Webern and Multiple Meaning

Arnold Whittall
Music Analysis, Vol. 6, No. 3. (Oct., 1987), pp. 333-353.
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ARNOLD WHITTALL

WEBERN AND MULTIPLE MEANING

Of the first generation of twelve-note composers, Webern is usually regarded as

the most progressive, at least as far as harmony is concerned.* In Schoenberg
and Berg the dividing line between that advanced variety of tonal harmony
termed 'vagrant', or 'roving', and the chordal textures of certain twelve-note
compositions is, to put it mildly, often unclear. But with Webern, even before
he adopted the twelve-note method, it is surely a different story. I emphasize
that I am not referring here to the possibility of some essentially new kind of
tonality in Webern, but rather to survivals of the old kind of tonal harmonic
construction. And the last Webern piece in which we might confidently claim to
observe some consistent vestige of the old tonality is the first of the Op. 12 songs,
composed in 1915, where a text concerned with the arrival of night is set to a
melody that gives only mildly ambiguous priority to pitches diatonic to F major
- a priority that, in general, the piano accompaniment conspicuously fails to
support.
Yet even if Webern's rejection of tonality as traditionally conceived was
whole-hearted, his attitude to old forms and textures, we are usually told, was
hardly less reverential than Schoenberg's. And a particular speciality of
Webern's was the twelve-note canon - a perfect vehicle, we might think, for a
new twelve-note tonality, given the traditional canon's particularly delicate
dependence on the integration of horizontal and vertical planes. We might
therefore expect Webern's twelve-note canons to exploit the properties of the
compositional system in question as subtly as Bach's tonal canons display the
riches of that system, whether or not we choose to regard those twelve-note
properties as more essentially 'tonal' than atonal. Yet the diversity of critical and
analytical responses to this aspect of Webern's art exposes differences in hearing
and understanding that make a general consensus about the nature of his
achievement difficult to imagine.
* I am grateful to Jonathan Dunsby and Christopher Wintle for their comments on earlier versions of this essay

A R N 0 L . D WHITTALI.

In the wake of Boulez's sixtieth birthday in 1985, and the publications that
rather tardily attended it (Boulez 1986, Glock 1986), it has become possible to
evaluate the success, so far, of his various radical enterprises - and not just as a
composer. As a conductor, it is generally agreed, Boulez has been notably
successful in communicating the refinement and reticence of Webern's art; and
he has often referred to Webern in his published writings. Yet I suspect that, for
many composers and theorists today, there is little in Boulez's essays more
representative of what they would see as outdated avant-garde attitudes than his
complaint about Webern's willingness to allow triads and fourth-chords to
occur in his later twelve-note canons. With such puritanism, it might be
thought, no wonder Boulez has found it so difficult to compose. After all, few
composers today have any qualms about giving traditional-sounding chords a
positive role to play in what certainly cannot be described as tonal music by
traditional standards. Boulez's teacher Messiaen is perhaps the weightiest
example.
It is in his Darmstadt lectures of the late 1950s that Boulez quotes bs 7,8 and
9 of the second movement of Webern's String Quartet, Op.28, with arrows
indicating that in the space of seven crotchet beats we have two 2 chords.

Ex. 1

The example illustrates a discussion of intervals and chords that, as Boulez puts
it, 'create a weakening, or hole, in the succession of sound relationships' (Boulez
1971: 48). And in another essay, from the early 1960s, he comments that such a
traditional chord as the 'will falsify a structure . . . because its traditional
reference will certainly be stronger than its immediate reference to the structure
in question'. Such chords will, he declares, 'degrade the work in which they
appear by their often peremptory insistence on autonomy' (Boulez 1986: 60). In
other words, Boulez perceives a conflict between old and new in such music,
and he is so acutely aware of this because he believes that 'serial structure',
properly understood, 'tends to destroy the horizontal-vertical dualism, for
"composing" amounts to arranging sound phenomena along two co-ordinates,
duration and pitch. We are thus freed from all melody, all harmony and all

W E B E R N A N D MLJLTIPLE M E A N I N G

counterpoint, since serial structure has caused all these (essentially modal and
tonal) notions to disappear' (Boulez 1986: 141). So, even though Boulez has
praised Webern for the relative sophistication of his understanding of serial
principles, he finds the compositional deployment of those principles sadly
inconsistent, even in that supposed summa of Webernian dodecaphony, the
second Cantata, Op.31. Here, as in the string quartet, Boulez identifies what he
sees as a lack of consistent control over harmonic relationships. He refers to the
cantata's last two movements:
The pure counterpoint he writes in the sixth movement of this work is quite
admirable from the intervallic point of view as far as each individual voice is
concerned, but the vertical combinations produce completely uncontrolled
chords: statistically, this produces for most of the time chromatic chords,
but also once or twice there are common triads and fourth chords. To use a
term borrowed from science, the 'class' of the melodic line has absolutely
nothing to do with the 'class' of the harmony: the two are quite
incompatible. In the fifth movement, on the other hand, the four melodic
lines meet at the same point to form a specific harmony; they then break out
of phase and form a counterpoint whilst still retaining the same harmonic
relationship since they are derived from one and the same chord. Here the
counterpoint becomes entirely convincing because the vertical, the
horizontal and the diagonal aspects are controlled by the same laws. (Boulez
1976: 90)

