Webern's Op. 12, No. 2, Die geheimnisvolle Flöte: Text Setting, Form, and Pitch Orthography

Abstract

Abstract In tonal music, pitch orthography reflects different structural and functional meanings of notes in various contextual and textural settings such as harmony, melody, and voice leading. At the turn of the twentieth century, many composers attempt to progress beyond the confines of traditional tonality, whose works, as generally perceived by most analysts nowadays, treat the twelve chromatic notes as the twelve enharmonically equivalent pitch-classes and thus present “the dissolution of … [the] notational conventions of earlier times” (Gillies 1993, 43). Contrary to this general sentiment regarding orthography, the present paper brings the significance of pitch notation into sharper focus by investigating its crucial role in the course of the text setting and form in Webern's op. 12, no. 2. I will demonstrate how Webern utilizes orthography to reinforce the structure of the text and the narrative of form, assisting the analyst in considering notation as a core element while examining the pitch structure of the early twentieth-century music.