Abstract EN:

In webern's music as early as 1913 one can perceive the growing desire to come back to a certain extension in time. One of the major problems webern then faced was the organization of the musical form. "form" is not used here in the sense of the pre-etablished arrangements (sonata form, rondo form, etc. ) that webern frequently used from the trio op. 20 onward in order to organize the composition, -arrangements on which the serial structure adapts itself. Rather, "form" is to be understood as the path the composition follows, the musical event which gives to the composition its true substance and its unity. In the most significant pieces, the form is determined by the transformation of a musical "idea" wich is highly structured in terms of syntax and which is organized discursively, into a statement which instead of being built within time, desintegrates in it, and within which a, let us say, "vertical" expression triumphs. The development of webern's music from the miniatures of 1911 onward is thus reflected, reversed, in the compositions themselves.