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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] Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early life1.2 Education1.3 Innovation1.4 Success of Wozzeck and inception of Lulu 1925-291.5 Final years 1930-351.6 Aftermath 2 Legacy3 Major compositions 3.1 Piano3.2 Chamber3.3 Orchestral3.4 Vocal3.5 Operas 4 References5 Bibliography 5.1 Analytical writings 5.1.1 Douglas Jarman5.1.2 Other 5.2 Biographical writings 6 External links 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[original research?] 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][verification needed] 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,[weasel words] 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] The asteroid 4528 Berg is named after him. Major compositions See also: List of compositions by Alban Berg Piano Piano Sonata, Op. 1 Chamber String Quartet, Op. 3Four Pieces for Clarinet and Piano, Op. 5Lyric SuiteChamber Concerto (1925) for piano, violin and 13 wind instruments Orchestral Three Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6Violin Concerto Vocal Seven Early SongsFour Songs, Op. 2Five Orchestral Songs on Postcard Texts of Peter Altenberg, Op. 4Der WeinSchliesse mir die Augen beide Operas Wozzeck, Op. 7 (1925)Lulu (1937) Wozzeck (German pronunciation: [ˈvɔtsɛk]) is the first opera by the Austrian composer Alban Berg. A typical performance of the work takes slightly over an hour and a half. It was composed between 1914 and 1922 and first performed in 1925. The opera is based on the drama Woyzeck, which was left incomplete by the German playwright Georg Büchner at his death. Berg attended the first production in Vienna of Büchner's play on 5 May 1914, and knew at once that he wanted to base an opera on it. From the fragments of unordered scenes left by Büchner, Berg selected fifteen to form a compact structure of three acts with five scenes each. He adapted the libretto himself, retaining "the essential character of the play, with its many short scenes, its abrupt and sometimes brutal language, and its stark, if haunted, realism..."[1] The plot depicts the everyday life of soldiers and the townspeople of a rural German-speaking town. Prominent themes of militarism, callousness, social exploitation, and a casual sadism are brutally and uncompromisingly presented. Toward the end Act 1, Scene 2, the title character (Wozzeck) murmurs, "Still, All is still, as if the world died.", with his fellow soldier Andres uttering, "Night! We must get back!", seemingly oblivious to Wozzeck's previous words. The dialogue is concluded and a funeral march begins, only to transform into the upbeat song of the military marching band in the next scene. Musicologist Glenn Watkins considers this, "as vivid a projection of impending world doom as any to come out of the Great War ... " [2][3] Contents 1 Composition history2 Performance history3 Musical style and structure 3.1 Leitmotifs3.2 Classic forms 4 Roles5 Synopsis 5.1 Act 15.2 Act 25.3 Act 3 6 Instrumentation 6.1 Pit orchestra6.2 Special groups 7 Different versions and others with the same title8 Influences9 Recordings10 References11 External links Composition history Though Berg began work on the opera in 1914, he was delayed by the start of World War I and it was not until he was on leave from his regiment in 1917 and 1918 that he was able to devote time to finishing it. Berg's experience of the war had a pronounced impact on the compositional direction of Wozzeck, in a letter to his wife written in June 1918, he wrote, "There is a little bit of me in his character, since I have been spending these war years just as dependent on people I hate, have been in chains, sick, captive, resigned, in fact,humiliated." [3] His correspondence and notebooks dating from the war years reveal a painful obsession with completing Wozzeck. Compositional sketches and notes for both Wozzeck and the 'Marsch' of Three Pieces for Orchestra that Berg made during the war are strewn with disjointed fragments of military ordinances and terminology. In a draft page of the Act 1, Scene 2 libretto, Berg included notations in the dialogue that refer to Austrian army bugle calls. These military signals were later inserted into the score in a modified slightly atonal form, but still likely recognizable to Austrian audiences of the period. The scene of snoring soldiers in the barracks