Reference and association in the Vier Lieder, Op. 2, of Alban Berg

Music Theory Spectrum

Volumn 21, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 32-42

  Gauldin, Robert ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 67650252186     PISSN: 01956167     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/745919     Document Type: Article

References (32)

1. Alfred Einstein, Mozart: His Character, His Work (New York: Oxford University Press, 1945), 157-63.
2. Einstein specifically mentions D minor as the "tragic key" (the D minor Piano Concerto and Don Giovanni), C major as the "festive key" (the C major Piano Concerto and the Jupiter Symphony), and Emusical flat sign major as the "expressive key" (usually found in slow movements). To this list one might append G minor as the "chromatic key" (the String Quintet and the Symphony No. 40). Also note Beethoven's characteristic use of C major and F minor; he dubbed B minor "the black key." Some composers, such as Jan Sibelius, tend to associate certain keys with particular colors. 5 Patrick McCreless, "Schenker and Chromatic Tonicization: A Reappraisal," in Schenker Studies, ed. Hedi Siegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 125-45 [132-38].
3. See "Norse Song," Album for the Young, no. 41.
4. George Perle, "The Secret Program of the Lyric Suite," The International Alban Berg Society Newsletter 5 (1977): 4-12.
5. The rondo Finale of Brahms's D minor Piano Concerto appears to be closely modeled after the rondo Finale of Beethoven's C minor Piano Concerto. For a discussion of Wagner's use of such techniques see Robert Gauldin, "Wagner's Parody Technique: Träume' and the Tristan Love Duet," Music Theory Spectrum 1 (1979): 33-42.
6. Ulrich Krämer deals with the general topic of "Quotation and Self-Borrowing in the Music of Alban Berg," Journal of Musicological Research 12/1-2 (1992): 53-82, but with the exception of one quotation from Schoenberg, he ignores the op. 2 Songs.
7. Surveys of the cycle include Jay Wilkey, "Certain Aspects of Form in the Vocal Music of Alban Berg" (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1965);
8. Mary Wennerstrom, "Pitch Relations in Berg's Songs Opus 2," Indiana Theory Review 1 (1977): 12-22;
9. Douglas Jarman, The Music of Alban Berg (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 30-31, 148;
10. Mark DeVoto, "Berg, the Composer of Songs," in The Berg Companion, ed. Douglas Jarman (London: Macmillan, 1989), 33-66;
11. Stephen Kett, "A Conservative Revolution: the Music of the Four Songs Op. 2," in The Berg Companion, 67-90;
12. Dave Headlam, The Music of Alban Berg (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 33-45, 167-74;
13. and Anthony Pople, "The Early Works: Tonality and Beyond," in The Cambridge Companion to Berg, ed. Anthony Pople (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 66-76.
14. See the studies by Wennerstrom, Hattey, and Headlam, almough Headlam's discussion emphasizes interval cycles, especially those based on intervals 1 and 5.
15. Most writers mention the 5-32 referential chord and the derived trichord 3-5. Schoenberg observed the interesting character of this sonority during his discussion of the last two harmonies of the cycle (5-32 and 6-30 [013679]) in his Harmonielehre (1911), but neglected to mention that it occurs as early as m. 5 of the initial song. For a discussion of the basic palindromic design of this song see Robert P. Morgan, "The Eternal Return: Retrograde and Circular Form in Berg," in Alban Berg: Historical and Analytical Perspectives, ed. David Gable and Robert P. Morgan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 47-91 [84].
16. 7" of Emusical flat sign minor, noting the existence of a long-range voice exchange between the Bmusical flat sign and Fmusical flat sign C=Emusical sharp sign) in mm. 1 and 4, followed by a "resolution" to Emusical flat sign in measure 9. Also see Craig Ayrey, "Berg's 'Scheideweg': Analytical Issues in Op. 2/ii," Music Analysis 1/2 (1982): 189-202;
17. and Philip Lambert, "Ives and Berg: 'Normative' Procedures and Post-Tonal Alternatives," in Charles Ives and the Classical Tradition, ed. Geoffrey Block and J. Peter Burkholder (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 105-30 [121-22].
18. Wennerstrom's discussion of this song is revealing, especially her observations on the 3-5 trichord and its relation to the tonal centers of the first three songs. Pople ("Early Works," 69) traces no less than seven occurrences of the opening four-note motive (Amusical flat sign-C-G-Dmusical flat sign) in various transpositions, all of which contain the embedded 3-5. In contrast to the whole-tone-oriented sonorities of the previous song, this motive features half-step relations. I must take exception to the analysis of the D minor recurrence in Matthew Brown, Douglas Dempster, and Dave Headlam, "The musical sharp signIV (musical flat signV) Hypothesis: Testing the Limits of Schenker's Theory of Tonality," Music Theory Spectrum 19/2 (1997): 155-83 [179-80].
19. Headlam provides an extensive graph of cyclical tetrachords in this song. In addition to Anthony Pople's comments in his "Secret Programmes: Themes and Techniques in Recent Berg Scholarship," Music Analysis 12/3 (1993): 392-94,
20. see H. H. Stuckenschmidt's famous "Debussy or Berg? The Mystery of a Chord Progression," The Musical Quarterly 51/3 (1965): 453-59.
21. Glenn Watkins refers to the latter in his brief comments on "Warm die Lüfte" in Soundings: Music in the Twentieth Century (New York: Schirmer Books, 1988), 45-49.
22. Detailed information on this period of Berg's life can be found in Reinhard Gerlach, Musik and Jugenstil (Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 1985).
23. and Theodor Adorno, Alban Berg: Master of the Smallest Link, trans. Juliane Brand and Christopher Hailey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 49. At my suggestion, Hattey included this, as well as other allusions referred to in this article, in his Thesis during his discussion of the first and third songs.
24. Perle, "The Secret Program of the Lyric Suite," 4-12.
25. Allen Forte, "Berg's Symphonic Epilogue to Wozzeck," in Alban Berg: Historical and Analytical Perspectives, 157.
26. Kett, "Conservative Revolution," 67-68.
27. This reference is omitted in Janet Schmalfeldt's extended voice-leading analysis of the Sonata; see her "Berg's Path to Atonality: The Piano Sonata Op. 1," in Alban Berg: Historical and Analytical Perspectives, 79-110.
28. In his provocative article "Tristan and Berg's Lyric Suite," In Theory Only 8/3 (1984): 33-41,
29. Douglass Green, "Berg's De Profundis: The Finale of the Lyric Suite," The International Alban Berg Society Newsletter 5 (1977): 13-23.
30. For a discussion of the sources and their occurrences, see Anthony Pople, Berg's Violin Concerto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991);
31. and Douglas Jarman, "Alban Berg, Wilhelm Fliess, and the Secret Programme of the Violin Concerto," in The Berg Companion, 181-96.
32. Even in the more "abstract" instrumental works of Webern, extra-musical influences occasionally appear; see David Cohen, "Anton Webern and the Magic Square," Perspectives of New Music 13/1 (1974): 213-15, which deals with the Latin word square based on SATOR and its use in the final measures of the op. 24 finale.