Anton Webern's Zwei Lieder, Op. 19: Analysis 

Really appreciate all your videos. When I was a freshman in college this is one of the pieces that turned me on to webern. I remember listening to these two pieces on repeat and just thinking "this is so strange! How does this work? What is this?" And also being shocked at the beauty of the piece and how poetic it is in its brevity. Personally I find that the impracticality of performing this piece adds to its beauty it's like you can only play it if you really really want to and you have to put all this work into making something happen for two minutes. Sorta a reflection of the highly compact, complex beauty of the piece it is. So much happens yet it's over in two or so minutes.

I listened before watching and was completely lost. I listened after watching and felt like my ears were at a spa. Fantastic, fantastic work! You occupy a part of RU-vid that is direly needed.

Only a genius like Webern can produce such an extraordinary work...that an analysis of it is actually about 18 times as long as the actual piece And thank you for the insight you give in this channel, as always!

Thank you...Webern is one of my all-time favourites...

Thanks again for leaving us enlightened rather than intimidated. Piano reductions are particularly helpful.

Thank you very much for your great analysis!

This analysis was immensely helpful in understanding the piece, thank you for the effort.

learning a 12-tone serial piece has been on my bucket list for years. I am studying a posthumous Klavierstuck, and am slowly figuring it out. I plan to perform it at a local recital in August.

a prof of mine recommended your channel a while ago in undergrad, and i'm surprised i didn't check you out sooner as your knowledge of the music you cover is expansive, accurate, and easy to understand. you're a wonderful educator and clearly very qualified. thank you so much for the wonderful content/lectures!

This was a great video and shows you a fuller picture of Webern's compositional technique. We need the world of classical music consumers to approach contemporary classical music in a more informed way. You are doing a great service here Samuel. You are giving due credit to the 2nd Viennese School. Thank you.

Super Cool! Very interesting to see how Webern thought while composing this piece.

I feel that his approach to harmony also comes from his admiration of natural beauty, specifically the structural manifestation seen in biology. His process of branching tone rows into separate parts sort of emulates the growth of a tree limb, both being a result of set perimeters which develop into intricate, nonsensical structures. Although, I’m sure this aspect is a common theme throughout serial music, It’s still a gorgeous abstract analogy. Thank you for introducing this style with so much clarity.

Many thanks for this wonderful piece. !!!! Warren

Thanks for your excellent analysis of this twentieth century gem.

Great analysis, congratulations!

Amazing video thank you

Thank you so much for your video

Thank you, Maestro.

At 19:17 in the measure 4 the score is wrong. the phrase starts in the clarinet but in the score is written for the violin.

Samuel, As you probably know, Schoenberg's Opus 27 Nr 4, 'Der Wunsch des Liebhabers' has some intriguing similarities to Webern's Opus 19, both in the musical texture and in the text. Plus, they were both written in 1926! It would be fun to hear your thoughts or/and knowledge, someday, regarding the various resonances between those two pieces. Love your videos!

this piece reminds me of the art bears, a Fred frith band with a German (?) opera singer Dagmar Kraus. a very unique and interesting band. I think you'd love them if you have never heard them. as always, great breakdown and explanation. thank you.

16:23 Well, he used all four permutations in the second and third movement of his op. 18 as well, but you're right about the transpositions. Great video !

Thanks from me too for this for this analysis. I have gone to listen to the pieces several times and will then return to your analysis. I love the Webern and also Schoenberg in their atonal phase. as you know Webern also wrote instrumental works and not only songs in his middle period. Alban Berg is the one I love most in all his works. He did not allow the twelve tone system to become a fetish.

Great video, thanks! One thing: You meticulously show us the net of tone rows in the end, but you only hint at the most interesting part: I would love to understand how he makes those row combinations work. I think that's the final thing that's missing because the genius of this intricate network can only be understood if one sees not only how intricate it is, but at the same time that this is not arbitrarily done or just for the sake of being complicated. But thanks again!

I love your videos on Feldman, Webern and Beefheart. Would you have any interest in discussing John Cage? A lot of people think of him more as a philosopher than a composer, but I believe some of his music remains some of the most beautiful in the classical ouvre, even without the conceptuality. His use of chance also brings about an interesting discussion about the composer's identity in music.

Absolutely wonderful and insightful. It is interesting that my analyses of both the Op. 21 Symphonie and Op. 29 Kantate both use similar techniques of row "klangfarbenmelodie" (as they seem to show the revealing of the row across multiple voices). In this respect I think (or assume, based on my lack of significant exposure to some of these works) that Webern's periods in terms of musical structure, instead of instrumentation, could be divided between juvenilia (+ Op. 1 and, to a lesser extent, Op. 2), free atonality, and, from Op. 17 onwards, serialism, mostly in terms of the structure of the music, as the major non-serial work from the period, the orchestration of Bach's Fugue from the Musical Offering, has a similar use of techniques to other compositions of the period. I was curious if you could give any recommendations for Webern biographies and strong analyses of his work, as as a student of composition of I can only find his work of the highest calibre.

I really like these analyses. I am wondering : Could you do such an analyses about Pierre Boulez : Le marteau sans maitre? I really like the music of Boulez however it is quite difficult to find Boulez scores (for free).

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Thank you for good videos. Would love to see your take on some interesting electronic music. If you're interested artists like Autechre, Oneohtrix Point Never, Arca, Aaron David Ross are a few suggestions.

Cannot like it enough!

My question is: does Webern give you the information of what is his original tonal row, or do you have to “discover” it from the score?

שלום.

bar 4 in the sound sample is clarinet, not violin

"I'm stealing the towels"

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Samuel - Are you familiar with Kaoru Abe? When I sit down to listen to his work. . . I'm just awestruck (I mean that word in the best possible way). But I can't make heads or tails of his music. Either he's from the future or he's simply from another planet, that's as far as I've come to understanding him. I think that if anyone can take on the task of analyzing his work properly, it's you. In case you are not familiar with his music, his album Winter 1972 seems like a fair place to start: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-VI67c0Am_3w.html If you really want to question reality, check out "The Disintegration of the Sympathetic": ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-4zPjFQQpbu4.html Assuming he's just insane is way too simple, regardless of the fact I've heard him brushed off as "crazy" many, many times. Thoughts?

If you can' t recognise these row transformations why have a system at all, why not just free atonality?

I haven't played the video yet and I don't know what it is. Jordan Peterson tweeted this. I'll do and edit and give my thoughts when I've watched it.

More serialism, please! ;)

cutie cutie