Anton Webern
Symphony, Five Canons for Soprano and Two Clarinets, Three Traditional Rhymes, Three Songs, Trio, Variations for Piano
(hear it)

Serialism is the oddest thing. Experientially, it compares easily to the abstract art of say, Jackson Pollock. But the painters seem to have generally thrown paint at the canvas intuitively, while the Serialists utterly intellectualized their creative process. In the end, every element of music was taken, removed from its normal position in composition, and abstracted as a sort of unit for the ordering and reordering which are the essential activities of Serialist composing. The end result is an audible analog to Lacan's knot-tying excersize with his students. There, in my limited imagination, he and they would sit tying knots, the most complicated being worthy of praise. In reality, I think the concept of "knot" was essetially a metaphor for Lacan.

Even odder than his compositional approach is Webern's application of it to traditional rhymes and even latin church texts. Is it really possible for the deliriously dissonant music and wildly unmelodic song of the Five Canons for Soprano and Clarinets to express anything meaningful related to the text? What is the point of using a text if the music is unrelated to it? And what made him choose these texts? It's almost a weird joke or something...

bb, 12 Mar 08