Alban Berg

Listening Guide. Passionate Melody: Alban Berg (1885-1935, Vienna), Lyric Suite (1926), No. 2 Andante Amoroso.

Berg led an eventful life, fathering a daughter Albine at the age of 17 (in 1902) by a maid Marie Scheuchl who was 15 years his senior, married Helene Nahowski in 1906, premiered two of his Five Orchestral Songs in the Skandalkonzert of 1913 when the audience called for him to be committed to the asylum before the infamous riot broke out, served in the Austro-Hungarian army in World War 1, and, in the 1920s, had an affair with Hanna Fuchs-Robettin and taught composition to the philosopher Theodor Adorno. Berg moved to the secluded lodge Waldhaus in 1932 to escape the rising tide of Nazi ideology, and died soon after in 1935. While the notes F and H (in German notation, B-natural is “H”) which respectively commence and conclude the tone row used in movements 1, 3, and 4 of the Lyric Suite constitite a cypher based on the initials of Hanna Fuchs-Robettin, the second movement is not based on the tone row. In movement 2, we hear the expressive side of the Second Viennese School: lilting melody, lush texture, and sensuous harmony build through motivic variation to a brilliant tone cluster in high register near the end before the final release.