This
week, Clef Notes is looking at pointillism and how it appears in both art and
music. Last time, we looked at Georges Seurat’s famous pointillist painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La
Grande Jatte. Today, let’s listen to Anton Webern’s (1883–1945) Symphony,
Op. 21, which shows how pointillism is used in composition.
 |
| Anton Webern Courtesy of wikimedia.org |
A
student of Arnold Schoenberg, Webern was known to use the 12-tone method in his
work. He was a firm believer that composers worked as researchers, discovering
new ideas and ways to compose. Believing that the best art only does what is
necessary, many of his works are quite concise, without the lush elaboration
found in music of the Romantic era. His Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 10, No.
4, for instance, is only six measures long!
Some
of Webern’s work is considered to use pointillism. Like the dots on the
artist’s canvas, pointillism in music uses only one to four notes at a time,
sounding like pitch points to the ear. The only way to truly understand this is
to listen to an example.
Webern’s
Symphony, Op. 21 above is quite interesting in that, not only do we hear
pointillism, but in the first movement alone we also witness a double canon in
inversion and palindromes!
Next
week, we will wrap up our month on music and art by looking at post-modernism.
Stay tuned!
