Webern, Anton. (1883–1945) [Jone, Hildegard (1891–1963)]. Das Augenlicht von Hildegard Jone für gemischten Chor und Orchester. Op. 26. - SIGNED PRESENTATION COPY TO DAVID JOSEF BACH. Vienna: Universal Edition. 1938. First Edition. Piano-vocal score by Ludwig Zenk. Upright folio. [PN]11004, 14 pp. A few stray marks to wrappers, otherwise fine. Signed and inscribed one month before the prmiere by the composer on the title page to his important friend and associate D. J. Bach, May, 1938. An important association copy.


Dedicated to "My daughter Amalie Waller," the choral work "Das Augenlicht" was premiered in London on June 17, 1938 by Hermann Scherchen, Webern's favorite conductor of his own works, conducting the BBC Orchestra at the International Society for Contemporary Music Festival. "Since the society's Austrian section had been suspended after the Anschluss, Webern was unable to attend officially, and as a composer of 'degenerate music' he would probably have been prevented from travelling abroad in any case by the new regime....In the audience was Luigi Dallapiccola, who penned an assessment of the new work in his diary entry later the same evening: 'The orchestral forces are limited to essentials...Sonority, colour, articularion, instrumental layout - all is invention: every bit as important, therefore, as overall construction. Das Augenlicht, when one hears it, proves full of harmonious poetry: voices and instruments, often with enormous empty spaces between them, create opposing planes of sound. The score seems enriched by those mysterious vibrations which would arise if it were performed under a glass bell-jar...Certain subtleties in the writing would deserve a discussion in themselves: the way, for instance, that Webern avoids as far as possible that brusque 'recall to reality' represented by the strong beat of a bar, which here would break the dream-like atmostphere that permeates the highly poetic composition.'" (Michael Hayes, "Anton von Webern," (London: Phaidon, 1995), p. 199 - 200)


David Josef Bach (1874 - 1947) was an important and influential figure in the cultural life of early twentieth-century Vienna. As a boy, Bach was a close friend of the young Arnold Schoenberg, who later named him as one of the three friends (the other two were Oskar Adler and Alexander von Zemlinsky) who greatly influenced him in his youthful explorations of music and literature. Describing him as "A linguist, a philosopher, a connoisseur of literature, and a mathematician" as well as "a good musician", Schoenberg paid tribute to his friend by claiming that it was D.J. Bach who furnished his character with "the ethical and moral power needed to withstand vulgarity and commonplace popularity" ('My Evolution', 1949).


It was Bach who founded the amateur Vienna Singverein ('Vienna Choral Society') in 1919, where Webern was a regular conductor and with whom he developed a close and enduring friendship. It was Bach who delivered the address which opened the concert of Webern's music given on 3 December 1933 to celebrate the composer's fiftieth birthday, and Bach who persuaded Webern not to resign from his position as president of the Vienna International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) chapter when his projected performance of Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck in Florence in 1934 was cancelled for political reasons.