| Berg 1914-24 |
| In May 1914 Berg saw the first performance in Vienna of Georg Büchner's play Woyzeck (then known as Wozzeck) and immediately decided to compose an opera on the play. "Someone must set it to music" he said at the time. He completed a few sketches for the opera, but was to discard these later when returning to the project. In 1914 Berg was occupied with his Op. 6 and could do no more work on the opera. The First World War began in August of that year, and Berg was inducted into the Austrian Army the following August. He was sent to a reserve officers' training camp at Bruck an der Leitha (Perle 1995:62). "In spite of his precarious health he underwent the usual basic training. After a serious physical breakdown he was judged unfit for active service and assigned to guard duty in Vienna, but the conditions and rigors of his military life remained harsh" (Perle 1980:19). He was eventually transferred to the War Ministry (1916), where he was "occupied with difficult paperwork under a frightful superior officer (an idiotic drunkard)" (Berg quoted in Perle 1980:21). In a letter to his wife 22 August 1916 he complains "It has been months now since I've done any more work on Wozzeck. Everything suffocated, buried!" (Perle 1980:188). Berg was, however, finally able, in between his clerical duties, to compose. "According to Reich, he had commenced work on the opera in [summer 1917] with the second scene of Act II" (ibid., 189). "There is a bit of me in [Wozzeck's] character," Berg wrote to his wife 7 August 1918, "I have been spending these war years just as dependant on people I hate, have been in chains, sick, captive, resigned, in fact humiliated." This identification is what kept Berg at work on the opera four years after his first inspiration. Writing to Webern 19 August he described the unique formal conception he would employ in Wozzeck. Berg was discharged from the military at the end of the war (November 1918). His time was now occupied by management of the Society for Private Musical Performances (founded by Schoenberg in Vienna 23 November) and of several houses owned by the Berg family in Vienna. Despite these distractions, by summer 1919 Berg had completed Act I and Act II scene 2 of Wozzeck. To Berg's dismay, however, he was forced to leave Vienna for a time in 1920. His mother urgently requested that he return to the Berghof, the Berg's family residence in Carinthia, and assume management of the house. As Berg put it, he had been "'commanded,' by a power just as questionable as that of the military in its time" (in Perle 1980:189). Thankfully for Berg, the Berghof was sold in May 1920 and he was able to return to composition and to his personal and professional life in Vienna. In July and August Berg was at work on Wozzeck and anticipating a career as a musical journalist. The latter was because of the "necessity of scraping some means of existence" (ibid.,190). Berg's Op. 5 premiered on 23 October in Vienna. In the same year, Berg published his Opp. 3 and 5 at his own expense. Late in 1920 Berg was "very sick for three months. Twice in the sanitorium. A sort of nervous breakdown associted with my affliction of asthma" (ibid.) Berg's career in musical journalism did not materialize; nor did a book he planned to write about Schoenberg. In June 1921 Berg was at work on the most difficult scene of the opera, the fourth scene of Act II. Life in post war Austria was very difficult, with the currency being constantly devalued and with a severe shortage of goods. Berg wrote to his wife on 23 June 1921, jubilantly describing a huge amount of provisions recieved from the American Relief Administration. "I can't even calculate the value. Perhaps 10,000 or 20,000 crowns (or more?)" (ibid., 191). The short score of Wozzeck was completed in October 1921. In December Berg travelled with Eduard Steuermann, who had been performing Berg's piano sonata in Darmstadt and Frankfurt, to have directors of the opera houses in these two cities hear Wozzeck played from the short score. The opera was not accepted for performance. Berg completed the full score in spring 1922. By this time, Wozzeck and Georg Büchner had become a topical concern for scholars and for the general public. That a composer, though an unknown one, was writing an opera based on the play was of great interest. Berg decided to publish the vocal score himself, using funds borrowed from a friend of his sister's. By the end of 1922, this score was ready. Alma Mahler, a very close friend of Berg and his wife, repaid the debt incurred by the publication, having undertaken a fund-raising tour. In return, Berg dedicated the score to her. In January 1923 Berg sent out printed cards announcing that the vocal score was available and could be obtained direct from him. Soon after this, Erwin Stein published an introduction to the music of Webern and Berg which included a description of Wozzeck. The formal aspects of the opera were stressed and this provided a "handle" for journalists writing about the opera. This was important because "publicity is the life-blood of a new [opera]" (ibid. 194). In April 1923 Berg signed a contract with the music publisher Universal Edition for the Three Pieces and Wozzeck. Soon after, a highly perceptive article on Wozzeck, written by Ernst Viebig, was published in Die Müsik (ibid.). Berg hoped that the article would lead to a performance of the opera, but only a little publicity resulted from it. In June Anton Webern conducted the premier of the first two movements of Berg's Op. 6 in Berlin, and Op. 3 was revived on 2 August in Salzburg. Herman Scherchen, a conductor already known for his sponsorship of new music, was present at the performance of the quartet. He suggested that Berg "arrange a suite of excerpts for voice and orchestra from Wozzeck" (ibid. 195). In 1922 the Berlin State Opera had received a controversial appointee as musical director, a man considered too young for the job. This was Erich Kleiber. Despite the unwelcome atmosphere the Berlin press was creating for Kleiber, the conductor was given a free hand to completely revise the repertory of the opera. In early 1924 he assured Berg he would perform Wozzeck. The three excerpts from Wozzeck were premiered by Scherchen 11 June 1924. The performance was an extraordinary success. In Berlin in 1925, the upcoming production of the opera became a central issue in the campaign against Kleiber. Even two weeks before opening night it was in danger of being called off (ibid. 196). "The reviews of the open dress-rehearsel that preceded the premier show to what an extent Wozzeck had become a touchstone of attitudes on various intersecting ideological, aesthetic, social, political, professional, and personal issues" (ibid. 197). As Steinbeck wrote in The Pearl: "The poison sacs of the town began to manufacture venom, and the town swelled and puffed with the pressure of it" (Steinbeck 30). On 14 December 1925 Wozzeck was premiered by Kleiber. The performance was a sensational success. Even after this success, however, the press fabricated accounts of disturbances and riots at performances. Outside of the press, German nationalists attacked the work as being anti-German. Outside of Germany, Czech nationalists campaigned against the opera to demonstrate their anti-Germanic sentiment. Wozzeck had been performed in Prague 11 November 1926. Berg's opera received its Russian premier in Leningrad 13 June 1927. In the mid-1920's, musical life in Russia was diverse as art was considered beyond the bounds of the state. By late in the decade, however, Soviet culture had become increasingly regimented, and modern music was seen as a decadent product of the bourgeois. Wozzeck had not been revived in Russia as of 1980. Between 1924 and 1933 Berg was free from financial worry, as the opera had been an amazing success. It had been performed in 17 cities in Germany. Berg's luck soon turned, however. "Just as the German nationalists' denunciation of Wozzeck as a work that was not representative of authentic German culture did not prevent the Czech nationalists from denouncing it for the opposite reason, its exclusion from the soviet Union because of its "bourgeois decadence" did not inhibit the Nazis, when they came to power in 1933, from banning it in Germany as an example of Kulturebolschewismus" (Perle 201). Berg was thus deprived from his major source of income. Berg had begun his next work, the Chamber Concerto, in 1923. next...............................Chamber Concerto |