Music Program Notes

Langsamer Satz (1905) Anton Webern (1883-1945) Like many other works of art, Webern’s Langsamer Satz was born of love. In 1905, the young Austrian composer wrote in his diary, “Our love rose to infinite heights and filled the Universe. Two souls were enraptured.” He had taken a holiday hiking in the mountains surrounding Vienna with the woman who would become his wife, Wilhelmine Mörtl.

Those familiar with Webern’s mature work, with its tight, miniaturized forms, mathematical precision, and atonal angularity, will be surprised to hear such highly Romantic music. Though intended to be part of a quartet, the larger work was left unfinished, perhaps because the 21-year-old composer soon embraced the modern idioms of his mentor Arnold Schoenberg. Langsamer Satz retains its name of “slow movement,” and is among Webern’s longest works. The music is lush, chromatic, and emotionally charged, described by some as “Tristan and Isolde compressed into 11 minutes.” It is an interesting musicological artifact of a composer’s development, but it is foremost an outpouring of a young man’s love.

It is an interesting “ musicological artifact of a composer’s development, but it is foremost an outpouring of a young man’s love.

Program Notes by McKinley Glasser