Product Description
For solo classical guitar; 3 pp
Alban Berg 1885
-1935
Berg was a student of
Arnold Schoenberg, and came to prominence with compositions using the
atonalism of that school. He incorporated chromaticism and an absence
of tonality into his compositions with complete facility, if not to
public acclaim. His creativity was interrupted by World War 1, during
which he served in the Austrian Army. He returned to composition as a
champion of modern music, with his opera Wozzeck (1923) bringing both
fame and notoriety. He died of blood poisoning in 1935.
Over the past century
dissonance increased in the compositions of serious music to a point
where the semitones had equal value, which is harmonically a kind of
wall. Berg was an early innovator. However, if when strictly followed
such serialism reaches an ultimate dissonance that effectively sees
off melody and harmony as emotional and structural entities, that
still leaves elements around form, dynamics and rhythm for the
purposes of expression, and these together with adroit note selection
prove to be surprisingly potent for articulation and cohesion.
The Lyric Suite (1927),
which uses Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, is a case in point.
The very name seems incongruous for an atonal work, yet lyric it is,
and if the forms used are necessarily masked by the characteristics
of serial writing they are not eliminated by them. In this excerpt a
rondo form is used with the principle subject repeated on the third
page (noted in the score) after a digression to more remote regions
than this form usually adopts, due to the atonality.
As well, Berg's writing
is rarely purely atonal. In fact the integration of consonant
elements are one of the music's most alluring features. It would be
so easy, one feels, for melodic material to coagulate the mix, but in
his hands the very opposite is generated, an increased clarity of
mood. The music remains consistent, as it should, and the
incorporation of (often only relatively) thematic material, if often
arresting after so much dissonance, doesn't always always mean less
intensity or gloom. It is simply effective, either way.
Having said all that,
it can hardly be denied that the substance of atonality (dissonance,
clashing semitones, unharmonic bass) gives it a special suitability
to express dark outlooks, and Berg is the author of Wozzeck and Lulu,
no downtown musicals. It is hard to determine if Berg chose atonality
because it could deliver the angst or because he was bored with
obvious forms and romanticism. Probably both.
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