Composer of the Day!

Today's composer of the day is Alban Berg.

February 9, 1885 - December 24, 1935

(Photo: Alban Berg as played by Christopher Walken.)

Today would have been the 125th birthday for Mr. Berg, if he'd only had superhuman immortality. Berg represents Part II of our three part Composer of the Day! series on Second Viennese School composers. (see Part I here)

Berg was born into wealth, and died in poverty, the latter due to blacklisting by the Nazis. After knocking up one of his family's servants at age 17, Berg did the practical thing and got a job as a bookkeeper. By the age of 19, though, Berg did the unpractical thing and started to study composition with Arnold Schoenberg.

Berg is perhaps best known as the composer most-often cited by twelve-tone apologists and by haters of modernist music in need of some credibility. This is primarily due to Berg's reputation as a composer who successfully combined the musical sensibilities of Romanticism with Expressionist ideals and post-tonal musical languages.

Berg also ascribed to a system of composition that ventured to compose entire works of music from a single motive or musical gesture. This conservation of ideas manifests itself in many of his works, including the musicologist's wet-dream Lyric Suite, of which the first movement, for example, is derived entirely from a series of intervals in the very first bar. His most famous works are probably his Violin Concerto and his two operas, Wozzeck and Lulu. Both operas are touching stories of hope and the unwavering human spirit; the former about a soldier driven insane by doctors who then stabs his mistress, and the latter about a woman who kills her husband, kills her doctor, becomes a prostitute who is in turn killed by Jack the Ripper.

Here is a small bit from one of my favorite moments of Lulu:


Like his serialist comrade, Anton Webern, Berg suffered a rather tragic and gruesome death when he was (likely) bitten by an insect and died of blood poisoning, worsened by a little home surgery performed by his wife. He died on Christmas Eve, which, of course, totally sucks.

In the unlikely case that you haven't heard his music, please remedy that immediately. His music is a marvel of carefully executed musical architecture, and of lyrical and emotional depth.

Besides the already named works, his Chamber Concerto (1925) and Altenberg leider (1911-12) are amazing pieces more than worth the listen.

Chamber Concerto (1925), mvt. 1:


Five Orchestral Songs on Postcard Texts of Peter Altenberg, Op. 4 (1911-12):


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"I think the origin of all this clamour for tonality is not so much the need to sense a relationship to the tonic, as a need for familiar chords: let us be frank and say "for the triad"; and I believe I have good reason to say that just so long as a certain kind of music contains enough such triads, it causes no offence, even if in other ways it most violently clashes with the sacred laws of tonality."
-- Alban Berg, quoted in Reich, Willi (1971). Schoenberg: A Critical Biography, p.34.

Ho Hum

Another Bernard Holland article. Ho hum.

Schoenberg and his school do not make us smile,

(yawn) Ho hum.

but then, they rarely try.

Ho (yawn) hum.

Ho. Hum. Yawn.
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A Texasman in New York

I liked this review pretty well. The writer wrote well. However, the anti-modernist bias continues to drip bile that leaves nasty stains on even the best-intentioned accounts of early modern music.

MET Chamber Ensemble engagingly offbeat

NEW YORK – Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern and Alban Berg were among the seminal figures of 20th-century music.

True!

But nearly a century after their first essays in composing with all 12 tones of the octave, as opposed to the eight notes of traditional major and minor keys,

But…Bach used all 12 notes of the octave. Constantly. Regularly. So did Chopin. And Mozart. And basically every post-Renaissance composer, ever. Even some Renaissance composers did.

these three and their followers remain hard sells.

Sort of. As I’ve discussed before, perhaps often, the narrative of “nobody likes this music” is not helpful in this regard. Perhaps the reviewer doesn’t like this music?

In your wildest dreams, can you imagine the Dallas Symphony Orchestra playing a piece by Webern?

Yes. Yes, I can. It’s not really that wild a dream, either. It should be noted here that the reviewer writes for the Dallas Morning News and is in New York. Those crazy liberal East Coasters and their hundred year-old unlistenable music!

Even the Dallas-Fort Worth modern-music series avoid this whole chunk of repertory as if it were radioactive.

This is an argument? We’re not talking about really obscure pieces here, either. Pierrot Lunaire is, perhaps, Schoenberg’s most popular and accessible work. I found dozens of available recordings without even trying.

But James Levine, music director of the Metropolitan Opera and Boston Symphony Orchestra, has been a long-standing champion of Schoenberg and company.

True! Good research.

On Sunday evening, at Zankel Hall, the chamber-music hall buried in the bowels

Nice choice. The “bowels” are, I reckon, where the “shitty” music lives.

of Carnegie Hall, he and the MET Chamber Ensemble served up two-and-a-half hours' worth.

Of shit?

In retrospect, the revolution led by Schoenberg was inevitable.

I guess, in retrospect, it could be seen that way. Schoenberg certainly thought so. This is the “inevitable stylistic progress” narrative, and is invoked frequently enough. It is problematic, though. That’s probably for another time. We have more prose…

To the big narrative forms of late romanticism, it responded

It = the revolution? The revolution responded? Cool! That must have been something.

with stark disruptions and miniatures of wispy gesture and clattery cataclysm.

This is slightly unclear. How many things are there in this sentence? Three? “Stark disruptions,” “miniatures of wispy gesture,” and “clattery cataclysm”? Or is it “stark disruptions” and “miniatures of wispy gesture and clattery cataclysm”? Disruptions and miniatures are not…the same kind of thing, and it’s funny to phrase it this way. I think what he means is possibly “miniatures that feature stark disruptions, wispy gestures, and clattery cataclysm”?

