Six Little Piano Pieces Op.19 (1911)

Leicht, zart (Light, delicate)

Langsam (Slow)

Sehr langsame Viertel (Very slow crotchets)

Rasch, aber leicht (Quick, but light)

Etwas rasch (Fairly quick)

Sehr langsam (Very slow)

“A novel in a single gesture:” Schoenberg’s eloquent advocacy of the brevity of Webern’s Six Bagatelles Op.9 could well be applied to the Six Little Piano Pieces Op.19. Less than six minutes in length altogether, they represent an extreme and obviously unsustainable solution to the problem met by Schoenberg and his pupils after his rejection of tonality and before his discovery of an alternative means of organising a structure of even the most modest proportions. The problem was compounded by his avoidance at that time of repetition and predictable rhythmic patterns. The only conventional structural technique discernible in these essentially informal miniatures is melodic variation, elusive though it is. Each one is distinctive in its way, however, from the comparatively dense but expressive first piece by way of the dry wit of the second, the unequal duet for a loud right hand and a soft left hand in the third, the capricious scherzo of the fourth and the ill humour of the fifth to the whispered desolation of the sixth - which last was written immediately after the funeral of Gustav Mahler.

Leicht, zart (Light, delicate)

Langsam (Slow)

Sehr langsame Viertel (Very slow crotchets)

Rasch, aber leicht (Quick, but light)

Etwas rasch (Fairly quick)

Sehr langsam (Very slow)

In these experimental miniatures Schoenberg admits nothing which could be conventionally expected of him in 1911 - no tonal allusions, no more than fragmentary melodies, no predictable rhythmic patters, no form anyone would recognise. Which is why, more than ten years before he had developed the twelve-note method as a means to hold such music together, the six pieces of Op.19 are so very short.

The only conventional structural technique discernible in these essentially informal pieces is melodic variation. But the theme, heard at the beginning of the first piece, is of no more than four notes and there are no divisions between the variations: they overlap, occur simultaneously, in chordal form, in melodic form, in augmentation of microscopic diminution. In the ninety seconds of the first piece the variations can already be counted in dozen. The second is a witty study in rhythm, with only two linear variation to offset the dryly repeated thirds in the left hand. In the third piece a loud right hand and simultaneously soft left hand create a peculiarly one-sided duet on the four-note theme. In the more twenty second of the fourth, a kind of scherzo, a new theme is quietly suggest, gently rejects, violently repeated, and rejected again. The original theme reappears in the fifth piece, though not without some controversy at the end. The last was written immediately after the funeral of one of Schoenberg’s composer heroes, Gustav Mahler. With a dynamic range extending from p to pppp, it is as near to stillness as music can get. The four-note theme is just perceptible in two melodic variations, before it breathes its last in the final bar.