berg twelve tone

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The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 25, Issue 2, pp. 183210, ISSN 0277-9269, electronic ISSN 1533-8347. © 2008 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/ jm.2008.25.2.183. 183 This essay further explores ideas and autograph sources that I worked with in “ ‘Rückfälle in meine altgewöhnte freie Schreib- weise’: Berg’s Lyric Suite Dichotomy as Seen through the Early Sketches,” in “The Development of Berg’s Twelve-Tone Aesthetic as Seen in the Lyric Suite and Its Sources” (Ph.D. diss., Yale Uni- versity, 1995), 15888. 1 Technically speaking, Berg’s second setting of the Theodor Storm text “Schließe mir die Augen beide” (1924) is his first composition using what he called “strict” twelve- tone techniques. I choose to disregard that work in this context given its brevity and entirely uncharacteristic use of the series at a single prograde transposition and in strict rotation. Berg’s correspondence with Webern fixes beginning and end dates for his work on the Lyric Suite ; see the relevant letters in Schoenberg, Berg, Webern/Die Streichquartette: Eine Dokumentation, ed. and trans. Ursula von Rauchhaupt (Hamburg: Deutsche Gram- mophon, 1987), 269, 278. Schoenberg presented his early ideas on twelve-tone composi- tion to his students on February 17, 1923; for accounts of that meeting see Joan Allen Smith, Schoenberg and His Circle: A Viennese Portrait (New York: Schirmer, 1986), 19798. According to Anne Shreffler, Schoenberg likely informed Webern of his discoveries ear- lier, in the summer of 1921 or 1922; see Shreffler, “ ‘Mein Weg geht jetzt vorüber’: The Vocal Origins of Webern’s Twelve-Tone Composition,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 47 (1994): 28487. 2 Letter of July 13, 1926, in The Berg-Schoenberg Correspondence: Selected Letters, ed. Juliane Brand, Christopher Hailey, and Donald Harris (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), 348. The letter also appears untranslated in Briefwechsel Arnold Schönberg-Alban Berg, ed. Juliane Brand, Christopher Hailey, and Andreas Meyer (Mainz: Schott, 2007), 2:26771. The Lyric Suite and Berg’s Twelve-Tone Duality ARVED ASHBY The Lyric Suite is Berg’s first extended twelve- tone composition: he began it in mid September 1925, about a year and a half after Schoenberg announced his twelve-tone discoveries to his students, and he completed it in early October 1926. 1 Berg in- formed Schoenberg of his progress that July: “Gradually, even I am be- coming adept in this method of composing, and that is very reassuring. For it would have pained me dreadfully if it had been denied me to ex- press myself musically this way.” 2 According to Berg’s own description,

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Page 1: Berg Twelve Tone

The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 25, Issue 2, pp. 183–210, ISSN 0277-9269, electronic ISSN 1533-8347. © 2008 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’sRights and Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/jm.2008.25.2.183.

183This essay further explores ideas and autograph sources that Iworked with in “ ‘Rückfälle in meine altgewöhnte freie Schreib-weise’: Berg’s Lyric Suite Dichotomy as Seen through the EarlySketches,” in “The Development of Berg’s Twelve-Tone Aestheticas Seen in the Lyric Suite and Its Sources” (Ph.D. diss., Yale Uni-versity, 1995), 158–88.

1 Technically speaking, Berg’s second setting of the Theodor Storm text “Schließemir die Augen beide” (1924) is his first composition using what he called “strict” twelve-tone techniques. I choose to disregard that work in this context given its brevity and entirely uncharacteristic use of the series at a single prograde transposition and in strictrotation. Berg’s correspondence with Webern fixes beginning and end dates for his workon the Lyric Suite ; see the relevant letters in Schoenberg, Berg, Webern/Die Streichquartette:Eine Dokumentation, ed. and trans. Ursula von Rauchhaupt (Hamburg: Deutsche Gram-mophon, 1987), 269, 278. Schoenberg presented his early ideas on twelve-tone composi-tion to his students on February 17, 1923; for accounts of that meeting see Joan AllenSmith, Schoenberg and His Circle: A Viennese Portrait (New York: Schirmer, 1986), 197–98.According to Anne Shreffler, Schoenberg likely informed Webern of his discoveries ear-lier, in the summer of 1921 or 1922; see Shreffler, “ ‘Mein Weg geht jetzt vorüber’: TheVocal Origins of Webern’s Twelve-Tone Composition,” Journal of the American MusicologicalSociety 47 (1994): 284–87.

2 Letter of July 13, 1926, in The Berg-Schoenberg Correspondence: Selected Letters, ed. Juliane Brand, Christopher Hailey, and Donald Harris (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987),348. The letter also appears untranslated in Briefwechsel Arnold Schönberg-Alban Berg, ed. Juliane Brand, Christopher Hailey, and Andreas Meyer (Mainz: Schott, 2007), 2:267–71.

The Lyric Suite and Berg’sTwelve-Tone Duality

ARVED ASHBY

The Lyric Suite is Berg’s first extended twelve-tone composition: he began it in mid September 1925, about a yearand a half after Schoenberg announced his twelve-tone discoveries tohis students, and he completed it in early October 1926.1 Berg in-formed Schoenberg of his progress that July: “Gradually, even I am be-coming adept in this method of composing, and that is very reassuring.For it would have pained me dreadfully if it had been denied me to ex-press myself musically this way.”2 According to Berg’s own description,

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3 According to Adorno, Berg drew up this detailed overview for the Kolisch Quar-tet’s premiere of the Lyric Suite. It was first published in Alban Berg: Bildnis im Wort, Selb-stzeugnisse und Aussagen der Freunde, ed. Willi Reich (Zurich: Die Arche, 1959), 45–54; andappears in translation in Schoenberg, Berg, Webern/Die Streichquartette: Eine Dokumentation,287–95. The original manuscript is held in the Anton Webern/Alban Berg Collection,Music Division, Library of Congress.

4 “The Lyric Suite was Berg’s first major work to adopt Schoenberg’s twelve-tonemethod of composition; but it is characteristic of the composer’s initially cautious approachthat movements and/or sections in serial technique alternate with others in the free atonalstyle of Wozzeck and the Chamber Concerto, to say nothing of tonal enclaves” (MoscoCarner, Alban Berg: The Man and the Work [New York: Holmes and Meier, 1983], 124).

5 Theodor W. Adorno, Alban Berg: Master of the Smallest Link, trans. Juliane Brandand Christopher Hailey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 106. Joan AllenSmith offers a middle-road view of another kind, saying Berg required his fullest ingenu-ity to deal with twelve-tone imposition: “His adoption of the twelve-tone method at a timewhen he was at the height of his success as a composer was made possible through hisgreat originality and compositional flexibility. Although the twelve-tone method may nothave been adopted with the same urgent necessity by Berg as by Schoenberg and Webern,it is perhaps in Berg’s music that the twelve- tone method is used in the most refined andoriginal manner, even if the composer himself may not have come to it spontaneouslyand from necessity” (Smith, Schoenberg and His Circle: A Viennese Portrait, 201–2).

however, only half the Lyric Suite uses twelve-tone techniques (see thestructural diagram from his “Neun Blätter zur Lyrischen Suite für Streich -quartett,” reproduced in fig. 1).3 The first and last movements are con-sistently twelve-tone, whereas the twelve-tone third movement enclosesa “free” trio section and the “free” fifth movement includes two twelve-tone sections (marked “tenebroso”). The second and fourth move-ments are entirely “free.” These alternating compositional approachesseem in themselves a structural conceit, since they are arranged moreor less symmetrically.

