Alban Berg

A Research and Information Guide

Bryan R. Simms

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000525496
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Alban Berg: A Research and Information Guide is an annotated bibliography concerning both the nature of primary sources related to the composer and the scope and significance of the secondary sources which deal with him, his compositions, and his influence as a composer. The second edition will include research published since the publication of the first edition and provide electronic resources.

1 Alban Berg: The Making of a Classic Composer

DOI: 10.4324/9781003248965-1

Alban Berg is now recognized as a classic figure in the history of music. His entire oeuvre is performed repeatedly around the world, recorded regularly, studied in well over a thousand books and articles, enjoyed and pondered by the serious musical public everywhere. His music has been influential upon, indeed indispensable to, other major composers. Operas including Zimmermann's Die Soldaten and Rihm's Jakob Lenz could probably not have been written without Wozzeck; the brilliant virtuosity of Boulez's Éclat would be hard to imagine without the Chamber Concerto, the pathos-laden music of George Rochberg without the Orchestral Pieces, the quotation collages of Berio and Kagel without the Violin Concerto, or the provocative eclecticism of Alfred Schnittke without Lulu and Der Wein.

But Berg's vast importance—so obvious in the present day—became generally known only long after the composer's death in 1935. Before the 1960s and 1970s he was widely regarded as a minor figure who left relatively few works which were either imitations of Schoenberg or confused by allegiances to both the romantic and modern periods. His teacher, Arnold Schoenberg, although sensitive to Berg's talent, was almost certainly unaware of his student's true importance. Following World War II, as works by Schoenberg and Webern became models for the emerging European and American avant-garde, relatively few observers rated Berg's oeuvre at the same high level as others in the Second Viennese School, finding it more of a romantic atavism than a model for the future.

But gradually Berg's true position in the future of music forced its way out. His ultimate recognition came almost solely from the inherent greatness of the works themselves—their power, exerted independently of fashions and personalities, to grasp and hold the musical imagination. A vivid reflection of this change in perception is contained in the specialized literature that is the main subject of this volume. Writing in 1920 the pianist Eduard Erdmann—one of the first interpreters of Berg's Piano Sonata—could only compare the work to Schoenberg's. Erdmann found its style derived from Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony although lacking in Schoenberg's "sweep of imagination." In 1951 Hans Keller dismissed Wozzeck as an inferior copy of works by Schoenberg. By the 1980s, however, such evaluations had become unthinkable among reputable music critics. More typical of the present day is George Perle's 1982 assessment of Lulu as "one of the supreme masterpieces of its genre in the entire repertory."

Writings about Berg have left a record of discoveries and insights into the man and his music. Before turning to a report on this body of research, a brief sketch of his life and work will help to put his oeuvre into context.

Berg's Life

Albano Maria Johannes Berg was born in central Vienna on 9 February 1885. His father, Conrad Berg (1846-1900), ran a book and art shop. His mother, Johanna (née Braun, 1851-1926), was artistic and cultivated the trait in her children. Berg and his three siblings—Hermann (1872-1921), Karl (called Charley, 1881-1952), and Smaragda (1886-1954)—grew up in a comfortable and artistic family environment. Summers were usually spent in the family's villa, "Berghof," in the mountainous region of Carinthia in southern Austria.

Berg's circumstances took a perilous turn in 1900, when his father died suddenly from a heart attack. The remainder of his adolescence was marked by poor health, financial uncertainty, failures in school, and emotional crises. One of these was prompted by the birth out of wedlock in December 1902 of a daughter, named Albine, whose mother, Marie Scheuchl, was a domestic at the Berghof. Willi Reich has written that feelings of guilt and depression led Berg shortly thereafter to attempt suicide. But despite personal problems, the years from 1900 to 1904 witnessed important musical growth. Berg had developed into a competent pianist, and he had begun to compose songs, which were often performed privately by those in his family.

In 1904 Berg became the private student of Arnold Schoenberg, giving both his artistic and personal life a strict guidance that it had lacked to that time. Berg received lessons from Schoenberg until about 1910, although Schoenberg permanently remained an awesome presence in Berg's life, influencing not only his career and artistic direction but acting as a stern father figure who tended to be censorious. His studies with Schoenberg were methodical and extensive, beginning with harmony, moving to counterpoint (at which Berg was especially gifted), finally turning to free composition.

