Alban_Berg

[[Image:Alban Berg Bueste Schiefling 01.jpg|thumb|right|220px|Bust of Alban Berg at Schiefling, Carinthia, Austria]]

'''Alban Maria Johannes Berg''' ([[February 9]], [[1885]] – [[December 24]], [[1935]]) was an [[Austria]]n [[composer]]. He was a member of the [[Second Viennese School]] with [[Arnold Schoenberg]] and [[Anton Webern]], and produced compositions that combined [[Gustav Mahler|Mahlerian]] [[romantic music|romanticism]] with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's [[twelve-tone technique]].

==Life and work==

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]].

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 of 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]].<ref> {{cite web|url=http://www.geocities.com/al6an6erg/bio.html |title=Alban Berg Biography |accessdate=2007-12-22 }}</ref>

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]]. By [[1906]], he was studying music full-time; by [[1907]], he began [[musical composition|composition]] lessons. His student compositions included five drafts for [[piano sonata]]s. He also wrote songs, including his ''[[Seven Early Songs (Berg)|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 (Berg)|Piano Sonata]] ([[opus number|Op.]] 1) (1907–[[1908|8]]); it is one of the most formidable "first" works ever written (Lauder, 1986).

Berg studied with Schoenberg for six years until 1911. Berg admired him as a composer and mentor, and they remained close lifelong friends. Berg may have seen the older composer as a father figure, as Berg's father had died when he was only 15.

Among Schoenberg's teaching was the idea that the unity of a musical composition depends on 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 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".{{Fact|date=October 2007}} The Piano Sonata is an example—the whole composition is derived from the work's opening [[quartal and quintal harmony|quartal]] gesture and its opening phrase.

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; despite the outward hostility of 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, [[conducting|conducted]] by Schoenberg. Settings of aphoristic utterances, the songs are accompanied by a very large orchestra. The performance caused a riot, and had to be halted; the work was not performed in full until [[1952]] (and its full score remained unpublished until 1966).

From [[1915]] to [[1918]], Berg served in the [[Austria-Hungary|Austrian]] Army and during a period of leave in [[1917]] he began 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.

Three excerpts from ''Wozzeck'' were performed in [[1924]], and this brought Berg his first public success. The opera, which Berg completed in [[1922]], was not performed in its entirety until [[December 14]], [[1925]], when [[Erich Kleiber]] directed a performance in [[Berlin]]. Today ''Wozzeck'' is seen as one of Berg's most important works. Berg completed only the first two acts of his later opera, the critically acclaimed ''[[Lulu (opera)|Lulu]]'', before he died.

Berg's best-known piece is his elegiac [[Violin Concerto (Berg)|Violin Concerto]]. Like much of his mature work, it employs a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's [[twelve tone technique]] that enables the composer to combine frank [[atonality]] with passages that use more traditional tonal harmonies; additionally, Berg incorporates quotations from historical tonal music, including a [[Johann Sebastian Bach|Bach]] chorale and a [[Carinthia (state)|Carinthian]] folk song. The Violin Concerto was dedicated to Manon, the deceased daughter of architect [[Walter Gropius]] and [[Alma Schindler]].

Other well known Berg compositions include the ''[[Lyric Suite]]'' (seemingly a significant influence on the String Quartet No. 3 of [[Béla Bartók]]{{Fact|date=October 2007}}), ''Three Pieces for Orchestra'' and the [[Chamber music|Chamber]] [[Concerto]] for [[violin]], [[piano]] and 13 [[Woodwind instrument|wind]] instruments.

Berg died in Vienna, on Christmas Eve 1935, apparently from [[blood poisoning]] caused by an insect bite. He was 50 years old.

Douglas Jarman writes in the [[New Grove]]: "As the 20th century closed, the 'backward-looking' Berg suddenly came as Perle remarked, to look like its most forward-looking composer."<ref>Jarman, Grove</ref>

==Major compositions==
''See also [[List of compositions by Alban Berg]]''

===Piano===
*[[Piano sonata (Berg)|Piano Sonata, Op.1]]
*[[Kammerkonzert]] (1925) for piano, violin and 13 wind instruments

===Strings===
*[[Violin Concerto (Berg)|Violin Concerto]]
*[[Lyric Suite]]

===Opera===
*[[Wozzeck]]
*[[Lulu (opera)|Lulu]]

===Vocal===
*[[Seven Early Songs (Berg)|Seven Early Songs]]

==Bibliography==
===Analytical writings===

*Adorno, Theodor W. ''Alban Berg: Master of the Smallest Link''. Trans. Juliane Brand and Christopher Hailey. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

*Schmalfeldt, Janet. "Berg’s Path to Atonality: The Piano Sonata, Op. 1". ''Alban Berg: Historical and Analytical Perspectives''. Eds. David Gable and Robert P. Morgan, pgg. 79-110. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

*Lauder, Robert Neil. ''Two Early Piano Works of Alban Berg: A Stylistic and Structural Analysis''. Thesis. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1986.

