Profile of Alban Berg on Famous Like Me

Alban Maria Johannes Berg (February 9, 1885 – December 24, 1935) was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School along with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, producing works that combined Mahlerian romanticism with a highly personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.

Life and work

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

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. He had very little formal music eduction until he began a six-year period of study with Arnold Schoenberg in October 1904 to 1911, studying counterpoint, music theory, and harmony; by 1906 he concentrated on his music studies full-time, and by 1907 he began composition lessons. Among his compositions under Schoenberg were five piano sonata drafts and various songs, including his Seven Early Songs (Sieben frühe Lieder), three of which were Berg's first publicly performed work in a concert featuring the music of Schoenberg's pupils in Vienna that same year.

These early compositions would reveal Berg's progress as a composer under Schoenberg's tutelage. The early sonata sketches eventually culminated in Berg's Piano Sonata Op.1 (1907–8); while considered to be his "graduating composition", is one of the most formidable Op. 1 ever written by any composer. (See Lauder.) Schoenberg was a major influence on him throughout his lifetime; Berg not only greatly admired him as a composer and mentor, but they remained close friends for the remainder of his life. Many people believe that Berg also saw him as a surrogate father, considering Berg's young age during his father's death.

An important idea of Schoenberg is his teaching was what would later be known as developing variation, which stated that the unity of a piece is dependent on all aspects of the composition being derived from a single basic idea. Berg would then pass this idea down to one of his students, Theodor Adorno, who stated: "The main principle he conveyed was that of variation: everything was supposed to develop out of something else and yet be intrinsically different." The Sonata is a striking example of the execution of this idea — the whole composition can be derived from the opening quartal gesture and from the opening phrase.

Berg was a part of Vienna's cultural elite during the heady period of fin de siècle. Among his circle included the musicians Alexander von Zemlinsky and Franz Schreker, painter Gustav Klimt, writer and satirist Karl Kraus, architect Adolf Loos, and poet Peter Altenberg. In 1906, Berg met Helene Nahowski, singer and daughter of a wealthy family, and despite the outward hostility of her family, married on May 3, 1911.

In 1913, Berg's Five songs on picture postcard texts by Peter Altenberg were premiered in Vienna. The piece caused a riot, and the performance had to be halted: a complete performance of the work was not given until 1952.

From 1915 to 1918, he served in the Austrian Army and it was during a period of leave in 1917 that he began work on his first opera, Wozzeck. Following World War I, he settled again in Vienna where he taught private pupils. He also helped Schoenberg run the Society for Private Musical Performances, which sought to create an ideal environment for the exploration of unappreciated and unfamiliar new music by means of open rehearsals, repeated performances, and the exclusion of all newspaper critics.

The performance in 1924 of three excerpts from Wozzeck brought him his first public success. The opera, which Berg completed in 1922, was not performed in its entireity until December 14, 1925, when Erich Kleiber directed a performance in Berlin. The opera is today seen as one of his most important works; a later opera, also critically acclaimed, Lulu, was left incomplete at his death.

Berg's best-known piece is probably his elegiac Violin Concerto. Like so much of his mature work, it employs a highly personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve tone technique that enables it to combine frank atonality with more traditionally tonal passages and harmonies; additionally, it uses actual quotations of pre-existing tonal music, including a Bach chorale and a Carinthian folk song. Other well known Berg compositions include the Lyric Suite (seemingly a big influence on the String Quartet No. 3 of Béla Bartók), Three Pieces for Orchestra, and the Chamber Concerto for violin, piano and 13 wind instruments.

Berg died on Christmas Eve, 1935, in Vienna, apparently from blood poisoning caused by an insect bite. He was 50 years old.

Compositions

• List of compositions by Alban Berg
• Wozzeck
• Lulu
• Lyric Suite
• Seven Early Songs
• Violin Concerto

Bibliography

Analytical writings

• Adorno, Theodor W. Alban Berg: Master of the Smallest Link. Trans. Juliane Brand and Christopher Hailey. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
• 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, pgg. 79-110. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
• Lauder, Robert Neil. Two Early Piano Works of Alban Berg: A Stylistic and Structural Analysis. Thesis. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1986.
• Bruhn, Siglind, ed. Encrypted Messages in Alban Berg’s Music. New York: Garland Publishing, 1998.
• 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.
• Perle, George. The operas of Alban Berg. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.
• 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, Dougas. The Music of Alban Berg. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.
• 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).

Biographical writings

• Brand, Juliane, Christopher Hailey and Donald Harris, eds. The Berg-Schoenberg Correspondence: Selected Letters. New York: Norton, 1987.
• Grun, Bernard, ed. Alban Berg: Letters to his Wife. London: Faber and Faber, 1971.
• Redlich, H.F. 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.
• Monson, Karen. Alban Berg: a biography. London: Macdonald and Jane's, 1979.
• Carner, Mosco. Alban Berg: the man and the work. London: Duckworth, 1975.
• Redlich, Hans Ferdinand. Alban Berg, the man and his music. London: J. Calder, 1957.
• Leibowitz, René. Schoenberg and his school; the contemporary stage of the language of music. Trans. Dika Newlin. New York: Philosophical Library, 1949.

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