Alban Berg

(b Vienna, 9 Feb 1885; d there, 24 Dec 1935). Austrian composer. He wrote songs as a youth but had no serious musical education before his lessons with Schoenberg, which began in 1904. Webern was a pupil at the same time, a crucial period in Schoenberg's creative life, when he was moving rapidly towards and into atonality. Berg's Piano Sonata op.1 (1908) is still tonal, but the Four Songs op.2 (1910) move away from key and the op.3 String Quartet (1910) is wholly atonal; it is also remarkable in sustaining, through motivic development, a larger span when the instrumental works of Schoenberg and Webern were comparatively momentary. Berg dedicated it to his wife Helene, whom he married in 1911.

Then came the Five Songs for soprano op.4 (1912), miniatures setting poetic instants by Peter Altenberg. This was Berg's first orchestral score, and though it shows an awareness of Schoenberg, Mahler and Debussy, it is brilliantly conceived and points towards Wozzeck - and towards 12-note serialism, notably in its final passacaglia. More immediately Berg produced another set of compact statements, the Four Pieces for clarinet and piano op.5 (1913), then returned to large form with the Three Orchestral Pieces op.6 (1915), a thematically linked sequence of prelude, dance movement and funeral march. The prelude begins and ends in the quiet noise of percussion; the other two movements show Berg's discovery of how traditional forms and stylistic elements (including tonal harmony) might support big structures.

In May 1914 Berg saw the Vienna première of Büchner's Woyzeck and formed the plan of setting it. He started the opera in 1917, while he was in the Austrian army (1915-18), and finished it in 1922. He made his own selection from the play's fragmentary scenes to furnish a three-act libretto for formal musical setting: the first act is a suite of five character pieces (five scenes showing the simple soldier Wozzeck in different relationships), the second a five-movement symphony (for the disintegration of his liaison with Marie), the third a set of five inventions on different ostinato ideas (for the tragedy's brutally nihilist climax). The close musical structuring, extending to small details of timing, may be seen as an analogue for the mechanical alienness of the universe around Büchner's central characters, though Berg's music crosses all boundaries, from atonal to tonal (there is a Mahlerian interlude in D minor), from speech to song, from café music to sophisticated textures of dissonant counterpoint. Wozzeck had its première in Berlin in 1925 and thereafter was widely produced, bringing Berg financial security.

His next work, the Chamber Concerto for violin, piano and 13 wind (1925), moves decisively towards a more classical style: its three formally complex movements are still more clearly shaped than those of the op.6 set and the scoring suggests a response to Stravinskian objectivity. The work is also threaded through with ciphers and numerical conceits, making it a celebration of the triune partnership of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern. Then came the Lyric Suite for string quartet (1926), whose long-secret programme connects it with Berg's intimate feelings for Hanna Fuchs-Robettin - feelings also important to him in the composition of his second opera, Lulu (1929-35). The suite, in six movements of increasingly extreme tempo, uses 12-note serial along with other material in projecting a quasi-operatic development towards catastrophe and annulment.

The development of Lulu was twice interrupted by commissioned works, the concert aria Der Wein on poems by Baudelaire (1929) and the Violin Concerto (1935), and it remained unfinished at Berg's death: his widow placed an embargo on the incomplete third act, which could not be published or performed until 1979. As with Wozzeck, he made his own libretto out of stage material, this time choosing two plays by Wedekind, whom he had long admired for his treatment of sexuality. Dramatically and musically the opera is a huge palindrome, showing Lulu's rise through society in her successive relationships and then her descent into prostitution and eventual death at the hands of Jack the Ripper. Again the score is filled with elaborate formal schemes, around a lyricism unloosed by Berg's individual understanding of 12-note serialism. Something of its threnodic sensuality is continued in the Violin Concerto, designed as a memorial to the teenage daughter of Mahler's widow.

works:
Operas

• Wozzeck (1925)
• Lulu (1935)

Orchestral music

• 5 Altenberg Songs, op.4 (1912)
• 3 Pieces, op.6 (1915)
• Chamber Conc. (1925)
• 7 Early Songs (1928)
• 3 Pieces from the Lyric Suite (1928)
• Der Wein, aria (1929)
• Vn Conc. (1935)

Chamber music

• Pf Sonata, op.1 (1908)
• Str Qt, op.3 (1910)
• 4 Pieces, cl, pf, op.5 (1913)
• Adagio, cl vn, pf
• Lyric Suite, str qt (1925)

Songs

• 4 op.2 (1910)
• many early songs

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The Austrian composer Alban Berg (1885-1935) adopted the revolutionary twelve-tone method, but he frequently combined it with tonality.

Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, and Anton Webern have often been called the second Viennese school. (The first Viennese school included those classical composers of the 18th century who wrote many of their important works in Vienna; Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven are the most outstanding representatives.) Schoenberg, the great innovator, first transcended the limitations of traditional tonality and then organized his new sounds according to the twelve-tone method.

