Page 261 - Vinkler, Jonatan, in Jernej Weiss. ur. 2014. Musica et Artes: ob osemdesetletnici Primoža Kureta. Koper: Založba Univerze na Primorskem.
P. 261
woyzeck and wozzeck – büchner and berg
Constructivist Expressionism
or Expressionist Constructivism?
Whatever knowledge might exist about the multiplicity of musical forms contained
in this opera, about the rigour and logic with which they were composed, about the
combinatory skill employed down to the smallest detail–from the rise of the cur-
tain to the moment when it finally falls–nobody in the audience can distinguish
anything of these fugues and inventions, suites and sonatas, variations and passa-
caglias, as the attention is captured by the idea of the opera alone, which transcends
Wozzeck’s individual fate. I think it has been a success for me! 3
Indeed, his success was total: aware of the difficulty of pouring expressi-
onist content into a mould that would highlight it, Berg had a brilliantly sim-
ple idea. If Bach wrote arias for orchestra and Beethoven inserted recitatives
and ariosos into music for string quartets or piano sonatas, if the vocal has
always–explicitly or implicitly–marked instrumental music, then why wou-
ld the opposite not also be possible? Schubert incorporated genuine passages
of lied into his symphonies, chamber music and piano sonatas, and the who-
le of Mozart’s music exudes the spirit of the opera, of brisk dramaturgy, of
dynamic changes of mood and character. A profound and inspired musici-
an, Alban Berg made innovations to operatic theatre by drawing on his bac-
kground as an instrumental composer, out of a need to discover the logic of
a monumental architecture that could no longer be based on the laws of to-
nality. Atonalism would in this way be shaped within moulds initially deter-
mined by tonal harmonic relations and sequences, such as the suite, the fu-
gue, the sonata, the lied, the scherzo, the rondo. There is no need to dwell
here on the paradox that was to scandalise the purists of the new music: how
can we turn back when we want the radically new at any price and above all
by rejecting the old? It is well known that Berg did not have an easy time of
it in this respect, and his teacher Schönberg admonished him for it whenever
the occasion arose. The correspondence between the two reveals how Berg’s
former teacher constantly discouraged his disciple while he was composing
the opera, which he was not to praise in writing until 19494. Now, almost
one hundred years later, we are able to look more objectively at Berg’s choice,
stripped of its ideological passions. Ultimately, as Berg says in the quotation
above, what matters to the audience in the opera house is less the work’s com-
binatory art and the meticulous craft of its inner structures (old or new) and
more the persuasive power of the music and action on the stage.
3 Berg, Écrits, 110.
4 Carner, Alban Berg, 85.
259
Constructivist Expressionism
or Expressionist Constructivism?
Whatever knowledge might exist about the multiplicity of musical forms contained
in this opera, about the rigour and logic with which they were composed, about the
combinatory skill employed down to the smallest detail–from the rise of the cur-
tain to the moment when it finally falls–nobody in the audience can distinguish
anything of these fugues and inventions, suites and sonatas, variations and passa-
caglias, as the attention is captured by the idea of the opera alone, which transcends
Wozzeck’s individual fate. I think it has been a success for me! 3
Indeed, his success was total: aware of the difficulty of pouring expressi-
onist content into a mould that would highlight it, Berg had a brilliantly sim-
ple idea. If Bach wrote arias for orchestra and Beethoven inserted recitatives
and ariosos into music for string quartets or piano sonatas, if the vocal has
always–explicitly or implicitly–marked instrumental music, then why wou-
ld the opposite not also be possible? Schubert incorporated genuine passages
of lied into his symphonies, chamber music and piano sonatas, and the who-
le of Mozart’s music exudes the spirit of the opera, of brisk dramaturgy, of
dynamic changes of mood and character. A profound and inspired musici-
an, Alban Berg made innovations to operatic theatre by drawing on his bac-
kground as an instrumental composer, out of a need to discover the logic of
a monumental architecture that could no longer be based on the laws of to-
nality. Atonalism would in this way be shaped within moulds initially deter-
mined by tonal harmonic relations and sequences, such as the suite, the fu-
gue, the sonata, the lied, the scherzo, the rondo. There is no need to dwell
here on the paradox that was to scandalise the purists of the new music: how
can we turn back when we want the radically new at any price and above all
by rejecting the old? It is well known that Berg did not have an easy time of
it in this respect, and his teacher Schönberg admonished him for it whenever
the occasion arose. The correspondence between the two reveals how Berg’s
former teacher constantly discouraged his disciple while he was composing
the opera, which he was not to praise in writing until 19494. Now, almost
one hundred years later, we are able to look more objectively at Berg’s choice,
stripped of its ideological passions. Ultimately, as Berg says in the quotation
above, what matters to the audience in the opera house is less the work’s com-
binatory art and the meticulous craft of its inner structures (old or new) and
more the persuasive power of the music and action on the stage.
3 Berg, Écrits, 110.
4 Carner, Alban Berg, 85.
259
