Alban Berg

Sketch of Alban Berg by Emil Stumpp

Alban Maria Johannes Berg (/ˈɑːlbɑːn bɛrɡ/;[1] German: [ˈbɛɐ̯k]; February 9, 1885 – December 24, 1935) was an Austrian composer of the Second Viennese School. His compositional style combined Romantic lyricism with twelve-tone technique.[2]

Biography

Early life

Berg was born in Vienna, the third of four children of Johanna and Conrad Berg. His family lived comfortably until the death of his father in 1900.

Education

He was more interested in literature than music as a child and did not begin to compose until he was fifteen, when he started to teach himself music. In late February or early March 1902 he fathered a child with Marie Scheuchl, a servant girl in the Berg family household. His daughter, Albine, was born on December 4, 1902.

Berg had little formal music education before he became a student of Arnold Schoenberg in October 1904. With Schoenberg he studied counterpoint, music theory, and harmony.[3] By 1906, he was studying music full-time; by 1907, he began composition lessons. His student compositions included five drafts for piano sonatas. He also wrote songs, including his Seven Early Songs (Sieben Frühe Lieder), three of which were Berg's first publicly performed work in a concert that featured the music of Schoenberg's pupils in Vienna that year. The early sonata sketches eventually culminated in Berg's Piano Sonata, Op. 1 (1907–1908); it is one of the most formidable "first" works ever written.[4] Berg studied with Schoenberg for six years until 1911. Berg admired him as a composer and mentor, and they remained close lifelong friends.

Among Schoenberg's teaching was the idea that the unity of a musical composition depends upon all its aspects being derived from a single basic idea; this idea was later known as developing variation. Berg passed this on to his students, one of whom, Theodor W. Adorno, stated: "The main principle he conveyed was that of variation: everything was supposed to develop out of something else and yet be intrinsically different".[5] The Piano Sonata is an example—the whole composition is derived from the work's opening quartal gesture and its opening phrase.

Innovation

Berg was a part of Vienna's cultural elite during the heady fin de siècle period. His circle included the musicians Alexander von Zemlinsky and Franz Schreker, the painter Gustav Klimt, the writer and satirist Karl Kraus, the architect Adolf Loos, and the poet Peter Altenberg. In 1906, Berg met the singer Helene Nahowski, daughter of a wealthy family (said by some to be in fact the illegitimate daughter of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria from his liaison with Anna Nahowski);[6] despite the outward hostility of her family, the two were married on May 3, 1911.

Watschenkonzert, caricature in Die Zeit of April 6, 1913

In 1913, two of Berg's Five Songs on Picture Postcard Texts by Peter Altenberg (1912) were premièred in Vienna, conducted by Schoenberg in the infamous Skandalkonzert. Settings of aphoristic poetic utterances, the songs are accompanied by a very large orchestra. The performance caused a riot, and had to be halted. This was a crippling blow to Berg's self-confidence: he effectively withdrew the work, which is surely one of the most innovative and assured first orchestral compositions in the literature, and it was not performed in full until 1952. The full score remained unpublished until 1966.

From 1915 to 1918, Berg served in the Austro-Hungarian Army and during a period of leave in 1917 he accelerated work on his first opera, Wozzeck. After the end of World War I, he settled again in Vienna, where he taught private pupils. He also helped Schoenberg run his Society for Private Musical Performances, which sought to create the ideal environment for the exploration and appreciation of unfamiliar new music by means of open rehearsals, repeat performances, and the exclusion of professional critics.

