Thoughts On Anton Webern’s “VARIATIONEN” For Piano

By William Antoniou

Despite growing up very much close to, and involved in the world of Contemporary

Classical Music, Anton Webern is one of the few composers who’s name I know, but who’s work I

am not familiar with. “VARIATIONEN” For Piano is my rst Webern experience, and while I can’t

say I was moved by the piece, or that I particularly liked it, I did nd it interesting nonetheless,

both as a composer but also as a pianist.

As is the case with most 12 tone music, I was unable to identify a melody. While I don’t

think that an emphasised melody is always necessary for a piece of music to be signi cant, I do

believe that a well constructed melody is one of the harder things to do as a composer. Unless

one really reaches, this piece has none, so I will move on.

One of the most interesting facets of this piece, and from what I can tell, one of the most

discussed and debated facets of this piece, is the rhythm. Each movement is written in one time

signature, (3/16 in Movement I, 2/4 in Movement II, 3/2 in Movement III), but the music never

seems to correspond in any obvious way to these time signatures. It seems that the notes are

constantly syncopated, or disjointed from the time signatures. It’s obvious that this is by design.

The question that I would ask, and that many other have asked of this piece, is why? Only

Webern can give us the answer. Maybe he was just trying to be clever? He wouldn’t be the rst 12

Tone composer to write complicated music simply for the sake of writing complicated music. In

order to form my own theory about the discrepancies between the time signatures and the music,

I decided to listen to the piece without looking at the score, and to disregard the written time

signatures. Su ce it to say, it was like listening to a di erent piece. Each movement does in fact

have a very clear “groove.” It might not always be totally rhythmically symmetrical, but it starts to

“make sense.” So, perhaps Webern wrote the time signatures he did simply to have them, without

them being especially important during listening. After all, an audience will never have the score in

front of them. I would argue that because of this, it doesn’t really matter.
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 Another thing that I like about what Webern has done, despite not liking the piece itself, is

that there is a clear style that is discernible in all of the movements, but each movement is

su ciently varied from the other. This may seem to be a fundamental concept when writing any

piece with movements, but it’s not an easy task when writing 12 tone music. They’re similar

enough, but di erent enough. This is also the case for the way he utilises the instrument. The

theme of abrupt jumps from high to low is present in all three movements. There’s also something

to be said about the fact that this piece is probably only playable, realistically, on piano, or

something similar to piano. It would be immensely di cult for an ensemble of any kind to perform

this piece “correctly,” and reason is that the rhythm in relation to the time signature is so

complicated, that a singular mind and body is what’s needed to make it work.

This brings me to another issue that has been widely discussed about this piece, although

more to do with the performances. There are many moments in the third movement when the clef

changes quickly, prompting the pianist to make a decision. Should they bring one hand over the

other, or simply move both hands and let the right hand play the higher notes and left hand play

the lower notes? Does it make a di erence? Again, only Webern can tell us if it made a di erence

to him. However, as a composer and as a pianist I would say that yes, it does make a di erence.

While the di erence in the sound or timbre may not be audible to the untrained, or the

uninterested ear, to the trained ear it can make all the di erence. The strain on the hand from

making a big jump will inevitably mean that the note is struck di erently than if it were more at

ease from a smaller jump. I would guess that Webern wanted to hear this di erence, which is why

he made the clef changes he did. Otherwise, he would not have scored it in this way. An example

that comes to mind from my own playing is how I was taught to play Chopin’s Raindrop Prelude.

In the middle section, the right hand repeatedly plays A at, while the left hand plays the build up

to the climax. Some pianists play the A at with their thumb, others with their pointer, others with

their middle nger. I was taught to alternate between all three at random. It may seem

unnecessary, but if you listen closely, really listen closely, each note has a slightly di erence

sound, just like each raindrop is slightly di erent. And of course they do, because each nger is a

di erence size and a di erent length.

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