Schoenberg's principal European disciples, Berg and Webern, followed his ideas but developed them in quite different directions. Webern pushed many of Schoenberg's innovative concepts as far as was possible in the 1940s. In fact, Schoenberg even said on one occasion, "Webern always exaggerated!" But Berg always seemed to be linking Schoenbergian techniques with those of earlier music: sometimes he used baroque or classical forms (sonata, rondo, passacaglia, fugue); at other times he quoted older compositions within the framework of the twelve-tone method (Wagner's Tristan prelude, Bach's chorale Es ist genug, a Carinthian folksong). Such links with the familiar aided in winning acceptance for Berg's music and in preparing the ear to accept even more complex contemporary styles.

Berg was born on Feb. 9, 1885, in Vienna. His father was an export salesman; his mother the daughter of a court jeweler. At the age of 14 Berg began to develop an intense interest in music, and the following year he composed his first songs. He neglected his school studies and failed in his matriculation examinations. Sinking into a profound depression, which was intensified by an unhappy love affair, he attempted suicide in the fall of 1903. He overcame this spiritual crisis, and after his graduation in 1904 he took the job of unpaid accountant in a government office.

A decisive change in Berg's life soon took place. His brother, who had read one of Schoenberg's newspaper advertisements as teacher of theory and composition, secretly took some of Alban's songs to Schoenberg. Impressed with the talent they revealed, Schoenberg invited Berg to become his pupil, at first without fee, later at modest cost. Compositions written during the period of study with Schoenberg include the Seven Early Songs (1905-1907), the Piano Sonata, Op. 1 (1908), the Four Songs, Op. 2 (1908-1909), and the String Quartet, Op. 3 (completed in 1910). Berg married Helene Nahowska in 1911. The World War I years were difficult for Berg. At first enthusiastic about his military service, he soon suffered a physical breakdown caused largely by asthma, which had tormented him for years. He was transferred to office work in the Ministry of War and remained there until the war's end.

The Opera Wozzeck

Berg completed his first opera, Wozzeck, in 1921. He arranged his own libretto from a play by Georg Büchner. There are three acts of five scenes each. In Act I the protagonist is shown in his relation to the world around him; in Act II the drama develops; in Act III the catastrophe occurs, followed by an epilogue. Each act consists of a series of strict musical forms. The first act is composed of five character pieces; the second is a five movement symphony; and the third is made up of six "inventions" (the extra section being an elaborate orchestral interlude between the fourth and fifth scenes).

However, Berg did not want these forms to be obvious to the listener. He stated, "From the moment when the curtain rises until it descends for the last time there must not be anyone in the audience who notices anything of these various fugues and inventions, suite movements and sonata movements, variations and passacaglias. Nobody must be filled with anything else except the idea of the opera - which goes far beyond the fate of Wozzeck. And that - so I believe - I have achieved!" The continuing success of Wozzeck since its premiere in Berlin in 1925 proved that Berg was right.

Later Works

In the last 10 years of his life Berg turned to the twelvetone method. Works employing this method include the Chamber Concerto for violin, piano, and wind instruments (1923-1925); the Lyric Suite for string quartet (1925-1926); Der Wein, a concert aria for soprano and orchestra (1929; text by Baudelaire in the German translation of Stefan George); Lulu, a three-act opera (1928-1935; text by Frank Wedekind, last act unfinished); and the Violin Concerto (1935). In these compositions the twelve-tone method is treated in a free and personal manner. The Chamber Concerto is preceded by a musical motto including the letters of Schoenberg's, Berg's, and Webern's full names, insofar as these can be translated into musical notation. In the Lyric Suite strict twelve-tone movements alternate with those in which the tonal material is more freely treated. The Violin Concerto has a tone row made up almost entirely of triads, a procedure that most twelve-tone composers avoided.

Early in 1935 the American violinist Louis Krasner commissioned Berg to write a violin concerto. While he was thinking about the form the work should take, a tragedy occurred in his intimate circle: the death of Manon Gropius, the 19-year-old daughter of Alma Mahler. Berg quickly composed the concerto as a tribute to her memory. It was completed on Aug. 11, 1935. Ironically, it became his farewell to life. An insect bite led to general blood poisoning. On Dec. 24, 1935, he died, his thoughts preoccupied to the last with his unfinished opera Lulu.

Further Reading

Two good biographies of Berg are H. F. Redlich, Alban Berg: The Man and His Music (1957), and Willi Reich, The Life and Work of Alban Berg (1963; trans. 1965). Both contain important selections from Berg's writings. René Leibowitz, Schoenberg and His School (1947; trans. 1949; repr. 1970), has a section on Berg. Leibowitz is not always accurate in details, but he communicates his appreciation for Schoenberg and his followers.

Additional Sources

Carner, Mosco., Alban Berg: the man and the work, London: Duckworth, 1975; New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1977, 1975, 1983.

Monson, Karen., Alban Berg, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1979.

Neighbour, O. W. (Oliver Wray), The New Grove Second Viennese School: Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, New York: Norton, 1983.

Reich, Willi, The life and work of Alban Berg, New York: DaCapo Press, 1981.

