22 ECHOES OF VIENNA You mention the theatricality of Mozart's instrumental music. What about Webern's? His Langsamer Satz depicts a couple in love and has a poetic structure. Anton Webern’s writing may be compared with that of Mozart in its vocal character and its process of identification with the figures it evokes. Yet his language is very different. In this work, composed very early, in 1905, he carries Romantic expression to an extreme degree. Care must nevertheless be taken not to lapse into emotional excess, for there is a profound sense of restraint that emanates from this music. Its narrative treatment is more intimate than Mozart’s. We are not in the realm of opera here, but in the tone of shared confidences. A man tells us of his walk with his beloved, and this budding love has a particular flavour, that of an epoch coming to an end, depicted by a young composer preparing to abandon tonality and switch to dodecaphonism (the twelve-tone system). One can still hear echoes of Johannes Brahms and Gustav Mahler.
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