during Act 2, Scene 5 was influenced by Berg's similar such experience: " ... this polyphonic breathing, gasping, and groaning is the most peculiar chorus I've ever heard. It is like some primeval music that wells up from the abysses of the soul ... "[4] In 1916 however, he devoted himself to attaining the rank of Einjährig-Freiwillige Korporal (Corporal), which he did later that year. During this period, as Berg wrote to his wife, "For months I haven't done any work on Wozzeck. Everything suffocated. Buried!" [2] Finishing Act 1 by the summer of 1919, Act 2 in August 1921, and the final act during the following two months[1] (with orchestration finalized over the following six months), Berg completed Wozzeck in April 1922. For the climactic section, Berg used one of his old student pieces in D minor.[5] Performance history Erich Kleiber, "who programmed (the opera) on his own initiative",[1] conducted the world premiere at the Berlin State Opera on 14 December 1925. Walsh claims that it was "a succès de scandale with disturbances during the performance and a mixed press afterwards, but it led to a stream of productions in Germany and Austria, before the Nazis consigned it to the dustbin of 'decadent art' after 1933".[1] Initially, Wozzeck established a solid place for itself in the mainstream operatic tradition and quickly became so well-established in the repertoire of the major European opera houses that Berg found himself able to live a comfortable life off the royalties. He spent a good deal of his time through the 1920s and 30s traveling to attend performances and to give talks about the opera. The American premiere of the opera was given by the Philadelphia Grand Opera Company on 19 March 1931[1] at the Philadelphia Metropolitan Opera House with Leopold Stokowski conducting. Arnold Schoenberg's former pupil, the conductor and BBC programme planner Edward Clark, produced a broadcast of fragments of the work in a studio concert on 13 May 1932, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sir Henry Wood.[6] On 14 March 1934 in the Queen's Hall, Adrian Boult conducted a complete concert performance of Wozzeck, again produced by Edward Clark.[7][8] The opera was given its first British staged performance at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden on 22 January 1952.[1] Musical style and structure Wozzeck is generally regarded as the first opera produced in the 20th century avant garde style and is also one of the most famous examples of employing atonality (music that avoids establishing a key) and Sprechgesang. Berg was following in the footsteps of his teacher, Arnold Schoenberg, by using free atonality to express emotions and even the thought processes of the characters on the stage. The expression of madness and alienation was amplified with atonal music. Though the music is atonal in the sense that it does not follow the techniques of the major/minor tonality system dominant in the West during the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods, the piece is written with other methods for controlling pitch to direct the harmonic flow. The tritone B-F, for example, represents Wozzeck and Marie, permanently in a struggle with one another. The combination of B♭ and D♭ (a minor third) represents the link between Marie and the child. In this way, the opera continually returns to certain pitches to mark out key moments in the plot. This is not the same as a key center, but over time the repetition of these pitches establishes continuity and structure. Leitmotifs Berg uses a variety of musical techniques to create unity and coherence in the opera. The first is the use of leitmotifs. As with most composers who have used this method, each leitmotif is used in a much more subtle manner than being directly attached to a character or object. Even so, motifs for the Captain, the Doctor and the Drum Major are very prominent. Wozzeck is clearly associated with two motifs, one often heard as he rushes on or off stage, the other more languidly expressing his misery and helplessness in the face of the pressures he experiences. Marie is accompanied by motifs that express her sensuality, as when she accepts a pair of earrings from the Drum major (an act that indicates that her submission to the 'rape' at the end of act 1 was not so reluctant). A motif that is not explicitly linked with a physical object would be the pair of chords that are used to close each of the three acts, used in an oscillating repetition until they almost blur into one another. The most significant motif is first heard sung by Wozzeck himself (in the first scene with the Captain), to the words 'Wir arme Leut' (poor folk like us). Tracing out a minor chord with added major seventh, it is frequently heard as the signal of the inability of the opera's characters to transcend their situation. 