Alban Berg and Anton Webern: Serialism Pioneers
Alban Berg
Alban Berg was a favorite pupil of Schoenberg. He is considered the most lyrical of the three (Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg), perhaps because of his friendship with Mahler. Mahler’s works, especially the 6th and 9th Symphonies, exerted a great influence on Berg, despite his music being strictly atonal. Even in his strictly twelve-tone second stage, Berg remained lyrical, ordering the series on a pitch with reminiscences, making his work more easily accepted by the general public than Schoenberg’s or Webern’s.
Berg started his first period after Post-Wagnerianism under the supervision of his teacher and is characterized by a very free and expressive atonality. His masterpiece, Wozzeck (dedicated to Mahler), is an opera in which an unhappy soldier kills his unfaithful lover and then hangs himself. It is the prototype of a social document presented in an expressionist work. It is written in a post-Wagnerian chromatic dissonant style, a classic example of atonal chromatic style with composite closed forms (no sonata form, variations, Leitmotif, or traditional songs).
In his second period, his works include: “La Cantata del Vino,” “Concerto for Violin and Orchestra,” and “Lulu.”
The “Concerto for Violin and Orchestra” is subtitled “To the Memory of an Angel” (referring to the daughter of Mahler’s second marriage, who died at 18). In this work, Berg, while believing the twelve-tone system was the only valid alternative to the tonal system, tries to exhaust the logic of the system without alienating his freedom of expression. He seeks to avoid or create successive tonal reminiscences and dissonances. The series draws on the open strings of the violin (G minor, D major, A minor, E major) and the first notes of Bach’s Chorale “Es ist genug.”
Berg’s Lulu
His opera “Lulu” is expressionistic, but more abstract and complex than Wozzeck, with more symbolism. His music is organized more strictly in terms of its twelve-tone alignment, though not without some tonal implications.
It is about a woman who marries a doctor and a painter, whom she indirectly kills. Later, she kills one of her former lovers and goes to jail. His victim’s son falls in love with her. Countess Geschwitz, who is a lesbian, gets her out of jail. Lulu has since lived under the blackmail of the Countess and ends up as a prostitute in London, where she is killed by Jack the Ripper. The message of the play suggests that the only attractive roles for a woman were lover or prostitute. The third act is incomplete due to Berg’s death; it was finished by Friederich Cerha, using orchestrations from the Lulu-Symphonie.
Anton Webern
Anton Webern is much more demanding in terms of form and style, and therefore more rigorous. If Berg represents the romantic potential of Schoenberg’s teachings, Anton Webern represents their classic potential: “Atonality without romanticism.” Webern is the starting point of serialism.
Atonal Stage
All works of this stage are characterized by extreme rigor in the notation of notes, nuances, and dynamics. Everything is well-studied; no note is superfluous or missing.
The characteristics of his work are:
- Abandonment of classical form.
- Absence of symmetry, repetition, and thematic development.
- Brevity and conciseness (Op. 10 No. 4 lasts 20 seconds in 6 bars).
- Expressive condensation.
- The work is heard as a whole.
- Silence is an integral part of musical discourse. Sound and silence have equal value.
- Dynamics are extremely discreet, mostly pianissimo, with few fortes and pianos.
Dodecaphonic Stage
In 1924, he began a second stage of composition using Schoenberg’s twelve-tone method. For Anton Webern, serialism seemed to free him from the earlier composition system.
Initially, from 1914 to 1926, he only wrote songs, based on two contrasting elements: the tradition of the Lied and the presence of the popular. Webern’s training as a musicologist helped him not to reconstruct the forms of the past, but to imagine new formal criteria.
From 1926 until his death, he ignored the voice, and his works became more stringent and perfect. Webern’s works are on a millimetric scale, where everything is accurate to the extent desired by him. His notations do not lend themselves to the discretion of the interpreter; they are extremely accurate. He never wrote opera because it was inconsistent with his tendency toward precise notation. His sensitivity to color and tonal clarity often pushed him to choose unexpected instrumental combinations, as with the Quartet Op. 22 for Violin, Clarinet, Tenor Saxophone, and Piano. With few exceptions, his works are written in the chamber music style.