Alban Berg's Music Analysis

Alban Berg began to write lieder in 1901 but first in 1904 he started taking lessons with Schönberg, first in counterpoint and harmony, and since 1907 in composition. In 1910, Schönberg wrote in a letter to his publisher about Berg’s talent: “One (Alban Berg) is an extraordinarily gifted composer. But the state he was in when he came to me was such that his imagination apparently could not work on anything but Lieder. Even the piano accompaniments to them were song-like in style.” As the correspondence between them shows, Berg was committed to Schönberg’s ideas: “Advocacy for Schoenberg’s doctrines and beliefs is the single most important leitmotif in the correspondence. Almost everyone mentioned, however prominent in his or her own right, is seen as a believer or a detractor. Even Webern appears less as an individual than as a protagonist for

2 from 1909 and early 1910, where he crossed the line to atonality in the last song, I decided instead to perform his Jugendlieder from 1908 as they are usually not heard in this combination. I mentioned the orchestral feel of “Sieben frühe Lieder” and elaborated on the challenge of studying them in different keys in the previous section on collaboration. Another challenge we encountered was the integration of the two songs that were not published in “Sieben frühe Lieder”. They were the two shortest songs we performed in the first half of the concert, and as they were never intended for publishing, they contain much sparser performance indications. Although Berg never wanted them published, he must have seen some value in a few of his early songs. He gave, for example, a copy of ten of his songs, including “An Leukon” and what would later become “Sieben frühe Lieder” to his wife as a present on occasion of the tenth anniversary of their meeting. “An Leukon” is also the only song that was published after Berg’s death during the lifetime of his