At about the same time that he began his studies with Schoenberg, Berg also began an apprenticeship as an accountant in the Austrian civil service. In 1905 he took over the management of rental properties that his mother had inherited, allowing him to resign from the civil service. But he was determined to be a professional musician, as his imagination was now fired by modern art and literature and by the new directions in music represented by his teacher, Schoenberg. Berg formed a close friendship with other Schoenberg students, especially with Anton Webern, who enjoyed a much warmer personal relationship with the master than Berg ever was to have.

In 1907 Berg was introduced to an aspiring opera singer, Helene Nahowski, with whom he fell passionately in love. On 3 May 1911, despite the reservations of her father, the two were married and took up residence in Hietzing, a suburb of Vienna. During the period of his tumultuous courtship, he composed his first important works: a Piano Sonata, Op. 1; String Quartet, Op. 3; and songs of far greater originality than his earlier essays in this genre. But he had no success in arranging for performances, outside of appearances on several concerts of Schoenberg's students, nor could he attract significant critical attention to his efforts. One of the concerts arranged by Schoenberg had an especially damaging effect upon his self-confidence. This was sponsored by the Akademischer Verband fü Literatur und Musik in Vienna, on 31 March 1913, when two of his Orchestral Songs, Op. 4, together with works by Webern, Schoenberg, Mahler, and Zemlinsky, were to be heard. In the middle of Berg's selections, the audience erupted in protest against their recondite modernism. The police were summoned, and the remainder of the concert was cancelled, leaving Berg bitterly dejected. Indeed, prior to the mid-1920s Berg seemed unable to emerge from Schoenberg's shadow and establish himself as an original and important voice in modern music.

Like most musicians in Schoenberg's circle, Berg's patriotism at the beginning of World War I was keen. Ready to fight for the Hapsburg Monarchy, he entered the Austrian military service in 1915 and was stationed near the Hungarian border. But his enthusiasm for military life quickly turned to revulsion—later reflected in his opera Wozzeck—and his poor health led to his being restationed at the war ministry in Vienna. Berg was left an antimilitarist, bitterly disillusioned by the society that had produced the war and its devastating aftermath.

Following the war, he was appointed by Schoenberg as a leader and manager of the Society for Private Musical Performances, an idealistic organization for the performance of modern music in Vienna. Although repeatedly interrupted by poor health, Berg worked tirelessly for the Society until its demise in 1921. It brought him a small measure of attention as a composer since his Four Songs, Op. 2; String Quartet, Op. 3; and Clarinet Pieces, Op. 5, were performed in its concerts. But his hopes for a significant career in music seemed no brighter than before, and around 1920, with Schoenberg's encouragement, he considered redirecting his work toward that of a writer about music. In that year he accepted the editorship of the modern music journal Musikblätter des Anbruch and soon began to write a biography of Schoenberg. He backed out of both undertakings in order to devote himself to completing Wozzeck, although the essays that began to appear in 1920 show his skill as a writer and musical analyst.

In 1922 Wozzeck was at last completed and published at Berg's own expense (with assistance from Mahler's widow, Alma). There were no immediate prospects for a performance, although the originality of the work provoked several polemics in the musical press. In 1923 his reputation as a composer began to improve. In April he entered into a contract with the Viennese publisher Universal Edition, which brought out all of his music from that point. His String Quartet was heard in August at the Salzburg Festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music, and the work received praise in several newspapers. Erich Kleiber, the new director of the Berlin Staatsoper, expressed interest in staging Wozzeck in the German capital, a prospect that was advanced by Hermann Scherchen's performance in Frankfurt in June of 1924 of a suite of extracts from the opera. The way was finally cleared for the Berlin premiere of Wozzeck, which occurred on 14 December 1925. Although controversial, the work was a success and established Berg as a major composer in his own right.

Berg now experienced the prerogatives of an internationally celebrated artist, travelling to performances throughout Europe, receiving a monthly stipend from his publisher, and later even purchasing a new automobile. In 1932 he also acquired a villa, the "Waldhaus," near the old Berghof, for use as a summer retreat. Beginning in 1925, Berg adopted Schoenberg's twelve-tone method of composition, but he interpreted the method in a distinctive way and adapted it to music that was far more eclectic in style than Schoenberg's.

