Alban Berg and twelve tone technique

[haydnguy]

Thanks for starting this thread Mischa. I have been trying to get at what you are asking for awhile now and did not even know how to ask the question!!

When I'm less tired and alert, I will study this thread more closely.

[Philidor]

Originally Posted by SchubertGuy

Thanks for starting this thread Mischa. I have been trying to get at what you are asking for awhile now and did not even know how to ask the question!!

When I'm less tired and alert, I will study this thread more closely.

Ditto. It's a fantastic thread. Could I change the title so Google indexes it? 'Advice, tips, help' is a good, modest title but won't assist someone searching on the subject and there's gold here which should be shared. Would 'Alan Berg and twelve tone technique' be accurate, or is there a better title?

[Mischa]

Send the flowers to Scott, please! Concerning the title, no problem, do it as you want to. I wanted to enhance some issues anyway a bit with sound and score snippets soon, when I've more time (and finally understood at least 30% of the books). Some things like: how the folk tune is spooking through the music:

A bird on the plum tree woke me,
Tridie, tridie, triri, tulie!
otherwisely I would have overslept in Mizzi’s bed,
Tridie, tri, tulie!
If everybody would want a rich and pretty girl,
Tridie, tridie, triri, tulie!
where ought the devil take the ugly one?
Tridie, tri, tulie!
The girl is Catholic and I am Protestant,
Tridie, tridie, triri, tulie!
she will surely put away the rosary in bed!
Tridie, tri, tulie!

Or the choral. But this will take some time, anyway - I'll certainly bump up the thread for a couple of questions for Scott in a couple of weeks!

[Philidor]

Originally Posted by Mischa

Concerning the title, no problem

[Herzeleide]

Alan.

[Philidor]

::

[Mischa]

The Pople book about the concerto is most helpful and covers a lot! To encourage the discussion a bit, I'll post some critics and assessments about the concerto from the book, which open some questions regarding the composition itself and 12tone orthodoxy in general. Most of all the integration of the Bach choral is a matter of concern for instance for Boulez.

The copies are from the google book feature, since some pages are missing, the text is sometimes interrupted and continued in quotes:

Starting with Wagnerian Ernest Newman in a review of the second performance in London in 1935 conducted by Webern (there's a recording of it). Notice the acid word "atonalism":

...organically one with his harmony, as tonal melody is organically one with tonal harmony. To take an existing tonal melody - the product of a certain way of thinking in music - and then give it atonal harmonies - the product of a completely different way of musical thinking, and directed towards a completely different end - is to fall between two stools.

Then Aaron Copland in 1941 (posted for the sake of the word "Tristanesque"):


Virgil Thompson reviewing a performance with Szigeti in 1949:


René Leibowitz in his "Schönberg and his school":


An early Pierre Boulez, finding himself site on site with Newman stating tonal and serial "languages" were incompatible:

...of a serial harmonisation of a Bach chorale because of the so-called true harmony which is found within a melody. But it is necessary to choose one or the other of these solutions, rather than cast them together; the materials are not of the same nature, the structure can not be without justification and without stability. This is cruelly apparent to the ear. Besides, I believe that the 12tone language has more pressing tasks than to tame a Bach chorale.

Of course Adorno - he wrote a book abo9ut this concerto, unfortunately not available currently:


A late Pierre Boulez:


And as a late reconciliation talking about reconciliation:


I find it rather absorbing. Quite a lot of critique focussing on the Bach choral. What do you think: is the integration just a show effect? An "unacceptable break in continuity"?
Agreed - a lot of these quotes cover Berg's standing in music with a sort of hidden desire to the Mahler times, but isn't the violin concerto the perfect allegory for it?

[Mischa]

Ok, I read loads of material about the concerto, bought too many versions of it, and simply want to say thanks to you, Scott - this was more than inspiring for me and offered me a lot of ways to listen to it! I'm very grateful for your efforts!

There's no concerto, that means so much to me as the Berg, and I'll always fail to understand, that people can listen to it a couple of times and cherish and understand all the countless facettes of it. I just don't get that.
The concerto seems to describe an emotion, I never had, but an emotion, I have very vivid reminiscences of. Tricky to describe.

Anyway, really, thank you!

[Scott Good]

Misha,

My pleasure! Really, I feel like I gained knowledge by studying this amazing score.

And, I did spend some more time on it - looking at the beginning and ending. There is a relationship - a kind of inversion. Beginning with a more minor sound and ending with a major sound, as the inversion of a triad is it's opposite (major to minor or minor to major).

Some of these things are difficult to discuss on an internet forum, so, I am pleased that you gained something from my words. This means much to me!

[Chilperich]

The Pople book is excellent. (Incidentally, Pople himself was briefly Prof at the Music Department at Nottingham University while I was a postgraduate student there, but - unfortunately, I now see - I had no direct dealings with him.)

The first really comprehensive explanation of twelve-note technique I ever read was as a teenager, when (equipped with a score and recording borrowed from Fulham Library) I pored over Mosco Carner's essay about the Berg Concerto in The Concerto (Penguin, ed. Ralph Hill). I've not re-read it since (perhaps I should), but it inspired me to buy and study Smith Brindle's book, and later to look at the books of Rufer, Perle and Krenek (among others).

When I later read Carner's biography of Berg I was enraged to see that he described my great hero Franz Schmidt as a "mediocrity". (Schmidt was described by Hans Keller as "the most complete musician I have ever known", and he was well-known for being able to play virtually every then-extant work in the repertory from memory at the piano. Mahler insisted on Schmidt taking all the important cello solos when he conducted the Vienna Philharmonic/Court Opera, even though Buxbaum was officially the principal. When Leopold Godowsky was asked who the greatest living pianist was, he replied, "the other one is Franz Schmidt". Some mediocrity!) I found this hard to forgive, which probably explains why I haven't yet returned to his essay.

I find twelve-note technique fascinating to study, and yet I have never felt the slightest inclination to employ it in actual composition. (But then I have never felt any inclination to employ Palestrinian modal counterpoint either.)