The message is clear. Boulez finds Webern's serialism convincing when, to

adopt a Schoenbergian formula, 'the vertical and horizontal, harmonic and
melodic, the simultaneous and the successive are all in reality comprised within
one unified space' (Schoenberg 1974: 83). And Boulez has acknowledged that
the second cantata - its fifth movement, at any rate - helped to stimulate his
response as a composer to his own proposition that 'if we can unite harmony
with melodic line under laws common to both then we can begin to find a
solution that will considerably enrich the musical vocabulary' (Boulez 1976:
91). In this respect, Boulez seems close to those American theorists who have
seen the origins of Multiple Order Function, and the power to realize the full
potential of combinatoriality, in procedures that Webern either failed to grasp,
or refused to employ. Robert Morris and Daniel Starr cite a passage from The
Path to the New Music in which Webern expressed disquiet at the effect, in an
atonal work, when 'one note occurred a number of times during some run of all
twelve' (Webern 1963: 5 l), and they observe that combinatoriality allows 'rows
to function as a means to realize Webern's ideal of tonal balance in contrapuntal
frameworks' (Morris and Starr 1977: 4). Morris and Starr do not see it as their
business to criticize Webern for his failure to realize his own apparent ideals
with the tools that were to hand. But Boulez has had no such inhibitions; nor
about drawing general conclusions from his criticism. 'Webern's work', he says,
'is like a picture by Mondrian. You can see its perfection, and it is very striking,

being stripped down to the absolute minimum - a truly austere kind of

perfection; but when you see it again at a later date, it offers you nothing further
. . . there aren't any different levels of interpretation.' By contrast, the music of
Berg and the paintings of Cezanne are richer, more complex, and Boulez implies
that by comparison Webern's work is lacking in mystery. For Boulez 'the
mystery of a work resides precisely in its being valid on many different levels'
(Boulez 1976: 24). The works of Webern and Mondrian, it appears, are not.
As I have already indicated, few if any theorists have been prepared to follow
Boulez into the domain of criticism, by arguing not only that Webern's twelvenote compositions fail to demonstrate adequate and consistent control over the
interaction of vertical and horizontal dimensions, but also that the music lacks
the subtlety and sophistication of being 'valid on many different levels'. Even
Hans Keller, who declared that Webern was 'the first composer to think about
music before thinking in music', conceded that Webern's 'musical personality his creativity and, last but first, his sheer musicality, were strong enough to
overcome - in the majority of creative instances, if not always - the handicap
which his unprecedented approach to composition had produced for himself'
(Keller 1982: 46). In general, music theorists have found more than adequate
compensation in Webern's use of large-scale symmetries, derived sets and the
systematic combination of pairs of sets in complementary relationships for his
failure, reluctance or simple inability to adopt the 'classic', hexachordal
combinatorial technique (see Babbitt 1960, Kramer 1971, Perle 1977, Phipps
1984). Indeed, Webern himself was evidently more interested in what George
Perle calls the 'converse' of combinatoriality (Perle 1977: 100)- a converse seen
at its most radical when, as is often the case, Webern brings more than two
different set forms into simultaneous alignment. But the suspicion remains that
Webern did not really care very much about the moment-to-moment vertical
consequences of set-combination, once a principle had been settled for deciding
which sets to combine. For him, it might appear, sticking come-what-may to
the fixed linear order in each contrapuntal voice was rationale enough.
Jonathan Kramer is one theorist who has defended Webern against the charge
of possible casualness. Kramer says of the chords in the first movement of the
first Cantata, Op.29, that 'although the verticalities are not derived from row
segments . . . their treatment is highly organised'. Indeed, Kramer argues, they
form 'referential sonorities' which 'provide a more specific sound context than
the row itself could provide' (Kramer 1971: 179). Kramer's analysis is a rare, if
not unique, example of an attempt to argue that Webern was as precise and
purposeful when building chords from several superimposed set forms as when
constructing his sets in the first place. But we might still seek explanations as to
why Webern failed to adopt Schoenbergian combinatoriality, and employ
combinations of paired hexachords based on complementary pitch-class
content. Could it be that Webern actually arranged his set-superimpositions to
ensure certain fundamental contrasts, not of pitch-content, but of musical
character? To compensate, with vertical chordal disorder, and with potentially
disruptive pitch or pitch-class repetitions between chords, for the high degree of
336

MUSIC A N A L Y S I S

6 ~ 3 1987
,

WEBERN A N D MU12TIPLE MEANING

internal, linear invariance possessed by his row structures and their resultant
motives? Could it be that the pre-compositional determination of what Perle
terms 'set-association based on invariance of segmental content' (Perle 1977:
loo), not to mention axes of symmetry and magic squares, challenged Webern
to move beyond such all-embracing integration in his actual compositions - to
seek for conflicts beyond the contrasts? Did he find in composing without the
safety net of hexachordal complementation a powerful demonstration of the
truth that atonality (especially when traditional forms and textures are
preserved) can only function properly in making diversities precariously
cohere, rather than in aping tonality and diversifying unities? Is it thoughts like
these that lie behind those brave assertions of March 1932?
We want to say 'in a quite new way' what has been said before. But now I can
invent more freely: everything has a deeper unity. Only now is it possible to
compose in free fantasy, adhering to nothing except the row. To put it quite
paradoxically, only through these unprecedented fetters has complete
freedom become possible. (Webern 1963: 55-6)

