It was Webern, more than any other composer born in the nineteenth century, who explored the possibility of less becoming more, which is to say the esthetics of Minimalism. Indicatively, the initial Columbia Masterworks edition of his The Complete Music fits on only four long-playing discs, with eight sides, containing less than three dozen works.
Raised in Vienna, taking a doctorate in musicology (and thus perhaps becoming the first trained musicologist to become a distinguished composer), Webern...