Berg, Alban (Maria Johannes), greatly significant Austrian composer whose music combined classical clarity of design and highly original melodic and harmonic techniques that became historically associated with the Second Viennese School; b. Vienna, Feb. 9, 1885; d. there, Dec. 24, 1935. He played piano as a boy and composed songs without formal training. He worked as a clerk in a government office in Lower Austria; in 1904 he met Schoenberg, who became his teacher, mentor, and close friend; he remained Schoen-berg’s pupil for six years. A fellow classmate was Webern; together they initiated the radical movement known to history as the New or Second Viennese School of composition. In Nov. 1918 Schoenberg organized in Vienna the Soc. for Private Musical Performances (Verein für Musikalische Privatauffuhrungen) with the purpose of performing works unacceptable to established musical society. So as to emphasize the independence of the new organization, music critics were excluded from attendance. The society was disbanded in 1922, having accomplished its purpose. In 1925 Berg joined the membership of the newly created ISCM, which continued in an open arena the promotion of fresh musical ideas.
Berg’s early works reflected the Romantic style of Wagner, Wolf, and Mahler; typical of this period were his Three Pieces for Orch. (1913–15). As early as 1917 Berg began work on his opera Wozzeck (after the romantic play by Büchner), which was to become his masterpiece. The score represents an ingenious synthesis of Classical forms and modern techniques; it is organized as a series of purely symphonic sections in traditional Baroque forms, among them a passacaglia with 21 variations, a dance suite, and a rhapsody, all cast in a setting marked by dissonant counterpoint. Its first production at the Berlin State Opera on Dec. 14, 1925, precipitated a storm of protests and press reviews of extreme violence; a similarly critical reception was accorded to Wozzeck in Prague on Nov. 11, 1926. Undismayed, Berg and his friends responded by publishing a brochure incorporating the most vehement of these reviews so as to shame and denounce the critics. Stokowski, ever eager to defy convention, gave the first U.S. performance of Wozzeck in Philadelphia on March 19, 1931; it aroused a great deal of interest and was received with cultured equanimity. Thereafter, performances of Wozzeck multiplied in Europe, and in due time the opera became recognized as a modern masterpiece. Shortly after the completion of Wozzeck , Berg wrote a Lyric Suite for String Quartet in six movements; it was first played in Vienna by the Kolisch Quartet on Jan. 8, 1927; in 1928 Berg arranged the second, third, and fourth movements for String Orch., which were performed in Berlin on Jan. 31, 1929. Rumors of a suppressed vocal part for the sixth movement of the suite, bespeaking Berg’s secret affection for a married woman, Hanna Fuchs- Robettin, impelled Douglas M. Greene to institute a search for the original score; he discovered it in 1976 and, with the help of George Perle, decoded the vocal line in an annotated copy of the score that Berg’s widow, understandably reluctant to perpetuate her husband’s emotional aberrations, turned over to a Vienna library. The text proved to be Stefan Georg’s rendition of Baudelaire’s De Pro-fundis clamavi from Les Fleurs du mal . Indeed, Berg inserted in the score all kinds of semiotical and numero-logical clues to his affection in a sort of symbolical synthesis. The Lyric Suite with its vocal finale was performed for the first time at Abraham Goodman House, N.Y., by the Columbia String Quartet and Katherine Ciesinski, mezzo-soprano, on Nov. 1, 1979.
Berg’s second opera, Lulu (1928–35), to a libretto derived from two plays by Wedekind, was left unfinished at the time of his death; two acts and music from the Symphonische Stücke aus der Oper Lulu of 1934 were performed posthumously in Zürich on June 2, 1937. Again, Berg’s widow intervened to forestall any attempt to have the work reconstituted by another musician. However, Berg’s publishers, asserting their legal rights, commissioned Friedrich Cerha to re-create the third act from materials available in other authentic sources, or used by Berg elsewhere; the task required 12 years (1962–74) for its completion. After Berg’s widow died in 1976, several opera houses openly competed for the Cerha version of the work; the premiere of the complete opera, incorporating this version, was first presented at the Paris Opéra on Feb. 24, 1979; the first U.S. performance followed in Santa Fe, N.Mex., on July 28, 1979. As in Wozzeck , so in Lulu , Berg organized the score in a series of classical forms; but while Wozzeck was written before Schoenberg’s formulation of the method of composition in 12 tones related solely to one another, Luluwas set in full-fledged dodecaphonic techniques; even so, Berg allowed himself frequent divagations, contrary to the dodecaphonic code, into triadic tonal harmonies.
Berg’s last completed work was a Violin Concerto commissioned by Louis Krasner, who gave its first performance at the Festival of the ISCM in Barcelona on April 19, 1936. The score bears the inscription “Dem Andenken eines Engels,” the angel being the daughter of Alma Mahler and Walter Gropius who died at an early age. The work is couched in the 12-tone technique, with free and frequent interludes of passing tonality.
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