That Webern was perfectly capable of explicitly integrating the vertical and
the horizontal in his twelve-note works is demonstrated in music not discussed
by Boulez: the second movement of the Concerto, Op.24. As Christopher
Wintle has put it, 'the various dimensions of the structure are all highly
integrated, and . . . there are no discontinuities' (Wintle 1982: 98). And what
better way to ensure such a result than to compose with a succession of single
sets, and with a consistently motivic texture, in which horizontal and vertical
planes shade in and out of each other in delightfully diverse, eminently audible
fashion? The successive trichords of the basic set of Op.24 generate four
instances of set-class 3-3 (0, l,4), four instances of 3-4 ( 0 , l , 5), two instances of
3-1 (0, 1, 2) and two of 3-6 (0,2,4). Vertical trichords occur on sixty-five of the
movement's seventy-eight crotchet beats, and these yield thirty-five instances of
set-class 3-3, twenty-six of 3-4, four of 3-1 and none of 3-6. (3-1, like 3-6, is a
cross-hexachord phenomenon, hence perhaps Webern's sparing use of it.) This
movement, one of Webern's least tense, is therefore a paradigm of contrast
without conflict. Invariance rules, yet variation is constant. The very simplicity
is satisfying. Yet I wonder if it is too far-fetched to suggest that, in a sense, much
of Webern's later work represents a search for a greater degree of linear and
vertical tension than is found in Op.24; that the deft, effortless transformation
of old into new achieved here was simply not enough? Perhaps it seemed just too
easy an obliteration of tonal music's power, especially in its late-Romantic
phase, to create tension through multiple meaning.
Another kind of verticalhorizontal relation that failed to satisfy Webern is
what we might term 'combinatoriality by default', the superimposition of a set
on its own retrograde. Of course he uses this in places: as an opening gambit, for
example, in the Symphony's second movement, and therefore as a closing
gambit too. But the bulk of that movement, using quartets of sets, is more

diverse and complex. As for the combination of two sets in a noncomplementary relation, there is nothing more spectacular than the first song of
Op.25, where we can observe the fractured heterophony of a set superimposed
on itself. For the main part of this essay, however, I will concentrate on the first
of the canons cited by Boulez: the second movement of the string quartet. Here,
the conjunction of consistent linear order with a degree of vertical disorder
could be an exemplary strategy for keeping the unity of musical space at arm's
length; and this is achieved by reinforcing an overall multiplicity, and by using
invariance as a tension-creating as well as integrative force. In Schoenbergian
combinatoriality, the juxtaposition and, especially, the superimposition of two
complementary hexachords made possible that extraordinary balancing act in
which the musical fabric, often neo-classical in texture and form, was at once
stratified and integrated, selective and comprehensive. But the essence, and the
atonality, lay in the presence of primarily complementary strata, rather than of
interpenetrating levels. And Schoenberg's famed fusion of horizontal and
vertical planes or dimensions can often appear the result of a desire to disguise or
transform - rather than preserve and exploit - this dualism of basic content.
With Webern, by contrast, dualism and - by extension - multiplicity enter his
most characteristic twelve-note conceptions in the most challenging fashion.

Webern described the second movement of Op.28 as 'a "Scherzo" in miniature',

and said of the first main section (bs 1-18) that 'the theme of the Scherzo is a
perpetual canon in a "subject"-like form' (Moldenhauer 1978: 753). Figure 1
presents the pitch-class material of this canon as a single, endless loop or cycle
built from three of the set-forms whose tetrachords are either literally identical
or equivalent in retrograde. These are grouped in such a way that the third
tetrachord of each set intersects with the first of its successor. If Bb is Webern's
'0' for the work as a whole, and the first tetrachord of P - 0 is 'B, A, C, H', we
begin the second movement's pitch-class cycle on C# , and with the interval
classes directionally inverted. The cycle is therefore 1-3, 1-7, 1-11, and the
sequence of seven tetrachords a, b, c, a', b', cr, a.
In forming this single tetrachord-cycle into a canon for four voices Webern
has created a characteristically subtle, ambiguous texture. In the light of
Babbitt's discussion of inversion theory and its application to the secondmovement canon of the Variations for Piano, Op.27 (Babbitt 1960), we can
argue that the second movement of Op.28 demonstrates an elaboration of that
process. In Op.27, a single sequence of set pairs is involved. In Op.28, one
canon (first violin and cello) is combined with another (second violin and viola)
in such a way that the interval classes formed by the voices of Canon I1 are
themselves in canon (at the distance of two crotchets) with the interval classes
formed by the voices of Canon I (see Fig. 2). But the process of realignment of
invariant dyads effected by the double canonic texture inevitably creates a

WEBERN A N D MULTIPLE MEANING

Fig. 1 Tetrachord Cycle

Fig. 2

Attacks

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

i.csof

CANON I
(VlnIICello)

6 [ 3 ] 2

3 [ 6 ] 4

i.csof

CANON I1
(VlnIINla)

4 [ 6 ] 3

2 [ 3 ] 6 4 2 - -

The interval-class canon

Integers in square brackets identify i.cs not actually stated, for reasons discussed
on p.340.

