String Quartet (1905)

Webern began his studies with Schoenberg in 1904 not long after he had heard the string sextet Verklärte Nacht for the first time: “The impression it made on me was one of the greatest I had ever experienced,” Webern told his teacher. The one-movement String Quartet he completed in September 1905 is Webern’s equivalent to Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht - except that the programmatic basis in his case was not literary but artistic. He was so profoundly impressed by the work of the Italian painter Giovanni Segantini that he compared him to Beethoven and so moved by his symbolist Alpine triptych La Vita - La Natura - La Morte that it inspired him to write what would prove to be his longest piece of instrumental music.

It is perhaps because Segantini and Beethoven were associated in the composer’s mind that the work begins with a three-note theme not unlike the “Muss es sein?” motif in Beethoven’s Quartet in F major, Op.135. It is heard no fewer than six times in the opening bars and then recedes into the background to re-emerge in its definitive form only very much later. Its influence is felt everywhere, however, not least as the source of the two main themes - an agitated, very Schoenbergian idea introduced by viola and a more lyrical melody which is presented as a fugue subject shortly after its first appearance. How this material relates to the Segantini triptych is by no means clear but the musical development is so compelling - the agitated theme giving rise to episodes of high drama, the lyrical melody abandoning its fugal function and becoming ever more ethereal in expression - that the visual element is scarcely relevant to the experience. The recall of the three-note motif in the closing bars seems as spontaneous as it is structurally inevitable.