La pedagogía de la nueva música. Webern como educador

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.