'foreground' of notable diversity, and with it a tension between background

invariance and foreground variety. That tension is enhanced by the presence of
an alternative canonic disposition. T o pair violin I with viola as Canon I, and
violin I1 with cello as Canon 11, is undoubtedly less plausible as a likely
expression of the composer's own intention than the disposition proposed
initially, since the basic dyads of the constituent set sequence embody none of
the constraints of Webern's favoured schemes as adumbrated by Babbitt.
Nevertheless, the textural and rhythmic relations which this alternative
arrangement make explicit serve to enrich the music's polyphonic multiplicity
as much as to disguise its most essential canonic framework (the complete score
is shown as part of Ex. 4).
Of course, if Webern had not presented the cello and second violin parts as
what appear to be modified forms of the fuller first violin and viola parts, the
possibility of an alternative canonic reading would not arise. Example 2
illustrates how an earlier version of the movement's opening might have looked
- an attempt at strict interval-imitation of violin I in the three following voices.
An immediate consequence of this scheme is that before all twelve pitch-classes
have been heard (the A on the first beat of b.4 completes the first collection) two
pitches - F and F# -have been repeated on adjacent beats and, in the case of F# ,
in a different octave. More problematically, second violin and cello come
together on A in different registers on the first beat of b.4. There would be
similar coincidences later, so it seems desirable to change the registers, or the
pattern of entries, or the motivic content of the lines themselves. Webern
chooses this last course, and suppresses the second violin A; or rather, he allows
the cello A to perform double duty. As a result, the cello must lose its F on the
previous beat. Webern then alters the register of the cello's F# so that it occurs
in the same octave as the viola Fd on the next beat - a move which establishes the
principle of registral variation applied throughout the movement. The overall
result, then, is not only a striking difference of rhythm between the pairs of
voices, but a difference of interval-pattern as well. It will be noted that, in bs 17
and 18, the absence of A in the cello means that the note can appear in the second
violin; and the cello also keeps F as its final note. There is one point - b. 12, first
beat - when two instruments do coincide on the same pitch: g' in first violin and
cello. Webern could have suppressed the first violin G, breaking up the pattern
of eight successive crotchets, though the resulting use of two instruments only
for one attack would have been incongruous in the middle of the section. Also,
the loss of the equivalent pitch in the viola, the B on beat 2 of b. 13, would have
been problematic, since it is not present in another part on the previous or
succeeding beats. There will be more to say later about the matter of immediate
or deferred pitch repetitions. (Texturally, it may be imprecise to refer to the
cello and violin Gs in b. 12 as 'the same', but with respect to the movement's
chordal construction they are more identical than not.)
At this point we might consider again Webern's possible reasons for choosing
to superimpose these particular sets. At the level of the tetrachord, horizontal
and vertical integration is ensured by the fact that all four sequences of sets use

WEBERN A N D MULTIPLE MEANING

Ex. 2

the same three tetrachords or their retrogrades. But since only three tetrachords
of mutually exclusive pitch-class content are available, the close proximity of a
prime to its retrograde when four forms are superimposed is inescapable (Fig.
3). For what it's worth, it seems that Webern's choice for his fourth set is the one
that postpones the inevitable moment of simultaneous arrival on the same pitchclass for as long as possible: that is, for six beats of the actual music, rather than
four or five. But it seems undeniable, if we reject as explanation sheer ineptitude
on Webern's part, that he saw an opportunity in the avoidance of purely
complementary set combinations for a particular kind of compositional result,
and a particular kind of musical expression.
Fig. 3 Tetrachord Cycles
Violin I
Violin I1
Viola
Cello

a'

a
b

I;

b'

ar

a
b

b
a

c zr

However we interpret the music's canonic pairings, it is clear that the

restrictions on pitch material ensured by the linear tetrachord cycle have an
effect in the vertical domain. One way to illustrate this is to present the leading
voice (violin I) as a harmonized melody. Example 3 sets this out as a kind of
miniature Rondo form (with re-orderings for ease of comparison), and shows
that, while no chord is identical in all sections, there are significant levels of
relationship within the three settings of Tetrachord 'a' and the two settings of
Tetrachord 'c'. Only in the two settings of Tetrachord 'b' does diversity
dominate. Literal repetition is confined to two attack-pairs: 3 with 31 and 4 with
32. Permutated repetition is found in four attack-pairs, not all part of the
leading-voice melody: 7 with 29, 10 with 16, 12 with 25 and 24 with 30. But
there is a wider vertical association between notes in the leading voice and those
in the following voices, shown in Ex. 3.
A still stronger sense of consistency emerges if we discuss the verticals as

ARNOLD WHITTALL

Ex. 3

Dux I

Arrack
Ser Class

3
3-1 1

4
4-6

3-6

23
4.10

Auack
Set C l a n

I8
4-13

17
3-1 1

16
3-10

15
3-9

Attack
Set Class

29
3-10

30
3-9

31
3-11

32

1-6

6
3-8

8
3-6

9
3-6

10
3-10

11
3-8

22

21
3-7

20
3-2

27
26
4-134-%IS

12
3-6

13

4-6

25
3-6

24

3-9

WEBERN A N D MULTIPLE MEANING

chord-classes or set-classes. Of the thirty-five attacks, seven contain four notes,

and twenty-three contain three notes. The four-note chords are all
unambiguously dissonant, and best described in set-class terms. There are three
instances of set-class 4-6 (0, 1, 2, 7: attacks 4, 13 and 32); two instances of setclass 4- 13 (0, l , 3 , 6 : attacks 18 and 27); and one instance each of 4-2 15 ( 0 , l , 4,
6: attack 26) and 4-10 (0, 2, 3, 5: attack 23). Of the twenty-three three-note
chords, we can describe nineteen in old-fashioned language, taking Boulez's
cue: five are :s, four are diminished triads, three are fourth-chords, and seven
are varieties of whole-tone chord. That leaves four unaccounted for: attack 20
(set-class 3-2), attack 19 (set-class 3-3), attack 33 (set-class 3-4) and attack 21
(set-class 3-7).
Of the twelve potentially symmetrical chords, five are literally symmetrical in
their registral deployment: 8, 12,15,29 and 30. For evidence of more extended
linear symmetries, we can point to the presence of a set-class palindrome
(attacks 3 to 8, 9 to 14), and this intersects with a second set-class palindrome
whose two segments are separated: attacks 13 to 18, and 27 to 32. Thus, twentytwo of the section's thirty-five attacks are involved in linear symmetry,
admittedly at a rather abstract level (see Ex. 4). But these relationships indicate
that, in the vertical domain, the music is by no means lacking in integration,
defined by various types of repetition. We can even make some progress, at the
level of separate, successive chords, towards demonstrating a degree of
integration between vertical and horizontal planes - an integration that suggests
some connection with the broader principles of twelve-note harmony proposed
by Martha Hyde in her work on Schoenberg (see Hyde 1985).
The crux of these harmonic principles is that 'Schoenberg does not conceive
of a harmony . . . as merely a vertical event with pitches sounding
simultaneously, but asserts that melodic events also have harmonic
implications. He proposes that a legitimate harmony comprises all pitches,
either simultaneous or successive, which are temporally associated' (Hyde 1985:
113). This still leaves us with the possibility of distinguishing chord from
harmony, vertical event from spatial continuum; and also, with respect to the
relation between chords and adjacent or non-adjacent elements of the set, the
possibility of distinguishing identity from derivation. For example, it is
perfectly possible to derive all the chordal set-classes of Webern's double canon
from the linear motivic statements of the basic cycle, where they appear as subsets. But only four of the chordal set-classes appear directly as adjacent
elements; and these, set-classes 3-2, 3-3, 3-4 and 4-10, account for only four of
the canon's thirty chords of three or more notes. Without pursuing this
important matter further here, therefore, I would suggest that we could well
find a more significant distinction between identity and derivation in Webern
than in Schoenberg. After all, Webern could have had a more old-fashioned
view of harmony than Schoenberg, perhaps because he had a stronger feeling for
musical history! Be that as it may, I would like to believe that Webern's concern
in chordal writing was to accept a significant degree of difference between linear
and vertical interval-class collections, in the interests of something we could call

