other than their common origin in the initial vocal gesture, there is little analytic payoff derived from noting the subsequent recurrence of so many sets in the instrumental parts. Motivic saturation in itself reveals nothing unique about this particular piece. Numerous first period works reveal the same saturation derived from an opening gesture. Without some further demonstration of how these sets link up to one another at deeper levels of structure, it is not exactly clear how this piece "represents a breakthrough in Webern's handling of motivic atonality...changing how motives relate to each other" (p. 174), let alone reflecting anything notably lyrical.
[30] Shreffler partitions out the semitone dyads [C-C#] and [D-D#] within each trichord to show their equivalence with the opening dyads. She accounts for the nonconforming E and F# at the end as "imbedded modifications" of the initial dyadic idea. In an earlier sketch, however, she notes in passing that the opening [C-C#] dyad was originally preceded by an E, thus presenting a [C-C#-E] trichord both at the beginning and the end. A reasonable inference could be drawn that the sketch was therefore actually more unified by a long-range structural relationship than the revision. By lopping off the initial E, Webern disrupted the equivalency between opening and closing trichords, opting in favor of a more local association between dyads at the expense of large-scale unification.
[31] Shreffler's impressive archival excavation of three different sketches of the opening vocal gesture of op.14/1's Die Sonne also affords additional analytic inferences in support of her thesis of a lyrical Webern. Each of the three preliminary versions of the phrase is internally unified by an equivalency relationship between two constituent sets. In the final version, however, Webern again ruptured this internal symmetry by juxtaposing two disparate sets instead. This revision also suggests a preference for lyrical disorder over logical order, supporting the revised conception of the composer Shreffler proposes. This compositional orientation of undermining rather than promoting logical coherence is subtly summed up in the final gesture of the finished work as well. A note-for-note equivalency relationship unfolding progressively between two sets is ultimately derailed by the last two notes of the piece in a dramatic crescendo. The deliberate disruption in the revision process thus provides a useful analytic paradigm for comprehending structural aberrations in the final score, too.
[33] At the outset, these two pentachords are not "near-retrogrades" as Shreffler claims, but rather "near-retrograde inversions" at RI5. Their ordered pitch-class interval successions, <-5-1+3-1> and <-1+3-1+5>, are near-retrogrades, not retrograde inversions as they must be to make the pitch segments themselves near-retrogrades. This is a minor oversight that might actually support Shreffler's argument, however, since the abandoned RI relationship is even stronger evidence of a serial state of mind than a mere retrograde.
[34] But Shreffler's case is seriously jeopardized by the fact that the two segments are more directly heard as near-transpositions or traditional canonic imitations. The first four notes of the second pentachord, <C#-C Eb-D>, form an exact transposition down a whole step of the first pentachord starting on its second note, <Eb-D-F-E>, with the same <-1+3 1> interval succession. Moreover, this is succeeded by another transpositional entrance down another whole step of a third pentachord <B-F#-F-G#-A>, whose first four notes transpose those of the first pentachord exactly from its beginning, again with the same intervals <-5 1+3>. In light of this conventional transpositional scheme, Shreffler's contention that lyrical Webern was rebelling against Schoenberg's logically ordered retrogrades and inversions when he abandoned this sketch seems to attack a straw man.{10}
[36] Canonic serial operations, for example, can be defined progressively as "progressive-transposition (PnT)," "progressive-inversion (PnI)," "progressive-retrograde (PnR)," and "progressive-retrograde inversion (PnRI)," where n equals the size or cardinality of the participatory subset of equivalent notes between two near-equivalent sets. The value of n also represents the number of the successive application or "run-though" of the transformation in a sequence, ranging from (1, 2 . . . m), with m equal to the maximum cardinality of the entire set, at which point the progressive transformation is identical to the normal equivalency operation. P transformations flush out the continuum of transformational increments between the "all-or-nothing" of strict equivalency relationships.{11}
[37] PnRI successively retrogrades the interval succession of the three pentachordal segments in Webern's op. 14/1 sketch, but progressively inverts only n of their members at a time. The first run-through, P1RI, retrogrades the entire intervallic succession <-5-1+3-1> of the first pentachord <Ab-Eb-D- F-E>, but inverts only its first interval. This generates <-1+3-1+5>, the interval succession of the second pentachord, <C#-C-Eb-D-G>. The descending fourth <Ab-Eb> at the beginning of the first pentachord thus becomes the ascending fourth <D-G> at the end of the second, while the transpositionally invariant tetrachords <Eb-D-F-E> and <C#-C-Eb-D> remain intact.