In May of 1925 Berg visited the home in Prague of Herbert and Hanna Fuchs-Robettin. Berg's introduction to them came through their mutual friend Alma Mahler, whose husband, Franz Werfel, was Hanna's brother. Although Berg was always filled with respect for and devotion to his wife, he apparently felt at this time the need for a renewal of the intimacy that earlier had inspired his music. This desire led to a powerful infatuation with Hanna. Berg's way of composing had long relied upon hidden symbols to connect his music to his innermost personal life. Numbers, letters formed by note names, and melodic quotations outlined an inner poetic meaning that was often unrelated to, even contradictory of, the outer layer of expression suggested by text, dedication, or external programmatic connotation. Hanna Fuchs now became the muse to all of his remaining compositions, which were laden with secretive references to her and to himself. In a remarkable letter to her dated October 1931, Berg describes his constant yearning for her, saying that he is now forced to act out a false and shallow existence except in his thoughts of her, wherein lies the inspiration for such works as Lulu. The reader is reminded of the letters of 1907-1908 from Bela Bartok to his muse, Stefi Geyer, in which the woman herself seems scarcely to exist apart from a beloved, obsessional ideal that is at the very root of the composer's creativity.

The success of Wozzeck made Berg think almost immediately of composing another opera. He considered various literary works as prospective subjects, settling in 1928 upon Frank Wedekind's Lulu plays (Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora). As in Wozzeck he needed to shorten the source plays to make them suitable as a libretto, but in the new opera his revisions departed so extensively from his literary source as to constitute a distinctive version. Work on the new opera was interrupted by two lucrative commissions—a concert aria (Der Wein) for the soprano Ruzena Herlinger and a violin concerto for the American virtuoso Louis Krasner. The latter work has a funereal character, and it is dedicated to Manon Gropius, daughter of Alma Mahler and Walter Gropius, who died in April 1935 at the age of eighteen. Since Berg's correspondence of 1935 speaks of intimations of his own death, the work may also refer obliquely to his personal feelings of mortality, comparable to Mahler's "Der Abschied" from Das Lied von der Erde and numerous other great last works.

Berg's final years were troubled. With the rise of the Nazis in Germany, there were ever fewer performances of Wozzeck, and the type of music that he composed was then under outright attack throughout the German-speaking world. Schoenberg had fled Europe for America in 1933, and Berg's health was worse then ever. In the summer of 1935 he began to suffer from painful, recurrent abscesses. In November he remarked to friends that he could not live much longer. On 17 December he was hospitalized, whereupon blood poisoning was diagnosed. A series of heart attacks ensued, and the composer died on 24 December 1935 with Helene at his side. The circumstances leading to Berg's death were reported to Schoenberg in detail by several members of their circle. A letter from Erwin Stein, dated 17 January 1936, is especially informative: "Helene said that he [Berg] pushed free of his restraints, reared himself up, spread his arms and said repeatedly, 'Es ist genug!' Poor Helene, to have had to witness this. "This is Lulu's last victim/ she remarked."

Only a few major performances of Berg's music remained in the offing before war again descended upon Europe. The Violin Concerto was premiered in Barcelona, although Webern—scheduled to conduct—was too distracted to do so. Most problematic of all was Lulu, since before his death the composer had not quite finished the scoring of Act 3 nor had time to make general revisions. Schoenberg offered to finish the work, but when he saw the unflattering caricature of the Jewish banker Puntschu in Act 3, he declined. An incomplete version, limited to Acts 1 and 2 plus orchestral selections from Act 3, was first heard in Zurich in 1937.

Following the war, Berg's music gradually returned to center stage in international modern music circles. Wozzeck was performed ever more widely in the 1950s, including stagings at Covent Garden in 1952 and at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1959. Lulu remained an enigma since Helene Berg, who lived until 1976, now refused to have the third act completed, published, or the opera performed as a whole. Only after her death and in spite of stipulations in her will was the entire work performed, with Act 3 completed and the whole opera revised by the Viennese composer Friedrich Cerha. The first complete performance took place in Paris in 1979.