Berg had a particular interest in the number 23, using it to structure several works. Various suggestions have been made as to the reason for this interest: that he took it from the Biorhythms theory of Wilhelm Fliess, in which a 23-day cycle is considered significant,[7] or because he first suffered an asthma attack on 23rd of the month.[8]

Success of Wozzeck and inception of Lulu 1925-29

Three excerpts from Wozzeck were performed in 1924, and this brought Berg his first public success. The opera, which Berg completed in 1922, was first performed on December 14, 1925, when Erich Kleiber conducted the first performance in Berlin. Today Wozzeck is seen as one of the century's most important works. Berg made a start on his second opera, the three act Lulu, in 1928 but interrupted the work in 1929 for the concert aria Der Wein which he completed that summer. Der Wein presaged Lulu in a number of ways, including vocal style, orchestration, design and text.[9]

Other well-known Berg compositions include the Lyric Suite (1926), which was later shown to employ elaborate cyphers to document a secret love affair; the post-Mahlerian Three Pieces for Orchestra (completed in 1915 but not performed until after Wozzeck); and the Chamber Concerto (Kammerkonzert, 1923–25) for violin, piano, and 13 wind instruments: this latter is written so conscientiously that Pierre Boulez has called it "Berg's strictest composition" and it, too, is permeated by cyphers and posthumously disclosed hidden programs.

Final years 1930-35

Life for the musical world was becoming increasingly difficult in the 1930s both in Vienna and Germany due to the rising tide of antisemitism and the Nazi cultural ideology that denounced modernity. Even to have an association with someone who was Jewish could lead to denunciation, and Berg's "crime" was to have studied with the Jewish composer Arnold Schoenberg. Berg found that opportunities for his work to be performed in Germany were becoming rare, and eventually his music was proscribed and placed on the list of degenerate music.[10] In 1932 Berg and his wife acquired an isolated lodge, the Waldhaus on the southern shore of the Wörthersee, near Schiefling am See in Carinthia, where he was able to work in seclusion, mainly on Lulu and the Violin Concerto.[11] At the end of 1934 Berg became involved in the political intrigues around finding a replacement for Clemens Krauss as director of the Vienna State Opera. As more of the performances of his work in Germany were cancelled by the Nazis, who had come to power in early 1933, he needed to ensure the new director would be an advocate for modernist music. Originally the premiere of Lulu had been planned for the Berlin State Opera, where Erich Kleiber continued to champion his music and had conducted the premiere of Wozzeck in 1925, but now this was looking increasingly uncertain, and Lulu was rejected by the Berlin authorities in the spring of 1934. Kleiber's production of the Lulu symphonic suite on 30 November 1934 in Berlin was also the occasion of his resignation in protest at the extent of conflation of culture with politics. Even in Vienna, the opportunities for the Vienna School of musicians was dwindling.[10]

Berg had interrupted the orchestration of Lulu because of an unexpected (and financially much-needed) commission from the Russian-American violinist Louis Krasner for a Violin Concerto (1935). This profoundly elegiac work, composed at unaccustomed speed and posthumously premièred, has become Berg's best-known and beloved composition. Like much of his mature work, it employs an idiosyncratic adaptation of Schoenberg's "dodecaphonic" or twelve-tone technique, that enables the composer to produce passages openly evoking tonality, including quotations from historical tonal music, such as a Bach chorale and a Carinthian folk song. The Violin Concerto was dedicated "to the memory of an Angel", Manon Gropius, the deceased daughter of architect Walter Gropius and Alma Mahler.

Berg died in Vienna, on Christmas Eve 1935, from blood poisoning apparently caused by an insect-sting-induced carbuncle on his back that occurred in November.[12] He was 50 years old.

Aftermath

Berg completed the orchestration of only the first two acts of Lulu before he died. The first two acts were successfully premièred in Zürich in 1937, but for personal reasons Helene Berg subsequently imposed a ban on any attempt to "complete" the final act, which Berg had in fact completed in particell (short score) format. An orchestration was therefore commissioned in secret from Friedrich Cerha and premièred in Paris (under Pierre Boulez) only in 1979, soon after Helene Berg's own death. The complete opera has rapidly entered the repertoire as one of the landmarks of contemporary music and, like Wozzeck, remains a consistent audience draw.

