Variations for piano (Webern)

History of composition

By the early 1930s Webern was one of the composers and artists criticised by the Nazi Party, which was rapidly gaining power. By 1934 Webern's conducting career, a major source of income for the composer, was practically over, and he earned his living by teaching composition to a few private pupils. Despite the considerable disadvantages this financial situation had, the lack of a stable job provided Webern with more time to compose.

Opus 27 took Webern about a year to complete. The three movements were not composed in the order they appear in the work:

The piece is the only work for piano solo that was published by the composer and assigned an opus number. It was also the last work by Webern to be published by Universal Edition during his lifetime.

Structure

All three movements of the work are 12-tone pieces based on the following row (as found at the beginning of the second movement):

The work's title, Variations, is ambiguous. In a letter dated 18 July, Webern wrote: "The completed part is a variations movement; the whole will be a kind of 'Suite'". Only the third movement was completed at the time, and it is clearly a set of variations. The form of the other two movements conforms to the "Suite" plan: the first movement is a ternary form, ABA, and the second is a binary form. However, to refer to an entire work by the form of its last movement is very unusual, and numerous attempts have been made to explain the title.

Webern scholar Kathryn Bailey outlined three possible views on the structure of the piece. Webern's Variations may be considered any of these:

1. A three-movement sonata: sonata form – binary scherzo – variations
2. A three-movement suite: ternary movement – binary movement – variations
3. A set of variations, in which the first two movements have little connection to the third

One of the earliest explanations was offered by René Leibowitz, who in 1948 described the first movement as a theme and two variations, the second movement as a theme with a single variation, and the third movement as five variations of yet another theme. Willi Reich, a member of Arnold Schoenberg's circle, described the work as a sonatina which begins with a set of variations (first movement) and ends with a sonata form (third movement). Reich claimed his explanation was identical to Webern's and stemmed from the two men's conversations, however, the authenticity of this claim has been questioned.

Yet another explanation was provided by Friedhelm Dōhl (who published Reich's analysis, but did not find it satisfactory), who viewed each of the fourteen phrases in the first movement as a variation of the prime/retrograde idea, and found the same structure in the second movement. Robert U. Nelson published a similar analysis in 1969. Finally, Kathryn Bailey's analysis suggests that the first movement is a sonata form, her ideas supported by Webern's own remarks in the original manuscript, published in 1979 by Peter Stadlen.

Symmetry

A particularly notable feature of Variations is symmetry, which is featured throughout the work. Horizontal symmetry can be observed, for example, in successive phrases of the first movement: bars 1–18 comprise four phrases, each built from the normal row and its retrograde stated simultaneously, and the second half of the phrase is always a reverse of the first. Each phrase is therefore a palindrome, though only the first pair of rows in the beginning of the movement is perfectly palindromic. Vertical symmetry pervades the second movement, which is a canon. The pitches are arranged around the pitch axis of A4. Each downward reaching interval is replicated exactly in the opposite direction.