Everything seemed fairly clear at the time of Anton Webern's death—Webern was a remarkable but not-very-prolific composer with just a few pieces to his credit. He seemed to have written only three orchestral works that predate World War I—the Passacaglia, Op. 1, the Six Pieces, Op. 6, and the Five Pieces, Op. 10. After Webern died in 1945, however, musicologists became increasingly aware of a huge amount of music never published or indeed even spoken of during the composer's lifetime. Sorting through the reams and reams of sketches, drafts, and finished products found in manuscript has been the life's work for a handful of scholars, and only now, as we move into the next century, is the situation, and with it Webern's catalog of works, at last becoming reasonably tidy. It turns out that Webern's orchestral resume is not so sparse as it once seemed—there are all kinds of manuscripts, some of which ride a very blurry line between abandoned draft and finished product, the sum of which better than triple the sheer bulk of his orchestral output. One of the most important finds is a set of Five Pieces for Orchestra dating from 1913, a companion set to the famous Op. 6 and Op. 10 sets.

The Five Pieces, Op. posth. (as they must be called to distinguish them from the Five Pieces, Op. 10), are actually from the same brewing-pot as Op. 10. Webern composed 11 pieces between 1911 and 1913. Five went to Op. 10, six remained unpublished. Of the latter, one is for voice and orchestra, and the other five, discovered by scholar Hans Moldenhauer in 1965, found their way into the present set.

Two of these Op. posth. pieces are obviously unfinished—Nos. 2 and 4 break off suddenly after 20 and 14 bars, respectively. It is difficult to tell with precision just how finished the other three pieces are. Webern's manuscripts contain numerous markings, changes, and corrections, the exact order of whose appearance is not always clear.

Like the Op. 10 Pieces, these are not long works. No. 1, "Bewegt," fills lasts just 16 bars, No. 3, "Sehr Bewegt," just 14. No. 5 (whose manuscript has no tempo marking) is, at 25 bars, a little more imposing. Interestingly enough, Nos. 2 and 4, the two unfinished pieces, each seem to be headed towards significantly greater length, and it may have been this very thing that resulted in their never being finished. We know that Webern was having trouble composing long pieces during the early 1910s.

The ensemble used for the Five Pieces, Op. posth is not a small one. There are the usual woodwinds and brass, in significant numbers, and a large contingent of percussion and miscellaneous instruments (including guitar). However, save for a few brief moments in No. 3, the sound is never dense at all, and the string section is not even really a section—just four players total are required. Spaciousness, fragmentation, concentration of atonal gesture and motive are of the essence here.

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