Anton Webern spent the vast majority of his life in Vienna. Born Anton von Webern, he came of age in the culturally enlightened and intellectually vibrant environment that accompanied the decline of the Habsburg Empire, with notable luminaries including Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg, Gustav Klimt, Oscar Kokoschka, Egon Schiele, Adolf Loos, Karl Kraus, Arthur Schnitzler, Stefan Zweig, Hermann Broch, and Sigmund Freud, among others. Webern contributed to this period of renewal as a member of the “Second Viennese School,” along with his professor, Schoenberg, and fellow student, Alban Berg. Beyond their pedagogical relationship, Webern held Schoenberg in deep veneration, following him both ideologically and physically, throughout his life. The political atmosphere of the 1930s, precipitating the departure of Schoenberg in 1933 who, as a Jew, was no longer able to work, separated the two men. Webern saw no reason to abandon his native country, and believed vehemently in the creation of “Greater Germany” and in Hitler’s national socialism. Nonetheless, working in near total isolation, he continued to develop a musical style which, due to its incompatibility with the stylistic requirements of the Third Reich, remained essentially unknown until the composer’s death in 1945. The post-war period saw a sudden flurry of interest in his music by the younger generation of composers including Boulez and Stockhausen, who saw Webern as the only figure whose techniques were worthy of exploration and development.

The son of a public servant at the Ministy of Agriculture, Webern followed his father when the latter was employed in Graz (1890-1894) and Klagenfurt (1894-1902), before returning to Vienna. In addition to studying piano and cello, Webern produced his first compositions, a series of chambre works, in 1899, followed by a set of Lieder, a form to which he would return frequently throughout his career. His early settings of the poetry of Ferdinand Avenarius, Richard Dehmel, and Stefan George reveal the young Webern’s taste for impressionist and symbolist literature. A trip to Bayreuth in 1902, during which he attended a performance of Parsifal, left a deep impression on the composer, with Wagner, and later Richard Strauss, becoming his principal points of reference at that time. Also in 1902, Webern enrolled at Vienna University, where he studied musicology with Guido Adler, music theory and pedagogy with Hermann Graedener, and counterpoint with Karl Navrátil. One of the few composers to also have a comprehensive education in musicology, Webern obtained a doctorat in the latter discipline in 1906; his thesis, supervised by Adler, was on Choralis constantinusby the Renaissance composer Heinrich Isaac. Webern’s fascination for Isaac’s canonic polyphonic style is palpable in the works of his first period, including*Passacagliafor orchestra (Op. 1) andEntflieht auf leichten Kähnenfor choir (Op. 2), as well as in later works in which Webern began to apply Schoenbergian serialism, notablySymphony*(Op. 21). Among Webern’s early works, Im Sommerwind from 1904 stands out as the only orchestral work which is programmatic in nature, based upon a poem by Bruno Wille.

Also in 1904, Webern travelled to Berlin to pursue study with Hans Pfitzner, but left soon afterwards, disillusioned by Pfitzner’s disparaging views on the music of Strauss and Mahler. Upon his return to Vienna, and having been deeply impressed by a performance of Verklärte Nacht, Webern, along with Heinrich Jalowetz and Karl Horwitz, began studying with Schoenberg. Berg and others (e.g., Erwin Stein, Egon Wellesz)n with whom Webern would remain close, joined Schoenberg’s class soon thereafter. Studies with Schoenberg officially concluded in 1908, when Webern composed his two first works with opus numbers.

When Schoenberg left Vienna for Berlin in 1911, Webern followed, playing an active role in the musical activities of his mentor, as may be seen in the diary Webern kept during this time. Both Schoenberg and Webern subsequently returned to Vienna. During this time, Webern’s career as a conductor gained momentum, working in theatres in Innsbruck (1909), Bad Teplitz and Danzig (1910), Prague alongside Zemlinsky (1911), and Stettin (1912), albeit with a certain distaste and uneasiness with such work which would mark his personality in years to come. This period saw the composition of Webern’s early “atonal” works, which are marked by their extreme brevity. After marrying his cousin in 1911, Webern was drafted in 1915, before briefly living in Prague. He went on to return to Vienna (and to Schoenberg) in 1917. In 1918, he renounced the use of “von” in his name.

The period following the First World War was marked by the creation of the “Society for Private Musical Performances” by Schoenberg, with considerable support from his former students. From 1918 to 1922, the group organised some 117 concerts dedicated to the performance of contemporary music. It was also at this time that Schoenberg devised his twelve-tone serial technique. Webern applied this approach in 1925 — albeit in a far more rigorous manner than his mentor — in the composition of his Drei Volkstexte Op. 17 and Drei Lieder Op. 18.

After several failed attempts, Webern organised two series of conferences dedicated to twelve-tone music in 1932-1933. The notes taken from these events by Webern’s student, Willy Reich, formed the basis of the book “The Path to the New Music,” which was published in 1960. Apart from several articles dedicated to the music of Schoenberg, this tome constitutes the majority of Webern’s surviving writings.

Starting in 1921, Webern’s activities as a choir conductor, and from 1927 as an orchestral conductor of the Arbeiter-Symphoniekonzerte, brought him broad acclaim, notably for his performances of Mahler’s symphonies, of which he was recognised as a leading interpreter. Before 1936, he was regularly invited to London as a guest conductor. After Schoenberg’s departure from Europe in 1933 and Berg’s death in 1935, Webern became increasingly isolated and financially precarious. Nonetheless, despite his work having been designated on the list of “degenerate art” by the Third Reich, he became increasingly outspoken in his support for National Socialism. The war exacerbated his isolation, despite a budding relationship with poet Hildegard Jone, who authored several texts which Webern used in his Lieder and Cantatas.

After having been drafted, his son, Peter, was killed in 1945. The composer’s own brutal death a few months later would bring to light a corpus of works which had remained largely secret over the prior decade. Various accounts of his death exist, the most famous of which are his tragic accidental shooting by an American soldier, and that his death was associated with the black-market activities of his sons-in-law. It is far more likely, however, that he was killed while trying to protect Nazis fleeing advancing allied forces.