ARNOLD WHITTALL

Ex.4

Vln I

Vln 11

Vla

Cello

Attacks.

10

11

I2

13

14

15

16

17

Set-Class
Palindromes

Actual
Symmetries

l0,2,41

[0,2,41

[0,2.71

Same-ocrave
Repetitions

Different-octave
Repetitions

Repetitions
Deferred by I beat

MUSIC ANALYSIS

6 ~ 3 1, 987

WEBERN A N D MULTIPLE MEANING

Ex.4 cont

tempo, elwas fl~rssender

DOCO

W ~ e d e ra emachl~ch

rit

h i Fk
FU 1 FU

Eb

Eb

Fti 1 FU

ARNOLD WHITTALL

'higher multiplicity'. And in order to establish what this means in practice, we

can trace its possible origins (as far as Webern was concerned) in the muddy but
invigorating waters of Schoenberg's tonal theory.

I suspect that few if any composers would like it to be thought that each and
every element or event in any work of theirs has only a single, indivisible and
unambiguous role to play, or function to perform. And even when a composer
believes that something utterly decisive in its singularity and lack of ambiguity
has been achieved, an analyst may well come along and attempt to demonstrate
that it is not so singular, so unambiguous, after all. However valid or invalid
such features may be, the term 'ambiguity' usually suffices to classify them.
Strictly speaking, therefore, multiple meaning should refer only to an element
or event that goes beyond mere double meaning into an even greater number of
possibilities. To say that something has multiple meaning should be to indicate
that the most appropriate of several distinct possibilities can only be determined
when the consequences of the event itself can be explained.
Schoenberg used the concept of multiple meaning to express his
understanding of the history of harmony JS evolutionary. There is therefore
much more to that concept than the simple proposition that such sonorities as
the augmented triad and the diminished seventh can, at the moment of their
occurrence, have the possibility of belonging simultaneously to six, or eight,
different tonalities or regions respectively (Schoenberg 1969: 44). Central to
Schoenberg's concept of harmony is a distinction between successions of chords
which establish and express tonalities and those which do not. The latter he calls
roving, or vagrant, harmony. For example, he claims that 'no succession of
three chords' in Ex. 5a and b 'can unmistakably express a region or tonality'
(Schoenberg 1969: 3):
Ex. 5

WEBERN A N D MULTIPLE MEANING

And later in Structural Functions of Harmony Schoenberg offers a reduction of

the opening of the Leonora No. 3 Overture (Ex. 6) with the following
commentary:
The introduction . . . starts with a descending scale, passing in unison
through all the tones of C major. In spite of this every one of the four
measures exhibits a multiple harmonic meaning comparable to that
produced by roving vagrants; therefore, the dominant 7th chord on F sharp
can introduce the minor triad on B. The following triad on G is the first
distinct expression of C major, but does not introduce the tonic; instead it
turns to flat SM in which there is an episode of six measures. A roving
segment leads to a short segment in M, which is then followed by t. The
harmony on A flat in ms. 27, though introduced by a dominant, is best
considered here as VI oft, which in ms. 31 is changed to T. (Schoenberg
1969: 168-9)

Comparison of this analysis with Schenker's, a 'C major V' underpinning a

middleground graph of the entire thirty-six-bar introduction (see Free
Composition, Fig. 62/2), shows that it is possible to trust Beethoven's long-range
tonal vision to a far greater extent than Schoenberg seemed able to do. But the
essential, and significant, feature of Schoenberg's understanding of roving
harmony seems to me to be this: what establishes a tonality most decisively is a
progression or progressions embodying what Schoenberg terms 'the conquest
of its contradictory elements' (Schoenberg 1969: 2). A tonality can seem
suspended, not when a sequence of chords cannot be assigned to one or more
keys, but when this conquest of contradiction is missing. As Schoenberg saw it,
all tonal music expresses a tension between tendencies to contradiction and
tendencies to clarification. And it was the particular consequence of the loss of
tonality that such harmonic tension could no longer be taken for granted.
We are used to regarding Webern as the very model of the devout disciple
with a mind and style of his own. We are therefore no more likely to mistake
Webern's music for Schoenberg's than we are to argue that such ideas as
Webern expresses in words are radically at odds with his master's voice. As an
adept pupil determined not to be a callow imitator, Webern evidently accepted
Schoenberg's explanation of how and why music had evolved in the way it had.
Yet he also sought to demonstrate in his own way the consequences of that
evolution for contemporary composition. The value of roving or vagrant
harmony in tonal music was that it could lend even greater force to the actual
conquest of contradictory elements when a tonality was eventually established,
or re-established. It diversified the essential unity more richly and dramatically.
What Webern the serialist therefore sought to do was to diversify essential serial
unity in such a way as to preserve the richness of allusion characteristic of tonal
composition when the tension between roving harmony and tonal resolution between centrifugal and centripetal forces - was at its greatest. And the pursuit
of that purpose involved much more than the employment of two types of

Ex. 6
B e e t h o r e n : L e o n o r a Overture No.3: lntroductron

l bJ -~J T # 4 & 7 E '*-4

-.

