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Leopold Spinner's Later Music

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2010

Extract

Leopold Spinner is one of the outstanding inheritors of the traditions of the Second Viennese school, not only by virtue of his direct relationship (as Webern's pupil), but also because his music builds upon and extends that school's achievements. In my first article (TEMPO 109) I isolated two fundamental characteristics of his style. First, Spinner continually makes use of intervallic asymmetries in the polyphonic combination of motifs and lines which, through their similarities of shape, set up expectations of symmetry. Secondly—and contrary to the practice of Schoenberg and Webern—he frequently exploits the duplications which arise (often in the same register) from the proximity of the same notes in two or more simultaneous set-forms. The close relationship of Spinner's music to Webern's late works—with their avoidance of note-duplications and their predominantly homogeneous and symmetrical textures—allows these Spinnerian characteristics to stand out against an immediately recognizable Webernian background, and thus to acquire their peculiar expressive and dramatic tension.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

page 17 note 1 See, for instance, bars 1–6 of the Prelude (partly shown in Ex. ic of my first article) or bars 8–9 and from bar 1 2 onwards (Ex.2 above).

page 19 note 1 For instance, the very opening and the entry of the chorus in the first movement of Webern's op. 29; also the magical alternation of homophonic choral phrases with those of the solo soprano at the very end of tht finale—even though Webern uses two inversions in mirror-combination with two original forms of the row.