Splinters in the eye: Interpreting Webern's bach transcription

This article is centered around an interpretation of Webern's transcription of Bach's six-part Ricercar from The Musical Offering. Its aim is to show how the transcription can be understood as a dramatization of certain dialectical issues regarding the relationship between ideas of style and philosophies of history. In particular, this article positions the work within Schoenberg's writing about style, considerations drawn from the writings of Adorno, and suggestions regarding the Hegelian orientation of mid-twentieth-century historical models in use in Vienna. Interwoven into this structure is an underlying attempt to establish a preliminary position for reading Webern's works from this particularly ideologically difficult period from a potentially politically redemptive vantage point.