The Second Viennese School ( German : Zweite Wiener Schule, Neue Wiener Schule ) was the group of composers that comprised Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils, particularly Alban Berg and Anton Webern , and close associates in early 20th-century Vienna . Their music was initially characterized by late- Romantic expanded tonality and later, a totally chromatic expressionism without a firm tonal centre, often referred to as atonality ; and later still, Schoenberg's serial twelve-tone technique . Adorno said that the twelve-tone method, when it had evolved into maturity, was a "veritable message in a bottle", addressed to an unknown and uncertain future. Though this common development took place, it neither followed a common time-line nor a cooperative path. Likewise, it was not a direct result of Schoenberg's teaching—which, as his various published textbooks demonstrate, was highly traditional and conservative. Schoenberg's textbooks also reveal that the Second Viennese School spawned not from the development of his serial method, but rather from the influence of his creative example.
51-741: The principal members of the school, besides Schoenberg, were Alban Berg and Anton Webern , who were among his first composition pupils. Both of them had already produced copious and talented music in a late Romantic idiom but felt they gained new direction and discipline from Schoenberg's teaching. Other members of this generation included Ernst Krenek , Heinrich Jalowetz , Erwin Stein and Egon Wellesz , and somewhat later Eduard Steuermann , Hanns Eisler , Robert Gerhard , Norbert von Hannenheim , Rudolf Kolisch , Paul A. Pisk , Karl Rankl , Josef Rufer , Nikos Skalkottas , Viktor Ullmann , and Winfried Zillig . Schoenberg's brother-in-law Alexander Zemlinsky
102-645: A counterfactual and universal nature. Such themes predominate in Berg's often quasi-autobiographical and programmatic œuvre , not only romantically as in his Lyric Suite , but also socially as in Lulu , politically as in Wozzeck , and even mortally as in his Violin Concerto . By contrast, Webern, who also started studying with Schoenberg in 1904, took from an evening with Mahler in 1905 that: "Nature
153-706: A furuncle on his back, induced by an insect sting that occurred in November. He was buried at the Hietzing Cemetery in Vienna. Before he died, Berg had completed the orchestration of only the first two of the three acts of Lulu . The completed acts were successfully premièred in Zürich in 1937. For personal reasons Helene Berg subsequently imposed a ban on any attempt to "complete" the final act, which Berg had in fact completed in short score . An orchestration
204-511: A career as a writer several times, turning to music slowly and at times unconfidently until the success of Wozzeck . He did not begin to compose until he was fifteen, when he started to teach himself music, although he did take piano lessons from his sister's governess. With Marie Scheuchl, a maid in the family estate of Berghof in Carinthia and fifteen years his senior, he fathered a daughter, Albine, born 4 December 1902. In 1906 Berg met
255-821: A greater remove, wrote compositions evocative of the Second Viennese style, such as the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould . By extension, however, certain pupils of Schoenberg's pupils, such as Berg's pupil Hans Erich Apostel and Webern's pupils René Leibowitz , Leopold Spinner and Ludwig Zenk, are usually included in the roll-call. The broader circle of the Second Viennese School included, among others, Oskar Adler , Theodor W. Adorno , Hans Erich Apostel , Robert Gerhard , Norbert von Hannenheim , Heinrich Jalowetz , Hanns Jelinek , Sándor Jemnitz , Otto Jokl [ de ] , Rudolf Kolisch of
306-672: A lifelong friendship. Life for the musical world was becoming increasingly difficult in the 1930s both in Vienna and Germany due to the rising tide of antisemitism and the Nazi cultural ideology that denounced modernity . Even to have an association with someone who was Jewish could lead to denunciation, and Berg's "crime" was to have studied with the Jewish composer Arnold Schoenberg . Berg found that opportunities for his work to be performed in Germany were becoming rare, and eventually his music
357-620: A reality that can be picked and put in the mouth or that can be counted and put in one's pocket!' ( Otto Ernst [ de ] ). Music is like that – – – and quite a few literary works that are written from within a longing -filled heart! – – : – – – I've now got to A Doll's House . ... Berg wrote in a typically freewheeling manner to share his reading of Ibsen 's A Doll's House with Watznauer on October 18, 1906, here quoting from Ernst's Meersymphonie in relating music to dreams , fantasies , feelings , and desires , especially those of
408-422: A relatively small oeuvre , he is remembered as one of the most important composers of the 20th century for his expressive style encompassing "entire worlds of emotion and structure". Berg was born and lived in Vienna. He began to compose at the age of fifteen. He studied counterpoint, music theory and harmony with Arnold Schoenberg between 1904 and 1911, and adopted his principles of developing variation and