0:00 Beyond this, Berg also reuses motifs from set pieces heard earlier in the opera to give us an insight into the character's thoughts. The reappearance of military band music, as in the last scene of Act I, for example, informs the audience that Marie is musing on the Drum major's physical desirability. An almost imperceptible leitmotif is the single pitch B, symbolizing the murder. It is first heard pp at the very end of Act 2, after Wozzeck's humiliation, after his words Einer nach dem andern... (one at a time), and grows more and more insistent during the murder scene, with Maries last cry for help a two-octave jump from B5 to B3, until after the murder, when the whole orchestra explodes through a prolonged crescendo on this single pitch, first in unison on B3, then spread across the whole range of the orchestra in octaves. Classic forms Berg decided against the use of the classic operatic forms such as aria or trio for this opera. Instead, each scene is given its own inner coherence by the use of forms more normally associated with abstract instrumental music. The second scene of Act II (during which the Doctor and Captain taunt Wozzeck about Marie’s infidelity), for instance, consists of a prelude and triple fugue. The fourth scene of Act I, focusing on Wozzeck and the Doctor, is a set of passacaglia variations. The various scenes of the third act move beyond these structures and adopt novel strategies. Each scene is a set of variations, but where the term ‘variation’ normally indicates that there is a melody undergoing variation, Berg identifies different musical elements for ‘variation’. Thus, scene two is a variation on a single note, B♮, which is heard continuously in the scene, and the only note heard in the powerful orchestral crescendos at the end of act two, scene two. Scene three is a variation on a rhythmic pattern, with every major thematic element constructed around this pattern. Scene four is a variation on a chord, used exclusively for the whole scene. The following orchestral interlude is a freely composed passage that is firmly grounded in the key of D minor. Finally, the last scene is a moto perpetuum, a 'variation on a single rhythm' (the quaver). The table below summarizes the dramatic action and forms as prepared by Fritz Mahler.[9] Drama Music Expositions Act I Five character pieces Wozzeck and the Captain Scene 1 Suite Wozzeck and Andres Scene 2 Rhapsody Wozzeck and Marie Scene 3 Military March and Lullaby Wozzeck and the Doctor Scene 4 Passacaglia Wozzeck and the Drum Major Scene 5 Andante affettuoso (quasi Rondo) Dramatic development Act II Symphony in five movements Marie and her child, later Wozzeck Scene 1 Sonata movement The Captain and the Doctor, later Wozzeck Scene 2 Fantasia and fugue Marie and Wozzeck Scene 3 Largo Garden of a tavern Scene 4 Scherzo Garden room in the barracks Scene 5 Rondo con introduzione Catastrophe and epilogue Act III Six inventions Marie and her child Scene 1 Invention on a theme Marie and Wozzeck Scene 2 Invention on a note (B♮) Tavern Scene 3 Invention on a rhythm Death of Wozzeck Scene 4 Invention on a hexachord Interlude Invention on a key (D minor) Children playing Scene 5 Invention on a regular quaver movement Roles Role Voice type Premiere cast, 14 December 1925 (Conductor: Erich Kleiber) Wozzeck baritone Leo Schützendorf Marie, his common-law wife soprano Sigrid Johanson Marie's son treble Captain buffo tenor Waldemar Henke Doctor buffo bass Martin Abendroth Drum Major heldentenor Fritz Soot Andres, Wozzeck's friend lyric tenor Gerhard Witting Margret, Marie's neighbor contralto Jessika Koettrik First Apprentice deep bass Second Apprentice high baritone Madman high tenor Soldiers, apprentices, women, children Synopsis Act 1 Scene 1 (Suite) Wozzeck is shaving the Captain who lectures him on the qualities of a "decent man" and taunts him for living an immoral life. Wozzeck slavishly replies, "Jawohl, Herr Hauptmann" ("Yes sir, Captain") repeatedly to the Captain's