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It was
during the 1920s that Alban Berg
first began to make various
arrangements of his own works,
but
whereas the Three Pieces
from the Lyric
Suite are orchestrations
of movements from a
work originally scored for
string quartet, the
Three Fragments for Voice
and Orchestra
from the Opera "Wozzeck"
and the Five Symphonic
Pieces from the Opera "Lulu"
are
adaptations of excerpts from
stage works
designed to give them an
alternative life of
their own in the concert hall.
At first sight, an
"arrangement" might seem
to be less significant than an
actual
composition. But when we take
into
account the circumstances in
which these
arrangements were made and ask
ourselves
why Berg undertook them, we
may be
forced to revise this
prejudice. This was
a period of major success for
Berg, who
had finally managed to break
free from
the excessive dependency of
his
pupil-teacher relationship
with Schoenberg
and overcome his feelings of
insecurity
as an artist. As a result, he
now
began to make a determined
effort to
champion those of his works
that he
considered important enough to
be introduced
to a wider public.
In the case of his two
operatic transcriptions
his aims were largely
promotional:
these symphonic excerpts from
his two
stage works were intended to
give audiences
a foretaste of the operas as a
whole.In
the case of Wozzeck,
it was HermannScherchen
who encouraged Berg to arrange
passages from it for the
concert hall, and the
successful first performance
of the Three
Fragments under
Scherchen in Frankfurt
on 15 June 1924 was followed
by a
large number of enquiries
about the opera as a
whole. It comes as no
surprise, therefore,
to find Berg adopting a
similar tactic when
promoting his second opera, Lulu.When
Otto Klemperer enquired
whether he was
also planning any “Lulu
Fragments", Berg
replied in May 1934 that he
had it in mind
to write two sets of excerpts
e “a larger one
& a smaller one”. The
“larger” set, he told
his publisher, would provide
"a very
clear picture of the spirit of
the piece",
while the smaller one was
"more of a selection
for propaganda purposes". It
was the
smaller set that he intended
to finish first, not
least because it would help
him "to make
progress on the full score of
the
opera, as these 4 (or 5)
pieces are almost
wholly identical with what
will be in the full
score". Later that month Berg
approached Erich Kleiber, who
had conducted the première of
Wozzeck in 1925, and
asked him whether he had “the
inclination, opportunity &
courage” to conduct the first
performance. The “music of
this suite“, he assured
Kleiber, was "chosen in such a
way that it will encounter no
opposition, even among
prejudiced listeners - quite
the opposite, it will meet
with their approval and, to a
certain extent, perhaps
prepare the way for the stage
work even more effectively
than the Wozzeck Fragments
did". Kleiber agreed to
introduce these Symphonic
Pieces from the Opera "Lulu"
and conducted them in Berlin
on 30 November 1934. But Berg
had miscalculated: his
listeners proved highly
“prejudiced”, and a witch hunt
was unleashed against both him
and Kleiber, with the result
that four days later Kleiber
resigned as general music
director of the Berlin State
Opera and, protesting at
National Socialist cultural
policies, turned his back on
Germany.
The
performance of the Wozzeck
Fragments in Prague
under the direction of
Alexander von Zemlinsky on 20
May 1925 was a turning point
in Berg’s life for two
reasons. First, it was here
that he met Kleiber and was
able to discuss the
forthcoming première of Wozzeck
- an event that was to be so
crucial to his career as a
composer. And, secondly, he
got to know Hanna
Fuchs-Robettin, the wife of
the Prague industrialist,
Herbert Fuchs-Robettin, and
sister of the writer Franz
Werfel. During the rehearsals
he stayed with the
Fuchs-Robettins and fell in
love with Hanna. When he got
back to Vienna, he found that
he could not settle: “I'm no
longer myself,” he wrote to
her. “This is the greatest
thing that has ever happened
to me. My heart won’t stop
beating. I stagger along like
a madman; [...] day and night
my imagination gallops away
with me, from the supreme
heights of human happiness to
the deepest possible levels of
human despair. [...] And all
because of you, you unique and
glorious woman, my eternally
beloved.”