Legacy

Bust of Alban Berg at Schiefling on the lake, Klagenfurt-Land District, Carinthia, Austria

Berg is remembered as one of the most important composers of the 20th century and to date is the most widely performed opera composer among the Second Viennese School.[13] He is considered to have brought more "human values" to the twelve-tone system, his works seen as more "emotional" than Schoenberg's.[14] Critically he is seen to have preserved the Viennese tradition in his music.[15] His popularity has been more easily secured than many other Modernists since he plausibly combined both Romantic and Expressionist idioms. Though Berg's Romanticism at one time seemed a drawback for some more modernist composers, the Berg scholar Douglas Jarman writes in the New Grove: "As the 20th century closed, the 'backward-looking' Berg suddenly came as [George] Perle remarked, to look like its most forward-looking composer."[13]

Major compositions

Piano

Chamber

Orchestral

Vocal

Operas

References

  1. ↑ "Berg, Alban". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
  2. ↑ John H Baron (10 June 2010). Chamber Music: A Research and Information Guide. Routledge. pp. 301–. ISBN 978-1-135-84828-6.
  3. ↑ Schoenberg, Arnold. Trans. Joe Monzo. "Schoenberg's Harmonielehre", Sonic Arts at the Wayback Machine (archived April 5, 2012)
  4. ↑ Lauder (1986)
  5. ↑ Adorno, p. 33
  6. ↑ Georg Markus, Der Kaiser Franz Joseph I.: Bilder und Dokumente; Anna Nahowski and Friedrich Saathen, Anna Nahowski und Kaiser Franz Joseph : Aufzeichnungen / erstmalig herausgegeben und kommentiert von Friedrich Saathen, Böhlau, 1986.
  7. ↑ Jarman, D. (1983). Alban Berg, Wilhelm Fliess and the Secret Programme of the Violin Concerto. The Musical Times Vol. 124, No. 1682 (Apr. 1983), pp. 218-223
  8. ↑ Jarman, D. (1985). The Music of Alban Berg. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 228-230
  9. ↑ Elliott 2014, p. 55.
  10. 1 2 Notley 2010.
  11. ↑ Hailey 2010a.
  12. ↑ "Alban Berg". www.musicacademyonline.com. Retrieved 2015-09-17.
  13. 1 2 Jarman, Grove
  14. ↑ The Complete Book of 20th Century Music, pg.20, by David Ewen, Prentice-Hall Inc. 1963
  15. ↑ The Grove Encyclopedia of Music and Musicians, pg.638, St. Martin's Press, Inc. 1961

Bibliography

  • Warrack, John and Ewan West. The Oxford Dictionary of Opera, 1992. ISBN 0-19-869164-5.

Analytical writings

Douglas Jarman

  • Jarman, Douglas. Dr. Schon's Five-Strophe Aria: Some Notes on Tonality and Pitch Association in Berg's Lulu. Perspectives of New Music 8/2 (Spring/Summer 1970).
  • Jarman, Douglas. Some Rhythmic and Metric Techniques in Alban Berg's Lulu. Musical Quarterly 56/3 (July 1970).
  • Jarman, Douglas. Lulu: The Sketches. International Alban Berg Society Newsletter, 6 (June 1978).
  • Jarman, Douglas (1985) [1979]. The Music of Alban Berg (Revised ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 9780520049543. 
  • Jarman, Douglas. Countess Geschwitz's Series: A Controversy Resolved?. Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 107 (1980/81).
  • Jarman, Douglas. Some Observations on Rhythm, Meter and Tempo in Lulu. In Alban Berg Studien. Ed. Rudolf Klein. Vienna: Universal Edition, 1981.
  • Jarman, Douglas. Lulu: The Musical and Dramatic Structure. Royal Opera House Covent Garden program notes, 1981.
  • Jarman, Douglas. The 'Lost' Score of the 'Symphonic Pieces from Lulu'. International Alban Berg Society Newsletter 12 (Fall/Winter 1982).
  • Jarman, Douglas (1989). Alban Berg, Wozzeck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521284813. 
  • Jarman, Douglas (1991). Alban Berg: Lulu. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521284806. 