Few have addressed the aesthetic and political implications of thishybridity in one of Berg’s most important and familiar compositions.The hybrid aspect of the Lyric Suite can be heard several ways: it can beheard either as a hesitant acknowledgment of twelve-tone necessity, oras brilliant personalization of the method—Berg’s eager attempt tomake it his own. Among those subscribing to the former view, MoscoCarner takes the hybrid aspect as a sign of Berg’s caution in embracingthe new method, and by extension a comment on the hothouse politicsinvolving the Schoenberg circle and its methodologies.4 T. W. Adornotook a middle view when he attributed the hybrid structure to the intensely personal manner of the music itself: he found the style of the Lyric Suite incompatible with the “mathematical determination” ofthe twelve-tone system. At the same time, he thought this music tran-scended any dialectic of strict and free, technical and expressive: “Thetruly lyrical movements affirm their unrestrained subjectivity by avoid-ing the twelve-tone technique. However, that technique, even where itis used, is seamlessly bound up with the style of freedom.”5

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6 Theodor W. Adorno and Alban Berg: Correspondence 1925–1935, ed. Henri Lonitz,trans. Wieland Hoban (Cambridge, MA: Polity Press, 2005), 58.

7 See George Perle, The Operas of Alban Berg, vol. 2, Lulu (Berkeley: University of Cal-ifornia Press, 1985), 17–29. Perle announced his discovery earlier in “The Secret Pro-gram of the Lyric Suite,” International Alban Berg Society Newsletter 5 (1977), 4–12. Lookingthrough Berg’s sketches for the Lyric Suite also in 1976, Douglass Green deciphered thetext overlay to the finale as Baudelaire’s De profundis clamavi, revealing that movement tobe a particularly explicit function of Berg’s “secret program”; see Green, “Berg’s De Pro-fundis: The Finale of the Lyric Suite,” International Alban Berg Society News letter 5 (1977):13–23.

The writer who made the most of the hybridity of the Lyric Suite wasBerg himself. He informed Schoenberg of it in his comprehensive let-ter of July 13, 1926, and had spelled out the dichotomies in greater detail three weeks before in a letter to Adorno, describing the secondmovement as “not twelve tone music” and the fifth as “half free, halfstrictly twelve tone.”6 He went so far in detailing his methods as to callthe finale “in very strict twelve tone technique” and developed thesedistinctions in the synoptic “Neun Blätter zur Lyrischen Suite für Streich -quartett.” Berg let few opportunities pass to mention this duality. Onecould even dub the twelve-tone duality of the Lyric Suite its “public pro-gram,” in contrast to the lovesick “secret program” that has dominateddiscussion of this work since George Perle’s discovery of Hanna Fuchs’sannotated score in 1976.7 It is a natural human tendency, as Umberto

figure 1. Structure of the Lyric Suite, from Berg’s “Neun Blätter zurLyrischen Suite für Streichquartett”

6 Sätze: Allegretto, Andante, Allegro, Adagio, Presto, Largo12Ton frei 12Ton frei frei 12Ton

(Trio frei) (die 2Trios12Ton)

Die Reihe verändert sich im Verlauf der 4 Sätze durch Umstellung einigerTöne. (Diese Veränderung unwesentlich in Hinblick auf die Linie, wesentlichaber in Hinblick auf die Charakter—“Schicksal erleidend.”)

Reihen siehe Anlage, Form siehe Anlage.

Verknüpfung der einzelnen Sätze geschieht—abgesehen davon, daß die 12Ton-Reihe eine solche Verknüpfung herstellt—dadurch, daß jeweils 1 Bestandteil (1 Thema oder 1 Reihe, 1 Stück oder 1 Idee) in den folgenden Satz hinüberge -nom men wird und der letzte wiederum auf den 1. zurückgreift. Natürlich nichtmechanisch, sondern ebenfalls im Verhältnis der großen Entwicklung (Stim-mungssteigerung) innerhalb des ganzen Stücks (“Schicksal erleidend”!).

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8 Umberto Eco, “Interpretation and History,” in Interpretation and Overinterpretation,ed. Stefan Collini (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 30.

9 Jarman, “ ‘Man hat auch nur Fleisch und Blut’: Towards a Berg Biography,” in Alban Berg: Historical and Analytical Perspectives, ed. David Gable and Robert P. Morgan(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 21. The biographical import of the Lyric Suite’s secretprogram makes the timing of its discovery ironic. The programmatic details came to lightwhen music scholars were becoming largely disenchanted with biography, or were at leastmoving in other directions, and the reevaluation of Berg’s life that Jarman envisioned—and which would have given those details necessary context—has not appeared.

10 Adorno, Alban Berg: Master of the Smallest Link, 5; Pierre Boulez, Conversations withCélestin Deliège (London: Eulenburg, 1976), 24.

Eco observed from a hermeneuticist’s perspective, to equate secretknowledge with deep knowledge.8 Secrets prove more intriguing thanpublic information, and thus Berg’s secret program has dominated dis-cussion of the Lyric Suite for thirty years.

The romantic narrative is of interest primarily to biographers, butthe public program of compositional hybridity has far-reaching implica-tions for Berg’s relationship with Schoenberg and for Berg’s analystsdown to the present day. Scholars have overcompensated for earlier as-sessments wherein, as Douglas Jarman notes, “Berg’s music and his lifedid not relate.”9 Berg’s romantic encryptions certainly have biographicalimportance, but they are ultimately banal or perhaps even non-Bergianby reason of the largely one-dimensional connection between extramusi-cal scenario and musical details. The Lyric Suite, as recently discussed, hasbecome a work of unambiguous autobiography—a document of insistentcandidness and self-revelation. Adorno, on the other hand, locatedBerg’s essence elsewhere, in ambiguity and in opposition to “any kindof insistence,” while Pierre Boulez was drawn to Berg’s music as a“whole universe in perpetual motion.”10 These important descriptionsoffer testimony less to the amorous, demonstrative disclosures of theLyric Suite than to the anxious but purposeful contradictions of Berg’scompositional design.

This complex and tortuous composition unfolds and resonates onmany levels. The free-strict duality leads ultimately to political ques-tions: how could this music demonstrate “the possibility of expressingmyself musically in that way” at the same time it artfully prevaricates onthe question of twelve-tone necessity? Perhaps “possibility,” as opposedto obligation, was the operative word? Is this not still some kind of ideo-logical statement? Answers lie in the compositional history of the work.Particularly important is when and how the composer understood theLyric Suite to be a hybrid composition; here, the sketches and auto-graphs (held by the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna) proveinvaluable. Usually more forthcoming with emotional scenarios thancompositional explanations, in the Lyric Suite Berg conjoined a struc-

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11 Jarman points out the differences of programmatic approach between Berg andhis colleagues in Schoenberg’s inner circle. Contrary to Schoenberg and Webern, “thedetailed autobiographical nature of [Berg’s] programmes, and the way in which these details are embodied in the very structure of the music, make them essentially differentfrom the more generalized programmes that served as a starting point for his colleagues”( Jarman, “Secret Programmes,” in The Cambridge Companion to Berg, ed. Anthony Pople[Cam bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997], 175). Berg’s care over circulating the to-tal chromatic, in the free passages of the Lyric Suite as well as those written with stricttwelve-tone techniques, also gives an idea of how his style remained consistent even acrosschanges in compositional method. “Unlike Schoenberg and Webern, both of whom un-derwent significant stylistic changes in adopting the new method,” writes Robert Morgan,“Berg remained remarkably constant, applying serial techniques to attain essentially thekinds of musical and expressive values favoured in his pre-twelve-tone works” (Morgan,“Retrograde and Circular Form in Berg,” in Alban Berg: Historical and Analytical Perspec -tives, 133).

12 See Arved Ashby, “Schoenberg, Boulez, and Twelve-Tone Composition as IdealType,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 54 (2001): 585–625.

tural enigma to an emotional confession, choosing to publicize a com-positional duality that became inaudible in the finished composition.11

The Lyric Suite sketches allow fresh glimpses into this inscrutable “uni-verse,” a composition so recursive and self-contradictory that it threat-ens to dissipate before our very eyes and ears.

Scattered Beginnings

One detail soon surfaces from the autograph materials: Berg cre-ated none of the kinds of row tables that he later drew up for Der Wein,the Violin Concerto, and Lulu. Row tables, incomplete matrices drawnup as pre-compositional references, have become symbols—thoughproblematic ones—in the historical and aesthetic reception of twelve-tone works. Row tables lack an equivalent in tonal composition, andtheir authoritative appearance has at times encouraged a deterministicview of twelve-tone composition, one corroborated by the historicism ofthe postwar pan-serialist composers.12 The row table stands as a corol-lary to two widely accepted—but again problematic, and sometimessimply untrue—beliefs regarding Schoenbergian twelve-tone composi-tion: that (1) a single row, functioning as an authoritative presence,works to unify the composition through a single and unchanging seriesof interval-classes; and (2) the twelve-tone piece represents a compos-ing out of the relational potential within that unitary row.