459-572: A selection of musical compositions of the Emperors Ferdinand III , Leopold I , and Joseph I (two vols.). Between 1894 and 1938 he was editor of Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich , a seminal publication in music history. Adler was the first music historian to emphasize style criticism in research. His attitudes and procedures are evident in the Handbuch der Musikgeschichte (“Handbook of Music History”), of which he became
510-450: A surface glamour that won him admirers when Schoenberg himself had few. Berg died from sepsis in 1935. [... T]here are things that can't be measured by the yardstick of Nature – – things that have sprung solely from the human spirit , towering far above the material world—things that are real only in our longing for them, 'when the sublime and beautiful things, the good and wise things, that we long for, turn into reality—not
561-433: A time receive lessons from the older master, Haydn, though he was not a pupil in the sense that Berg and Webern were pupils of Schoenberg. Berg, Schoenberg, or Webern featured (or were inferred) in the work of composers Michael Dellaira , Ernst Krenek , and René Staar and writers William H. Gass , Gert Jonke , Thomas Mann , Thomas Pynchon , and Amelia Rosselli . Erika Fox named her "Malinconia Militare" (2003) after
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#1732773312694612-414: Is for us the model ...." Berg was born in Vienna, the third of four children of Johanna and Konrad Berg. His father ran a successful export business, and the family owned several estates in Vienna and the countryside. The family's financial situation turned to the worse after the death of Konrad Berg in 1900, and it particularly affected young Berg, who had to repeat both his sixth and seventh grade to pass
663-555: Is now housed at the University of Georgia and other important items are in the Houghton Library at Harvard University . Adler was one of the founders of musicology as a discipline ( Musikwissenschaft ). He was also among the first scholars in music to recognize the relevance of sociocultural factors to music ( Musiksoziologie ), thereby providing a broader context for aesthetic criticism which, with biography, had been
714-553: Is seen as having preserved the Viennese tradition in his music. Berg scholar Douglas Jarman writes in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians that "[as] the 20th century closed, the 'backward-looking' Berg suddenly came as [George] Perle remarked, to look like its most forward-looking composer." The Alban Berg Foundation , founded by the composer's widow in 1969, cultivates the memory and works of
765-446: Is sometimes included as part of the Second Viennese School, though he was never Schoenberg's pupil and never renounced a traditional conception of tonality. Though Berg and Webern both followed Schoenberg into total chromaticism and both, each in his own way, adopted twelve-tone technique soon after he did, not all of these others did so, or waited for a considerable time before following suit. Several yet later disciples, such as Zillig,
816-753: The Catalan Gerhard, the Transylvanian Hannenheim and the Greek Skalkottas, are sometimes covered by the term, though (apart from Gerhard) they never studied in Vienna but as part of Schoenberg's masterclass in Berlin. Membership in the school is not generally extended to Schoenberg's many pupils in the United States from 1933, such as John Cage , Leon Kirchner and Gerald Strang , nor to many other composers who, at
867-518: The Chamber Concerto ( Kammerkonzert , 1923–25) for violin, piano, and 13 wind instruments: this latter is written so conscientiously that Pierre Boulez has called it "Berg's strictest composition" and it, too, is permeated by cyphers and posthumously disclosed hidden programs. It was at this time he began exhibiting tone clusters in his works after meeting with American avant-garde composer Henry Cowell , with whom he would eventually form
918-628: The International Composers Guild , Steuermann's sister Salka Viertel , Imre Waldbauer et al. of the Waldbauer-Kerpely Quartet [ hu ] , Franz Werfel , Arnold Zweig , and Jung-Wien writers Peter Altenberg , Hermann Bahr , Karl Kraus , and Arthur Schnitzler . Though the school included highly distinct musical personalities (the styles of Berg and Webern are in fact very different from each other, and from Schoenberg—for example, only
969-693: The Kolisch Quartet , Ernst Krenek , Rita Kurzmann-Leuchter [ de ] , Erwin Leuchter [ de ] , Olga Novakovic, Paul Pisk , Rudolf Ploderer, Josef Polnauer, Erwin Ratz , Willi Reich [ de ] , Josef Rufer , Peter Schacht , Julius Schloss, Nikos Skalkottas , Erwin Stein , Eduard Steuermann , Viktor Ullmann , Rudolf Weirich, Adolph Weiss , Egon Wellesz , Alexander Zemlinsky , and Winfried Zillig . Contemporaneous performers, friends, admirers, and supporters of