abuse. However, when the Captain scorns Wozzeck for having a child "without the blessing of the Church", Wozzeck protests that it is difficult to be virtuous when he is poor, but entreats the Captain to remember the lesson from the gospel, "Laßet die Kleinen zu mir kommen!" ("Suffer the little children to come unto me," Mark 10:14). The Captain is confounded by Wozzeck's theological knowledge and anxiously squeaks, "What do you mean? And what sort of curious answer is that? You make me quite confused!" After Wozzeck continues the discussion by positing that it would be easy to be moral, if only he were wealthy; and that, if the poor ever "got to Heaven, we'd all have to manufacture thunder!" The flustered Captain, unable to comprehend Wozzeck, finally concedes that he is "a decent man, only you think too much!" The Captain concludes the discussion, saying it has "quite fatigued" him and again chides Wozzeck to walk slowly before finally exiting. Scene 2 (Rhapsody and Hunting Song) Wozzeck and Andres are cutting sticks as the sun is setting. Wozzeck has frightening visions and Andres tries unsuccessfully to calm him. Scene 3 (March and Lullaby) A military parade passes by outside Marie's room. Margret taunts Marie for flirting with the soldiers. Marie shuts the window and proceeds to sing a lullaby to her son. Wozzeck then comes by and tells Marie of the terrible visions he has had, promptly leaving without seeing their son, much to Marie's dismay. She laments about being poor. Scene 4 (Passacaglia) The Doctor scolds Wozzeck for not following his instructions regarding diet and behavior. However, when the Doctor hears of Wozzeck's mental aberrations, he is delighted and congratulates himself on the success of his experiment. Scene 5 (Rondo) Marie admires the Drum-major outside her room. He makes advances to her, which she first rejects but then accepts after a short struggle. Act 2 Scene 1 (Sonata-Allegro) Marie is telling her child to go to sleep while admiring earrings which the Drum-major gave her. She is startled when Wozzeck arrives and when he asks where she got the earrings, she says she found them. Though not convinced, Wozzeck gives her some money and leaves. Marie chastises herself for her behavior. Scene 2 (Fantasia and Fugue on 3 Themes) The Doctor rushes by the Captain in the street, who urges him to slow down. The Doctor then proceeds to scare the Captain by speculating what afflictions may strike him. When Wozzeck comes by, they insinuate that Marie is being unfaithful to him. Scene 3 (Largo) Wozzeck confronts Marie, who does not deny his suspicions. Enraged, Wozzeck is about to hit her, when she stops him, saying even her father never dared lay a hand on her. Her statement "better a knife in my belly than your hands on me" plants in Wozzeck's mind the idea for his subsequent revenge. Scene 4 (Scherzo) Among a crowd, Wozzeck sees Marie dancing with the Drum-major. After a brief hunter's chorus, Andres asks Wozzeck why he is sitting by himself. An Apprentice delivers a drunken sermon, then an Idiot approaches Wozzeck and cries out that the scene is "Lustig, lustig...aber es riecht ...Ich riech, ich riech Blut!" ("joyful, joyful, but it reeks...I smell, I smell blood"). Scene 5 (Rondo) In the barracks at night, Wozzeck, unable to sleep, is keeping Andres awake. The Drum-major comes in, intoxicated, and rouses Wozzeck out of bed to fight with him. Act 3 Scene 1 (Invention on a Theme) In her room at night, Marie reads to herself from the Bible. She cries out that she wants forgiveness. Scene 2 (Invention on a Single Note (B)) Wozzeck and Marie are walking in the woods by a pond. Marie is anxious to leave, but Wozzeck restrains her. As a blood-red moon rises, Wozzeck becomes determined that if he can't have Marie, no one else can, and he stabs her. Scene 3 (Invention on a Rhythm) People are dancing in a tavern. Wozzeck enters, and upon seeing Margret, dances with her and pulls her onto his lap. He insults her, and then asks her to sing him a song. She sings, but then notices blood on his hand and elbow; everyone begins shouting at him, and Wozzeck, now agitated and obsessed with his blood, rushes out of the tavern. Scene 4 (Invention on a 6-Note Chord) Having returned to the murder scene, Wozzeck becomes obsessed with the thought that the knife he killed Marie with will incriminate him, and throws it into the pond. When the blood-red moon appears