Anyway, bonus points for “clattery cataclysm”. I just want to say that over and over. Try it!

Supersaturated harmonies based on predictable tensions and releases gave way to arbitrary unpredictability.

Honestly, I don’t know what this means. The music is…predictable, yet unpredictable. Or: the big, narrative late Romantic forms' predictability was replaced with unpredictability? That sounds like a positive thing. Right? No? We like our art to be predictable? Sigh.

Composed between 1909 and 1934, Sunday's fare covered quite a range of scale. There were the miniatures of Webern's Four Pieces for violin and piano (Op. 7),

Awesome pieces. Totally tiny and quiet, with subtle tone color manipulations. A little dense and hard to get at first. But cool.

Berg's Four Pieces for clarinet and piano (Op. 8)

Also awesome. More post-romantic and full of notes. Pretty accessibly expressionistic.

and Schoenberg's Six Little Piano Pieces (Op. 19)

Transcendent pieces. Great for beginning study of atonal style, and also analysis. I recommend this. Analysis. Of these pieces. And, well, in general. And these pieces in general.

At the maximalist end lay Berg's massive Chamber Concerto for piano and violin with 13 wind instruments. Atonal or not, this music can sometimes seem a jumble of tonal fragments.

That is true, especially of Berg. He retained various tonal elements in some of his works.

The Berg Chamber Concerto sometimes sounds like busy neoclassical counterpoint patched in and out of sync.

Sort of. Okay. But it’s cool right? Or good? What? Bad? Bueller?

The Schoenberg piano pieces seem like peeks into miniature worlds of sometimes haunting beauty.

Yeah. Rad.

What could have been a mortification of the flesh came across as genuinely engaging, at times downright seductive, thanks to performances lovingly detailed and finely finished. Standouts among the performers were Mr. Levine (a deft pianist as well as conductor), violinists Gil Shaham and David Chan, pianist Yefim Bronfman and clarinetist Anthony McGill.

You…you liked it? Or some of it? Awesome. That is great. Or did you just like the performances of the awful music? Or the performers? I’d like to hear more about what you think, sir.

And veteran soprano Anja Silja made a riveting experience of Schoenberg's Pierre lunaire, its speech-song settings of Otto Erich Hartleben poems as disturbing as the rawest expressionist paintings.

Good. That sounds good. Like I said, that piece is famously liked by people who don’t really like this music. So: what was good? I also want to hear some more about the chamber music you mentioned in the previous paragraph.

…

That’s it? Oh. Okay. That's kind of disappointing. It almost seems as though you didn't hate it because famous people were performing in New York.

Next time, I'd like to hear some more, please.

I Am Here to Report to You about Some Excellent Music Criticism!

I am here to report to you about some excellent music criticism!

I know, right?

It does exist! I am very pleased. I, however, have one small issue regarding the following. Let it be known, though, that I am very much mostly pleased.

This gentleman has written a very good review for the New York Times about a recent concert featuring some oft-derided music from a century ago. The concert sounds like it was great. The reviewer seems like he genuinely likes the repertoire. Plus: I really like the repertoire! He made me wish I had seen the concert. My quibble is: would someone who does not already know/like the repertoire be encouraged by the review to see the concert?

James Levine is a well-regarded conductor and pianist. The Met Chamber Ensemble is similarly well-regarded. The featured composers should be regarded similarly. Although the author, as noted, above, seems to like the music, he felt the need to...to what? Take an easy dig at it? Or, perhaps, nod to those that don't like it? Who would read a review about a Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg concert with any real interest if they've already made up their mind about the music? Certainly, in the first paragraph, Kozinn sort of abandons any effort to convince any unbelievers to attend the concert to gain greater understanding or appreciation of...

For some listeners the music of the Second Viennese School is by now - a century on - so thoroughly entrenched as to be standard repertory;

Yes. Yes it is. It is not played often enough, or written favorably about enough. And, when mentioned, it is often to deride better-loved composers such as Brahms. But it is historically significant. Also, if one cares to spend time with it, is fucking awesome music.

for others it was supplanted by other styles so long ago that it's irrelevant.

I suppose I understand what he's getting at, here. However, I could easily make the same argument about Bach vis-a-vis people who only listen to rock. Or jazz. Or hip-hop. Or Copland, for that matter. Supplanted by other styles? Like Renaissance in the Baroque era? Or Baroque in the Classical era? Or Classical in the Romantic era? Or Disco in the 1990s?

But if you're still trying to figure out what you think about it, the best idea may be to seek out a performance with James Levine at the helm.

Okay! That is great. I love that you wrote that. It encourages people to be intellectually and/or artistically curious. Which is great. Did I mention that it's great? You are totally asking people who are undecided to be welcome to listen, and attend, and, I guess, decide for themselves. Awesome.

Mr. Levine is a true believer,

This sounds sort of like he's in a cult. The cult of the Second Viennese School. Which I would totally join. However, your sentiment contains a note of...condescension? Even if the condescension is unintended, or well-intended. But you make it sound like he's not normal. Non-normative.

but where other true believers approach this music with earnest reverence, he makes it sing.

Ah. He makes the non-music sounds musical. He is an irreverent true-believer, in that he believes the crazy atonal nonsense is music, and in his role as interpreter, makes it sing.

Don't get me wrong, this is a great article, and I encourage you to read the rest. I only want to point out that even the best-intentioned review can contain hidden, or unintended, critique of music that a) is having image trouble anyway, and b) it purports to acclaim.

So, I was wrong. Kozinn doesn't abandon the effort to convince people to attend and listen. He merely subtly undermines his effort with loaded language. That's my issue.

Otherwise: well done, sir! Well done.
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