Other

  • Bruhn, Siglind, ed. Encrypted Messages in Alban Berg’s Music. New York: Garland Publishing, 1998.
  • Elliott, Antokoletz (2014). A History of Twentieth-Century Music in a Theoretic-Analytical Context. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis. ISBN 9781135037307. 
  • Headlam, Dave. The Music of Alban Berg. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.
  • Lauder, Robert Neil. Two Early Piano Works of Alban Berg: A Stylistic and Structural Analysis. Thesis. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1986.
  • Perle, George (1977). Twelve-tone tonality. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 9780520033870. 
  • Perle, George (1995). The right notes: twenty-three selected essays on twentieth-century music. Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press. ISBN 9780945193371. 
  • Perle, George. The Operas of Alban Berg. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.
  • Schmalfeldt, Janet. "Berg’s Path to Atonality: The Piano Sonata, Op. 1". Alban Berg: Historical and Analytical Perspectives. Eds. David Gable and Robert P. Morgan, pp. 79–110. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
  • Schweizer, Klaus. Die Sonatensatzform im Schaffen Alban Bergs. Stuttgart: Satz und Druck, 1970.
  • Wilkey, Jay Weldon. Certain Aspects of Form in the Vocal Music of Alban Berg. Ph.D. thesis. Ann Arbor: Indiana University, 1965.
  • Whittall, Arnold (2008). The Cambridge introduction to serialism. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521863414. 

Biographical writings

  • Adorno, Theodor W.; Berg, Alban (2005) [1997]. Lonitz, Henri, ed. Briefwechsel 1925–1935 [Correspondence 1925–1935]. Hoban, Wieland - translator, originally published by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 9780745694962. 
  • Adorno, Theodor W. Alban Berg: Master of the Smallest Link. Trans. Juliane Brand and Christopher Hailey. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
  • Brand, Juliane, Christopher Hailey and Donald Harris, eds. The Berg-Schoenberg Correspondence: Selected Letters. New York: Norton, 1987.
  • Carner, Mosco. Alban Berg: the man and the work. London: Duckworth, 1975.
  • Floros, Contantin. Trans. by Ernest Bernhardt-Kabisch. Alban Berg and Hanna Fuchs. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007.
  • Grun, Bernard, ed. Alban Berg: Letters to his Wife. London: Faber and Faber, 1971.
  • Jarman, Douglas. "Alban Berg", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed April 9, 2007) (subscription required)
  • Lee, Douglas (2002). Masterworks of 20th-Century Music: The Modern Repertory of the Symphony Orchestra. NY: Routledge. ISBN 9781136066900. 
  • Leibowitz, René. Schoenberg and his school; the contemporary stage of the language of music. Trans. Dika Newlin. New York: Philosophical Library, 1949.
  • MacDonald, Malcom (2008). Schoenberg. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198038405. 
  • Monson, Karen. Alban Berg: a biography. London: Macdonald and Jane's, 1979.
  • Redlich, Hans Ferdinand. Alban Berg, the man and his music. London: John Calder, 1957.
  • Reich, Willi. The life and work of Alban Berg. Trans. Cornelius Cardew. New York : Da Capo Press, 1982.
  • Simms, Bryan R. (2013) [1996]. Alban Berg (2nd ed.). Hoboken: Taylor and Francis. ISBN 9781135846749. 
  • Walton, Chris (2014). Lies and epiphanies: composers and their inspiration from Wagner to Berg. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press. ISBN 9781580464772. 
  • Hailey, Christopher (2010a). Berg's Worlds. pp. 3–32. , in Hailey (2010)
  • Notley, Margaret (2010). 1934, Alban Berg, and the shadow of politics: documents of a troubled year. pp. 223–268. , in Hailey (2010)
  • Hailey, Christopher, ed. (2010). Alban Berg and his world. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN 9781400836475. 

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