Lyric Suite (Berg)

Last updated
Lyric Suite
String quartet by Alban Berg
WP Alban Berg.jpg
Sketch of Alban Berg by Emil Stumpp (1927)
Composed1925 (1925)–26
Dedication Alexander von Zemlinsky
MovementsSix

The Lyric Suite is a six-movement work for string quartet written by Alban Berg between 1925 and 1926 using methods derived from Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique. Though publicly dedicated to Alexander von Zemlinsky (from whose Lyric Symphony it quotes), the work has been shown to possess a "secret dedication" and to outline a "secret programme". [1]

Contents

Berg arranged three of the "pieces" (movements) for string orchestra in 1928.

Composition and analysis

The string quartet has six movements:

  1. Allegretto gioviale
  2. Andante amoroso
  3. Allegro misterioso – Trio estatico
  4. Adagio appassionato
  5. Presto delirando – Tenebroso
  6. Largo desolato
Initial thematic statement of the tone row, mm. 2-4, cyclically permuted to begin on E in mm. 7-9 Berg's Lyric Suite Mov. I thematic statement.PNG
Initial thematic statement of the tone row, mm. 2–4, cyclically permuted to begin on E♭ in mm. 7–9

As Berg's friend and fellow Schoenberg pupil Erwin Stein wrote in the preface to the score, "[t]he work (Ist and VIth part, the main part of the IIIrd and the middle section of the Vth) has been mostly written strictly in accordance with Schoenberg's technique of the 'Composition with 12 inwardly related tones." A set of 12 different tones gives the rough material of the composition, and the portions which have been treated more freely still adhere more or less to the technique". [3] George Perle points out that the first movement is not strictly twelve-tone, with the opening four chords being derived not from the series but from the interval-7 cycle. [4]

The first analysis was undertaken by H. F. Redlich, who notices that "the first movement of the Lyric Suite develops out of the disorder of intervals in its first bar, the notes of which, strung out horizontally, present the complete chromatic scale, and from this in the second and following bars, grows the Basic Set in its thematic shape". [5]

Theodor W. Adorno called the quartet "a latent opera". [6] Redlich described "the concealed vocality of the Lyric Suite" [7] despite having no knowledge of the setting of Baudelaire's De profundis clamavi in the finale movement, deciphered by Douglass M. Green from what Perle calls "Berg's cryptic notations". [8]

Perle discovered a complete copy of the first edition annotated by Berg for his dedicatee, Hanna Fuchs-Robettin (Franz Werfel's sister, with whom Berg had an affair in the 1920s), later that year. [9] Berg used the signature motif, A-B-H-F (in German notation, B means B♭, while H means B♮), to combine Alban Berg (A. B.) and Hanna Fuchs-Robettin (H. F.). [10] This is most prominent in the third movement. Berg also quotes a melody from Zemlinsky's Lyric Symphony in movement four which originally set the words "You are mine own". In the last movement, according to Berg's self-analysis, the "entire material, the tonal element too... as well as the Tristan motif" is developed "by strict adherence to the 12-note series". [6]

I. Allegretto giovale

According to René Leibowitz, the first movement is "entirely written in the twelve-tone technique, [it] is a sonata movement without the development. Thus the recapitulation follows directly upon the exposition; but, because of the highly advanced twelve-tone technique of variation, everything in this movement is developmental". [11]

The tone row of the first movement is

Lyric Suite Movement I tone row.svg

Pople adds a bar line to group the first and the last six pitches. [12] He also depicts it as:

Berg's Lyric Suite Mov. I tone row B-P.PNG

Whenever a given row-form is immediately repeated, a reversed coupling of the hexachords is employed to produce a secondary set. Berg had used the row previously, in 1925, in his first twelve-tone work, his second setting of "Schliesse mir die Augen beide". [2]

III. Allegro misterioso – Trio estatico

In the third movement, the outer sections of the Allegro misterioso present the same music forwards and then backwards, while the Trio estatico, the B section of the ABA, is through-composed. [13] Berg generates a characteristic rhythmic cell through partitioning the series into a seven-note chromatic segment and a complementary five-note motive from the remaining notes. [14]

According to Wolfgang Martin Stroh, [15] the tone row of the third movement is

Lyric Suite Movement III tone row.svg

which can be partitioned into a rising chromatic segment and remaining pitches: [15] [9]

