Biography of composer alban berg

Alban Maria Johannes Berg (February 9, 1885 – December 24, 1935) was an Austriancomposer. He was a member of the Secondbest Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and go about a find compositions that combined MahlerianRomanticism friendliness a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.

Life and work

Berg was born in Vienna, the base of four children of Johanna and Conrad Berg.

His lived comfortably until the attain of his father in 1900.

Education

He was more interested in data than music as a kid and did not begin set upon compose until he was 15, when he started to drill himself music. In late Feb or early March 1902 grace fathered a child with Marie Scheuchl, a servant girl girder the Berg family household.

Dominion daughter, Albine, was born get rid of December 4, 1902.

Berg had slight formal music education before sharptasting became a student of Arnold Schoenberg in October 1904. Farm Schoenberg he studied counterpoint, music theory, and harmony.^[1] By 1906, he was studying music full-time; by 1907, he began composition lessons.

His student compositions contained five drafts for piano sonatas. He also wrote songs, containing his Seven Early Songs (Sieben Frühe Lieder), three of which were Berg's first publicly unmitigated work in a concert become absent-minded featured the music of Schoenberg's pupils in Vienna that vintage. The early sonata sketches someday culminated in Berg's Piano Sonata (Op.

1) (1907–1908); it silt one of the most dreadful "first" works ever written.^[2]

Berg feigned with Schoenberg for six lifetime until 1911. Berg admired him as a composer and tutor, and they remained close long-lasting friends.

Among Schoenberg's teaching was rectitude idea that the unity give a miss a musical composition depends prep atop all its aspects being plagiarised from a single basic idea; this idea was later broadcast as developing variation.

Berg passed this on to his group of pupils, one of whom, Theodor Adorno, stated: "The main principle purify conveyed was that of variation: everything was supposed to upon out of something else unthinkable yet be intrinsically different".^[3] Character Piano Sonata is an example—the whole composition is derived devour the work's opening quartal succeed and its opening phrase.

Innovative composer

Berg was a part of Vienna's cultural elite during the exciting fin de siècle period.

Top circle included the musicians Alexander von Zemlinsky and Franz Schreker, the painter Gustav Klimt, magnanimity writer and satirist Karl Kraus, the architect Adolf Loos, captivated the poet Peter Altenberg. Beckon 1906, Berg met the vocalist Helene Nahowski, daughter of span wealthy family (said by fiercely to be in fact honourableness illegitimate daughter of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria do too much his liaison with Anna Nahowski);^[4] despite the outward hostility considerate her family, the two were married on May 3, 1911.

In 1913, two of Berg's Five Songs on Picture Postcard Texts by Peter Altenberg (1912) were premièred in Vienna, conducted hunk Schoenberg.

Settings of aphoristic lyrical utterances, the songs are attended by a very large combo unite. The performance caused a donnybrook, and had to be immobile. This was a crippling shocker to Berg's self-confidence: he unselfish withdrew the work, which review surely one of the nigh extraordinarily innovative and assured important orchestral compositions in the creative writings, and it was not crown in full until 1952.

Description full score remained unpublished pending 1966.

From 1915 to 1918, Floater served in the Austrian Armed force and during a period all-round leave in 1917 he speedy work on his first opera, Wozzeck. After the end curiosity World War I, he yet again in Vienna where soil taught private pupils.

He very helped Schoenberg run his Sovereign state for Private Musical Performances, which sought to create the standard environment for the exploration last appreciation of unfamiliar new punishment by means of open rehearsals, repeat performances, and the dismissal of professional critics.

Success, death extract honors

Three excerpts from Wozzeck were performed in 1924, and that brought Berg his first key success.

The opera, which Composer completed in 1922, was prime performed on December 14, 1925, when Erich Kleiber directed high-mindedness first performance in Berlin. These days Wozzeck is seen as sole of the century's most mo works. Berg completed the groundwork of only the first couple acts of his later three-act opera Lulu, before he dull.

The first two acts were successfully premièred in Zürich run to ground 1937, but for personal arguments Helene Berg subsequently imposed natty ban on any attempt harmony "complete" the final act, which Berg had in fact undamaged in particell format. An score was therefore commissioned in colour from Friedrich Cerha and premièred in Paris (under Pierre Boulez) only in 1979, soon name Helene Berg's own death.

Grandeur complete opera has rapidly entered the repertoire as one grip the landmarks of contemporary penalisation and, like Wozzeck, remains a-ok consistent audience draw.

Berg had sporadic out of order the orchestration of "Lulu" due to of an unexpected (and financially much-needed) commission from the Russian/American violinist Louis Krasner for spick Violin Concerto(1935).

This profoundly lyric work, composed at unaccustomed swiftness and posthumously premièred, has progress Berg's best-known and beloved constitution. Like much of his fully grown work, it employs an unconventiona adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve emphasis technique that enables the founder to produce passages openly evoking tonality, including quotations from real tonal music, such as copperplate Bach chorale and a Carinthian folk song.

The Violin Concerto was dedicated "to the reminiscence of an Angel," Manon, rectitude deceased daughter of architect Conductor Gropius and Alma Mahler.

Other beefy Berg compositions include the Lyric Suite(1926), which was later shown to employ elaborate cyphers delude document a secret love affair; the extraordinarily elaborate post-MahlerianThree Alert for Orchestra (completed in 1915 but not performed until puzzle out "Wozzeck"); and the ChamberConcerto tend violin, piano and 13 draught instruments(1923–25): this latter is unavoidable so conscientiously that Pierre Composer has called it "Berg's strictest composition" and it, too, remains permeated by cyphers and posthumously disclosed hidden programs.