1020-587: The Piano Sonata, Op. 1 , published in 1910 and likely composed 1908–1909; it has been described as one of the most formidable "first" works ever written. Berg studied with Schoenberg for six years until 1911. Among Schoenberg's teachings was the idea that the unity of a musical composition depends upon all its aspects being derived from a single basic idea; this idea was later known as developing variation . Berg passed this on to his students, one of whom, Theodor W. Adorno , stated: "The main principle he conveyed
1071-636: The Rosé Quartet , Hans Rosbaud , Nikolai Roslavets et al. of the Association for Contemporary Music , Hermann Scherchen , Egon Schiele , Alfredo Sangiorgi [ it ] , Alfred Schlee [ de ] , Erich Schmid , Franz Schreker , Erwin Schulhoff , Eugenie Schwarzwald , Rudolf Serkin , Roger Sessions , Peter Stadlen , Erika Stiedry-Wagner [ de ] , Igor Stravinsky , Georg Trakl , Edgard Varèse et al. of
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#17327733126941122-790: The University of Vienna and — at the same time (1868-1874) — the Vienna Conservatory of Music (where he studied piano (main subject) and music theory and composition under Anton Bruckner and Otto Dessoff ). He even briefly served at the Vienna Handelsgericht before deciding to pursue his interest in music history. He received an arts diploma from the conservatory in 1874. In 1878, he graduated from University of Vienna as doctor of jurisprudence , and in 1880 as doctor of philosophy . His dissertation, Die Grundklassen der Christlich-Abendländischen Musik bis 1600 ( The Chief Divisions of Western Church Music up to 1600 ),
1173-614: The Vienna State Opera . As more of the performances of his work in Germany were cancelled by the Nazis , who had come to power in early 1933, he needed to ensure the new director would be an advocate for modernist music. Originally, the premiere of Lulu had been planned for the Berlin State Opera , where Erich Kleiber continued to champion his music and had conducted the premiere of Wozzeck in 1925, but now this
1224-938: The Vierteljahresschrift für Musikwissenschaft (Musicology Quarterly) . Adler provided the first article of the first issue, "Umfang, Methode und Ziel der Musikwissenschaft" ("The Scope, Method, and Aim of Musicology", 1885), which not only constitutes the first attempt at a comprehensive description of the study of music, but also famously divides the discipline into two subdisciplines, historische Musikwissenschaft (historical musicology) and systematische Musikwissenschaft ("systematic musicology"). In Adler's article, systematic musicology included Musikologie or vergleichende Musikwissenschaft (comparative musicology), which later became an independent discipline (cf. ethnomusicology ). Although these subfields do not exactly line up with current practice, they are roughly maintained in modern European musicology and roughly correspond to
1275-573: The 23rd of the month. From 1915 to 1918 Berg served in the Austro-Hungarian Army . During a period of leave in 1917 he accelerated work on his first opera, Wozzeck . After the end of World War I, he settled again in Vienna, where he taught private pupils. He also helped Schoenberg run his Society for Private Musical Performances , which sought to create the ideal environment for the exploration and appreciation of unfamiliar new music by means of open rehearsals, repeat performances, and
1326-664: The Musikwissenschaftliches Institut (Musicological Institute). His students at the Musikwissenschaftliches Institut included composers Anton Webern , Egon Wellesz and Karel Navrátil ; conductor Theo Buchwald ; violinist Rudolf Kolisch ; music editor Felix Greissle ; and musicologists Pavao Markovac , Heinrich Jalowetz , and Walter Graf . In 1886, he published Die Wiederholung und Nachahmung in der Mehrstimmigkeit ; in 1888, Ein Satz eines Unbekannten Beethovenischen Klavierkoncerts . In 1892-93 he edited
1377-550: The North American division of musicology into music history (often called "musicology"), music theory , and ethnomusicology . In 1885 he was called to the newly established German University of Prague , Bohemia , as ordinary professor of the history and theory of music, and in 1898, in the same capacity, to the University of Vienna, where he succeeded Eduard Hanslick . At the University of Vienna he established
1428-1314: The circle at various times included figures as diverse as Guido Adler , David Josef Bach , Ernst Bachrich , Imre [Emerich] Balabán and Béla Bartók of the New Hungarian Music Society, Julius Bittner , Artur Bodanzky , Mark Brunswick , Richard Buhlig , Edward Clark , Henry Cowell , Herbert Eimert , Gottfried Feist [ ca ] , Marya Freund , Felix Galimir of the Galimir Quartet, Rudolph Ganz , George Gershwin , Richard Gerstl , Walter Gropius , Marie Gutheil-Schoder , Alois Hába , Emil Hertzka , Jascha Horenstein , Felicie Hüni-Mihacsek , Erich Itor Kahn , Wassily Kandinsky , Hans Keller , Erich Kleiber , Gustav Klimt , Wilhelm Klitsch , Erich Wolfgang Korngold , Louis Krasner , Józef Koffler , Oskar Kokoschka , René Leibowitz , Erich Leinsdorf , Adolf Loos , Darius Milhaud and Francis Poulenc of Les Six , Elisabeth Lutyens , Gustav and Alma Mahler , Frank Martin , Dimitri Mitropoulos , Soma Morgenstern , Johanna Müller-Hermann , Dika Newlin , Will Ogdon , Max Oppenheimer , Otakar Ostrčil , Maurice Ravel , Rudolph Reti , Luigi Rognoni [ it ] , Arnold Rosé et al. of