7-r Tf
a@v IVV

7.
I

-L
I
1

tf

/ " I

Reproduced bv pemussion of Faber and Faber

harmony - what we might term 'referential' and 'non-referential'. It involved

most fundamentally a quest for ways of exploiting the tension between
invariance, whether expressed horizontally or vertically, and invariance
challenged and disrupted, a quest that, at its simplest, involved the recognition
of conflicts between linear and vertical, as well as contrasts within vertical
successions themselves.
There is certainly a sense in which Schoenberg himself can be held to have
pursued a comparable purpose, and to have developed his own idea of multiple
meaning in atonal harmony - of what Martha Hyde terms 'multi-harmonic
dimensions' and 'multi-dimensional harmonic structures' (Hyde 1985: 115).
This view of harmony proposes a kind of group framework for the individual
vertical events, that chordal foreground in which smaller sets, and greater

WEBERN A N D MIJI.1'1P1,E MEANING

diversity, may be found. And Schoenberg was surely just as skilled at playing off
the ordered against the unordered as he was in welding the two together to
secure the ultimate goal of superintegrated twelve-note harmony. Even if, for
Schoenberg, a 'harmony' was no longer 'merely a vertical event' (Hyde 1985:
113) the vertical events were still there to be composed, and this remained true
even after Schoenberg's establishment of his preferred combinatorial relation.
Maybe Webern too would have been perfectly happy to compose after this
model had he not already, by 1928, found such satisfaction in the more diverse
possibilities of multiple, ordered superimpositions. But I doubt it.
Schoenberg's demonstrations of mutual exclusiveness being absorbed into
harmonious completeness could just have seemed too easy to his most
perspicacious pupil. Combinatoriality gave Schoenberg the freedom to inflect
the interplay of motives and harmonies independently of strict ordering within
the hexachord. But Webern preferred to exploit the tension that results when
strict ordering is preserved between superimposed sets, some of whose
equivalent segments have certain pitches in common. Once his twelve-note
mastery was fully established in the Symphony, Op.21, he could never be
wholly satisfied with a single succession of sets, or even with sets in pairs. By
writing polyphonically with up to four set-forms at once he virtually ensured
that it was impossible for verticals and horizontals to interact after the
combinatorial model, and it therefore seems possible that he was more
concerned to express that crucial element of harmonic contradiction, stemming
from the concepts of roving harmony and suspended tonality, than he was to
conquer it.
The predominant linear invariants in Webern certainly can combine to form
referential sonorities. But these harmonic invariants are often challenged (not
prolonged) by the imperatives of the superimposed lines. What George
Rochberg once termed 'Webern's search for harmonic identity' (Rochberg
1962) was not simply a search for maximum possible unity, but for ways of
controlling the results when multiple linear invariants interact in the vertical
plane. And this was not a matter of the naive pursuit of an exact atonal
equivalent for the diverse functional potential inherent in a single vagrant
chord, in what is ultimately a tonal composition. Atonal chords cannot embody
such diverse potential, but they can interrupt a logical, invariant sequence, or
positively prevent such a sequence from being established in the first place.
Webern's superimposition of ordered twelve-note sets was the closest he came
to a translation of this aspect of multiple meaning into atonal practice, since it
enabled the composer to retreat from the kind of single meaning that obtains, as
in the second movement of Op.24, when vertical and horizontal 'classes' do
consistently coincide.
In the first four bars of the quartet movement there are three examples of
pitch-repetition in different octaves deferred by one beat: Ab (attacks 3 and 5),
G (attacks 4 and 6) and Bb (attacks 5 and 7). Also, the Ab /G succession in violin
I, echoing two beats later and an octave higher that in violin 11, is surplus to the
requirements of the movement's first twelve-note collection which, as stated

ARNOLD WHITTALL

previously, is not complete until the cello A of b. 4. And while it may not be
excessively disruptive for one such collection to overlap with its successor to this
extent, the nature and degree of such overlaps do increase as the canon
proceeds. It therefore seems to me that the types of pitch-repetition shown in
the lower part of Ex. 4 are not subordinate to the gradual unfolding of twelvenote collections, still less to the controlled succession of combinatorial
aggregates: they are not the obedient consequence of underlying principles of
invariance. These repetitions, coupled with the diversities of chordal formation
as beat-by-beat successions, present a vision of musical space not as a wellbalanced, neatly regulated affair, but as provocatively poised between order and
disorder. Even if we take the view that Webern was simply making the best of a
bad job, attempting to remove as many twelve-note solecisms as possible, and
even if we argue that Webern is simply underlining the transfer of that unifying
power formerly inherent in harmony to the linear, motivic domain, the fact
remains that the musical space that results is far from straightforwardly
integrated. Contradictory elements are prominent, although these are not, as
Boulez implies, a simple matter of the opposition between traditional and nontraditional chords.