again, Wozzeck, fearing that he has not thrown the knife far enough from shore and also wanting to wash away the blood staining his clothing and hands, wades into the pond and drowns. The Captain and the Doctor, passing by, hear Wozzeck moaning and rush off in fright. Interlude (Invention on a Key (D minor)) This interlude leads to the finale. Scene 5 (Invention on an Eighth-Note moto perpetuo, quasi toccata) Next morning, children are playing in the sunshine. The news spreads that Marie's body has been found, and they all run off to see, except for Marie's little boy, who after an oblivious moment, follows after the others. Instrumentation Berg scores for a fairly large orchestra in Wozzeck, and has three onstage ensembles in addition to the large orchestra (a marching band in Act I, Scene 3, a chamber orchestra in Act II, Scene 3, a tavern band in Act II, Scene 4 as well as an upright piano for Act III, Scene 3). The instrumentation of the work is as follows:[10] Pit orchestra Woodwinds: 4 flutes (all double piccolos), 4 oboes (4th doubles English horn), 4 Clarinets in B-Flat (1st doubles Clarinet in A, 3rd and 4th double clarinets in E-flat), bass clarinet in B-flat, 3 bassoons, contrabassoonBrass: 4 horns in F, 4 trumpets in F, 4 trombones (1 alto, 2 tenor, 1 bass), tubaPercussion: 4 timpani, bass drum, several cymbals (a pair, suspended, and one attached to the bass drum), bass drum (with switch), snare drum, 2 tam-tams (one smaller than the other), triangle, xylophoneKeyboards: celestaStrings: harp, first and second violins, violas, violoncellos, double basses Special groups Marching band (Act 1, Scene 3): Woodwinds: piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets in E-flat, 2 bassoonsBrass: 2 horns in F, 2 trumpets in F, 3 trombones, tubaPercussion: Bass drum with cymbals, snare drum, triangle In his instructions, Berg says the players in the marching band may be taken from the main orchestra, and even goes so far as to indicate exactly where the players can leave with a footnote near the end of Act 1, Scene 2.) Tavern band (Act 2, Scene 4): Woodwinds: clarinet in CBrass: bombardon in F (or tuba, if it can be muted)Keyboard: accordionStrings: guitar, 2 fiddles (violins with steel strings) Act 3, Scene 3: Upright out-of-tune piano In addition to the above groups, which appear on stage, Berg also asks for a chamber orchestra in Act 2, Scene 3, which should if possible be composed of additional players, and separated from the main pit orchestra. The instrumentation explicitly matches that of Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony No. 1: Woodwinds: flute (doubling piccolo), oboe, English horn, clarinet in E-flat, clarinet in A, bass clarinet in B-flat, bassoon, contrabassoonBrass: 2 hornsStrings: 2 violins, viola, violoncello, double bass Different versions and others with the same title There are several different versions of Wozzeck in the opera repertoire, apart from Berg's own. One is an arrangement for twenty-two singers and twenty-one instrumental parts, realized and arranged by the Montreal composer John Rea. It is published by Universal Edition of Vienna.[10] Another version, which reduces the orchestra to about 60 players for smaller theaters, was prepared by composer and fellow Schoenberg-student Erwin Stein in collaboration with Berg.[11] This version is also available from Universal Edition. Wozzeck is also the title of an opera by German composer Manfred Gurlitt, also based on the Büchner play, and first performed four months after Berg's opera. Gurlitt's work, which was created without any knowledge of Berg's, has remained in its shadow.[12] Influences The orchestra rise during Wozzeck's drowning is quoted in Luciano Berio's "Sinfonia" (1968–69). Recordings Alban Berg: Wozzeck – Franz Hawlata (Baritone), Angela Denoke (Soprano), Reiner Goldberg (Heldertenor), Vivian Tierney (Contralto), Johann Tilli (Buffo Bass), Hubert Delamboye (Buffo Tenor), Vivaldi Chorus; IPSI; Petits Cantors de Catalunya; Orchestra & Chorus of the Gran Teatre del Liceu; Sebastian Weigle Stage Director: Calixto Bieito, Barcelona, 2006. Label: Opus Arte. Alban Berg Austrian composer Written by: Willi Reich 0 SHARE Read View History Edit Feedback Alban BergAustrian composer bornFebruary 9, 1885Vienna, AustriadiedDecember 24, 1935Vienna, Austria Alban Berg, in full Alban Maria Johannes Berg (born Feb. 9, 1885, Vienna, Austria—died Dec. 24, 