Alban Berg

Alban Maria Johannes Berg (9 February 1885 – 24 December 1935) was an Austrian composer associated with the Second Viennese School. His music blended Romantic lyricism with the twelve-tone method. Despite producing a modest number of works, he is regarded as a major 20th-century composer due to an expressive style that captured "entire worlds of emotion and structure." Berg was born and spent his life in Vienna. He started composing at fifteen.

From 1904 to 1911, he studied counterpoint, music theory, and harmony under Arnold Schoenberg, adopting Schoenberg’s techniques of developing variation and twelve-tone composition. His most notable works include the operas Wozzeck (1914–1922) and Lulu (begun in 1928, completed after his death), the chamber pieces Lyric Suite and Chamber Concerto, and a Violin Concerto. He also wrote numerous lieder. Berg died of sepsis in 1935.

Early life

He is often described as bringing more "human values" to the twelve-tone system, with his music considered more "emotional" than Schoenberg’s. Its surface appeal attracted admirers at a time when Schoenberg had few. Berg was born in Vienna, the third of four children to Johanna and Konrad Berg. His father ran a successful export business, and the family owned several estates in Vienna and the countryside.

After Konrad Berg died in 1900, the family’s finances declined, which affected young Berg—he had to repeat both sixth and seventh grades to pass exams. One of his closest lifelong friends, architect Hermann Watznauer (who later wrote Berg’s first biography under the pseudonym Hermann Herrenried), became a father figure, partly at Konrad’s request. Watznauer was ten years older. Berg wrote him letters up to thirty pages long, often in florid, dramatic prose with unusual punctuation.

As a child, Berg was more interested in literature than music and considered becoming a writer several times; he turned to music slowly and with little confidence until Wozzeck succeeded. He did not begin composing until fifteen, teaching himself music, though he took piano lessons from his sister’s governess. With Marie Scheuchl, a maid at the family’s Carinthian estate, Berghof, who was fifteen years his senior, he fathered a daughter, Albine, born 4 December 1902. In 1906 Berg met singer Helene Nahowski (1885–1976), daughter of a wealthy family (rumored to be the illegitimate daughter of Emperor Franz Joseph I from his affair with Anna Nahowski).

Early works (1907–1914)

Despite her family’s open hostility, they married on 3 May 1911, though her father insisted on a Protestant ceremony to ease the divorce he expected. With little prior music education, Berg began studying counterpoint, music theory, and harmony under Arnold Schoenberg in October 1904. By 1906 he studied music full-time, and by 1907 he started composition lessons. His student works included five drafts for piano sonatas and songs, among them his Seven Early Songs (Sieben frühe Lieder).

Three of these songs were his first publicly performed pieces, in a 1907 Vienna concert featuring music by Schoenberg’s pupils. These early sketches led to the Piano Sonata, Op. 1, published in 1910 (likely composed 1908–1909), often called one of the most formidable "first" works ever written. Berg studied with Schoenberg for six years until 1911.

Schoenberg taught that a composition’s unity depends on all its aspects deriving from a single basic idea—later called developing variation. Berg passed this on to his students; one, Theodor W. Adorno, said: "The main principle he conveyed was that of variation: everything was supposed to develop out of something else and yet be intrinsically different." The Piano Sonata exemplifies this: the entire piece derives from its opening quartal gesture and phrase. Berg moved in Vienna’s cultural elite during the fin de siècle. His circle included musicians Alexander von Zemlinsky and Franz Schreker, painter Gustav Klimt, writer and satirist Karl Kraus, architect Adolf Loos, and poet Peter Altenberg.

In 1913, two of Berg’s Altenberg Lieder (1912) premiered in Vienna, conducted by Schoenberg in the infamous Skandalkonzert. These songs set aphoristic poems and were accompanied by a very large orchestra. The performance caused a riot and had to be stopped. Berg effectively withdrew the work; it was not performed in full until 1952, and the full score remained unpublished until 1966.

Wozzeck (1914–1922) and Lulu (from 1928)

Berg had a particular fascination with the number 23, using it to structure several works. Possible reasons include his interest in Wilhelm Fliess’s biorhythm theory (which features a 23-day cycle) or that his first asthma attack occurred on the 23rd of a month. Wozzeck (1914–1922) and Lulu (from 1928) From 1915 to 1918 Berg served in the Austro-Hungarian Army. During leave in 1917 he accelerated work on his first opera, Wozzeck.

After World War I, he settled again in Vienna, teaching private students. He also helped Schoenberg run the Society for Private Musical Performances, which aimed to create an ideal environment for exploring new music through open rehearsals, repeat performances, and the exclusion of professional critics. In 1924, three excerpts from Wozzeck were performed, bringing Berg his first public success. He completed the opera in 1922, and it premiered on 14 December 1925, conducted by Erich Kleiber in Berlin.