| Lyric Suite |
| Composed in 1925-26, this work for string quartet is often said to be Berg's most beautiful work. It is his first large-scale work to employ the twelve-tone method of composition. Berg's love for Hanna Fuchs-Robettin was the inspiration for the Lyric Suite. The titles of the movements, containing the words gioviale (jovial), amoroso (amorous), estatico (ectatic, ecstacy), and so on hint strongly that the work is in some way about emotion. The construction of the work is quite complex, with elaborate row organization and extensive cross-referencing between the movements. As well, there are quotations of works by other composers. A melodic figure from the Lyric Symphony, composed by Alexander Zemlinsky, to whom the Berg work is dedicated, is used in the 5th movement. Zemlinsky's vocal setting of this figure was "Du bist mein Eigen, mein Eigen" (You are my own, my own"), a statment that Berg wanted his work to implicitly contain. Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde is quoted as well (though not in full). Perhaps Berg felt that, like the pair in the opera, he and Hanna would be united only in death. The tempi of the movements alternate between increasing extremes of fast and slow. Shown below are the changes in speed. The left-hand movements increase in speed while the right hand ones decrease. (Brightness = quickness.) V Allegretto gioviale (I) (II) Andante amoroso ^ V Allegro misterioso(III) (IV)Adagio appasionato ^ V Presto delirando(V) (VI) Largo desolato ^ Above was mentioned a literary enhancement made to the Lyric Suite via non-literary means. Another of these, one that was meant to be secret and that has much broader implications, is found in an annotated score of the work discovered by George Perle. This score had been given to Hanna by Berg. In it, a vocal text to be sung by soprano, taken from a Stefan George translation of a poem by Baudelaire ("De Profundus Clamavi"), accompanies the final movement. Zu dir, du einzig Teure, dringt mein Schrei Aus tiefster Schlucht, darin mein Herz gefallen. Dort ist die Gegend tot, die luft wie Blei. Und in dem Finstern fluch und schrecken wallen. Sechs Monde steht die Sonne ohne warm. In sechsen lagert das Dunkel auf der Erde. Sogar nicht das Polarland ist so arm. Nicht einmal Bach und Baum noch Feld noch Herde. Erreicht doch keine schreckgeburt des Hirnes Das kalte Grausen dieses Eis-Gestirnes Und dieser nacht o ein Chaos riesengross ! Ich neide des gemeinsten Tieres los Das tauchen kann in stumpfen Schlafes Schwindel... So langsam rollt sich ab der Zeiten Spindel ! The poem shows us the torment that Berg felt in his unfulfilled love. (Berg's wife Helene once said that Alban needed this love to be unfulfilled, for the purposes of his art, and caused it to be so.) In addition, Berg was probably amused that his unique method of employing the hexachordal content of his rows (i.e. the two groups of 6 notes in a 12 note collection) is reflected in the division Baudelaire makes of 12 months into two groupings of 6. The annotated score also yields other tidbits. The pitches in Lyric Suite are often arranged so that the letters of the notes refer to the names Alban Berg and Hanna Fuchs. In addition, we find that Berg, who had a fascination with numerology, used his own "fateful" number 23 and Hanna's 10 to determine musical parameters in the piece, such as tempi and number of bars in a section. Adorno called Lyric Suite a "latent opera." Indeed, the music is tremendously moving and has a story-like progression. With knowledge of the subliminal texts and the super-dramaturgic arrangements of notes and other factors, we come to understand the piece as the progression of a person who is in a purely emotional landscape. next.........................Der Wein |