Asking the "what ifs" and "what might-have-beens"

"Every artist's development carries with it a sense of paths not taken, of unfulfilled promise, of possibilities left untouched. No one can retrace these paths, and speculation is ultimately futile. But it can be done with more or less imagination, more or less tact." (Puffett, 1996: 37)

Just read Derrick Puffett's inspiring piece of rumination--if I may call it such--on "what Webern lost", as he puts it, in having studied with Schoenberg, and not say Pfitzner, Schmidt or Schoeck. Apart from indirectly offering a refreshing and fascinating account of aspects of Webern's biography, one interwoven with a fascinating glimpse into Webern's sketches and diary entries, Puffett imaginatively and beautifully illustrates a potentially fruitful way of analyzing music, especially a composer's juvenile works. He quotes E.T. Cone on the two usual games played: to measure early works against the later ones ("imperfect copies") and to find "intimations of a style yet to be formed". He then proposes a third: "finding intimations of a style not later realised".

This exercise (of the musical mind) is potentially exhilarating! Not only does it provide a different motivation for music analysis, it is also a more challenging and intriguing way to integrate analysis with historical/musicological studies.