The attention lavished on row tables continues to affirm the myththat the twelve-tone row represents the first Basic Idea of the composi-tion, the composer’s initial creative thought, and the work’s structuralcornerstone. The row table, along with the complete matrix of forty-eight classic transformations, has iconographic importance. There isthe famous photo of Webern working at his piano in 1930, with the

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tables for his op. 22 mounted above a sketchbook.13 One also thinks ofWebern’s reference to the so-called magic square of Pompeii (satorarepo tenet opera rotas) and of the perennial appearance ofSchoen berg’s op. 33a matrix in music history texts. These documentsseem to affirm Schoenberg’s basic pronouncement in his 1947 essay“Brahms the Progressive” that “the most important capacity of a com-poser is to cast a glance into the most remote future of his themes ormotives. He has to be able to know beforehand the consequenceswhich derive from the problems existing in his material, and to orga-nize everything accordingly.”14 Schoenberg chose at that point in histhinking to separate the musical “material” from its final and “most re-mote” realization, invoking a time gap between the two and imputingan instantaneous and inviolate aspect to the former (the work idealizedas the necessary realization of Einfall) separate from the compositionalprocess itself.15 Given Schoenberg’s conceptual separation it comes asno surprise that, as Kathryn Bailey tells us,

the row tables were a more significant part of Schoenberg’s creativeprocess than they were for either Berg or Webern. Schoenberg, whopublicly expressed such bitterness over the world’s interest in the rowson which his works were based, seems privately to have considered therow tables themselves as works of art.16

In terms of chronology and methodology, Schoenberg’s “glance intothe most remote future of his themes or motives” is closer to the scien-tistic reasoning of Boulez and the Darmstadt School than it is to the

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13 See Kathryn Bailey, “Webern’s Row Tables,” in Webern Studies, ed. Bailey (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 175–76.

14 Arnold Schoenberg, “Brahms the Progressive,” in Style and Idea: Selected Writings ofArnold Schoenberg, ed. Leonard Stein and trans. Leo Black (Berkeley: University of Califor-nia Press, 1975), 422.

15 See Schoenberg, “Inspiration,” trans. R. Wayne Shoaf, “Schoenberg on Inspira-tion,” in Tenth Anniversary Bulletin, Arnold Schoenberg Institute (1987), 1; cited inSchoen berg, The Musical Idea and the Logic, Technique, and Art of its Presentation, ed. andtrans. Patricia Carpenter and Severine Neff (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995),375. Schoenberg repeatedly changed his mind on the connection between Einfall andboth compositional process and the finished work. According to Carpenter and Neff ’s introduction to The Musical Idea and the Logic, Technique, and Art of its Presentation (18),“Schoen berg moved steadily toward an understanding of the idea as somehow standingfor the wholeness of a work.” As Leonard Stein and others have shown, there are in-stances where Schoenberg altered the series according to local melodic considerations,providing additional examples of confluence between musical material and composi-tional realization. On this situation in the Piano Concerto and the op. 31 Variations, seeStein, “From Inception to Realization in the Sketches of Schoenberg,” in Bericht über den I.Kongress der lnternationalen Schönberg-Gesellschaft, ed. Rudolf Stephan (Vienna: Lafite, 1978),213–27.

16 Bailey, “Webern’s Row Tables,” 224.

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less unitary manner of “working with tones,” as Schoenberg described it late in life, that he had developed in the Piano Pieces opp. 23 and25.17 That same postwar, inductive manner of thought has helped,retroactively, to give the row table and matrix their central aesthetic-musical importance, ushering them out of the composer’s private ate-lier and into music history textbooks.

We would do well to keep the historiography of twelve-tone compo-sition in mind when exploring Berg’s earliest labors on the Lyric Suite,which offer revealing contrasts with Schoenberg’s and Webern’s meth-ods. The autograph source that comes closest to a row table in terms ofcompositional chronology is an eighteen-stave bifolium (referred tohereafter simply as “the bifolium”) of early sketches, in various shadesof ink and pencil.18 To judge from one formal diagram, the bifoliumcontains some of Berg’s earliest ideas for the Lyric Suite. A sketch on fol. 14 presents a composition in four movements of increasing tempocontrasts, a conception that must predate Berg’s description of thework in a letter to Webern dated October 12, 1925, as “a Suite forstring quartet; six movements, more lyric than symphonic in character.”The early plan in question (see fig. 2) follows the pattern of alternatingever faster and slower tempos found in the final six-movement form butsuggests something closer to a four-movement sonata structure; Bergseemed uncertain where to place the scherzo and slow movement. Thissonata-aspect continues in the formal diagrams that follow—the thirdmovement still called a “scherzo” even when the overall design was ex-tended to six, including a presto fifth movement.

Clearly, the bifolium is not a row table insofar as it might show thecomposer differentiating between “pre-compositional” and “composi-tional” thinking. Many of the bifolium drafts could be described as con-cept sketches, to use Patricia Hall’s term for the briefer drafts of Lulu.Hall describes concept sketches—ideas the composer often discarded—as “fragmentary and highly preliminary in nature, often showing Berg’s

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17 Schoenberg, “My Evolution” (1949), in Style and Idea, 89. He discussed thismethodology in more detail in a 1937 letter to Nicolas Slonimsky, referring in that caseto a “technique” of “composing with tones”; Slonimsky, Music Since 1900, 5th ed. (NewYork: Schirmer, 1994), 1030.

18 ÖNB, F 21 Berg 76/XII, fols.11–11v, 14–14v. “ÖNB” stands for the Österreichis-che Nationalbibliothek and refers here always to the Musiksammlung. In her catalogue ofBerg’s autographs, Rosemary Hilmar does not separate this bifolium from the latersketches (mostly for the sixth movement) that were included under the same shelf num-ber. She describes the contents of the bifolium simply as “ferner Skizzen sowie Theme-nentwürfe zu anderen Sätzen.” Hilmar, Katalog der Musikhandschriften, Schriften und Stu-dien Alban Bergs im Fond Alban Berg und der weiteren handschriftlichen Quellen im Besitz derÖsterreichischen Nationalbibliothek, ed. Franz Grasberger and Rudolf Stephan (Vienna: Uni-versal Edition, 1980), 65.

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initial thoughts about some feature of a passage or extended section ofthe opera.”19 One such bifolium sketch became something longer andmore permanent, perhaps the beginning of a continuity draft: hissketch of the opening of the second-movement Andante amoroso, ex-ample 1, grew to a length where we can see the composer balancinglyric impulsiveness with accountability to the complete chromatic. Likethe bifolium as a whole, this draft consists of several layers of work asseen in the vertical and lateral spacing on the page, the changinglength of bar-lines, and the use of both pencil (staves 1–3, part of 5)and ink (staves 4–5). As it appears in the final score (transposed up amajor 6th from the pitch level in the sketch), this passage circulates thechromatic quite stringently, with several pitch-class repetitions intro-duced in m. 2 of the accompanying line. The sketch begins with thetwelve pitch-classes making up the first phrase in stave 1, while changesmade to the accompanying line apparently show the composer workingto reduce pitch-class redundancies. Pitch revisions of the accompanyingline in stave 2 are found in stave 3, where one pitch-class is introducedand repetition of two others eliminated to produce the complete chro-matic with one duplication, E �. In the last layer of the sketch (staves 4–5),the two-part counterpoint is rewritten as a strict canon at the octave withthe second voice entering after the initial pitches D �, B �, E.20 All revisionsretain the top melodic line, with its elegantly lyrical disposition of thecomplete chromatic, and the second line painstakingly tailored to it.

Given that the Lyric Suite saw Berg’s first substantial application of the method that Schoenberg called “Komposition mit zwölf nur

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19 “Their appearance can best be described as an almost illegible ‘stream of con-sciousness,’ as if Berg were freely experimenting with ideas before beginning the arduousprocess of realization and refinement” (Patricia Hall, A View of Berg’s “Lulu” through theAutograph Sources [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996], 21, 24).

