Variations Op.27 (1936)

Sehr mässig

Sehr schnell

Ruhig fliessend

Considering how meticulous he was in every tiny detail of composition – it took him two weeks to complete the 88 notes of the second movement of the present work – it is surprising that Webern chose a no more than approximately appropriate title for his Op.27. While the third movement (the first to be written) is is clearly in theme-and-variations form, the other two are not. Indeed, as he started on the first movement (the second to be written) he noted that the work was “evolving into a kind of suite.” Suite or Variations, however, it is uniquely valuable as Webern’s one mature composition for solo piano.

In a sense, of course, all serial music, of which this is a classically pure twelve-note example, can be described as variations. The Sehr mässig (Very moderate) opening movement of Op.27 presents a series of twelve notes in the first four bars and then repeats it in reverse order. A few bars later it appears in inversion, which is then similarly reversed. This continual variation is not so much the form of the piece, however, as its means of linear and harmonic continuity, while the 12-note series is not so much the main theme as the material from which its themes are fashioned. What the ear takes as the main theme, after seven bars of introduction, is a lyrical exchange of two-note phrases in even semquavers between right hand and left. The form is ternary with a middle section that preserves the pattern of exchanges between the two hands but accelerates them into demi-semiquavers, disrupts the flow with fleeting tempo changes, jostles them with percussive jabs while applying dynamic pressure that leads to a fortissimo climax. The closing section recalls the first, in inversion but in the same lyrical mood. According to Peter Stadlen, who was painstakingly coached by Webern in preparation for the first performance, the composer likened the improvisatory character of this movement to that of an intermezzo by Brahms.

The tiny Sehr schnell (Very quick) second movement would be even shorter than its 33 seconds were not the two halves of its binary construction repeated. Canonic in texture though it is, and rigously symmetrical with its changes of dynamics between loud and soft with every two notes, it has a scherzo-like character which, according to Stadlen again, Webern compared to that of the Badinerie in Bach’s Suite in B minor.

In the Ruhig fliessend (Quietly flowing) theme-and-variations movement itself the series and the theme destined for variation are not the same thing.The 12-note series is presented, note by note, in the first five bars. The theme comprises those five bars, four bars of development, and four bars of the theme in reverse. The following five variations have much the same number of bars, although the second and third must be a little longer to accommodate the frequent ritardando markings, and the fifth is marginally quicker. Distinguishing features include an insistence on chords of two notes a seventh apart in variation No.1, notes repeated two by two in No.2, two-note leagato phrases passing from hand to hand (as in the first movement) in No.3, and an increase in dynamic levels and rhythmic activity in the climactic No.4. The last variation restores the calm associated with the original theme and ends ppp.

The first draft of Ruhig fliessend, incidentally, extended to seven variations, two of which Webern later dropped – feeling perhaps that a movement lasting any more than four minutes and a few seconds would be excessively long.