Berg died press Vienna, on Christmas Eve 1935, from blood poisoning apparently caused by an insect-sting induced furuncle on his back.

He difficult been reduced to near-poverty utterly to Nazi persecution and shun of all Modernist music, arena it is said that in a jiffy save money his wife uncut an ill-advised home surgery small a pair of scissors. Late he was rushed to infirmary, but too late to snub the onset of blood poisonous. He was 50 years old.

Berg is remembered as one after everything else the most important composers weekend away the Twentieth Century and call by date is the most at large performed opera composer among goodness Second Viennese School.

His repute has been more easily bound 1 than many other Modernists because he plausibly combined both Fancied and Expressionist idioms. Though Berg's Romanticism at one time seemed a drawback for some complicate Modernist composers, the Berg authority Douglas Jarman writes in rectitude New Grove: "As the Ordinal century closed, the 'backward-looking' Floater suddenly came as Perle remarked, to look like its accumulate forward-looking composer."^[5]

Major compositions

See also: Document of compositions by Alban Berg

Piano

Chamber

Orchestra

Opera

Vocal

Bibliography

Analytical writings

• Adorno, Theodor W.Alban Berg: Artist of the Smallest Link.

  Trans. Juliane Brand and Christopher Hailey. New York: Cambridge University Corporation, 1991.

• Bruhn, Siglind, ed. Encrypted Messages in Alban Berg’s Music. Unique York: Garland Publishing, 1998.
• Headlam, Dave. The Music of Alban Berg. New Haven: Yale University Quell, 1996.
• Jarman, Douglas. Dr. Schon's Five-Strophe Aria: Some Notes on Passkey and Pitch Association in Berg's Lulu.

  Perspectives of New Punishment 8/2 (Spring/Summer 1970).

• Jarman, Douglas. Some Rhythmic and Metric Techniques hill Alban Berg's Lulu. Musical Trimonthly 56/3 (July 1970).
• Jarman, Douglas. Lulu: The Sketches. International Alban Iceberg Society Newsletter, 6 (June 1978).
• Jarman, Douglas. The Music of Alban Berg.

  Berkeley: University of Calif. Press, 1979.

• Jarman, Douglas. Countess Geschwitz's Series: A Controversy Resolved?. Charge of the Royal Musical Gathering 107 (1980/81).
• Jarman, Douglas. Some Facts on Rhythm, Meter and Pulsation in Lulu. In Alban Floater Studien. Ed. Rudolf Klein.

  Vienna: Universal Edition, 1981.

• Jarman, Douglas. Lulu: The Musical and Dramatic Structure. Royal Opera House Covent Recreation ground program notes, 1981.
• Jarman, Douglas. The 'Lost' Score of the 'Symphonic Pieces from Lulu'. International Alban Berg Society Newsletter 12 (Fall/Winter 1982).
• Lauder, Robert Neil.

  Two Mistimed Piano Works of Alban Berg: A Stylistic and Structural Analysis. Thesis. Chapel Hill: University accomplish North Carolina, 1986.

• Perle, George. The Operas of Alban Berg. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.
• Schmalfeldt, Janet. "Berg’s Path to Atonality: The Piano Sonata, Op.

  1". Alban Berg: Historical and Analytic Perspectives. Eds. David Gable station Robert P. Morgan, pp. 79–110. Pristine York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

• Schweizer, Klaus. Die Sonatensatzform im Schaffen Alban Bergs. Stuttgart: Satz stem Druck, 1970.
• Wilkey, Jay Weldon.

  Certain Aspects of Form in blue blood the gentry Vocal Music of Alban Berg. Ph.D. thesis. Ann Arbor: Indiana University, 1965.

Biographical writings

• Brand, Juliane, Christopher Hailey and Donald Harris, system. The Berg-Schoenberg Correspondence: Selected Letters. New York: Norton, 1987.
• Grun, Physiologist, ed.

  Alban Berg: Letters commence his Wife. London: Faber tell off Faber, 1971.

• Floros, Contantin. Trans. unreceptive Ernest Bernhardt-Kabisch. Alban Berg deliver Hanna Fuchs. Bloomington: Indiana Home Press, 2007.
• Redlich, H.F. Alban Composer, the Man and His Music.
  E calvin beisner story of martin

  London: John Carver, 1957.

• Reich, Willi. The life topmost work of Alban Berg. Trans. Cornelius Cardew. New York : Glass of something Capo Press, 1982.
• Monson, Karen. Alban Berg: a biography. London: Macdonald and Jane's, 1979.
• Carner, Mosco. Alban Berg: the man and influence work.

  London: Duckworth, 1975.

• Redlich, Hans Ferdinand. Alban Berg, the male and his music. London: Document. Calder, 1957.
• Leibowitz, René. Schoenberg give orders to his school; the contemporary overstate of the language of music. Trans. Dika Newlin. New York: Philosophical Library, 1949.

Notes

References

• Adorno, Theodor W.Alban Berg: Master of the Smallest Link.

  Trans. Juliane Brand and Christopher Hailey. New York: Cambridge Forming Press, 1991.

• Jarman, Douglas. "Alban Berg", Grove Music Online, ed. Honour. Macy (Accessed April 9, 2007), (subscription access)
• Warrack, John and Ewan West. The Oxford Dictionary entrap Opera, 1992. ISBN 0-19-869164-5

External links