HAUER, Josef Matthias [1893-1959]: Autograph music manuscript

From the inventor of twelve-tone music Unpublished extensive music manuscript of a piano composition for four hands from his last creative phase beginning in August 1940, in which Hauer focused on composing twelve-tone pieces, which he understood as an ideal image of the world order. Hauer was the first composer, who developed with his composition "Nomos" op.19 the art of twelve-tone music. His importance as a pioneer was increasingly recognized in the late 1960s. His so-called "Zwölftonspiele" follow strict, eternal and unchanging laws and represent images of a "harmony in spheres" projected into the musical, which pay homage to an ascetic, completely un- or supersensible ideal of sound. They appear like an esoteric-contemplative game that carries its meaning in itself and accordingly follow a uniform basic pattern: first, the twelve-tone row is exposed, sometimes in rhythmic form, sometimes monolithically. Then it is broken down into a four-part movement and subjected to contrapuntal procedures (e.g., voice exchanges). The focus is on harmonic progressions; melodic and motivic elements are always only fill-ins, embellishments. The tonal range is relatively limited; melodic and rhythmic figures are hardly or not at all changed. The present wrok, dedicated to the Mozarteum in Salzburg, is not listed in the catalog of works published in Walter Szmolyan's monograph about Hauer.