Since
both parties were married, the
relationship came to nothing
but found expression in the Lyric
Suite for string
quartet, a piece begun in the
autumn of 1925 and completed
by September 1926. “Every
note", vowed Berg in a letter
to Hanna, was “consciously
dedicated" to her. In December
1925 he travelled to Berlin
for the first performance of Wozzeck,
breaking his journey in Prague
to see Hanna, but the visit
served only to increase his
inner torment.
The
string orchestra arrangement
of Three Pieces from the
Lyric Suite received its
first performance in Berlin on
31 January 1929. lt is based
on the three middle movements
of the earlier string quartet,
movements which quote in turn
from Zemlinsky’s Lyric
Symphony for soprano,
baritone and orchestra, to
words by Rabindranath Tagore.
At thirteen points in the
Andante amoroso, Berg works in
a quotation from Zemlinsky`s
symphony associated with the
words "Du bist mein eigen" -
"You are my own". This was
"the most beautiful music I
have ever written," Berg told
Hanna, when explaining its
secret programme to her. It
showed Hanna and her “sweet
children in three themes that
keep returning in the manner
of a rondo”. The “initially
unsuspecting, secret nature”
of his relationship with Hanna
inspired the Allegro
misterioso, at the heart of
which is “embedded the first
brief outburst of love”.
The Trio estatico breaks out fortissimo,
quoting from Zemlinsky’s "Du,
die in meinen unsterblichen
Träumen wohnt” (You who dwell
in my immortal dreams) and
standing in stark contrast to
its two framing sections with
their restless, largely pianissimo
semiquavers, which Berg
described as "like a whisper".
In the Adagio appassionato,
finally, the “awareness of
love” strikes the couple “like
a flash of lightning”, before
developing into a “grand,
unending passion”.
This profoundly expressive
movement, in which Berg twice
quotes Zemlinsky’s “Du bist
die Abendwolke, die am Himmel
meiner Träume hinzieht” (You
are the evening cloud that
drifts across the sky of my
dreams), is undoubtedly the
emotional high point of the
work.
Berg’s
two operatic arrangements
concentrate entirely on their
respective principal female
characters. For the Wozzeck
Fragments, he selected
three passages from the opera
that deal with the character
of Marie, who betrays Wozzeck
- the father of her child - by
having an affair with the
Drum-Major and who in the end
is murdered by Wozzeck. Berg
intended these Fragments
to fit together to form “a
unified whole” and provide a
study of the female
protagonist. According to
Webern's enthusiastic
appraisal, they “constitute a
self-contained, autonomous
work [...]. Indeed, this
woman’s whole tragedy is
captured here. And even though
the two men do not appear at
all, one knows everything.”
In the Lulu-Suite,
too, it is the
characterisation of the
eponymous heroine that is the
composer’s central concern.
The Suite revolves
around the Lied der Lulu
- the Song of Lulu - that Berg
dedicated to Webern on the
latter's fiftieth birthday,
adding that “these fifty bars”
were “perhaps the most
important in the whole opera”.
Even more than had been the
case with the Wozzeck
Fragments, Berg was
swayed here by formal
considerations and, as he told
his publisher, was keen that
“all five movements should
have purely musical formal
titles”. Conversely, he was no
longer so concerned with the
opera's actual plot. The Rondo
in which Lulu is seen through
Alwa's eyes and the Lied
der Lulu both come from
the first part of the opera,
while the Ostinato from Act
Two marks its turning point,
coming, as it does, between
Lulu’s rise and fall. The
Variations (the interlude from
Act Three) and the Adagio
sostenuto from the end of the
opera, in which the dying
Countess Geschwitz recalls her
love for Lulu after the latter
has been murdered by Jack the
Ripper, represent stages in
Lulu’s gradual degradation, a
fall that culminates in her
death. These scenes create the
impression of images caught by
time-lapse photography and
take their place within a
symphonic structure which,
like the opera itself, is
characterised by the idea of
symmetrical structures.
Susanne
Rode-Breymann
(Translation:
Stewart Spencer)
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