Pedagogy of the new music. Webern as an educator

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss the figure but above all the teaching vocation of the Viennese composer Anton von Webern (1883-1945). After briefly sketching the musician’s philosophical and aesthetic outlook, we will focus on the lectures given between 1932 and 1934 on twelve-tone composition within the context of a farranging educational project holding considerable cultural significance. Second, through a comprehensive analysis of these lectures, we will shed light on Webern’s wish to formulate a genuine normative aesthetics of music that encompassed and provided a preferential rationale for the twelve-tone system. Thus, this «stylistic option» —it should be remembered that the new music, to paraphrase Aristotle’s famous saying, /can be preached in many ways /— will be defended in the light of a normative aesthetics that reflects on the essence of art and music and which uses Goethe’s morphology as indisputable point of reference.

Keywords

• dodecafonismo
• naturaleza
• comprensibilidad
• morfología
• goethe