Abstract
The moment when Wozzeck kills Marie, in the third act of Berg’s opera, is one of terrifying power (Example 1). Berg himself described it as follows:
When finally the murder of Marie is committed to the sound of the ff drum beats on ‘B’, all the motives connected with her are sounded precipitately. They pass through her mind with lightning speed and in distorted form, like the images of life which may well pass through the mind at the moment of death: the Lullaby from Act 1 ([A in Example 1], bar 104); suggestions of the trinket scene of Act 2 ([B], bar 104); the Drum Major himself ([C], the same bar); the motive of Marie bemoaning her wretched life ([D], bar 105), which finally fades away in the moment of her last breath with the motive of dreamy fifths …, the motive of waiting in vain ([E], bars 106–7).1
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Notes
Berg’s lecture on Wozzeck (1929), trans. in Hans Ferdinand Redlich, Alban Berg: the Man and his Music (London: John Calder, 1957), pp. 280–81;
I have amended the translation where necessary. Berg also refers to the murder scene in his article ‘The Preparation and Staging of Wozzeck’, trans. as Appendix I of George Perle, The Operas of Alban Berg, vol. 1: Wozzeck (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980), p. 206.
Perle, op. cit., pp. 139–40. See also Douglas Jarman, The Music of Alban Berg (London: Faber and Faber, 1979), pp. 48–9.
Janet Schmalfeldt, Berg’s ‘Wozzeck’: Harmonic Language and Dramatic Design (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), p. 220.
Other writers who have commented on the passage are Gerd Ploebsch, Alban Bergs ‘Wozzeck’: Dramaturgie und musikalischer Aufbau (Baden-Baden: P. H. Heitz Verlag, 1968), p. 82,
and Josef-Horst Lederer, ‘Zu Alban Bergs Invention über den Ton H’, 50 Jahre Wozzeck von Alban Berg, ed. Otto Kolleritsch (Graz: Universal Edition, 1978), pp. 57–67.
Carl Dahlhaus, Esthetics of Music, trans. William Austin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 64.
Berg’s article is translated in Willi Reich, Alban Berg, trans. Cornelius Cardew (London: Thames and Hudson, 1965), pp. 63–6.
See Douglas Jarman, ‘Weill and Berg: Lulu as Epic Opera’, The New Orpheus: Essays on Kurt Weill, ed. Kim H. Kowalke (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), pp. 147–56.
On Berg’s initial enthusiasm for Salome, see Mosco Carner, Alban Berg: The Man and The Work (London:Duckworth, 1975), p. 6. Lederer (op. cit., p. 66, n. 17) writes as if Berg retained his enthusiasm, but Schmalfeldt (op. cit., p. 262, n. 10) says he became critical: neither author gives a source. See also Reich, op. cit., p. 38. For Berg’s 1918 reaction to Elektra see Alban Berg: Letters to his Wife, ed., trans., and annot. Bernard Grun (London: Faber and Faber, 1971), p. 243.
Carl Dahlhaus, ‘Schreker and Modernism: On the Dramaturgy of Der ferne Klang’, Schoenberg and the New Music, trans. Derrick Puffett and Alfred Clayton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 198.
See the letter to Webern cited in Karen Monson, Alban Berg: a Biography (London: Macdonald and Jane’s, 1980), p. 52.
Berg always had the highest regard for Zemlinsky. He attended as many performances of his music as possible and, around 1920, planned to write a book about him: see Carner, op. cit., p. 59, n. 1, and Rosemary Hilmar, Alban Berg: Leben und Wirken in Wien bis zu seinen ersten Erfolgen als Komponist (Vienna: Verlag Hermann Böhlaus Nachf., 1978), p. 154.
After Berg’s death, Zemlinsky was one of the composers who were considered for the task of completing Lulu: see Perle, The Operas of Alban Berg, vol. 2: Lulu (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 262ff.