20 Staves 4, 5, and part of 6 are written in a distinctive black ink, which appears alsoin the sketchbook for the second movement (ÖNB, F 21 Berg 76/II). This book containsa developed continuity sketch for the Andante amoroso written in pencil, with the linesdeveloped in the bifolium inserted in ink after at least part of the pencil continuity sketchhad been written out.

Figure 2. Early formal sketch for the Lyric Suite, bifolium ÖNB, F 21Berg 76/XII, fol. 14

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aufeinander bezogenen Tönen,” we might have expected an obviousrow table, or other such prefiguration of “the consequences which de-rive from the problems existing in his material” (to quote Schoenbergagain from “Brahms the Progressive” on implementation of the compo-sitional idea). The absence of a row table in the usual sense does notnecessarily mean that Berg did not produce one; such a documentcould simply have been lost. But the musical content of the earlysketches makes it unlikely that he put together any such synopticoverview. None of Berg’s initial Lyric Suite drafts shows a connectionwith the row forms in the finished composition, or indeed with any integral set of interval-classes. In his later works, Berg often proved un-able to separate his ostensible pre-compositional materials from theirworking-out. As Patricia Hall notes, row tables for Berg’s later twelve-tone works often show signs of compositional sketching. In some of therow tables for Lulu, for example, he begins to explore and test the com-positional possibilities of rows immediately after writing them out.21 Inaddition, as seen especially in such an unusually structured row as thatfor Der Wein (the first hexachord of which consists of a D-minor scalefragment), Berg often constructed his rows after making specific, local-ized compositional decisions including (in the case of Der Wein) the desirability of diatonic scales as melodic elements.

In terms of “glancing into the most remote future of themes or motives,” the closest Berg came to a summary row table for the LyricSuite was a diagram for “various systems” of conjoined row forms,arranged according to gradated change in hexachordal collections (seeex. 2). This source likely dates from well after the first bifolium sketchesand was possibly produced around the time of the reconstituted secondsketchbook described below; the diagram of row forms develops thelarge-scale structural thinking seen in the second sketchbook but in-cludes the second form of F. H. Klein’s all-interval row (the “neueKleinsche Form”) rather than the vertical partitioning of the first formthat Berg later chose to replace it.22 (The first detailed partitioning of

192

21 “Berg did not always work systematically from one stage of sketching to the next;rather, he often launched immediately into compositional sketches upon deriving a rowform” (Hall, A View of Berg’s “Lulu” through the Autograph Sources, 17). The same applies toSchoenberg’s method of working, as shown in Stein’s demonstration of Schoenberg com-posing the extended theme to his Piano Concerto before devising a row to match themore important elements of that theme (Stein, “From Inception to Realization in theSketches of Schoenberg,” 222–25).

22 For further explanation of this sketch, see Ashby, “Of ‘Modell-Typen’ and ‘Reihen-formen’: Berg, Schoenberg, F. H. Klein, and the Concept of Row Derivation,” Journal of theAmerican Musicological Society 48 (1995): 92–98. In that essay I described this as an “early”sketch, but would now place it somewhat later in the genesis of the Lyric Suite, for the rea-sons given above.

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the row occurs in the reconstituted second sketchbook, on F21 Berg86/I, fol. 10v and fol. 23v.) So this diagram of “various systems” sug-gests, remarkably, that Berg organized his Lyric Suite row forms only after considerable sketching. The diagram also contravenes the twocommon twelve-tone assumptions mentioned earlier in revealing thatBerg (1) organized his work according to hexachordal invariance pro-duced through order-position operations, including the white-notehexachord seen on the bottom stave(this in addition to the Schoenberg -ian operations in the pitch-class domain, namely transposition and in-version, seen elsewhere in the diagram); and (2) introduced a secondrow form (the “neue Kleinsche Form”) derived from the first by non-Schoenbergian operations.

193

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=Krebs b[?](v[on]. d[er]. Orig[inalen] R[eihe])

etc.

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example 2. Berg’s diagram of hexachord relations for the Lyric Suite(ÖNB, F 21 Berg 76/V, fol. 1)

diverse Systeme (1) Orig[inal] Reihe + U[mkehrung], K[rebs], U[mkehrung von]K[rebs],

(2) Orig[inal] Reihe + Dom[inante] + Medianteform(3) 1 + 2 (wobei ebenfalls Dom[inante] un[nd] Mediante

von Umkehr[un]g u[nd] Krebs)(4) Orig[inal] Reihe u[nd] Transpos[ition] auf alle[n] Stufen(5) 4 + U[mkehrung], u[nd] K[rebs], u[nd] U[mkehrung]-K[rebs]

neue auf allen Stufen(6) II. (Kleinsche Form

mit 1)-5)

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None of the early Lyric Suite sketches presented here represents anattempt to write music adhering strictly to Schoenberg’s method ofcomposing “with twelve tones related only to one another.” As seen in abifolium sketch for the third movement, however, Berg might havebeen devising twelve-tone series as well as executing compositionaldrafts. This sketch (see ex. 3) arrives at a series of twelve tones for thethird movement (given in stave 14, with a circled “12”) after explo-ration of chromaticism in the ABHF collection (in stave 12), followedby his first indication of the structure for any of the movements (the“Übergang zu” reference). In an experiment with chromatic comple-tion in the upper stave of the sketch, Berg adds to the bass statement ofABHF the only transposition (T–3) of that collection (PC set 4–5) thatpresents no redundant pitch-classes. Additional note stems to the rightin the upper stave presumably represent the pitch classes needed tocomplete the chromatic. The sketch, then, suggests that Berg intendedto use at least part of the bifolium for the following stages of sketching:(1) experimenting with circulation of the chromatic, (2) establishing aseries, and finally (3) devising a form for the movement as based upondiscoveries made while sketching. Berg was clearly satisfied with his de-sign and discoveries. He circled the whole sketch over fol. 14 in redpencil and even recorded in the right margin his completing the sketchat 2:23 in the morning (“9 [the date?] 2:23, h”).

Arguably, the bifolium shows Berg moving beyond “working withtones” in the manner described by Schoenberg and going on to developa kind of intermediary stage between the linear techniques of so-calleddeveloping variation and the full textural presentation of the motive,both as melody and as chords, that represents twelve-tone writing ascommonly defined. In Schoenberg’s words from 1937, during his earlyperiod of “working with tones” he “built other motives and themesfrom [the original motive], and also accompaniments and otherchords—but the theme did not consist of twelve tones.”23 Berg was ap-parently trying to arrive at referential dodecaphonic series for individ-ual movements in some bifolium sketches and did consider himselfbound to the number twelve. Thus this early source for the Lyric Suiteshows him attempting some kind of “twelve-tone music” but failing todifferentiate the compositional process from the supposedly pre-compositional in a way that suggests Schoenberg’s early manner of“working with tones.”

194

23 Letter from Schoenberg to Slonimsky in Music Since 1900, 1030.

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“Backsliding into My Accustomed Free Style”

In the letter to Schoenberg discussing the Lyric Suite, Berg fell backupon the “difficulties” encountered with the canons of the third move-ment to justify “so as not to despair—occasional backsliding into my accustomed free style.”24 Penned roughly a year into Berg’s work on theLyric Suite, this mention of “backsliding” could refer to any of the work’shybrid elements or none specifically. In any event, here Berg presentsSchoenberg with a scenario of strict twelve-tone efforts followed bylarge-scale and regressive reversions to free atonality; yet the bifoliumcontradicts this progression and instead suggests that Berg began withfree and attempted strict sketching more or less at the same time.

