| Wozzeck: Music |
| Alban Berg was one of the first composers in the realm of atonal music. These composers saw as one of their major tasks the invention of organizational procedures that would replace those lost by the liberation of the 12 semitones from traditional tonality. In tonal music, the contexts in which themes and motives operate and harmonic continuity and contrast are provided by the triad and the "complex of functional relationships postulated in the concept of the key center"(Perle 1980: 130). In Wozzeck, Berg uses means of integration and differentiation analogous to those of tonal music. TONE CENTERS Though Wozzeck is considered an atonal opera, it has several sections that sound more or less tonal. The most notable of these sections are the first scene and interlude of Act III. Throughout the opera, however, tone conters are present. Tone centers are emphasized pitch-classes that have no functional relation to other pitch-classes. (A pitch-class is simply the grouping of all notes of the same or equivalent name; c in any octave belongs to a single pitch class, as do all b flats and a sharps.) In this way they are unlike tonics, which do have functional relations to other pitch-classes. In I/1 (Act I scene 1), c sharp/ d flat is the tone center. It is further categorized as a simple tone center because it is only a single pitch-class. Its 'priority is established through repitition, durational preponderance, and prominence at registral and temporal boundaries" (ibid.,134-5). It is the highest and lowest note in the Captain's Leitmotiv and is sustained at the end of this Leitmotiv. It also becomes the recurrent monotone motive of Wozzeck's "Jawohl, Herr Hauptmann!" (ibid.,131). A complex tone center is constructed during the first statement of the Captain's Leitmotiv: the dyad f-b and the tritone a-e flat combine with the sustained c sharp of the motive to produce a five-note segment of the whole-tone scale. This segment is important for the work as a whole. At the end of I/1 a is added to this collection, producing a chord that is heard at the end of Act I and of Act III, that introduces Act II in arpeggiated form, and that decays alongside of Wozzeck's self-esteem at the end of the second act. b-f is a dyadic tone-center that permeates the opera. In I/1 the adjacency b-f (or f-b) is found often in vocal or instrumental lines, and each of the first four vocal passages begins on b or f. In the triple fugue of II/2 the initial entry of each subject represents the same dyad. The dyad is associated with the curtain rising or falling, being part of the curtain music at at the end of each act. b is the last note of Act II - the last fragment of Wozzeck's mind as he "stares in front of him." This becomes the ostinato on b in III/2 "symbolizing Wozzeck's obsession with the murder of Marie" (ibid. 139), and the two crescendi on b in the following interlude. During the murder scene, "f is employed as a complementary tone center" (ibid.). Wozzeck's final words before stabbing Marie re-iterate f, while Marie's cry for help at the moment of her death is sung as bs two octaves apart. MORE TO COME? |