1935, Vienna), Austrian composer who wrote atonal and 12-tone compositions that remained true to late 19th-century Romanticism. He composed orchestral music (including Five Orchestral Songs, 1912), chamber music, songs, and two groundbreaking operas, Wozzeck (1925) and Lulu (1937).Apart from a few short musical trips abroad and annual summer sojourns in the Austrian Alps, Berg’s life was spent in the city of his birth. At first, the romantically inclined youth leaned toward a literary career. But, as in most Viennese middle-class homes, music was regularly played in his parents’ house, in keeping with the general musical atmosphere of the city. Encouraged by his father and older brother, Alban Berg began to compose music without benefit of formal instruction. During this period his output consisted of more than 100 songs and piano duets, most of which remain unpublished.In September 1904 he met Arnold Schoenberg, an event that decisively influenced his life. The death of Berg’s father in 1900 had left little money for composition lessons, but Schoenberg was quick to recognize Berg’s talent and accepted the young man as a nonpaying pupil. The musical precepts and the human example provided by Schoenberg shaped Berg’s artistic personality as they worked together for the next six years.In the circle of Schoenberg’s students, Berg presented his first public performance in the fall of 1907: Piano Sonata (published 1908). This was followed by Four Songs (1909) and String Quartet (1910), each strongly influenced by the young composer’s musical gods, Gustav Mahler and Richard Wagner.Having come into a small inheritance, Berg married Helene Nahowski, daughter of a high-ranking Austrian officer, in 1911. The Bergs took an apartment in Vienna, where he settled down to devote the remainder of his life to music, although they participated freely in the intellectual life of the city. Among their closest friends were Adolf Loos, one of the pioneers of modern architecture, and the painter Oskar Kokoschka.A characteristic of Berg’s creative activity was the slow, often hesitant, manner in which he gave final form to the musical ideas that, for the most part, were the result of sudden inspiration. This fastidious, perfectionist manner of composing explains his relatively small number of works. In 1912 Berg finished his first work since his student days with Schoenberg, Five Orchestral Songs. The inspiration for this composition came from postcard messages addressed to both his friends and his foes by the eccentric Viennese poet Peter Altenberg. These sometimes erotic postcard texts were sufficiently nonconformist to prompt Berg to use them as background for even-less traditional music than he had composed in the past. But when two of these songs were presented at a concert of the Academic Society for Literature and Music in March 1913, they provoked a near riot, in which performers and audience freely participated.The genesis of Berg’s first work for the stage was a memorable theatrical experience: the performance of German dramatist Georg Büchner’s (1813–37) Woyzeck (published 1879), a drama built around a poor working man who murders his faithless sweetheart and then commits suicide while their child, unable to comprehend the tragedy, plays nearby. The theme fascinated Berg. But his work on the opera—which, varying the spelling, he would call Wozzeck—was delayed by World War I. During the course of the war, Berg (always in frail health) worked in the War Ministry. When he did begin composition, he was confronted by the gigantic task of compressing 25 scenes into three acts. Although he managed to write the libretto in 1917, he did not begin composing the score until the war was over. He completed the opera in 1921 and dedicated it to Alma Mahler, the widow of Gustav Mahler, the composer and conductor who had dominated Vienna’s musical life during Berg’s youth.Wozzeck—perhaps the most frequently performed theatrical work in the atonal idiom—represents Berg’s first attempt to deal with social problems within the framework of opera. From numerous statements he made, it is evident that he intended the opera to portray far more than the tragic fate of the protagonist. He wanted, in fact, to make it symbolic of human existence. Musically, its unity stems from large overall symmetries within which are set traditional forms (such as the passacaglia and sonata), excerpts in popular music