Webern, with Alban Berg, was a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg in Vienna, moving in style to atonalism and then serial technique, writing music of brief concision and often extreme delicacy. Webern was an intellectual and highly economical composer with extreme concentration, symmetry and silence all clearly apparent in his writings. Each of the works represented here is developed from the minimum amount of musical material to obtain the maximum degree of unity. Through this philosophy Webern established himself as a master of timbre and delicate orchestral effects and a leading voice of twentieth century music.