Alban Berg

Alban Berg (born February 9, 1885, Vienna; died December 24, 1935, ibid.) was the first composer of the Second Viennese School to conceive major works based on atonality. Born in Vienna, he spent most of his life in the Austrian music metropolis. A versatile talent, he initially had more interest in literature than in music, but in 1904 he was accepted as a private student by Arnold Schoenberg and subsequently introduced to the world of sonic boundary-crossing and twelve-tone music. Impressed by his mentor, to whom he remained a lifelong friend, Alban Berg then sought to find his own path of sound design between atonality and dodecaphony. Until 1906, he still worked as a civil servant, but from then on, he dedicated himself full-time to music. Alban Berg's affinity for literature was expressed not only in music-theoretical writings but also in his two main works. He achieved his breakthrough in 1925 with the psychological opera "Wozzeck," based on a work by Georg Büchner. The second central stage work, "Lulu" (1937 fragment, completed by Friedrich Cerha in 1962–74), was based on Frank Wedekind's plays "Erdgeist" and "Die Büchse der Pandorra." Both operas, in their sonority and musically dramatic density, go far beyond the formal language of Expressionism and developed into key works of modern theatrical language. Compositionally, Alban Berg originally started from Neo-Romanticism but already moved away from the conventions of tonality around 1909. His "String Quartet Op. 3" (1909/10) is considered groundbreaking in this context. Equally innovative in sound were the "Three Orchestral Pieces Op. 6" (1913–15). Despite the high degree of musical abstraction, Alban Berg succeeded in not forgetting the sensuality and expressiveness of the richness of sound. In addition to the "Seven Early Songs" (1907/08), which were still under the influence of Schoenberg, he created numerous other vocal compositions and instrumental works such as the "Chamber Concerto for Violin and Piano with 13 Wind Instruments" (1923–25), the "Lyric Suite for String Quartet" (1925/26), and "Four Pieces for Clarinet and Piano" (1913).