Berg's Music

Berg's music followed the same stylistic evolution as that of his teacher, Schoenberg, although their works are not especially similar in specifics of style or structure. The early pieces by both composers are in the German late-romantic idiom, which Schoenberg used until about 1908 and Berg until about 1910. After this time both composers wrote atonal music (a term they rejected on semantic grounds). Schoenberg concisely defined atonality as a style that "treats dissonances like consonances and renounces a tonal centre." In his radio dialogue "What Is Atonality?" Berg adduced other characteristic features of such music: traditional forms are still encountered, thematic work is central to its expansion, counterpoint is intensified, phrasing is irregular, and rhythm and meter are proselike.

In the early 1920s Schoenberg developed a "twelve-tone" compositional method that allowed him to have systematic control over the harmonic and melodic structure of his otherwise atonal music. Berg adopted aspects of this method beginning with the 1925 song setting of "Schließe mir die Augen beide," although he had already referred to certain elements of Schoenberg's method in the Chamber Concerto (1923-25). Like every other major composer who has written twelve-tone music—Webern, Stravinsky, Krenek, Hauer, Boulez, Copland, and Britten among them—Berg developed his own distinctive interpretation of the method and produced music that was unique in style. As with Schoenberg, Berg used the twelve-tone method in music that had a more traditional tone than had been apparent earlier, conforming to an international movement of the 1920s and 30s in which traditional musical materials, forms, and styles gained favor.

Berg's music can thus be divided into three periods—tonal/romantic, atonal, and twelve-tone. Many characteristics are shared commonly by the music of all three: the presence of reinterpreted classical forms (including sonata-allegro form, variational forms, and ternary or otherwise symmetrical schema), organic unity based on continuous variations upon initial motivic or thematic shapes, eclectic harmonic structures based on triadic, whole-tone, and quartal collections of notes, and ever-present referential or rhetorical gestures including quotations, latent semantic symbols, or programmatic narratives.

Music of the first of these three periods is mainly devoted to the genre of song, as exemplified by the Seven Early Songs; Four Songs, Op. 2; and numerous early songs published posthumously. Under Schoenberg's tutelage, instrumental composition was also undertaken, resulting in the Piano Sonata, Op. 1, among other works. In all of these pieces, elements of the late-romantic German idiom are plain: an enriched harmonic vocabulary in which whole-tone formations are especially characteristic, an attenuated sense of key, dense and contrapuntal textures, hyperemotive expressivity, irregular phrasing and proselike rhythm, and extensive motivic development. Berg often chose poetry by late nineteenth-century German writers that shared an overstated, emotive tone with the music, and he was especially fond of poetry that referred to sleep and dreams. The lyric element in these songs is often suppressed in favor of a declamatory vocal line, and ternary forms are most typical.

In his second or atonal period (1910-23) Berg's music is more equally divided between vocal and instrumental genres. His works are also more eclectic than those in the earlier style, as he experimented with a succession of different idioms: In the Four Pieces for clarinet and piano, Op. 5, he tried his hand at the "aphoristic" manner of his friend Webern, in which a piece was radically abbreviated and concentrated. The Orchestral Pieces, Op. 6, make overt references to the symphonic style of Mahler, despite the absence of traditional tonal plans. The String Quartet, Op. 3, is Schoenbergian in its complex linearity, pervasively dissonant harmonies, and far-reaching motivic work.

The opera Wozzeck is the masterpiece of this period, and it is a work in which Berg asserts his own artistic and expressive vision. Although highly original, the overall dramaturgical conception is indebted to Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande in its succession of dramatic tableaux connected by orchestral interludes and in its direct adoption of a preexistent spoken play as a libretto. The background of Wagnerian musical rhetoric is also evident in the use of an elaborate leitmotivic apparatus. The music is again eclectic, mixing elements of tonality, atonality, ultrachromaticism, lyricism, declamation, strict and free forms. In his own statements about the opera Berg chose to emphasize its traditional elements, especially the presence in the various scenes and interludes of forms...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Original Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents Page
• Series Editor's Foreword Page
• Preface Page
• Abbreviations Page
• Chapter 1. Alban Berg: The Making of a Classic Composer
• Chapter 2. Music by Berg
• Chapter 3. Berg's Published Writings, Interviews, Lectures, and Libretti
• Chapter 4. Writings on Wozzeck
• Chapter 5. Writings on Lulu
• Chapter 6. Writings on Berg's Chamber Music
• Chapter 7. Writings on Berg's Orchestral Music
• Chapter 8. Writings on Berg's Songs
• Chapter 9. Other Writings on Berg's Life and Works
• Index
• About the Author