Simms, Bryan R., Alban Berg: a guide to research, New York: Garland Pub., 1996.

For more information on Alban Maria Johannes Berg, visit Britannica.com.

Berg, Alban (b Vienna, 9 Feb. 1885, d Vienna, 24 Dec. 1935). Austrian composer. Although he wrote no ballet music, his concert works have been used by choreographers, including Béjart (Suite viennoise, 1961), Tetley (Threshold, 1972), and William Tuckett (Enclosure, 1990).

Berg, Alban (Vienna, 1885-1935, Vienna), an Austrian composer who was a pupil of Arnold Schönberg and an exponent of musical Expressionism. Berg's principal work is the opera Wozzeck, which is based on the dramatic fragment Woyzeck by G. Büchner. The opera consists of three acts (comprising 15 scenes) which are joined by symphonic interludes. Its first performance was on 14 December 1925 in Berlin. For a long time it was thought that Berg died before completing more than two acts of his equally well-known opera Lulu, which is based on F. Wedekind's ‘Lulu’ plays, Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora. The two acts were first performed in Zurich in 1937 and at international houses throughout the following 40 years until after the death of Berg's widow, when the third act completing the opera was released. In Der Wein (1929) Berg set poems of Baudelaire in translations by Stefan George. His other contributions to the Lied (c.70, with duets) include poems by Storm, Hebbel, Mombert, and 5 orchestral songs based on texts written for postcards by P. Altenberg.

The fascination of Berg's style lies in the imaginative skill with which he combines new techniques with his rich Viennese heritage; in this sense he has been called the ‘Klassiker der modernen Musik’. His outstanding contribution to the modern opera has remained his most widely recognized achievement.

• Period: Modern (1910-1949)
• Country: Austria
• Born: February 09, 1885 in Vienna, Austria
• Died: December 24, 1935 in Vienna, Austria
• Genres: Chamber Music, Concerto, Keyboard Music, Miscellaneous Music, Opera, Orchestral Music, Vocal Music

Biography

Alban Maria Johannes Berg is one of the central figures of twentieth century musical composition. As one of the triumvirate of the Second Viennese School, Berg produced a rather small body of work that is nonetheless distinguished by a strongly Romantic aesthetic and a distinctive dramatic sense.

Berg's father was an export salesman, his mother the daughter of the Austrian Imperial jeweler. The young Alban's musical training consisted mainly of piano lessons from his aunt. By his teenage years, however, he had composed dozens of songs without the benefit of formal compositional studies. Berg was a dreamy youth and an indifferent student. In 1903, he endured the end of a passionate (if adolescent) love affair, failed his school finishing exams, and became despondent over the death of his idol, composer Hugo Wolf, all of which led to a suicide attempt. However, he survived to repeat his final year of school and went to work as an apprentice accountant. In 1904 Berg's brother, Charley, took Alban's compositions to Arnold Schoenberg, who accepted Berg as a student. In 1907 Berg met the singer Helene Nahowski, overcame her parents' objections over his poor health (he had severe asthma) and lack of prospects, and married her in 1911.

The composer was drafted into the Austrian army in 1915, served for eleven months, and was discharged for poor health. The army experience led him to revisit Woyzeck Georg Büchner's tragedy about a horribly brutalized private. In 1917, Berg began an operatic adaptation of the play, which occupied him for the next five years. When the Austro-Hungarian empire collapsed in the wake of World War I, Berg found work as business manager of Schoenberg's Society for Private Musical Performances, an organization which allowed Vienna's musical avant-garde to enjoy professionally prepared performances before friendly, critic-free audiences.

After a number of interruptions related to personal and familial affairs, Berg completed Wozzeck in 1922. Though initially savaged by critics, the opera eventually gained momentum, enjoying performances throughout Europe and recognition as a masterpiece. Berg's next major work, the Chamber Concerto (1923-1925) was among his first to demonstrate the influence of Schoenberg's twelve-tone method, though the work does not make rigorous, consistent use of twelve-tone practices. In 1925 and 1926, Berg wrote the Lyric Suite for string quartet, parts of which systematically employ twelve-tone principles. The Lyric Suite remains one of the composer's most often performed works; George Gershwin, it is said, had a particular admiration for this music. Years after Berg's death, scholars confirmed that the composer had originally included a sung text in the last movement, a tribute to his "secret" lover, Hanna Fuchs-Robertin. The Suite is now sometimes performed with this restored text.

The last of Berg's works are among his most important. The Violin Concerto (1935) is dedicated "to the Memory of an Angel," a reference to the daughter of Alma Mahler (a close ally) and Walter Gropius, Manon, who had died at the age of 19. The work is particularly striking in its lyrical expressiveness and for the incorporation of tonal elements into its 12-tone idiom. At the time of his death from blood poisoning in 1935, Berg was in the middle of work on his opera Lulu, a sexual horror story, which he had begun in 1929. The opera's unfinished third act was completed by Friedrich Cerha in 1976, after 12 years of work. ~ AMG, All Music Guide

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