More than his teacher Arnold Schönberg, Anton Webern (1883-1945) is a central protagonist of the myth of modernity in 20th-century music. Remaining in Vienna even under the Nazi dictatorship and developing his own distinct interpretation of twelve-tone technique in isolation from the synchronized public music scene, he is shot by an American soldier in the chaos of the post-war period. A personality that is difficult to fathom biographically, with a work that appears hermetic, the post-war avant-garde emphatically claims Webern as the most important artistic forefather of the radical new beginning after 1945. Beyond this unique music-theoretical status as a "composer for composers," Webern's sublime miniatures, which initiate a new understanding of space and time, also stand as works sui generis.