A set of form sketches, predating the letter to Schoenberg by atleast ten months but composed after the bifolium stage, also contra-dicts Berg’s declaration by showing painstaking and symmetrical cali-bration of free to strict styles within the first month or two of composi-tion. The second of two store-bought sketchbooks with ten staves (ÖNBMusiksammlung, F 21 Berg 76/I)contains diagrams of a work in sixmovements and sketches that develop some ideas from the bifolium,suggesting that this source came after at least one sketch layer in the bi-folium. Two of these sketchbook diagrams (those given in figs. 3 and 4)place the two fastest movements (the Allegro and the Presto) first andthird and give the fifth movement a moderate Allegretto tempo,thereby differing from the uniformly increasing divergence of tempo in

195

24 Berg to Schoenberg, July 13, 1926, in The Berg-Schoenberg Correspondence, 351.

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12

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Ubergang zu

III

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example 3. Early sketch for the Allegro misterioso (ÖNB, F 21 Berg76/XII, fol. 14)

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196

figure 3. Formal sketch for the Lyric Suite, ÖNB, F 21 Berg 76/I, fol. 10v

figure 4. Formal sketch for the Lyric Suite, ÖNB, F 21 Berg 76/I, fol. 10

the finished Lyric Suite. Berg was apparently dissatisfied with the succes-sion of tempos seen in these plans. He began to cross out the move-ment designations in figure 3, then turned to the closest empty page inthe sketchbook to write out the succession of movements as seen in thefinished composition (fig. 5). To the right in this sketch, he clarifiedthe increasing tempo differences with a series of numbers. To the lower

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left, he expressed dissatisfaction (“Schlecht!”) with the order of the lastfour movements, possibly because of the extreme juxtapositions oftempo. Still, he felt this design to be a significant discovery, to judgefrom his dating the sketch at the upper left (“29/9.25”) in the sameway he usually commemorated completion of a fair copy.

The strict and free indications in these sketches show a formal con-ception that is increasingly detailed but still in flux. The schema seen infigure 3 establishes a particular balance between free and twelve-tonemovements. Early compositional sketches show that from the begin-ning Berg considered the third movement a primarily strict tripartitestructure, and figure 3 would thus seem to indicate a particularly bal-anced form of alternating strict and free movements. The sketch seenin figure 4 is balanced in a different and more complex manner. As indicated by the two columns under the heading “Stil,” Berg now givessome of the movements two parts. He indicates a strictly twelve-tonefifth movement just as he did in figure 3, possibly to provide a counter-part to the entirely strict first movement, while the last movement isnow designated “free-strict,” possibly an inversion of the “strict-free”form for the third movement.

The two store-bought sketchbooks (ÖNB, F 21 Berg 76/I and F 21Berg 76/III) present an account of the evolving strict-free hybridity. Itmight seem that Berg had decided upon his rows by the time he beganwork in the sketchbooks, since the first of the two to be catalogued(ÖNB , F 21 Berg 76/1) begins with the formal diagrams given abovein figures 2–4 (fols. 9v–10v); it also contains partitionings of the seriesfor the third movement (bottom of 10v) and the all-interval row from

197

figure 5. Formal sketch for the Lyric Suite, ÖNB, F 21 Berg 76/I, fol. 9v

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his second setting of “Schließe mir die Augen beide” as well as the rota-tions from that song (fols. 15–15v). But Berg tore many pages out ofthese two books, and the order of the ÖNB catalogue does not reflecttheir original sequence. Berg went through and assigned material todifferent movements in blue pencil, suggesting he went back and se-lected them for further exploration and possible reassignment. Thebindings and tear patterns allow the original books to be reconstructedalmost in their entirety (see fig. 6), and thereby allow us to concludethat Berg began F 21 Berg 76/III as a series of sketches arranged in theorder of the six movements, with the omission of the third, for whichthere is no material. He then began the second sketchbook (F 21 Berg76/I) by re-examining his plans for the form of the Lyric Suite (the for-mal diagrams transcribed above in figs. 2–4), writing out his registralpartitioning of the all interval row that he borrowed from Klein, andthen setting down sketches for the fourth, fifth, and sixth movements.25

The two reconstructed sketchbooks, then, present the same compo-sitional approach seen in the bifolium: they suggest Berg began theLyric Suite by working around the twelve-tone movements, for which hedid minimal experimental work that he did not keep. He started the bi-folium with sketches for the second and fourth movements, and thisfree material is the only material from the bifolium that he retained inthe final composition. Indeed, the first movements for which Berg pro-duced substantial sketches are those that would come to contain nostrict passages at all: he did allocate free material to these movementsin his notebook sketches but ultimately rejected those passages. Whenhe went from the bifolium to the first sketchbook (F 21 Berg 76/III),Berg intended to draft material for each movement in order. But hespent less time on the first movement than on the second (his depic-tion of Hanna Fuchs and her children, according to the pocket scoreBerg annotated for her) and skipped the third altogether. He also virtu-ally ignored the strict first and sixth movements. Not only were the firstand sixth movements the last that Berg began, but he also started themlong after he had arrived at the six-movement design with a strict firstmovement and a finale combining strict and free styles. Sketches forthe Allegretto using Klein’s all-interval row appear only after recogniz-able sketches for the second, third, fourth, and fifth movements; he

198

25 Ideas for what came to be the Adagio appassionato, namely the semitone oscilla-tions and imitation that open that movement, help reveal that Berg worked in F 21 Berg76/III before turning to F 21 Berg 76/I. We find a sketch for this opening passage tornout of the first sketchbook (ÖNB, F 21 Berg 76/III) and now catalogued as part of thesecond book (F 21 Berg 76/I, fol. 18), a draft that likely predates a sketch in the secondsketchbook proper where the texture is filled out and more rhythmic detail is provided(F 21 Berg 76/I, fol. 23).

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199

figure 6. Reconstruction of the two Lyric Suite sketchbooks (sketch-books as they stood before [1] Berg removed and relocatedmany pages on which he had sketched and [2] ÖNB cata-loguers numbered the pages in the new order)

FIRST SKETCHBOOK: F21 Berg 76/III, fol. 1v draft for a letter, apparently in response to a

reviewF21 Berg 76/III, fols. 2–2v (top) 1st mov’tF21 Berg 76/III, fols. 2v 2nd mov’t (coda to 1st movement?)

(bottom)–3v F21 Berg 76/I, fols. 17–17v 2nd mov’t (page continued with sixth after

being torn out, this later changed to fifth in blue pencil)

F21 Berg 76/I, fol. 22v 2nd mov’t (page continued with sketch for 3rd, which was later allocated to trio of 3rd with blue pencil)

F21 Berg 76/I, fol. 22 2nd mov’tF21 Berg 76/III, fols. 6, 6v 2nd mov’t (sketch for 5th mov’t added on fol. 6

after page was torn out; sketch at bottom of 6v reallocated to 6th in red pencil)

F21 Berg 76/I, fols. 18, 18v 4th mov’t (designation rewritten in blue; fol. 18v blank)

F21 Berg 76/I, fols. 16, 16v 5th mov’tF21 Berg 76/III, fol. 4 6th mov’t (later designated for 4th)F21 Berg 76/III, fols. 4v, 7–8 continuation of fol. 4F21 Berg 76/III, fols. 8v–10v 6th mov’t (later designated for 5th)

SECOND SKETCHBOOK:F21 Berg 76/I, fol. 9 sketch for an extraneous “waltz” (The two pages between fols. 9 and 9v, filled with script, were glued togetherand cannot be read or separated.) F21 Berg 76/I, fols. 9v–10v diagrams of overall form for the Lyric Suite F21 Berg 76/I, fols. 10v 3rd mov’t: partitionings of all-

(bottom), 23v interval series F21 Berg 76/I, fol. 23 4th mov’t (also designated for sixth) F21 Berg 76/I, fols. 11–11v continuation of fol. 23(The following page was torn out, and appears lost.) F21 Berg 76/I, fols. 12–12v 5th mov’t (designation rewritten in blue

pencil) F21 Berg 76/I, fol. 25v originally 6th mov’t; designation crossed

out, rewritten in blue pencil F21 Berg 76/I, fol. 25 lower half: designated for 3rd mov’t in blue

pencil F21 Berg 76/I, fols. 15–15v copying out of all-interval row from “Schließe

mir,” along with rotations from the song

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began the Largo desolato only after he had finished all five other movements.26

If Berg began the Lyric Suite by concentrating on free rather thantwelve-tone music, he took great pains to circulate the chromatic inthose free passages and thereby managed to introduce twelve-tone tech-niques into his music “seamlessly,” to use Adorno’s description.27 Boththe bifolium and sketchbooks show Berg painstakingly changing indi-vidual pitches after preliminary sketching. If such changes seem un-usual for Berg at this early stage of composition, he had exhibited similar concern in the sketches for his previous work, the ChamberConcerto.28 One might expect such care for circulating the total chro-matic in that work, which Berg dedicated to Schoenberg and used as aforum for experimenting with “long stretches of completely suspendedtonality” alongside “individual shorter passages of tonal character thatcorrespond to the regulations established by yourself in the ‘Composi-tion with 12 notes.’ ”29

200

26 As Berg told Schoenberg in his letter dated September 13, 1926, The Berg-Schoenberg Correspondence, 352. It is possible that Berg settled on Klein’s series only after hebegan pondering his first movement and decided it would have strong tonal implications.