[38] The second progressive application, P2RI, then retrogrades the output of P1RI, but this time inverts just its first and last intervals. This generates <-5-1+3+1>, the interval succession of the third pentachord, <B F#-F-G#-A>. Now the first and third pentachords share a transpositionally invariant tetrachord at their beginning, with the descending semitone <F E> at the end of the first pentachord matching the ascending semitone <G#-A> at the end of the third pentachord. The three segments of Webern's sketch thus comprise a coherent transformational network logically organized by a single progressive transformation.{12}
[39] But regardless of the means of structural integration in this sketch, Shreffler's conclusion is warranted by its most crucial point: its abandonment. Webern ultimately disrupted even the fuzziest logic by tossing out the second pentachord altogether and substituting a structurally anomalous and inexplicable <C#-G-C> trichord in the final version instead. The underlying compositional process here as before reveals the composer deliberately revising his sketches to instill greater ambiguity rather than order through the distortion or "fuzzification" of a logical scheme.
[41] The compositional process suggested by these sketches of ambiguating or "dissonating" the normative regularity of a structural idea alters the composer's traditional image as a calculating precisionist invariably seeking total coherence and organic unification. It transforms the familiar portrait of logical Webern into his lyrical alter ego trying to stretch beyond the restrictive confines of his intellect in pursuit of the expressive potential of ambiguity. It also flips the compositional process on its head as a process of deconstruction rather than construction. Instead of logically integrating, purifying, and rationally shaping an initial, amorphous, intuitive idea through the progressive refinement of its structural imperfections, Webern at other times appears to have employed the inverse process. He intentionally blurred the logic of systematic prototypes in order to translate the fractured syntax and juxtaposed metaphors of Trakl's expressionist poetry into the disassociated discourse of free atonality.{14}
[42] Must the act of composing or theorizing inevitably imply defeating incongruities by bending them into conformity with some totalizing principle? Is aesthetic value always dependent upon what Derrida calls the "illusion of a centered structure?" Ironically, it is the music of Webern, this paragon of logical refinement, that suggests not. In presenting this reappraisal, Shreffler invokes a more magnanimous conception not only of his music, but of music generally--one that embraces the beauty of "crippled symmetry" and invites us to celebrate flaws and wrinkles instead of always trying to "iron them out."{15} Ambiguity is not always a shortcoming. It can serve an expressive function comparable to dissonance in a normative context of structural coherence. As Robert Morris points out, conflict rather than unity "can be at the heart" of a piece. When "one does not quite grasp how [music] works," observes David Lewin, he listens "with added, rather than dissipating, interest."{16}
[44] At the same time, however, Shreffler's lesson in lyricism ought not disrupt one dogma only to substitute another. Her new lyrical Webern need not diminish our appreciation of the old logical one as well, as she herself concedes. An occasional absence of crisp set-class equivalence does not necessarily imply chaos or preclude some other form of rational organization. There are many other significant unifying factors and criteria for musical comprehensibility, particularly with respect to how a piece is heard. Moreover, fuzzy logic and progressive transformations suggest that lyricism and even ambiguity may be achieved through logical means themselves. Lest we forget that logical Webern wrote "even the most fragmented sounds must have a completely coherent effect." Still, at other times lyrical Webern described having "an intuitive vision of the work as a whole...inspiration, if you like."{18} Lockwood is wise to counsel sober equilibrium in his preface to Shreffler's book, finding Webern's "lyric impulses tempered at every step by concerns with coherence and structure" (p. vi).
[45] Our two Weberns, one logical the other lyrical, exist side by side. Both are real and necessary to our full recognition of their collaborative achievement. But in the end, of course, there is only one real Webern--and he is both together, delicately balanced in a steady state of logical lyricism. It is his music's symbiosis between rationality and intuition, its precarious dialectic between order and expressivity, uniting what Levi Strauss called "the contrary attributes of being both intelligible and untranslatable," that instills its special mystique. This paradox earns Webern's rank and resilience despite shifts in analytic paradigms across the poststructural divide. For how else can the same composer be claimed by contrary aesthetics? Bach, in Webern's time, was appropriated by competing factions. Now Webern seems to have sufficient breadth to be appreciated from different and even opposing perspectives. These oscillating views exist simultaneously in our minds and the music itself. Analysis is simply "a selection," as Leo Treitler once wrote, "from all the true things that may be said" about a work of art.{19}
[46] Despite his advocacy of Darmstadt orthodoxy, Karlheinz Stockhausen nonetheless espoused tolerant catholicity toward Webern's music. As if anticipating Shreffler's heretic reappraisal nearly a half century later, die Riehe's "enfante terrible" confessed on the tenth anniversary of the composer's death: "We have been accused of doing violence to Webern's music by reading into it something that is not there at all. There is not one interpretation but as many as there are points of view. The fact that everyone discovers something different in his music and wishes to demonstrate it to others throws a useful light on the manifold ideas about Webern; and that above all, his music allows of interpretation from the most varied points of view speaks only for its vitality. Let us concern ourselves with our common task, for it is unfruitful to make out of it a clash of philosophies. The matter at hand is to acquire a knowledge of the actual contents of Webern's scores, to quicken our perception of it, looking from every possible angle. Not everything that cries out for contradiction should be taken too seriously. And every musician who loves this music may feel it his duty untiringly to bring it nearer to others, to communicate the joy he feels at having discovered it. Then Webern's music will be able gradually to radiate its innermost power, by drawing people together in shared astonishment at such beauty."{20}
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