*Bruhn, Siglind, ed. ''Encrypted Messages in Alban Berg’s Music''. New York: Garland Publishing, 1998.

*Schweizer, Klaus. ''Die Sonatensatzform im Schaffen Alban Bergs''. Stuttgart: Satz und Druck, 1970.

*Wilkey, Jay Weldon. ''Certain Aspects of Form in the Vocal Music of Alban Berg''. Ph.D. thesis. Ann Arbor: Indiana University, 1965.

*Perle, George. ''The operas of Alban Berg''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.

*Jarman, Douglas. ''Dr. Schon's Five-Strophe Aria: Some Notes on Tonality and Pitch Association in Berg's Lulu''. Perspectives of New Music 8/2 (Spring/Summer 1970).

*Jarman, Douglas. ''Some Rhythmic and Metric Techniques in Alban Berg's Lulu''. Musical Quarterly 56/3 (July 1970).

*Jarman, Douglas. ''Lulu: The Sketches''. International Alban Berg Society Newsletter, 6 (June 1978).

*Jarman, Dougas. ''The Music of Alban Berg''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.

*Jarman, Douglas. ''Countess Geschwitz's Series: A Controversy Resolved?''. Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 107 (1980/81).

*Jarman, Douglas. ''Some Observations on Rhythm, Meter and Tempo in Lulu''. In Alban Berg Studien. Ed. Rudolf Klein. Vienna: Universal Edition, 1981.

*Jarman, Douglas. ''Lulu: The Musical and Dramatic Structure''. Royal Opera House Covent Garden program notes, 1981.

*Jarman, Douglas. ''The 'Lost' Score of the 'Symphonic Pieces from Lulu'''. International Alban Berg Society Newsletter 12 (Fall/Winter 1982).

===Biographical writings===

*Brand, Juliane, Christopher Hailey and Donald Harris, eds. ''The Berg-Schoenberg Correspondence: Selected Letters''. New York: Norton, 1987.

*Grun, Bernard, ed. ''Alban Berg: Letters to his Wife''. London: Faber and Faber, 1971.

*Floros, Contantin. Trans. by Ernest Bernhardt-Kabisch. [http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=1037_3025_3071&products_id=57669 ''Alban Berg and Hanna Fuchs'']. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007.

*Redlich, H.F. ''Alban Berg, the Man and His Music''. London: John Calder, 1957.

*Reich, Willi. ''The life and work of Alban Berg''. Trans. Cornelius Cardew. New York : Da Capo Press, 1982.

*Monson, Karen. ''Alban Berg: a biography''. London: Macdonald and Jane's, 1979.

*Carner, Mosco. ''Alban Berg: the man and the work''. London: Duckworth, 1975.

*Redlich, Hans Ferdinand. ''Alban Berg, the man and his music''. London: J. Calder, 1957.

*Leibowitz, René. ''Schoenberg and his school; the contemporary stage of the language of music''. Trans. [[Dika Newlin]]. New York: Philosophical Library, 1949.

==References==

* Douglas Jarman: "Alban Berg", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed April 9, 2007), [http://www.grovemusic.com (subscription access)]

*''The Oxford Dictionary of Opera'', by John Warrack and Ewan West (1992), 782 pages, ISBN 0-19-869164-5

==See also==

*[[List of Austrians in music]]

*[[List of Austrians]]

==Notes==
{{Refimprove|date=October 2007}}
{{reflist}}

==External links==
{{wikiquote}}
* {{IMSLP|id=Berg%2C_Alban|cname=Alban Berg}}



{{Persondata
|NAME= Berg, Alban
|ALTERNATIVE NAMES= Berg, Alban Maria Johannes
|SHORT DESCRIPTION= [[Composer]]
|DATE OF BIRTH= {{birth date|1885|2|9|mf=y}}
|PLACE OF BIRTH= [[Vienna]], [[Austria]]
|DATE OF DEATH= {{death date|1935|12|24|mf=y}}
|PLACE OF DEATH=[[Vienna]], [[Austria]]
}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Berg, Alban}}
[[Category:20th century classical composers]]
[[Category:Austrian composers]]
[[Category:Expressionism]]
[[Category:Opera composers]]
[[Category:People from Vienna]]
[[Category:1885 births]]
[[Category:1935 deaths]]

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