Violin Concerto (Berg)
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Alban Berg's Violin Concerto was written in 1935 (the score is dated August 11, 1935). It is probably Berg's best known and most often performed piece.
Conception and composition
The piece stemmed from a commission from the violinist Louis Krasner. When he first received the commission, Berg was working on his opera Lulu, and he did not begin work on the concerto for some months. The event which spurred him into writing was the death of Manon Gropius, the daughter of Alma Mahler (once Gustav Mahler's wife) and Walter Gropius. Berg set Lulu to one side to write the concerto, which he dedicated "To the memory of an angel."
Berg worked on the piece very quickly, completing it within a few months, although it is thought that his working on the piece was largely responsible for his failing to complete Lulu before his death on December 24, 1935 (the violin concerto was the last work that Berg completed). The work was premiered after the composer's death, with Krasner playing the solo part, on April 19, 1936.
The music
The concerto is structured in two movements, each further divided into two sections. The first movement begins with an Andante in classical sonata form, followed by the Allegretto, a dance-like section. The second movement starts with an Allegro largely based on a single recurring rhythmic cell; this section has been described as cadenza-like, with very difficult passages in the solo part. The orchestration becomes rather violent at its climax (which is literally marked in the score as "High point of the Allegro"); the fourth and final section, marked Adagio, is in a much calmer mood. The first two sections are meant to represent life, the last two death and transfiguration.
Like a number of other works by Berg, the piece combines the twelve tone technique learned from his teacher Arnold Schoenberg with passages written in a freer style. The score integrates serialism and tonality in a remarkable fashion, thereby countering Schoenberg's belief that the two idioms were irreconcilable. Here is Berg's tone row:
Like all tone rows, this contains all twelve notes of the chromatic scale. However, there is a strong tonal undercurrent: the first three notes of the row make up a G minor triad; notes three to five are a D major triad; notes five to seven are an A minor triad; notes seven to nine are an E major triad; and the last four notes together make up part of a whole tone scale. In addition, the first four odd-numbered notes correspond to the open strings of the violin, from bottom to top, and it is exactly this gesture which opens the piece.
The last four notes of the row, ascending whole tones, are also the first four notes of the chorale melody, Es ist genug (It Is Enough). Berg quotes this chorale directly in the last movement of the piece, where the harmonisation by Johann Sebastian Bach is heard in the clarinets.
There is another directly quoted tonal passage in the work in the form of a Carinthian folk song in the second movement.
Premieres
- World premiere: April 19, 1936, Barcelona at the ISCM Festival. Louis Krasner played the solo part, and the performance was conducted by Hermann Scherchen.
- English premiere: May 1, 1936, London, at an invitation-only concert. Krasner was again the soloist, and Anton Webern conducted a BBC orchestra. This performance has been recorded on acetate discs, survived in the violinist collection and later released on CD.
- English public premiere: December 9, 1936, London at the Queen's Hall in a BBC concert. Krasner was again the soloist, and Henry Wood conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
Further reading
- Anthony Pople, Berg: Violin Concerto (Cambridge University Press, 1991)
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