27 “He manipulated the twelve-tone technique in such a way that it became, as itwere, imperceptible. When he first adopted this technique, his object was to incorporateit seamlessly into his own tone” (Adorno, Alban Berg, 18).

28 For instance, Berg often tallied the chromatic in the introduction to the firstmovement of the Chamber Concerto in his sketches catalogued as ÖNB, F 21 Berg 74/X1. Here he marked m. 1 through beat 2 of m. 5 “alle 12 Töne”; m. 10, beat 2 throughm. 12, beat 3 “11 ohne fis”; etc.

29 Open letter from Berg to Schoenberg, February 9, 1925, The Berg-Schoenberg Corre-spondence, 336.

figure 6. (continued)

F21 Berg 76/I, fols. 1–7v comprised a separate, third book, now containingonly blank pages, from which Berg is likely to have taken the following pages ofuncertain order and folial origin:F21 Berg 76/I, fol. 19 sketch for end of quartet and end of 5th mov’t F21 Berg 76/I, fol. 20 diagram of black vs. white scalar hexachords

from all-interval row F21 Berg 76/I, fol. 20v 4th mov’t “or sixth” (allocated to 4th in blue

pencil) F21 Berg 76/I, fol. 21 3rd mov’t (“or fifth”) F21 Berg 76/I, fol. 21v 3rd mov’t (reallocated in blue pencil to trio

of 3rd) F21 Berg 76/I, fol. 24 trio of 3rd mov’t? F21 Berg 76/I, fol. 24v lower half: 6th mov’t

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Interpolative Forms

Berg went through his two store-bought sketchbooks and in bluepencil marked sketches that he then tore out of the books, presumablyto extract the most promising ideas and possibly also to make themmore accessible for development at the piano or work desk. Most ofthese blue inscriptions show him reallocating material from one move-ment to another, an interpolative process that seems to manifest itselfin the finished composition. Berg explains this process in some detailin his “Neun Blätter,” describing it as a means to unify the work as awhole:

The movements are linked—apart from the row, which is a link in itself—by carrying over 1 component (1 theme or 1 row, 1 bit or 1 idea) intothe next movement, and the last movement refers back to the 1st. Notmechanically, of course, but likewise in relation to the larger develop-ment (intensification of mood) within the piece as a whole (‘sufferinga fate!’).30

The question remains, however, whether this interpolative-transferprocess seen in the earliest sketches might bear some connection to themethodological, free-strict duality of the finished score. Certainly sucha procedure parallels the various interpolations and interruptions thatBerg eventually created in all six movements of the Lyric Suite. In the bi-folium and in the two sketchbooks, the eagerness with which he as-signed and reassigned material suggests less indecision than an obses-sive desire to interconnect the disparate movements of his composition.As Berg suggested in his statement above, the interconnections of mate-rial could have been recompense for a perceived lack of unity, a corol-lary to the absence of a twelve-tone series until he settled on Klein’s all-interval row somewhere roughly midway through his work in the sec-ond sketchbook.

Perhaps Berg carried material from one movement over to the nextout of programmatic considerations? An answer could show just howthoroughly—or superficially—the secret program informs Berg’s over-all structure. He did attribute symbolic, extramusical importance tosome “components” (Bestandteile) shared by the six movements of the Lyric Suite. But planning for the location of these components ap-parently did not consistently bring about juxtapositions of free andstrict material. The first music found in the bifolium sketch for the

201

30 From Berg’s “Neun Blatter zur Lyrischen Suite fur Streichquartett,” in Schoenberg,Berg, Webern/Die Streichquartette: Eine Dokumentation, 287. See the complete page as givenabove in figure 1.

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Andante amoroso (as discussed above, see ex. 1) could represent oneof Berg’s first ideas for the Lyric Suite since it appears at the top of apage, remarkably detailed and uncrowded by other sketching. ThatBerg attached extramusical significance to this passage is clear as earlyas a formal sketch in his second sketchbook (ÖNB Musiksammlung, F 21 Berg 76/1, fols. 23, 11, 11v), where he writes, “The primarytheme returns and appears everywhere.” In the annotated score hegave to Hanna Fuchs-Robettin, Berg let it be known that this free pri-mary theme of the rondo represented her: “I believe this music to bethe most beautiful thing I’ve yet written. . . . This ‘rondo’ is dedicatedto you and your children: a musical form in which the themes (particu-larly yours) keep returning, closing the lovely circle [den lieblichenKreis schließend].”31 In the next movement, marked “on the next day,”fragments of the trio represent troubled memories of the previous en-counter, while the introduction of Hanna’s theme (first violin, mm. 30–31: “always you [compare your theme from the 2nd movement]”) pre-cipitates first confessions of love (the Zemlinsky quotation in the viola,mm. 32–33: “Me: ‘you are mine, mine’ ”; restated in the second violin,mm. 46–50: “And now you say it too: ‘you are mine, mine’ ”).

Another such programmatic/thematic link exists between the freefourth movement and the Trio estatico of the otherwise strict thirdmovement, which is one of the few reassignments in the earliestsketches that Berg retained in the final published score. In the Wid-mungspartitur that he gave to Hanna, however, Berg ascribes no pro-grammatic significance to this material with its vivid, “ecstatic” leaps extending beyond the octave. His inscriptions for Hanna instead pointout the symbolic ABHF collection leading into the passage (see ex. 4).A bifolium sketch substantiates the impression that Berg conceived the juxtaposition of techniques within the third movement before hethought of quoting the “Trio estatico” in the fourth movement. As orig-inally sketched, the “Trio estatico” draft found on the bottom fourstaves of fol. 11v was part of the third movement while the “od[er]. IV”designation was added some time later, in darker pencil.

Whether programmatic in origin or not, the interpolations haveimportant formal implications. In his 1925 correspondence with We-bern, Berg initially spoke of the Lyric Suite as a string quartet, not as a

202

31 ÖNB, Lyric Suite pocket score (F 21 Berg 3437), 11. The insistence with which theprimary theme representing Hanna keeps coming back, the composer’s memories of herjust as inescapable, is reflected in Berg’s continuing annotations in this Widmungspartitur.When the adjunct semitone-whole-tone figure (emphasized in m. 5 and belabored byBerg in the bifolium sketch) begins to appear in the second violin in m. 35 and following,he writes “returning to you.” When the first violin takes up the same figure and then ush-ers in a varied statement of the whole opening section, he writes “and again entirely you.”

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203

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example 4. Third movement of the Lyric Suite, mm. 69–72 as anno-tated by Berg for Hanna Fuchs-Robettin

Berg LYRIC SUITECopyright 1927 by Universal EditionCopyright renewedAll Rights ReservedUsed by permission of European American Music Distributors Corporation,sole U.S. and Canadian agent for Universal Editon

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suite, suggesting the kind of classical design found in the bifolium for-mal diagram of a composition in four movements (see fig. 2); even after his formal plan had expanded, Berg persistently referred to thethird movement as a scherzo. It is only when the composition ex-panded to six movements that he went back to the bifolium and beganindicating the interpolations across movements. Thus, the interpola-tions seem inextricable from its development into a suite. Berg an-nounced this quality to Schoenberg in the letter of July 13, 1926: “As Ithink I told you once, it is going to be a Suite for string quartet, 6 move-ments, all rather lyric in character: Allegretto, Andante, Allegro, Ada-gio, Presto, Largo.”32 And to Adorno, on September 17, Berg wrote:“The quartet most certainly is a suite, even a lyric suite.”33 In his lateBerg book, Adorno explains the multiple dualities-within-dualities of theLyric Suite and how they stem from its lyric rather than sonata character.He calls the work “contrary to the spirit of sonata form” and claims that“on the basis of its very content and structural sense, [it] demands theliquidation of the sonata.”

