Six Bagatelles for string quartet Op.9 (1911-13)

Mässig

Leicht bewegt

Ziemlich fliessend

Sehr langsam

Äusserst langsam

Fliessend

“To express a novel in a single gesture, joy in a single breath”: Schoenberg’s definition of the miniaturist’s art was inspired by Webern’s Op.9. They are not, however, densely compacted compressions of epic material. On the contrary, they are more like close-up enlargements of isolated fragments, revealing textural details otherwise too tiny to register. A product of a uniquely fastidious temperament, the Six Bagatelles, the composer believed, were “the shortest pieces there have been in music.” If they can no longer claim that particular superlative - some of Kurtág’s pieces are even shorter - they remain unsurpassed in their microscopic complexity.

Mässig (moderately)

Leicht bewegt (lightly animated)

Ziemlich fliessend (fairly flowing)

Sehr langsam (very slow)

Äusserst langsam (extremely slow)

Fliessend (flowing)

Webern’s Bagatelles Op.9 are the ultimate miniatures, “perhaps the shortest pieces there have been in music,” the composer once remarked. Since the longest (Äusserst langsam) lasts just over a minute and the shortest (Ziemlich fliessend) scarcely more than twenty seconds, he cannot have been far wrong. And yet they are so expressive that Webern’s mentor, Arnold Schoenberg, found in them the inspiration for his famous definition of the miniaturist’s art: “to express a novel in a single gesture, joy in a single breath.” They are not, however, densely compacted compressions of epic material. On the contrary, they are more like enlargements of isolated fragments seen through a microscope, revealing details of colour and textural features too tiny to register in a large-scale structure observed at a normal distance.

Brevity, the possibilities of which Schoenberg himself explored round about 1910, was one of the solutions to the structural problems associated with his rejection of the tonal system. But for Webern, who went much further in this direction, it became a positive virtue, a revelation of a new world of sound. Every smallest change of colour is significant and anything repeated stands out in high relief. The last piece, the most fragmented in texture until its central climax, finally achieves a tenuous stability.

Mässig (moderately)

Leicht bewegt (lightly animated)

Ziemlich fliessend (fairly flowing)

Sehr langsam (very slow)

Äusserst langsam (extremely slow)

Fliessend (flowing)

Webern’s Bagatelles Op.9 are the ultimate miniatures, “perhaps the shortest pieces there have been in music,” the composer once remarked. Since the longest (Äusserst langsam) lasts just over a minute and the shortest (Ziemlich fliessend) scarcely more than twenty seconds, he cannot have been far wrong. And yet they are so expressive that Webern’s mentor, Arnold Schoenberg, found in them the inspiration for his famous definition of the miniaturist’s art: “to express a novel in a single gesture, joy in a single breath.” They are not, however, as those words might be taken to imply, densely compacted compressions of epic material. On the contrary, they are more like enlargements of isolated fragments seen through a microscope, revealing details of colour and textural features too tiny to register in a large-scale structure observed at a normal distance.

Brevity, the possibilities of which Schoenberg himself explored round about 1910, was one of the solutions to the structural problems associated with his rejection of the tonal system. But for Webern, who went much further in this direction than either Schoenberg or Berg, brevity became a positive virtue, a revelation of a new world of sound. On a larger scale such finely detailed instrumental colouring as that of the Bagatelles, which were completed in 1913, would have no point. In the miniature context, however, every smallest change of colour is significant. The beginning of the first piece (Mässig) is a characteristic example: a cello harmonic, a single note on the bridge of the viola, a violin note in normal position, two legato violin phrases, a tiny staccato ostinato on the bridge of the viola again, a sigh on the cello… all four instruments muted and restricted at this stage to pianissimo dynamics. In such circumstances a forte, fortissimo or even louder phrase, such as those that occur just after the central point of the first piece, have a disproportionately dramatic effect.

Where everything always changes, as it does here on a note-by-note basis, anything repeated stands out in high relief. The second piece (Leicht bewegt), which remains piano or pianissimo throughout except for a solitary forte high on second violin and a final pizzicato fortissimo, is a kind of scherzo built on the contrast between staccato ostinato figuration in the outer sections and legato melody in the shortest of all trio sections. The witty third piece (Ziemlich fliessend) and sixth (Fliessend) pieces are shaped like the first round a central climax. Between them are two slow movements: one (Sehr langsam) is a phantom presence of muted melodic lines and ostinatos, both elements further attenuated by bowing on the bridge or on the finger board or by false harmonics; the other (Äusserst langsam), though still muted and never louder than pianissimo and with no phrase more than three-notes long, offers the most sustained expression in the whole work. The most fragmented in texture until its central climax, the last piece finally achieves a tenuous stability.