This is the shortest musical utterance of a composer known for very short pieces. Half a minute in duration and six measures long, the fourth movement of Anton Webern's Five Pieces for Orchestra Op. 10 epitomizes the art of brevity. In the preface to Six Bagatelles Op. 9, another very short work Webern composed around the same time, his teacher Arnold Schoenberg wrote: “Consider the restraint required to express oneself so briefly. Every glance can be expanded into a poem, every sigh into a novel. But to express a novel in a single gesture, joy in a single breath—such concentration can only be present when there is a corresponding lack of self-pity.”
Anton Webern (1883–1945), Five pieces for orchestra, op. 10, autograph manuscript, [1913]. Robert Owen Lehman Collection.