Anton Webern's Three Poems for voice and piano are, like the roughly contemporaneous Eight Early Songs, a posthumous putting-together of early odds and ends. In the Three Poems are three different takes on texts by three different poets, composed by Webern in Three different years (1899, 1903, and 1902, according to the order in which the three songs appear in the set). First up is Ferdinand Avenarius' Vorfrühling [Early Springtime], a two-page ditty composed when Webern was only just past his fifteenth birthday. Second is a song called Nachgebet der Braut [A Bride's Nighttime Prayer], representing Webern about four to four-and-a-half years later; and third is Fromm [Piety], the work of a young man approaching nineteen.



Taking all of the above into account, it isn't surprising that the level of compositional competence varies as singer, pianist and listeners move through the Three Poems. Anton Webern was a gifted lad, but Vorfrühling is still not much better than a work-out piece. Avenarius' quiet, soft-edged poem receives an E flat major treatment in gently flowing six-eight meter. Webern does draw a wonderful texture up for the song, but there are moments at which the musical paragraph— think of it as a series of sentences, with commas and semicolons, and a period at the end— undeniably breaks down into uncomfortable wandering. Each time, Webern is quick to get back on track, but an irreparable damage is done all the same.



Nachgebet der Braut is noticeably more advanced, even if it, like all the works of 1903, was still blacklisted by Webern after he reached adulthood (nothing that he wrote until the Passacaglia, Op.1 of 1908 ever got official approval from him). Originally written in E major, it was published in a transposition to A. Richard Dehmel, a favorite poet of German-Austrian turn-of-the-century composers, is the author of the four-stanza poem, which is set by Webern in a manner not at all strophic. Dehmel's burning, passion-soaked words follow clear, repeating patterns; Webern's music, on the other hand, is free-form— each stanza gets its own music, and all of them roll together into one big swelling of melodic indulgence.



Fromm, which is a setting of a Gustav Falke poem, is much more restrained in tone. It is, like the preceding song, something of a prayer; but the prayer is of a different sort— steady, quiet, certain of itself as opposed to volcanic, gusting and busting. The piano accompaniment has a chorale-like shape, while the singer wriggles around above it in a sometimes quasi-recitative way. It is probably coincidence, but makes for a nice closure-producing touch anyway, that this third song is cast in the same key as the first, E flat major.



© All Music Guide

1.Vorfrühling: Leise tritt auf

Vorfruhling is one of Webern¹s earliest works, and was not given an opus number by the composer. It marks the beginning of a composition career destined to be dominated by the song. Vorfruhling sets a poem by Ferdinand Avenarius, and is marked "Tenderly Throughout" to reflect the gentle, pastoral, dream-like character of the text. Webern set a number of poems by Avenarius in his youth, but Vorfruhling is important because it offers a glimpse at what would become hallmarks of Webern's mature style: concision, compression, and a dynamic level between piano and pianississimo. Vorfruhling is a tonal piece in the key of E-flat major. After a short piano introduction, the voice begins, and presents the text quickly: the song is over, with no piano postlude, in just twenty-two measures. The piano and voice end together, softly fading away—as the composer intends-"as tenderly as possible."

© Alexander Carpenter, All Music Guide