Berg's constructive rhythm.PNG

George Perle,[ citation needed ] gives

Berg's Lyric Suite Mov. III tone row-P.PNG

Despite assertions by Berg and others, George Perle, however, "had not yet been informed, as Leibowitz and Redlich were by the time they came to write their respective books, that everything in the 'strictly' dodecaphonic first movement had to be derived from a single serial ordering of the twelve notes of the chromatic scale." Rather, he, "recognized that the first three chords unfold tetrachordal segments of a single statement of the cycle of fifths (C7), and that at the bottom of the same page, in bars 7–9, the cello presents a linear statement of the same cycle." The second violin unfolds "the initial tetrachordal segmentation of the perfect-5th cycle," again at the beginning of the recapitulation. He asks: "How could one [think] of the initial bar as 'disordered'? If anything is to be designated as an Urform here, surely it is this perfect-5th cycle, given its background role in relation to the tone row and other components of the movement." [16]

VI. Largo desolato

In the sixth movement, tone row 1 is [17]

Berg's Lyric Suite Mov. VI tone row 1-P.PNG

while tone row 2, derived from tone row 1, is [17]

Berg's Lyric Suite Mov. VI tone row 2-P.PNG

Version for string orchestra

In 1928, Berg arranged the second, third and fourth movements of the Lyric Suite for string orchestra. According to Adorno:

If the lyrical nature of the Suite is best fostered in the quartet, its dramatic nature is best fostered in the string tutti; only here are its contours dissolved as completely and enigmatically as the accompanimental concept of the sound demands; and only here does the paroxysm attain its full catastrophic force. [18]

Recordings

The piece has been recorded by and released on:

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alban Berg</span> Austrian composer (1885–1935)

Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer of the Second Viennese School. His compositional style combined Romantic lyricism with the twelve-tone technique. Although he left a relatively small oeuvre, he is remembered as one of the most important composers of the 20th century for his expressive style encompassing "entire worlds of emotion and structure".

In music, a tone row or note row, also series or set, is a non-repetitive ordering of a set of pitch-classes, typically of the twelve notes in musical set theory of the chromatic scale, though both larger and smaller sets are sometimes found.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atonality</span> Music that lacks a tonal center or key

Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key. Atonality, in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about the early 20th-century to the present day, where a hierarchy of harmonies focusing on a single, central triad is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale function independently of one another. More narrowly, the term atonality describes music that does not conform to the system of tonal hierarchies that characterized European classical music between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. "The repertory of atonal music is characterized by the occurrence of pitches in novel combinations, as well as by the occurrence of familiar pitch combinations in unfamiliar environments".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anton Webern</span> Austrian composer and conductor (1883–1945)

Anton Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor. His music was among the most radical of its milieu in its concision and use of then novel atonal and twelve-tone techniques in an increasingly rigorous manner, somewhat after the Franco-Flemish School of his studies under Guido Adler. With his mentor Arnold Schoenberg and his colleague Alban Berg, Webern was at the core of those within the broader circle of the Second Viennese School. He was arguably the first and certainly the last of the three to write music in a style lauded for its aphoristic, expressionist potency, reflecting his instincts and the idiosyncrasy of his compositional process.

The Second Viennese School was the group of composers that comprised Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils, particularly Alban Berg and Anton Webern, and close associates in early 20th-century Vienna. Their music was initially characterized by late-Romantic expanded tonality and later, a totally chromatic expressionism without firm tonal centre, often referred to as atonality; and later still, Schoenberg's serial twelve-tone technique. Adorno said that the twelve-tone method, when it had evolved into maturity, was a "veritable message in a bottle", addressed to an unknown and uncertain future. Though this common development took place, it neither followed a common time-line nor a cooperative path. Likewise, it was not a direct result of Schoenberg's teaching—which, as his various published textbooks demonstrate, was highly traditional and conservative. Schoenberg's textbooks also reveal that the Second Viennese School spawned not from the development of his serial method, but rather from the influence of his creative example.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Violin Concerto (Berg)</span>

Alban Berg's Violin Concerto was written in 1935. It is probably Berg's best-known and most frequently performed piece. In it, Berg sought to reconcile diatonicism and dodecaphony. The work was commissioned by Louis Krasner, and dedicated by Berg to "the memory of an angel". It was the last work he completed. Krasner performed the solo part in the premiere at the Palau de la Música Catalana, Barcelona, in April 1936, four months after the composer's death.