The lyric ego expressing itself, freed of all programmatic reification, isits own dialectic: it has but to sing what it feels and—thanks to its owninnate humanity—it becomes a part of the world of which it sings. A painful world: one that remains unattainable for the self, whichnonetheless remains longingly bound to it. . . . That world of the lyrichermit, a world that greets him only in parting, is also the world ofMahler’s Das Lied von der Erde: “Dark is life; dark is death!” The Suite is indebted to that work for its hovering, intermediary form, which yetallows the underlying, original form types [Ursprungstypen] to be-come more clearly crystallized than works that purposefully set out tobe a song, symphony, or quartet.34

In an essay on Berg’s orchestration of three Lyric Suite movements,Adorno extended his analysis of the anti-sonata aspect to textures anddeveloped the “fan-like” dualism that he attributed to the compositionon several occasions. This line of thought binds the dualities of compo-sitional technique and form to the larger dualisms of genre and style:

The title points to its formal double-nature: it is not called string quar-tet, but precisely Lyric Suite for string quartet. This means: it did notactually arise from the string quartet idea: from the sonata, presentedwithin the course of voices. Rather, a lyric-dramatic process, rooted inmelos and tone-color, is entrusted to four voices because of its inti-

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32 In von Rauchhaupt, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern/Die Streichquartette: Eine Dokumenta -tion, 271.

33 Theodor W. Adorno and Alban Berg: Correspondence 1925–1935, 77.34 Adorno, Alban Berg: Master of the Smallest Link, 104–5.

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macy. . . . Like the complete work—folded in the manner of a fan, go-ing in the extreme directions of explosion and restraint, sweetnessand despair—so is the compositional material played out according toextremes: in part completely free, even with tonal in-foldings [Ein-schlägen], in part tending to the utmost strictness in the sense ofSchoenbergian twelve-tone technique.35

“Working with Tones,” Not Sonata Forms

Adorno and Berg himself were eager to link the multiple dualismsof the Lyric Suite to its lyric aspect and, implicitly, with the biographicalintricacies of its secret program. (Berg confided in Adorno during composition, imparting details that led the latter to describe the quar-tet as a “latent opera.”)36 But the Lyric Suite owes at least as much of itsdualistic nature and “liquidation of the sonata” to its pre-dodecaphonic“working with tones.” In short, the Lyric Suite helps show how suite-likestructures proved amenable to nascent twelve-tone epistemologies.Both Schoenberg and Webern arrived by degrees at their methods ofcomposition with a referential series of twelve pitch-classes, and allthree composers of the inner Schoenberg circle developed their twelve-tone methodologies in works of more than four movements. Schoen-berg experimented through the brief and unrelated piano movementshe eventually published as op. 23 and op. 25, as well as the orchestralmovements he included in the Serenade, op. 24. Webern experi-mented throughout his opp. 14–18—collections of six, five, and threesongs.37 One could even compare Berg’s indecision over the placementand order of his material in the Lyric Suite with Schoenberg’s rather ar-bitrary final arrangement of the various shorter pieces he worked onbetween 1920 and 1923. Indeed, the suite aspect of the Lyric Suite canseem predicated—if not patterned—on that of Schoenberg’s Suite fürKlavier, op. 25, which was published in 1925.38

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35 Theodor W. Adorno, Musikalische Schriften V: Musikalische Aphorismen, Theorie derneuen Musik, Komponisten und Kompositionen, Konzerteinleitungen und Rundfunkvorträge,Musiksoziologisches, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Klaus Schultz (Frankfurt am Main: Suhr -kamp, 1984), 641–44; my translation. The editors believe this essay dates from 1934.Adorno carried several thoughts from it into the Lyric Suite chapter of Alban Berg: Masterof the Smallest Link.

36 “As a latent opera, the Suite has the character of an accompaniment, as it were,to a course of events absent from it. But this course of events does not demand the sym-phonic presence of sonata form as represented in the linear logic of four autonomousvoices” (Alban Berg: Master of the Smallest Link, 105). For Adorno’s poignant confession ofknowing about the Hanna Fuchs connection, see his letter to Helene of April 16, 1936,in Theodor W. Adorno and Alban Berg: Correspondence 1925–1935, 232–36.

37 See Anne C. Shreffler, “Mein Weg geht jetzt vorüber,” 275–340.38 For an account of Schoenberg’s work on these multiple movements, see Bryan R.

Simms, “Composing with Tones: Five Piano Pieces, Op. 23, and Serenade, Op. 24,” in TheAtonal Music of Arnold Schoenberg, 1908–1923 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000),

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Similarly, the earlier Lyric Suite sketches show that the duality offree and twelve-tone writing might relate to Schoenberg’s op. 23. Bergmade this duality part of his work’s public aspect, while Schoenbergchose not to. A major difference is of course the presence of a centraltwelve-tone series in the Lyric Suite. But that series changes across thework: in Berg’s own description, “the row changes in the 4 movementsby changing the position of certain tones. (The alteration is not impor-tant for the line, but it is important for the character—‘suffering afate.’)”39 The hybrid Lyric Suite could also be compared with Webern’s1922 song “Mein Weg geht jetzt vorüber”—likewise a hybrid work,which he began as his first attempt at composing with a series but even-tually left as a free atonal work with some remnants of its original row.40

When Berg retired to Trahütten to compose over the summers, healso took along scores for study. As he began work on the Lyric Suite inthe late summer of 1925, he was looking through Schoenberg’s opp. 23–25 as well as the Woodwind Quintet, op. 26. On September 13, 1925,around the time he began sketching his quartet, Berg wrote to Schoen-berg: “Casting a glance into your new score a while back was immeasur-ably exciting. How long will it be before I understand this music asthoroughly as I fancy, for example, that I understand Pierrot. For thepresent I am slowly familiarizing myself with your Opera 23–26, theonly scores I have up here with me.”41 According to Schoenberg’s owndescription of “composing with tones,” his opp. 23–25 count as transi-tional works: the former opus contains series using both fewer andmore than twelve pitch-classes as well as extended sections of free the-matic development in which no statements of the series occur. The Ser-enade similarly contains series of more than twelve pitches (as in thevariations movement, which uses a row of fourteen notes encompassingeleven pitch-classes), manipulations of multi-voice complexes ratherthan individual melodic lines, and extensive use of series rotation (inthe “Sonett”). Studying these scores in the summer of 1925, Berg in-serted rather perplexed annotations. At the top of the first movementof the Serenade, for example, he wrote out the opening sequence of

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179–219; and Ethan Haimo, “The Formation of the Twelve-Tone Idea, 1920–1923,” inSchoenberg’s Serial Odyssey: The Evolution of his Twelve-Tone Method, 1914–1928 (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1990), 69–105. To judge from a diagram found among sketches for hissecond movement, however, Berg directly compared the Lyric Suite not with Schoenberg’sop. 25, but with Schoenberg’s Serenade and Wind Quintet. The diagram in question(F21 Berg 76/II, fol.6) compares the three works side by side according to number ofmovements and proportions thereof, as tallied by numbers of measures.

39 In von Rauchhaupt, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern/Die Streichquartette: Eine Dokumenta -tion, 287; see figure 1, above.

