Alban Berg (1885-1935)
Three Pieces for Orchestra, Op.6
1: Präludium (Prelude)
2: Reigen (Rounds)
3: Marsch (March)
Alban Berg was born into a comfortable middle-class Viennese family, the
third of four children. His unremarkably
happy childhood was thrown into disarray after his father died in 1900. This loss was hugely traumatic for Berg.
Within months he had an attack of asthma, a compalint from which he would then
suffer for the rest of his life. His schoolwork suffered; he failed his exams
and was forced to repeat his sixth year, and would later also have to repeat
his seventh. Most scandalously, he had
an affair with the family's kitchen maid, which resulted in an illegitimate
daughter. The eventual collapse of this
relationship was the primary motivation for a suicide attempt in the autumn of
1903.
As a child Berg's main passion had been for literature, but in the wake
of his father's death he became interested more in music. He had been given piano lessons by his
governess, and from 1901 he composed songs and piano duets for his family. He evidently had talent, and so in 1904 his
brother and sister answered a newspaper advertisement for composition
classes. Unknown to Berg, they took
copies of some of his songs to the teacher, Arnold Schoenberg. Schoenberg was impressed with what he saw and
accepted Berg as a pupil, refusing to charge a fee in view of the family
circumstances. Berg quickly became
devoted to him. He studied with him
until Schoenberg abruptly left Vienna in 1911, and continued to seek his advice
and approval thereafter.
The relationship was not an easy one.
Berg increasingly regarded Schoenberg as something of a surrogate father
figure, whose approval he craved and whose criticism was devastating. Schoenberg for his part felt no compunction
about lecturing his pupil on matters of morality as well as music. As well as absorbing Schoenberg’s
compositional ideas, Berg also inherited to an extent his teacher's moral
views, in particular his ambivalence towards Viennese society. Schoenberg, along with many artists, saw the
Austro-Hungarian Empire as a corrupt and decadent realm that preferred
oppression of its subjects to social reform.
The Expressionist movement to which Schoenberg was allied was in part a
reaction to the lack of opportunity for political expression by exploring
extremes of personal crisis in art, partly fulled by the new ideas of the
subconscious that Sigmund Freud was developing.
In 1913 Berg visited Schoenberg in Berlin. The trip was a happy one until the last day,
when Berg showed his former teacher the two pieces he had written since
Schoenberg's departure from Vienna.
Schoenberg vehemently criticised them, before proceeding to lecture Berg
on what he saw as his lack of self-discipline. In a letter to Schoenberg
written after his return home, Berg revealed how much to heart he had taken the
criticism: “I have to thank you for your reproof as for everything
I have received from you, knowing well that it was meant for my own good. I don't need to tell you that the great pain
it has caused me, is proof of the fact that I have heeded your criticism.”
Schoenberg had suggested that for his next composition Berg should
consider a characteristic suite for orchestra, and Berg resolved that he would
attempt such a project. This was the
starting point for his Three Orchestral Pieces.
This origin is visible in the titles of the pieces (Prelude, Rounds,
March), but the final work that Berg produced moves way beyond the scope of
what might be expected of the original idea.
Berg dedicated the Three Orchestral Pieces to Schoenberg as a present
for his 40th birthday in 1914; in the event, only the first and last
pieces were finished in time, the middle movement not being completed until
1915. Berg's friend and fellow pupil of
Schoenberg Anton Webern conducted two of the pieces in 1920, but it was not
until 1930 that the work was heard in full.
Apart from Schoenberg, the influence of Gustav Mahler looms large in
Berg's style. After Mahler's death in
1911 Berg briefly considered writing a symphony, and some of the ideas from
that aborted project ended up as part of the Praeludium. This piece, materialising uncertainly from
nothing, carries clear echoes of the opening movement of Mahler's Ninth
Symphony, which had made an enormous impression on Berg at its posthumous
premiere in 1912 in Vienna. Like
Mahler, Berg's Prelude rouses itself
repeatedly to increasingly intense climaxes, but eventually retreats back into
the fog from which emerged. In a nod to
Schoenberg's concept of “developing variation”, ideas from this movement are
then reconstituted and transformed to provide the themes for the second.
The title “Reigen” is usually translated as “Round Dance”, but it seems
more likely that it has other associations: in the 19th century, “Reigen” was a
term used in salon music for a sequence of dance tunes, generally a hodgepodge
of popular hits. In a nod to this, the
movement evokes Waltzes and Ländler, sometimes overtly but often through a
distorting mist. “Reigen” may also refer
to the notorious, and at the time
banned, play of that name by Arthur Schnitzler.
The play has ten scenes featuring a chain of couples: a prostitute and a
soldier, then the soldier and a maid, and so on until the prostitute appears
again with a count in the final scene to complete the circle. Berg owned a copy of this dark indictment of
Viennese morality, and its tone chimes well with Berg's own ambivalence towards
Vienna, and the often sardonic character of this movement.
The final March also begins with
material reworked from the previous piece, as well as reintroducing a number of
ideas from the Praeludium. This is music of astonishing and overwhelming
complexity, that makes the most of the sheer brute force that can be harnessed
by a large orchestra. The sheer density of ideas and textures eventually causes
everything to collapse in on itself, leaving a desolate landscape and a hint of
something sinister before a final outburst by the brass. Weeks after Berg
completed this movement, Europe stepped over the brink and was engulfed in war.
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