It is with Four Pieces for violin and piano op. 7 that Anton Webern began his experiments on extreme concentration of form and sound material he then continued in his later opuses, such as his Six Bagatelles for string quartet op. 9 or Five Pieces for orchestra op. 10. Their style, usually defined as aphoristic, was quite unheard-of in the music of earlier epochs, since some of the pieces lasted for less than ten bars or less than a minute.
\nThe cycle of Four pieces op. 7 has been symmetrically constituted in contrasts of tempo, dynamics, and expressive character. The odd pieces are maintained in very slow tempo and subdued dynamics; this is the case in No. 3, for instance, where a triple pianissimo comes with an additional comment of \u201ckaum h\u00f6rbar\u201d (barely audible). The use, in both these pieces, of a mute, and the special articulation achieved by playing with the wood of the bow, make the violin sound peculiarly ethereal. In the rapid Nos. 2 and 4, the full dynamic scale is used, with abrupt changes; instrumental texture is highly differentiated and the nervous and broken narration clearly exhibits expressionist features. No. 4 begins with a dramatic violin motif in fortissimo, which dwindles after a sudden arrest after only two bars. In the finale, a semiquaver violin figure, falling from a high register, is played at the soundpost, in a murmur-like whisper, or \u201dwie ein Hauch,\u201d as indicated by the composer. It brings to mind Sch\u00f6nberg\u2019s well-known dictum of a novel expressed in a single sigh.
\nFour Pieces op. 7 were created in 1910. The first was published in March 1912 in a supplement to Der Ruf, an irregular magazine published by an academic literary and musical association. It was the first piece by Webern ever printed.
\nAdam Walaci\u0144ski<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is with Four Pieces for violin and piano op. 7 that Anton Webern began his experiments on extreme concentration of form and sound material he then continued in his later opuses, such as his Six Bagatelles for string quartet op. 9 or Five Pieces for orchestra op. 10. Their style, usually defined as aphoristic, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-w"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beethoven.org.pl\/encyklopedia\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beethoven.org.pl\/encyklopedia\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beethoven.org.pl\/encyklopedia\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beethoven.org.pl\/encyklopedia\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beethoven.org.pl\/encyklopedia\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/beethoven.org.pl\/encyklopedia\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":333,"href":"https:\/\/beethoven.org.pl\/encyklopedia\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions\/333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beethoven.org.pl\/encyklopedia\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beethoven.org.pl\/encyklopedia\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beethoven.org.pl\/encyklopedia\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}