Structure And Mechanism Of Musical Language In Webern's Twelve-Tone Series Choral Das Augenlicht Op.26

The highly theoretical creation practice pursued by Anton von Webern(1883-1945)had facilitated the composer to occupy an important position within the circle of the Second Viennese School during the 20th century.This paper focuses on the Op.26 of Das Augenlicht,a dodecaphonic choral created by Webern,combined with works of Op.18,Op.23,Op.25 and Op.29 as supporting evidence,to perform a thorough analysis of his musical language construct by using the pitch-class set analysis method,the twelve-tone serial analysis method,and the post-tonal music theory.Using a cross-disciplinary approach which draws on the "mapping" concept in mathematics and the "intertextuality" theory in literature,the application mechanism and strategies of musical languages in the work have been discussed from various aspects.The Webern's prowess in creative techniques and profound conceptual and spiritual connotations are finally explored as the main objective of this study.This paper is comprised of two sections that are mutually complementary,explanatory and indispensable.The first section begins with an analysis of musical language construct along the temporal line by conducting polymorphous segmentation and merging of prototype series in order to find the core set 3-3(014),which is followed by an in-depth analysis of the filtration forces of its intervallic structures within musical language units.An analysis of the spatial combination of intervallic structures of prototype series,as well as the spatial aggregations of its constant pitch-classes is conducted,further proving the controlling force imposed by the intervallic structure of the core set over the partial and overall work.The second section,focusing on the mechanism of musical language,adopts the"mapping" approach to delve into the structural force of the core set and the resulting formalist aesthetics;further,the intertextuality theory is employed to discuss the intertextual correlation between lyric and musical texts,followed by a detailed discussion on its mechanism and strategies—that is,the musical ideas of "lyrics come first" and"music serve lyrics" advocated by Plato,the father of the rational theology.Focusing on Webern's vocal music to explore the core set of 3-3 in the work,this paper has demonstrated that Webern had created a diversified and enriched musical world encompassing both unity and opposites by using a minimalist technique even if the available materials were extremely limited.