come engrossed in a survey of the books.

Among them vvei'e many volumes whose

titles we had previously come to know
through ^Vebern's handwritten library
catalogue. There were the works of Kant
and Holderlin, Strindberg and Maeter
linck, which had intensely occupied
Webern's thinking. There were the con
versations between Goethe and Eckermann from which he had cjuoted in his
diaries and letters. There was Bruno
Wille's Ojfenbaningcn dca WachhoUlcrhatimcs from which the composer had
drawn inspiration for his sv'mplionic
idyll Im Sommcrwind (1904) and for a
path-breaking string quartet (1905); the
same motto bv the religious mystic [acobus Bohme (1575-1624) that the free
thinker Wille had used for his book also
prefaces Webern's quartet. There were
the very volumes of poetry by Ferdinand
Avenaritis and Richaid Dehmel from
which the composer had chosen the texts
for some of his youthlul songs. As we
read title after title, the \'ery fountainhead of Webern's inspiration seemed to
well anew before our c\es.
And then there were the xolumes of
printed music from which \\'ebcrn had
stndied, the orchestral scores from which
he had conducted; from Bach's WcllTcmpcrcd Clavier and Minor Mass
to Beethoven's EiDpcror Concerto and
Schubert's Rosamimdc
music, from
works by Wagner, Bruckner, Wolf, and
Reger to a collection of those by We
bern's teacher and friend, Arnold Schoenberg. There were compositions which
had been dedicated to \\'ebeni by au
thors such as Apostel, Eisler, and Zcnk.
Many of the books and scores bore
Webern's autograph inscriptions, rang
ing from marks of interpretation to I'ccords of performances. As we leafed
through th.e pages, we came upon inti
mate and telling letters such as one
written by Webern to liis future wife
briefly before their weddiu", or one in
which Webern's father, Carl, makes
caustic references to the son's mentor
and idol Schoenberg; To follow in the
latter's footsteps, the conceined father
writes, certainh' would not augur well
for a career, since Schoenberg had not
proved capable of making a li\clihood.

-B-HE letters and neatly penned notes,

the pressed flowers and votixc pictures,
the bookplates imprinted "Toni von
Webern," and the many marginal pen
cilled remarks all mediated a strange
closeness with the man who once had
cherished ail these things. After an
eclipse of twenty years, human associa
tion restored the forgotten relics once
again to a life of their own, and the semidarkness of the attic was ilhiminated
by that strange awareness. A number of
books were badly damaged by the ele
ments to which they had lain exposed.
Not only nature had affected them; one
SR/August 27, 1966

large art book Die chinesischc Landschaftsinalerei had two pieces in the
shape of inner soles cnt out of its hard
cover. Presumably, some urgent need
had been met during the days when
physical wants took precedence over
everything else.
Ilenninc had turned to a wooden case
on the floor. It was equipped with a
metal handle and a padlock clasp. This
box, as Hennine told us, had served her
husband as a carrying case during his
years as a soldier. When she opened the
lid, more books appeared. We continued
separating them into stacks of volumes
\\'hich had formed part of Webern's per
sonal library and those which obviously
had belonged to other family members.
Suddenly, my wife uttered a subdued
exclamation, a mixture of surprise and
disbelief. Hermine had drawn out of
the box a large package, one of three
such parcels. Opening the wrapper, she
handed the bundle to my wife. What
Rosaleen saw were large quantities of
music manuscripts, unmistakalily in We
bern's own writing.
My mind at once registered the pas
sage in Webern's letter to his daughterin-law when he had spoken of his com
positions which were l;uried, together
with the typewriter and silverware, un
der the garden house. Could it be that
these were the \ cr\ manusciipts? In
credible as it at first appealed, this was
to be the case, Enslnined in the crude
wooden crate, untouched for two dec
ades, immo\ed by the world which had
gone by since and which, in particular,
had witnessed the emergence of We
bern's name as a briglit star on the mu
sical firmament, these manuscripts had
waited for their resui'rection. Instead of
being discovered, they might well have
been lost forever. In but a brief span of
time, the old house, with the obsolete
rummage in the attic, would be razed.
\Vhat was contained in those three
large packets of manuscripts since has

become part of music history. Before

our incredulous eyes there unfolded, in
astonishing variety and completeness,
Webern's creative ociturc from its very
beginnings in 1899 up to the year 1925
when the composer had long attained
maturity. Among the stack of early com
positions was the very first attempt of
the fifteen-year-old student at the Klagenfurt Gymnasium: two cello pieces,
no doubt conceived by Webern for his
own performance on the instrument
which was to accompany him through
out life, the same cello which had been
retrieved only yesterday. There were the
songs of his youth, piano pieces, string
quartets, and works for large orchestra.
Then there was the "real" Webern, such
as four settings of poems by Stefan
George. By their title listings, they in
trinsically belonged to the song cycles
Op. 3 and 4 but had not been pub
lished with the latter.
There was a sketch to an opera, Alladine iind Pnlomides, after the play by
Maurice Maeterlinck. According to ref
erences in Webern's letters to Schoen
berg and Dicz, the project had occupied
him during the year 1908. And on it
went with hitherto miknown composi
tions: several orchestral pieces, identical
in idiom and instrumentation with those
coritained in the Opus 10 cycle; the draft
of a cello sonata dated 1914; various
songs with the same instrumental combi
nations employed in the Opus 13 group;
the charming Kinderstiick for piano solo
of 1924; and two string trios of 1925.
Some of the works were in finished
scores, others in sketches or drafts. They
all, however, portrayed Webern's slow
and groping, ever-selective but in tlie
end mierring process of composing
which Igor Stravinsky had called "his
dazzling diamonds, the mines of which
lie had such a perfect knowledge." Here
in the attic, we had come upon the mainshaft of those mines.
To be sure, there were among the
manuscripts many of the already wellknown works, but some of these con
tained intensely interesting variants from
their published versions. The chorus
Entfiicht auf k'icliten Kahncn, Opus 2,
had been known heretofore as only a
cappclla. Here was now a scoring in
which Webern empkn ed the instrumen
tal assistance of violin, viola, violonccll),
liarmoninm and pianoforte. The Second
String Quartet, so titled by Webern on
the cover, tiu-ned out to be the often
performed Six Bagatelles, Opus 9, but
in a different sequence ant] with the
addition of a seventh piece in wliicli a
voice part joins the strings. One of the
most interesting finds consisted of the
instrumental parts, laboriously written
out by the composer himself, for a cham
ber arrangement of the well-known Six
Pieces for Orchestra, Opus 6; this ver(Contimied on pap,e 60)

PRODUCED 2005 BY UNZ.ORG

ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED

49