The Violin Concerto by Arnold Schoenberg dates from Schoenberg's time in the United States, where he had moved in 1933 to escape Nazi Germany. The piece was written in 1936, the same year as the String Quartet No. 4. At the time of its completion, Schoenberg was living in Brentwood, Los Angeles, and had just accepted a teaching position at the University of California, Los Angeles. The work is dedicated to Anton Webern.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Perle</span> American composer

George Perle was an American composer and music theorist. As a composer, his music was largely atonal, using methods similar to the twelve-tone technique of the Second Viennese School. This serialist style, and atonality in general, was the subject of much of his theoretical writings. His 1962 book, Serial Composition and Atonality: An Introduction to the Music of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern remains a standard text for 20th-century classical music theory. Among Perle's awards was the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his Wind Quintet No. 4.

The String Quartet, Op. 3, by Alban Berg was composed in 1910. It was not published until 1920.

Rudolf Kolisch was a Viennese violinist and leader of string quartets, including the Kolisch Quartet and the Pro Arte Quartet.

The Kolisch Quartet was a string quartet musical ensemble founded in Vienna, originally as the New Vienna String Quartet for the performance of Schoenberg's works, and settling to the form in which it was later known. It had a worldwide reputation and made several recordings. The quartet disbanded in the United States during the early 1940s.

The Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg published four string quartets, distributed over his lifetime: String Quartet No. 1 in D minor, Opus 7 (1905), String Quartet No. 2 in F♯ minor, Op. 10 (1908), String Quartet No. 3, Op. 30 (1927), and the String Quartet No. 4, Op. 37 (1936).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dial Records (1946)</span>

Dial Records was an American record company and label that specialized first in bebop jazz and then in contemporary classical music. It was founded in 1946 by Ross Russell. Notable artists who recorded for Dial include Charlie Parker, who signed an exclusive one-year recording contract with Russell on 26 February 1946, as well as Miles Davis, Max Roach, and Milt Jackson. Dial Records initially pressed its music for the Tempo Music Shop of Hollywood, California, but soon relocated to New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eugene Lehner</span> Hungarian musician

Eugene Lehner was a violist and music educator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amar Quartet</span>

The Amar Quartet, also known as the Amar-Hindemith Quartet, was a musical ensemble founded by the composer Paul Hindemith in 1921 in Germany. The quartet was active in both classical and modern repertoire until disbanding in 1933. It performed for many European concerts, broadcasts and recordings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chamber Symphony No. 1 (Schoenberg)</span>

The Chamber Symphony No. 1 in E major, Op. 9 is a composition by Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wind Quintet (Schoenberg)</span>

The Wind Quintet, Op. 26, is a chamber music composition by Arnold Schoenberg, composed in 1923–24. It is one of the earliest of Schoenberg's compositions to use twelve-tone technique.

The Tetzlaff Quartet is a German string quartet ensemble formed in 1994. The quartet has released four CD recordings, of which their 2014 recording of Berg's Lyric Suite and the Mendelssohn Quartet Op. 13 received a Diapason d'Or award and was an Editor's Choice for Gramophone magazine.

References

  1. ↑ Perle 1977a, [ page needed ].
  2. 1 2 Perle 1996, 20.
  3. ↑ Perle 1990, 123.
  4. ↑ Perle 1977a, 21.
  5. ↑ Redlich 1957, [ page needed ].
  6. 1 2 Sandberger 1996.
  7. ↑ Redlich 1957, 142.
  8. ↑ Green 1977.
  9. 1 2 Perle 1990, [ page needed ].
  10. ↑ Reel 2010.
  11. ↑ Leibowitz 1947, [ page needed ].
  12. ↑ Pople 1991, 18.
  13. ↑ Pople 1991, 17–18.
  14. ↑ Pople 1991, 15.
  15. 1 2 Stroh 1968, 26.
  16. ↑ Perle 1990, 126.
  17. 1 2 Antokoletz 1992, 70.
  18. ↑ Adorno 1991, 105.

Sources

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.