One of the three pioneers of serialism in the Second Viennese School, along with Schoenberg, his teacher, and Berg, his fellow student, Anton Webern (1883-1945) was perhaps strictest in his use of the 12-tone method. From the time he learned the system, in which each pitch in the octave must be used before any can be repeated, Webern adhered strictly to its principles in his compositions, ultimately using serialism to inform not only his selection of pitches but also dynamics and rhythm. This extension of Schoenberg’s method would be called “total serialism” and come to influence later 12-tone composers, especially Milton Babbit and George Perle in the United States.

Webern’s music, before and after his adoption of serial techniques, is distinctive in its sparseness of texture and economy of material. He was not a prolific composer, publishing only 31 opuses during his life, and the works he did publish are often incredibly succinct. (The fourth of his Five Pieces for Orchestra is only 30 seconds long, by many accounts the shortest work ever written for orchestra.) His orchestration was also innovative, employing musical pointillism, with short snippets of tone, and Klangfarbenmelodie, a “tone color melody” created with notes traded between instruments.