Berg had published the vocal score of Wozzeck in January 1923. Within a few weeks he began composition of the Chamber Concerto, which he would work on for almost two years. In April 1923 Berg signed a contract with Universal Edition for the publication of his Op. 6 and Wozzeck. On 13 September 1924, Schoenberg's 43rd birthday, Berg published his essay "Why is Schoenberg's Music so hard to Understand?" Berg completed the Chamber Concerto in short score on 9 February 1925, and dedicated the work to Schoenberg in an open letter. The full score was completed 23 July, and the work received its first performance on 19 March 1927.
While Berg's recent works had been highly expressionistic, the Chamber Concerto is classical and objective. This change is similar to the one that had occurred in Schoenberg's music: his Serenade, Op. 24 and his suite for piano, Op. 25, were more classical than his previous works (Perle 85:1). Berg's concerto represented another new direction: "In the Altenberg Lieder Berg employed the first ever ordered twelve-tone set...this concept returns in the Chamber Concerto" (Ibid.). The concerto is still far from Schoenberg's system, but benefits from Berg's dialogue with that composer. Berg had an advantage over Anton Webern and Josef Polnauer who, as Berg wrote, "always say, 'Oh, yes, I've already also done thus and so' whenever he speaks to them of his theoretical discoveries. Since he doesn't get this from me, he wants to show me all the secrets of his latest works" (Ibid., 2).
The Chamber Concerto makes consistent usage of the basic transformation operations of the twelve-tone system - prime, inversion, retrograde-inversion, and retrograde" (Ibid.). "Both ordered and unordered twelve-tone collections occur merely as some among the many components of any given section of the work" (Ibid.). The structure of the concerto is very rigid and Berg does not make use of transposition when repeating sections. |
