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The Music of YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS New Haven and London THE MUSIC OF ALBAN BERG DAVE HEADLAM Austrian composer Alban Berg ( 1885-1935), along with his contemporaries Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, dramatically altered the musical landscape of the Western world. In this original book, Dave Headlam offers a comprehensive analysis of Berg's music. He examines each of the composer's works-including the Piano Sonata, Opus I, the op eras Wozzeck and Lulu, and the Violin Concerto and defines the main components of his musical language. Charting Berg's development as he pro gressed from late-romantic tonality to atonality and finally to his own distinctive dodecaphonic language, Headlam demonstrates with clarity and sophistica tion the compositional continuity that underlies all Berg's music. Head lam closely analyzes Berg's compositional tech nique and the use of symmetry and cycles through out his oeuvre. He brings into the discussion Berg's own writings, as well as those of composer and musicologist George Perle; the techniques of Schoenberg, Webern, and other serialists; and as pects of pitch-class set and twelve-tone theory. I Headlam contends that in his treatment of all mu sical elements- pitch, rhythmic, formal, and even orchestrational techniques- Berg achieved a syn thesis that transcends the surface distinctions of his tonal, atonal, and twelve-tone periods, and that the Alban Berg DAVE HEADLAM of Composers the Twentieth Century ALLEN FORTE General Editor ADVISORY BOARD Milton Babbitt Princeton University Wallace Berry (deceased) Carl Dahlhaus (deceased) Stephen Hinton Stanford University David Lewin Harvard University Jan Maegaard University of Copenhagen Robert Morgan Yale University Christian Martin Schmidt University of Amsterdam Arnold Whittall /(jng's College, University of London For Sylvie Copyright© 1996 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 1o 8 of the U. S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Set in Postscript Monotype Garamond type by The Marathon Group, Durham, North Carolina. Printed in the United States of America by BookCrafters, Inc., Chelsea, Michigan. Libraiy of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Headlam, David John. The music of Alban Berg/ Dave Headlam. p. em. - (Composers of the twentieth century) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN o-300-06400-4 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Berg, Alban, 18 8 5-19 35 - Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. II. Series. MLpo.B47H43 1996 78o'.91-dc1o CIP MN A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. 10 9 8 7 6 j 4 3 1 I Contents Acknowledgments, vii A Note on Terminology, ix Introduction, I Tonality, Cycles, and Berg's Opus I and Opus z, I 3 z The Atonal Music: Introduction, 46 3 The Atonal Music: Detail and Analysis, 67 4 The Twelve-Tone Music: Introduction, I94 The Twelve-Tone Music: Detail and Analysis, z 7 I Conclusion, 38 5 Appendix: Theme and Row Charts for Chapter 5, 39I Notes, 40I Bibliography, 439 Index, 455 Acknowledgments T his book is the culmination of many years of work on the music of Alban Berg. I still distinctly remember the time in the listening room of the School of Music at the University of Michigan when I, as a first-year master's student feeling distinctly inferior in reper toire to my colleagues, flipped open the card catalogue to "B:' then to ''Berg" and WOzzeck. As I sat listening I was transfixed; it was a singular moment, to be followed by a master's thesis, doctoral dissertation, papers, articles, and finally this book. Happily, despite the untold hours, weeks, months, and years I have devoted to this music, I recently taught Act III, scene iii of Berg's first opera and was still moved by the experience. Through my work on Berg's music I became a part of a small but growing community of musicians whose insights I have pondered many times; these writers become familiar characters in the little superscript numbers that adorn the following pages. I wish to thank Douglass M. Green, Mark DeVoto, Douglas Jarman, and Glenn E. Watkins, who read and commented on parts of this book. One debt I particularly want to acknowledge is to George Perle, whose exem plary scholarship and devotion to Berg and advice on many musical matters have long guided my efforts. As I note below, I view this book as a further tilling of soil already broken by Perle. The personal and professional contact I have vii had with this remarkable musician is one of the most rewarding outcomes of my studies. I would also like to thank Allen Forte, editor of the series Composers of the Twentieth Century, for the opportunity to contribute this volume and for his kind advice through the process. My editors, first Jeanne Ferris, then Harry Haskell and Susan Laity at Yale University Press have been extremely helpful as well. I acknowledge Robert Freeman, director of the Eastman School of Music, for granting me a semester's leave and for furnishing assistance toward the pro duction costs of this book. I was greatly assisted at the Austrian National Library by Gunter Brosche and Rosemary Hilmar and at the Vienna City Library by Ernst Hilmar. For allowing me to examine the Berg manuscripts in their collec tion I am grateful to Dr. Marie Rolf and Robert Owen Lehman. I also acknowl edge European American Music Distributors Corporation and Musikverlag Robert Lienau for permission to reproduce examples from Berg's music. For their help during my days at the University of Michigan, I want to thank the graduate students and professors I was fortunate enough to work with-in particular Howard Cinnamon, John Covach, my thesis advisor Edward Chuda coff, and my dissertation advisor Andrew Mead. I was also given free rein at the Michigan Music Theory Conference IV to indulge in Berg's music, an opportu nity provided by the Music Theory Department and the chair Ralph Lewis. At the Eastman School of Music I have been fortunate to find myself among the finest scholars and students in music theory. I especially wish to mention count less hours of discussion with Matthew Brown, encouraging comments from Robert Wason, and the students participating in my two seminars on Berg's music for their indulgence and many insights: Michael Buchler, Ed Jurkowski, Paul Laprade, David Lefkowitz, Mary Linklater, David Palmer, Adam Ricci, Yayoi Uno, and Keith Waters. To Ed Jurkowski, Pat Long, and David Palmer I also owe thanks for many of the musical examples, to Aleck Brinkman and Martha Mesiti my regards for the contour graph of Berg's op. 4, no. 2, and to Kimberly Fox and Robert Fink gratitude for their 6oo dpi special. Finally, for their years of faithful service, with only a few hard drive crashes to keep life interesting, I salute my old Pronto computer (retired), my slightly newer IBM AT (soon to be retired), and my deluxe new Power Macintosh (still active); I have spent more time with these contraptions in the past years than with any thing or anyone else. In closing, I wish to thank my wife, Sylvie Beaudette, for her love and sup port and continual best wishes as I labored. It is to Sylvie that this book is ded icated, for I should surely be incurably insane without her. viii Acknowledgments A Note on Terminology I employ several terms and symbols in common use in theory parlance, given below. Two terms are somewhat unusual: ( 1) Tn-class sets are some times distinguished from Tnl-class sets; and (z) Pn is used to indicate pitch-class levels of Tn-class sets, as well as to indicate (as usual) pitch class levels from prime forms of serial motives or twelve-tone rows; Tn is reserved for relative transpositional levels between two sets. <-> an ordered series of elements, e.g., <C-D-E> { , } an unordered group of elements, e.g., {C ,D,E} Contour the contour of a group of pitches is given in relative terms, with o as the lowest position; <C4-B3 -E4> have contour < 10z>. Contours are given within angle brackets with no punctuation Cycle an ordered series resulting from successive equal grada tions, e.g., a 1-cycle of pitch-classes is <C-C#-D-D#-E F-F#-G-G#-A-A#-B> In a label given to a serial motive or twelve-tone row, where n is a variable indicating the initial pitch-class; e.g., I 5 is the inversional form beginning on F ix