style, dense chromaticism (use of notes not belonging to the composition’s key), extreme atonality, and passing approaches to traditional tonality, all of which function to create a work of notable psychological and dramatic impact. Although it antedates Schoenberg’s early 12-tone compositions, the opera also includes a theme using the 12 notes of the chromatic scale.After 137 rehearsals, Wozzeck was presented in its entirety for the first time on Dec. 14, 1925, at the Berlin State Opera, with Erich Kleiber conducting. Critical response was unrestrained. Typical of the prevailing attitude was the reaction of a reviewer in the Deutsche Zeitung:As I was leaving the State Opera I had the sensation of having been not in a public theatre but in an insane asylum.… I regard Alban Berg as a musical swindler and a musician dangerous to the community.But another critic described the music as “drawn from Wozzeck’s poor, worried, inarticulate, chaotic soul. It is a vision in sound.”Upon completion of Wozzeck, Berg, who had also become an outstanding teacher of composition, turned his attention to chamber music. His Chamber Concerto for violin, piano, and 13 wind instruments was written in 1925, in honour of Schoenberg’s 50th birthday.Berg searched for a new opera text. He found it in two plays by the German dramatist Frank Wedekind (1864–1918). From Erdgeist (1895; “Earth Spirit”) and Büchse der Pandora (1904; “Pandora’s Box”), he extracted the central figure for his opera Lulu. This work engaged him, with minor interruptions, for the next seven years, and the orchestration of its third act remained incomplete at his death (it was completed by the Austrian composer Friedrich Cerha and given its premiere in Paris in 1979). Musically complex and highly expressionistic in idiom, Lulu was composed entirely in the 12-tone system.With the seizure of power by the Nazis in Germany in 1933, Berg lost most of his income. Although, unlike their teacher Schoenberg, Berg and his friend and colleague Anton Webern were of non-Jewish descent, they, with Schoenberg, were regarded as representatives of “degenerate art” and were increasingly excluded from performances in Germany. The meagre response that Berg’s works evoked in Austria caused him particular anguish; abroad, however, he was considered more and more as the representative Austrian composer, and his works were performed at leading musical festivals.Berg’s last complete work, the Violin Concerto, originated under unusual circumstances. In 1935 the American violinist Louis Krasner commissioned Berg to compose a violin concerto for him. As usual, Berg procrastinated at first. But after the death of Manon, the beautiful 18-year-old daughter of Alma Mahler (by then the wife of the architect Walter Gropius), Berg was moved to compose the work as a kind of requiem and to dedicate it to the “memory of an angel”—Manon. Having found his inspiration, Berg worked at fever pitch in the seclusion of his villa in the Austrian province of Carinthia and completed the concerto in six weeks. By the time the work was finally presented by Krasner in Barcelona in April 1936, it had become a requiem not only for Manon Gropius but for Berg as well. One of the major violin concerti of the 20th century, it is a work of highly personal, emotional content achieved through the use of 12-tone and other resources—symbolic as well as musical.In mid-November 1935 he returned, a sick man, to Vienna. Although his mind was completely absorbed in his desire to finish the opera Lulu, he had to be hospitalized in December with septicemia and, after a deceptive initial improvement, he died suddenly.A man of strikingly attractive appearance and reserved, aristocratic bearing, Berg had also a generous personality that found expression in his correspondence and among his friends. He was an outstanding teacher of composition who encouraged his pupils to undertake significant work of their own. Few honours were accorded Berg in his lifetime; however, within a few years after his death he had become widely recognized as a composer who broke with tradition and mastered a radical technique and yet blended old and new to create, with Schoenberg and Webern, what became known as the 20th-century (or Second) Viennese school.Berg’s powerful and complex works draw from a broad range of musical resources but are chiefly shaped by a few central techniques: the use of a complex chromatic