See Ernst Hilmar, Wozzeck von Alban Berg: Entstehung-erste Folge-Repressionen (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1975), p. 21 and note.
Robin Holloway, Debussy and Wagner (London: Eulenburg Edition, 1979), p. 78.
See for example Egon Wellesz, The Origins of Schönberg’s Twelve-tone System (Washington: Library of Congress, 1958), pp. 4–5,
cited in Jim Samson, Music in Transition (London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1977), p. 226; Rudolf Stephan, ‘Aspekte der Wozzeck-Musik’, 50 Jahre Wozzeck von Alban Berg, p. 18. See also n. 30 below.
Hans Keller, ‘The Eclecticism of Wozzeck’, Music Review, vol. 12 (1951), p. 312.
See Rudolf Stephan, ‘Zu Franz Schrekers Vorspiel zu einem Drama’, Franz Schreker: am Beginn der neuen Musik, ed. Otto Kolleritsch (Graz: Universal Edition, 1978), pp. 120–21. Schreker’s analysis of Act II of Der ferne Klang occurs in ‘Entstehungsfragen der Oper’, Die Böttcherstrasse, vol. 2, no. 2 (1930), pp. 15–17, which I have been unable to consult: it is cited in Stephan, ‘Aspekte der Wozzeck-Musik’, p. 20, n. 20.
Nicholas Chadwick, ‘Franz Schreker’s Orchestral Style and its Influence on Alban Berg’, Music Review, vol. 35 (1974), pp. 29–46. It is difficult to obtain a clear view of Berg’s relations with Schreker. Reich maintains that they enjoyed a lifelong friendship (Reich, op. cit., p. 35), but Carner paints a less rosy picture (Carner, op. cit., pp. 29–31, especially 31n.). In 1925 Berg heard Der ferne Klang and described it as ‘awful’ (Alban Berg: Letters to his Wife, p. 345).
Joseph Kerman, Opera as Drama (New York: Vintage Books, 1952), pp. 230–32.
Synopsis from Peter Franklin, The Idea of Music: Schoenberg and Others (London: Macmillan, 1985), pp. 146–7.
Alma Mahler, Mein Leben (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1960), p. 24.
Haidy Schreker-Bures, H. H. Stuckenschmidt, and Werner Oehlmann, Franz Schreker (Vienna: Verlag Elisabeth Lafite, 1970), p. 72.
See Kim H. Kowalke, Kurt Weill in Europe (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International, 1979), p. 32.
See Peter Heyworth, Otto Klemperer: his Life and Times, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), Chaps 12–16.
See Derrick Puffett, ‘Schoecks Opern: Ein Beitrag zur Frage der Gattung’, Musiktheater, ed. Dorothea Baumann (Bonstetten: Theaterkultur Verlag, 1984), pp. 55–6.
See Werner Vogel, Othmar Schoeck in Gespräch (Zurich: Atlantis Verlag, 1965), p. 76. Berg probably heard a 1934 Vienna performance organized by Krenek (information supplied by Christopher Walton).
Quoted and trans. in Norman Del Mar, Richard Strauss: a Critical Commentary on his Life and Works, vol. 2 (London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1978), p. 261.
Jarman, ‘Weill and Berg’, p. 156. Clive Bennett argues that Berg was also influenced by Max Brand: ‘Maschinist Hopkins: A Father for Lulu?’, Musical Times, vol. 127 (1986), p. 484.
Kurt Weill, ‘Alban Berg: Wozzeck’, Kurt Weill: Ausgewählte Schriften, ed. David Drew (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1975), pp. 153–4.
Pierre Boulez, ‘Lulu: the Second Opera’, Orientations (London: Faber and Faber, 1986), pp. 393–4.
David Ewen, A Journey to Greatness: the Life and Music of George Gershwin (London: Allen, 1956), p. 120.
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Puffett, D. (1989). Berg and German Opera. In: Jarman, D. (eds) The Berg Companion. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09056-3_9
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