Themes and Conclusions

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

94

text excerpt

The saxophone quartet, too when I heard it conducted by Kagel in Paris a few seasons ago, sounded rather scatty in the second movement. / The note-values are too large, the measures too small. Webern seems to have been obsessed with the device of the silent or ‘suspended’ beat, with the note on the anacrusis. He employs it most successfully, to my mind, near the end of the Concerto, and most controversially in the last dozen measures of the piano Variations, where, because of attenuating changes of tempo, the effect seems to belong to the category of Papiermusik. The metrical accent obtains only if the listener is watching a score or a conductor, the ear otherwise perceiving the notes not in relation to silent beats but as beats themselves. 

The saxophone quartet, too when I heard it conducted by Kagel in Paris a few seasons ago, sounded rather scatty in the second movement. / The note-values are too large, the measures too small. Webern seems to have been obsessed with the device of the silent or ‘suspended’ beat, with the note on the anacrusis. He employs it most successfully, to my mind, near the end of the Concerto, and most controversially in the last dozen measures of the piano Variations, where, because of attenuating changes of tempo, the effect seems to belong to the category of Papiermusik. The metrical accent obtains only if the listener is watching a score or a conductor, the ear otherwise perceiving the notes not in relation to silent beats but as beats themselves. 

excerpt from 'Themes and Conclusions' pp. 94 (130 words)

1450182657707:

1450182657707