Who is composer Alban Berg?

In total the Austrian wrote only 15 works, but his is a back catalogue that is the epitome of all  killer, no filler.

One of the leading lights of the Second Viennese School, Berg’s compositional style combined Romantic lyricism with the twelve-tone technique with such expressiveness that despite his relatively minimal body of work he is seen as one of the most important composers of the 20th century.

As we prepare for a special performance of Berg’s seminal Wozzeck as part of our Multitudes festival, here’s a little more insight into the man behind this devastating opera.

He was Vienna born and bred

Alban Berg was born in Vienna in 1885, the third of four children. His father, Konrad, ran a successful export business, enabling the family to live comfortably, with several estates in Vienna and the Austrian countryside beyond. However, the Bergs’ financial situation took a downward turn with Konrad’s death in 1900. It was around this time that the young Alban, age 15, began to compose. He had taken piano lessons from his sister’s governess as a boy, but otherwise, at this stage, his musical endeavours were self completely taught.

He had a notable music teacher

Berg, in his late teens, was training as a civil servant when he began to take his first formal music lessons, with Arnold Schoenberg. Initially he took lessons in counterpoint, music theory and harmony with the great conductor, but the receipt of a large inheritance enabled him to leave his training in 1906 and take up composing full-time under Schoenberg’s tutelage. In 1910 Berg published his first composition, Piano Sonata, Op. 1, which premiered in Vienna the following year. Well received, the Sonata’s reputation would grow with Berg’s own, and has since been described as one of the most formidable first works ever written.

His first orchestral work caused a riot

In 1912 Berg completed his first orchestral work, Altenberg-Lieder, based on the short, cryptic poems which Viennese writer Peter Altenberg would scribble on postcards. The piece premiered in Vienna’s Musikvereinsaal, under the baton of Schoenberg, the following year. Upon its performance many in the audience were so taken aback by the music that they first began trying to drown it out with whistling, before the dissent erupted into a substantial riot. The concert, or as it became known, the Skandalkonzert (a term which needs little translation) was abandoned and Berg refused to allow Altenberg-Lieder to be performed again during his lifetime.

He was a reluctant composer

Despite studying under one of the most famous composers of the time, Berg’s artistic interests were much more invested in literature than music. He was a writer of lyric poetry in his youth, and often considered a career as a writer over one in music, particularly in the face of criticism from Schoenberg. It was only after the success of Wozzeck that Berg finally accepted his calling as a composer.

Wozzeck is his best known work

In May 1914 Berg attended the Vienna premiere of Georg Büchner’s Woyzek, a play which depicts a soldier’s tragic slide into madness and murder amid militarism and oppression. In fact Berg was so compelled by it that he saw it twice, and duly decided to make it into an opera, his first. Though he began the genesis of the opera that year, global events soon got in the way, but only temporarily. Following the First World War, and a three-year stint in the Austro-Hungarian Army, Berg returned to Wozzeck, finally completing the work in 1922. 

It would be three more years until the piece premiered, at the Berlin State Opera in 1925, where its modern atonal score drew a mixed reaction. However, in the years since, thanks to the emotional intensity of Berg’s music, Wozzeck has become widely revered as one of the most important 20th century modernist operas.

One of his works hides a secret love affair

In 1925 Berg visited Prague for a performance of his Three Wozzeck Fragments. During his time in the Czechoslovak Republic he stayed with the Industrialist Herbert Fuchs-Robettin and his wife, Hanna, at their villa in Bubeneč, and though happily married to his wife Helene for 14 years, Berg’s stay was marked by an intense five day affair with Hanna. 

The following year Berg completed his Lyric Suite, a dramatic six movement work, the score of which is littered with references to his Czech indiscretion. Chief among them, a recurring four-note cell, which represents his initials – ‘AB,’ the German notation for A and B-flat – and hers – ‘HF,’ the German notation for the notes B and F. The work also evolves from a 12-note series, which begins with an F (for Fuchs) and ends with a B natural, known as H (for Hanna) in German musical nomenclature.

He was silenced by the Nazis

Though Wozzeck had become recognised as a seismic work, Berg’s opportunity to fully build on its success was greatly curtailed by the rise of Nazism in Central Europe, a movement which was not only antisemetic, but also in opposition to modernity. Berg, owing to his approach to music, and his having studied with the Jewish Schoenberg, found opportunities for his compositions to be performed in Germany increasingly rare, until his work was placed on the Nazi government’s list of ‘degenerate music’ – effectively banning its performance.

His final work premiered 44 years after his death

On Christmas Eve 1935 Berg died as a result of health complications brought on by an insect bite suffered the previous month. He was 50 years old. Since 1929 he had been working on his much anticipated second opera Lulu, based on the plays of Frank Wedekind. He had finished a short score of the opera, but his passing came before he was able to revise the third and final act.

The completed first two acts received a premiere in Zurich in 1937, and Berg’s wife Helene duly approached Schoenberg to complete Lulu’s orchestration. However, after he refused, Helene forbade any other attempts to complete, or perform, Lulu, during her lifetime. That proved a long wait, as Helene would go on to survive her husband by 39 years, and only after she passed away in 1976, was the opportunity to finish Berg’s second opera opened. Fellow Viennese composer Friedrich Cerha was given the task, and in 1979, half a century after work on it had begun, Lulu was finally performed in full for the first time, under the baton of Pierre Boulez in Paris.

His impact extends beyond this planet

Actually, impact may be the wrong word to use here, given Berg’s legacy as a composer is such that he has an asteroid named after him; 4528 Berg was christened in 1983, fittingly following on from the previously named minor planet, 4527 Schoenberg.

Back on terra firma Berg’s legacy has been continued not only by his music, but by the Alban Berg Quartet, a string quartet that was active from 1971 to 2008; the Alban Berg Foundation, founded by his widow Helene in 1969; and the Alban Berg Monument, a sculptural tribute beside the Vienna State Opera, which was unveiled in 2016.