expressionism, which nearly obscures, yet actually remains within, the framework of traditional tonality; the recasting of classical musical forms with atonal content—i.e., abandoning traditional tonal structure dependent upon a centrally important tone; and a deft handling of the 12-tone approach developed by Schoenberg as a method of structuring atonal music. Berg dealt with the new medium so skillfully that the classical heritage of his compositions is not obliterated, thus justifying the term frequently applied to him: the “classicist of modern music.”Willi Reich Wozzeck Opera by Berg Written by: Betsy Schwarm 0 SHARE Read View History Edit Feedback Wozzeck, opera in three acts by Austrian composer Alban Berg, who also wrote its German libretto, deriving the story from the unfinished play Woyzeck (the discrepancy in spelling was the result of a misreading of the manuscript) by Georg Büchner. The opera premiered in Berlin on December 14, 1925. Of all rule-breaking avant-garde operas, it is the oldest of those that appear in the active repertoire.Background and contextA dark story of madness and murder, Wozzeck is an adaptation of Büchner’s groundbreaking and highly influential work, which was in progress at the author’s death in 1837 and was not performed until 1913. After seeing the play’s Vienna premiere, Berg determined to base an opera on it, but his progress on the work was slowed by the advent of World War I and military service. He completed the opera in 1922 and published the vocal score privately in 1922. He presented orchestral excerpts from the opera in concert in 1924. When Berg’s work came to the stage at the Berlin Staatsoper a year later, it was an immediate hit. Its success dismayed Berg, who felt that the work should have been too modern for wide acceptance, and he began to question whether he had fallen short of his overall intention.Berg tells the tale of Wozzeck’s madness with rhythmic and melodic fragments that carry moods from one scene to the next. As his mentor Arnold Schoenberg had taught him, Berg underlaid his music with compositional patterns going back hundreds of years. His harmonic structures sometimes verge into atonality, leaving the listener with no clear sense of the direction in which the music might move next. Atonality was an idea then in vogue among the Schoenberg circle, and it seemed ideally suited to reflect the protagonist’s precarious mental state and his descent into madness.Cast and vocal partsMarie, Wozzeck’s common-law wife (soprano)Wozzeck, a soldier (baritone)the Drum Major (tenor)the Doctor (bass)the Captain (tenor)Setting and story summaryWozzeck is set in a town near a military barracks during the first quarter of the 19th century.Act IThe soldier Wozzeck and his captain debate morality. The Captain suggests that, because Wozzeck has an illegitimate child, Wozzeck is immoral. Wozzeck maintains that poor people cannot afford morality. Later, while cutting wood, he finds himself tormented by strange visions. Meanwhile, Marie—the mother of Wozzeck’s child—is watching a military band and admiring the Drum Major. Wozzeck arrives, wanting to share his visions, but he cannot bring himself to stay with her. To earn more money, Wozzeck submits himself to the Doctor’s bizarre medical experiments. Meanwhile, tempted by the advances of the Drum Major she has been admiring, Marie yields to her impulses.Act IIIn Marie’s room, Wozzeck asks her about the new earrings she possesses. Unwilling to admit that they were a gift from the Drum Major, she says she found them, and only after Wozzeck’s departure she admits to herself that she feels guilt for the lie. The Captain and the Doctor interrupt their dark conversation to goad Wozzeck about Marie’s behaviour. Wozzeck confronts her, trying to force an admission of infidelity. When he sees her dancing with the Drum Major at the beer garden, he is overcome with rage. Later, the Drum Major mocks Wozzeck and beats him.Act IIIMarie reads in the Bible about Mary Magdalene. Later, walking together by a pond, she and Wozzeck reminisce. When she tries to flee his fit of temper, he stabs her. Townspeople see the blood on his hands. He returns to the pond to hide his knife and wash his hands in the water. Passing nearby, the Captain and the Doctor hear him drown. Neighbour children tease Marie’s child about his mother’s death, but he is too young to understand.Betsy Schwarm ebay3386