Formidable problems attach to any attempt to transfer a theory or a terminology

appropriate for tonal harmony to a different kind of music. We might even feel
that the most pressing obligation of the modern composer is to convince us that
it is no longer necessary to concern ourselves with harmony-as-chord at all; that
music can be rich and satisfying without pursuing the chimera of analogies with
the tonal past, or even claiming to have established some totally new concept of
harmony. The problem of harmony probably only seems really acute when
composers appear to retain certain principles implying harmonic function, and
then - apparently - to deny them.
I have argued elsewhere that positively anti-tonal Modernism is most
palpable in works which literally superimpose explicitly conflicting entities.
From Ives to Carter such compositions have challenged conventional views of
unity and coherence, and I believe that it makes most sense, aesthetically as well
as analytically, to talk not of synthesis but of a balance of separate elements
which are in some respects complementary (see Whittall 1987). Such music is
not simply a chaotic conflict of random confrontations (though this kind of
music does of course exist) but a purposeful playing-off of entities whose refusal
to amalgamate into seamless synthesis achieves a larger, looser coherence that
we can sense as specifically, even triumphantly, of our time: qualitatively unlike
the coherences of the past. From the perspective of Ives or Carter the purpose of
Webern's twelve-note canons seems a good deal less provocative than from the
perspective of Bach or Brahrns. In Webern we can be confident that each
participating voice will be clearly related to every other participating voice,
350

MUSIC ANALYSIS

6 ~ 3 1, 987

WEBERN A N D MUI,TIPI,E MEANING

intervallically and rhythmically. But the matter of collective content, expressed

as chordal harmony, remains. If we regard this as merely the textural servant of
atonal flux, in which anything goes provided the same thing does not happen too
often, and provided that any prominent verticals (as referential sonorities) do
not have incongruously consonant, triadic associations, the matter is obviously
a non-issue. The main reason I think it is an issue is because it is too easy to
assume that the vertical dimension at most subtly contrasts with the linear to
provide some discreet, unobtrusive variety, but is otherwise functionless. So I
want to reiterate the proposition that Webern welcomed the opportunity
provided by the canon form to employ refractory verticals, sonorities whose
intervallic content conflicts significantly with that of the melodic lines, and
whose pitches disrupt rather than promote a succession of 'pure' twelve-note
collections. And I want further to suggest that if the purpose of such sonorities
is to postpone or interrupt the establishment or reassertion either of referential
sonorities or of consistent twelve-note harmony as found in combinatorial
music, they are perhaps comparable in function to those harmonies held by
Schoenberg to embody multiple meaning in tonal composition.
One of the most interesting differences between Schoenberg and Schenker
with respect to tonal harmony is that with Schoenberg's multiple meaning it
becomes possible, even necessary, to think of fundamental tonal progressions
being interrupted - not in the Schenkerian sense, but quite literally stopped in
their tracks and prevented from operating until specifically restored. In essence,
therefore, multiple meaning is a metaphor for destabilization, and in the second
movement of Op.28 Webern uses all aspects of the music - register, tempo,
mode of attack as well as rhythm and pitch - to resist rather than reinforce the
symmetries and invariants of his basic material. And that could be because, after
all, twelve-note composition for Webern was not primarily a matter of the
glowing austerity of consistent constraints systematically transferred from
'background' to 'foreground', but a newly-discovered world of far greater
possibilities which did not demand constant and evident integration for their
justification. To recall Webern's own assertion, the unprecedented fetters could
yield a new and fuller freedom.
Boulez is therefore mistaken in his confident claim that what Webern was
doing was by definition inferior to a music whose vertical and horizontal planes
are as tightly controlled as Boulez deems desirable. Boulez is even more
mistaken, I believe, in his further claim that a composer capable of such
apparent inconsistency should also have written music that fails to be valid on
more than one level. Indeed, if the ultimate ideal for a composer is to make
control serve spontaneity, so that a work can be both coherent and complex in its
content, then Webern has little to learn from Boulez or anyone else. But this is
not simply an effort on my part to claim another scalp for the cause of
Modernism. I do not see Webern as, Berg-like, resisting synthesis. But the
syntheses are often precarious, and we do Webern-appreciation no service by
failing to recognize the problems inherent in the at times uneasy relations
between old and new in his music.

A R N O L D WHI'I-TALL

In particular, all Webern's twelve-note canons are literally composed against

a background of canons governed by the consonance-dissonance relation. But
'against' in the strict sense of the word. Such tonal canons do not so much lie
behind Webern's as stand in opposition to them. What I have termed Webern's
precarious synthesis is not literally a synthesis of old and new but one of unity
and diversity within the twelve-note system itself, a synthesis which a canonic
surface can help to shape. There is no tonal model, but even in the absence of
more decisive forms of complementation there is still an integrated atonality:
Webern's chromaticism is - just! - organic. His canon, like Wagner's
Mastersong, starts from the archaic externals, not to eliminate all evidence of
them, but to give his own display of mastery a more extended perspective.
Webern's approach to twelve-note harmony can be seen as a response,
whether instinctive or intentional, to Schoenberg's ideas about multiple
meaning in tonal composition. Yet even if there is a reasonably precise analogy
between suspended and confirmed tonality on the one hand, and 'uncontrolled'
and referential twelve-note harmony on the other, it is clear that Webern was far
from convinced that emphasis on either the confirmed or the referential was
necessary for coherent structure to be achieved. It was Schoenberg and the later
combinatorialists who, by shifting the focus of fundamental harmony away
from the chord, achieved a closer analogy to the 'classical' unity of traditional
tonality. In Schoenberg's case, indeed, it might be thought that there was
almost too much freedom within the aggregate. Not until Babbitt, perhaps, is
there -at least in principle - the best of both worlds, a genuine balance of fetters
and freedom.
Schoenberg's view of tonal harmony was never more different from
Schenker's than in its fascination with tension-creating ambiguities. For
Schenker, tonality did not need a tendency to contradiction so much as a
recognition of the potential for 'content' in the interaction of its hierarchic
levels, the embodiment of generative integration. The real music of the future
may well be no more - or even less - successful than Schoenberg's or Webern's
in establishing a true analogy with tonality in that sense, or even with the
multiple meanings that chromatic harmony can acquire only in its proper tonal
context. But the signs are that the music of the future will thrive on the kind of
challenges to integration that promoted the decline of tonality in the first place,
and whose constructive potential in the post-tonal, and post-Webern, world
remains to be fully worked out.
REFERENCES
Babbitt, Milton, 1960: 'Twelve-Tone Invariants as Compositional Determinants', The
Musical Quarterly, Vol. 46, No. 2, pp.246-59.
Boulez, Pierre, 1971: Boulez on Music Today, trans. Susan Bradshaw and Richard
Rodney Bennett (London: Faber and Faber).
-1976: Conversations with Celestin Deli2ge (London: Eulenburg).
352