40 See Shreffler, “ ‘Mein Weg geht jetzt vorüber,’ ” 288–301. 41 See The Berg-Schoenberg Correspondence, 338.

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nineteen pitches found in the viola over measures 1–5 and inscribedabove it “a row of about 20 tones?” To the right on the same page, henoted, “only the fourth movement can be designated twelve-tone mu-sic!” At the top of that fourth movement “Sonett,” Berg wrote “very freehandling of the row in the accompanying voices: many pitch repetitions(none of them ‘allowed’! ) + pitch interchanges!”42

By contrast, when Berg moved on to studying Schoenberg’s op. 26Quintet in the summer of 1926, he apparently found this work revela-tory with its four movements sharing a single twelve-tone series. OnMay 30, 1926, a week before informing Webern that work on the LyricSuite was at last going quite smoothly (“I’m writing away at the quar-tet”), Berg wrote to Schoenberg,

Slowly, very slowly, I am beginning to understand the quintet. Notlong ago I played it through with Webern (the reduction is very good!With one small exception: the missing rests, which greatly impede flu-ent reading), I enjoyed it tremendously and since then have felt deepregret that I can’t be in Zurich. I’m sure that Webern will do it quiteparticularly well. I imagine he wishes you could be there!43 Unfortu-nately, I must make do with the thought of it and with closer study ofthe score—the only score I brought along.44

It would be difficult to overstate the impact of Schoenberg’s op. 26Wind Quintet, declared a compositional breakthrough by members ofhis circle. Berg and his colleagues awaited each of Schoenberg’s twelve-tone works with great anticipation—Webern partly out of his competi-tiveness with Schoenberg, Berg largely out of curiosity over new compo-sitional possibilities. With the Quintet, Schoenberg presented his firstextended twelve-tone composition, his first to enable the structure andinvariances of the row to determine the structure as well as content ofeach of the four movements, and his first to use a single basic series forall movements. In his 1925 essay on the Quintet for the Musikblätter desAnbruch, Felix Greissle honored Schoenberg’s new opus for its “formalunity” and “advancement of technique”:

And something else yet harks back to the classical composers: the the-matic work, the differentiated completion of secondary ideas that, de-spite the greatest variety of character, always have the closest relation-ships to one another and to the main idea. It is in many respects a

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42 Universal-Edition pocket score of Schoenberg’s op. 26, with Berg’s annotations;ÖNB, F 21 Berg 170.

43 Webern was scheduled to conduct Schoenberg’s op. 26 at the ISCM festival inZurich that June.

44 Letter of May 30, 1926, in The Berg-Schoenberg Correspondence, 347.

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question of continuation and advancement of the old technique. For-mal unity is secured anew, and music can advance to where it oncestopped: at the search for a substitute for tonality.45

Berg was especially interested in Schoenberg’s means of securing for-mal unity. His inscriptions in his own copy of op. 26 indicate a particu-lar fascination with Schoenberg’s manipulation of the single series toproduce the large-scale sonata form in his first movement. Specifically,he was intrigued by Schoenberg’s articulation of structure through differ-ent row-form complexes, an interest that should encourage us to drawconnections with the Lyric Suite first movement, which is also a sonatastructure built on pitch-areas—formed in Berg’s case from invariant-richpairings of row-forms with their inversions. Berg’s own first movementdid not progress until that final summer of work on the Lyric Suite, andthe lessons he took from Schoenberg’s op. 26 were a likely catalyst forhis own first sonata form using twelve-tone techniques.

Berg’s autographs show us just how deeply—albeit inaudibly—thehybrid aspect pervades the Lyric Suite. At the same time, Schoenberg’sand Webern’s early twelve-tone compositions have their own hybrid as-pect. The difference is that Berg came last among the three to twelve-tone methods and devised a typically artful response, going public withthe amalgam and exhibiting it in the very fabric and design of his com-position while his colleagues chose to deemphasize it in their own ways.Berg linked serial techniques—repetition of interval-classes in a partic-ular and consistently observed order—with the twelve chromatic pitch-classes, but the same does not hold true for each movement of Schoen-berg’s op. 23. The fifth piece of op. 23, the “Waltz,” is the only one inthat set that can be considered twelve-tone in the sense of serially de-ploying a specific set of twelve pitch-classes (though P–O is the only rowform used, aside from a single statement of the retrograde in mm. 104–6). While Berg’s sketches show us just how strategically he plotted andarranged his passages of free atonality and strict serialism, Schoenbergmade the enigmatic decision to place his “Waltz” fifth and last in op. 23.He left us to ask whether the Waltz might serve as some kind of cap-stone, even if only a private one. Berg, however, made his strict first andlast movements explicit structural linchpins of such a kind.

There are any number of possible interpretations of the duality in the Lyric Suite and inevitable questions of whether the duality mightrepresent a quizzical pretense more than it does a real stylistic-methodological issue. Perhaps Berg made so much of the free-strict du-ality of the Lyric Suite simply because he had worked to make the dialec-

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45 Felix Greissle, “Die formalen Grundlagen des Bläserquintetts von Arnold Schön-berg,” Musikblätter des Anbruch 7 (1925): 67–68; my translation.

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tic musically inaudible? Such a decision would correspond with the mul-tiple recursions and dialectics that characterize this work at almost everylevel. Or we could speak of the duality as a kind of compensation, withBerg’s care in circulating the total chromatic—and possibly his cross-interpolative forms—as a way of allowing himself to selectively ignoreSchoenberg’s “rules of twelve tones relating only to one another.” Theduality might in the end be less a musical issue than a political one,which is perhaps what Mosco Carner really meant in referring to Berg’s“initially cautious approach.” The composer’s declaration of dualitymight be subterfuge—especially if Constantin Floros is correct in sayingthe Schoenberg circle held the “unshakeable” idea “that twelve-tonecomposition belonged to the future.”46 And a fanciful mind might thinkBerg clairvoyant enough to foresee structuralism dominating his futurecritical reception such that his insistence on free composition in theLyric Suite becomes a declaration of independence from future analysts.

We can stay on more solid ground and attribute the hybrid natureof the Lyric Suite—or rather Berg’s manner of making that hybriditypublic knowledge—to peculiarities of the composer’s own historical situation, his career, and to twelve-tone epistemology. He left a publicrecord of his methodological discoveries in the Lyric Suite’s intricateform. The work became an inside-out composition in this sense, itsstructural exoskeleton serving as open documentation of its own inter-nal workings-out. For Schoenberg, however, the binary forms of opp. 23and 25 served as trial runs for the larger structures of op. 26; he aspiredto larger instrumental forms and more abstract yet classical fulfillmentof his technique’s structural possibilities. Whereas Schoenberg’s worksof 1920–23 have taken on a transitional aspect—Ethan Haimo usesthe title “The Formation of the Twelve-Tone Idea” for his chapter onopp. 23–25—Berg’s Lyric Suite seems an immediate and highly originalconception. There was no preparatory work for the Lyric Suite, since hissecond, short “Schließe mir die Augen beide” setting seems less than anexercise by its side. And there were no compositions leading away fromit: after writing his own strict twelve-tone sonata form in the first move-ment of the Lyric Suite, as informed by Schoenberg’s accomplishments inthe op. 26 Wind Quintet, Berg went on to his second opera and othercompositional issues. In the end, his catalogue of twelve-tone composi-tions espouses no built-in historicism and contains no transcript ofmethodological “progress,” except for that within the Lyric Suite itself.

Ohio State University

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46 Constantin Floros, Alban Berg: Musik als Autobiographie (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf &Härtel, 1992), 79.

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ABSTRACT

The Lyric Suite is Berg’s first extended twelve-tone composition, yetby his own description only half of the work uses twelve-tone tech-niques. This compositional hybridity raises significant aesthetic and po-litical questions. How could the composer demonstrate what he called“the possibility of expressing myself musically in that way” and at thesame time artfully prevaricate on the issue of twelve-tone necessity?When in its genesis did the composer understand the Lyric Suite to be ahybrid composition? Here the sketches and autographs—held by theÖsterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna—prove invaluable. Berg’ssketches reveal that he began the Lyric Suite by working around thetwelve-tone movements, which started with minimal experimental workthat he did not keep. Berg attempted some kind of “twelve-tone music”with the Lyric Suite, but in failing to differentiate the compositionalprocess from the supposedly pre-compositional, his approach was in-consistent with Schoen berg’s early method of “working with tones.” Atthe same time, Schoenberg’s and Webern’s twelve-tone compositionsfrom the early 1920s display hybrid aspects of their own. Berg came lastof the three to twelve-tone methods and devised a typically artful re-sponse, going public with his amalgam and exhibiting it in the very fabric and design of his composition.

Keywords:Alban BergLyric SuiteMusical sketchesArnold SchoenbergTwelve-tone music

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