MLJSICANALYSIS

6:3, 1987

W E R E R N A N D MLJLTIPLE M E A N I N G

-1986: Orientations, trans. Martin Cooper (London: Faber and Faber).

Glock, William, ed., 1986: Pierre Boulez: A Symposium (London: Eulenburg).

Hyde, Martha M., 1985: 'Musical Form and the Development of Schoenberg's Twelve-

Tone Method', Journal of Music Theory, Vol. 29, No. 1, pp.85-143.

Keller, Hans, 1982: Stravinsky Seen and Heard (London: Toccata).
Kramer, Jonathan, 1971: 'The Row as Structural Background and Audible
Foreground: The First Movement of Webern's First Cantata', Journal of Music
Theory, Vol. 15, pp.158-81.
Moldenhauer, Hans, 1978: Anton von Webern: A Chronicle of His Life and Work
(London: Gollancz).
Morris, Robert, and Starr, Daniel, 1977: 'A General Theory of Combinatoriality and
the Aggregate', Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 3-35.
Perle, George, 1977: Serial Composition and Atonality, 4th edn (London: Faber and
Faber).
Phipps, Graham H . , 1984: 'Tonality in Webern's Cantata 1', Music Analysis, Vol. 3,
No. 2 (July), pp. 125-58.
Rochberg, George, 1962: 'Webern's Search for Harmonic Identity', Journal of Music
Theory, Vol. 6, No. I , pp. 109-22.
Schoenberg, Arnold, 1969: Structural Functions of Harmony, 2nd, rev. edn (London:
Benn).
-1974: 'Vortrag/l2 T Wrinceton' (ed. Claudio Spies), Perspectives of New Music,
Vol. 13, No. 1, pp.58-139.
Webern, Anton, 1963: The Path to the New Music, trans. Leo Black (Bryn Mawr:
PresserIUniversal).
Whittall, Arnold, 1987: 'The Theorist's Sense of History: Concepts of
Contemporaneity in Composition and Analysis', Journal of the Royal Musical
Association, Vol. 112, Part 1, pp. 1-20.
Wintle, Christopher, 1982: 'Analysis and Performance: Webern's Concerto Op. 24/11',
Music Analysis, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp.73-99.
It should be noted that this list does not include studies of the Webern movement that
are not cited in the text. For example, the article by Karlheinz Stockhausen, 'Structure
and Experiential Time' (Die Reihe, Vol. 2, English edn, Bryn Mawr: Presser/Universal,
1959), and the discussion by Robin Hartwell in his 'Rhythmic Organisation in the Serial
Music of Anton Webern' (Diss., University of Sussex, 1979), contain material on
Op.28111 that intersects with, and goes beyond, the interpretation presented here.

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Arnold Whittall
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References
Twelve-Tone Invariants as Compositional Determinants
Milton Babbitt
The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 46, No. 2, Special Issue: Problems of Modern Music. The Princeton
Seminar in Advanced Musical Studies. (Apr., 1960), pp. 246-259.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0027-4631%28196004%2946%3A2%3C246%3ATIACD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-4

Musical Form and the Development of Schoenberg's "Twelve-Tone Method"

Martha M. Hyde; Schoenberg
Journal of Music Theory, Vol. 29, No. 1. (Spring, 1985), pp. 85-143.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2909%28198521%2929%3A1%3C85%3AMFATDO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-C

The Row as Structural Background and Audible Foreground: The First Movement of
Webern's First Cantata
Jonathan Kramer
Journal of Music Theory, Vol. 15, No. 1/2. (Spring - Winter, 1971), pp. 158-181.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2909%28197121%2F24%2915%3A1%2F2%3C158%3ATRASBA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-6

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A General Theory of Combinatoriality and the Aggregate (Part 1)

Daniel Starr; Robert Morris
Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 16, No. 1. (Autumn - Winter, 1977), pp. 3-35.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-6016%28197723%2F24%2916%3A1%3C3%3AAGTOCA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-G

Tonality in Webern's Cantata I. Winner of the Elisabeth Lutyens Essay Prize, 1984
Graham H. Phipps
Music Analysis, Vol. 3, No. 2. (Jul., 1984), pp. 124-158.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0262-5245%28198407%293%3A2%3C124%3ATIWCIW%3E2.0.CO%3B2-L

Webern's Search for Harmonic Identity

George Rochberg
Journal of Music Theory, Vol. 6, No. 1. (Spring, 1962), pp. 109-122.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2909%28196221%296%3A1%3C109%3AWSFHI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P

The Theorist's Sense of History: Concepts of Contemporaneity in Composition and Analysis

Arnold Whittall
Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Vol. 112, No. 1. (1986 - 1987), pp. 1-20.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0269-0403%281986%2F1987%29112%3A1%3C1%3ATTSOHC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-J

Analysis and Performance: Webern's Concerto Op.24/II

Christopher Wintle
Music Analysis, Vol. 1, No. 1. (Mar., 1982), pp. 73-99.
Stable URL:
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