1479-410: The composer to produce passages openly evoking tonality, including quotations from historical tonal music, such as a Bach chorale and a Carinthian folk song. The Violin Concerto was dedicated "to the memory of an Angel", Manon Gropius , the deceased daughter of architect Walter Gropius and Alma Mahler . Berg died aged 50 in Vienna, on Christmas Eve 1935, from blood poisoning apparently caused by
1530-514: The composer, and awards scholarships. The Alban Berg Monument , situated next to the Vienna State Opera and unveiled in 2016, was funded by the Foundation. The Alban Berg Quartett was a string quartet named after him, active from 1971 until 2008. The asteroid 4528 Berg is named after him (1983). Piano Chamber Orchestral Vocal Operas Guido Adler Guido Adler (1 November 1855 – 15 February 1941)
1581-540: The editor in 1924. After the Anschluss in 1938, Adler was forced to resign from his position as editor of Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich . Following his death in Vienna in 1941, his library was taken from his daughter, Melanie Karoline Adler, and subsumed into the collections of the University of Vienna . At the end of World War II, the large part of Adler's library was returned to his son. Much of his library
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1632-421: The exams. One of his closest lifelong friends and earliest biographer (under the pseudonym Hermann Herrenried), architect Hermann Watznauer, became a father figure (partly at Konrad's request), being ten years Berg's senior. Berg wrote him letters as long as thirty pages, often in florid, dramatic prose with idiosyncratic punctuation. Berg was more interested in literature than music as a child and would consider
1683-443: The exclusion of professional critics. In 1924 three excerpts from Wozzeck were performed, which brought Berg his first public success. The opera, which Berg completed in 1922, was first performed on 14 December 1925, when Erich Kleiber conducted the first performance in Berlin. Today, Wozzeck is seen as one of the century's most important works. Berg made a start on his second opera, the three-act Lulu , in 1928 but interrupted
1734-578: The first line of Rosselli's "Webern Opus 4". Webern's Op. 27 was used in The Sopranos episode " Bust Out ". Alban Berg Alban Maria Johannes Berg ( / b ɛər ɡ / BAIRG , German: [ˈalbaːn ˈbɛʁk] ; 9 February 1885 – 24 December 1935) was an Austrian composer of the Second Viennese School . His compositional style combined Romantic lyricism with the twelve-tone technique . Although he left
1785-648: The ideals, ideas and approved repertoire of the group. Perhaps the culmination of the school took place at Darmstadt almost immediately after World War II, at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik , wherein Schoenberg—who was invited but too ill to travel—was ultimately usurped in musical ideology by the music of his pupil, Webern, as composers and performers from the Second Viennese School (e.g. Leibowitz, Rufer, Adorno , Kolisch, Heiss , Stadlen , Stuckenschmidt , Scherchen ) converged with
1836-605: The new serialists (e.g. Boulez , Stockhausen , Maderna , Nono , et al.). German musical literature refers to the grouping as the "Wiener Schule" or "Neue Wiener Schule". The existence of a " First Viennese School " is debatable. The term is often assumed to connote the great Vienna-based masters of the Classical style working in the late 18th and early 19th century, particularly Joseph Haydn , Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert . Though Mozart and Schubert did not study with Haydn, Beethoven did for
1887-534: The orchestration of Lulu because of an unexpected (and financially much-needed) commission from the Russian-American violinist Louis Krasner for a Violin Concerto (1935). This profoundly elegiac work, composed at unaccustomed speed and posthumously premiered, has become one of Berg's frequently performed compositions. Like much of his mature work, it employs an idiosyncratic adaptation of Schoenberg's "dodecaphonic" or twelve-tone technique , that enables
1938-432: The painter Gustav Klimt , the writer and satirist Karl Kraus , the architect Adolf Loos , and the poet Peter Altenberg . In 1913 two of Berg's Altenberg Lieder (1912) premiered in Vienna, conducted by Schoenberg in the infamous Skandalkonzert . Settings of aphoristic poetic utterances, the songs are accompanied by a very large orchestra. The performance caused a riot, and had to be halted. Berg effectively withdrew
1989-612: The singer Helene Nahowski [ de ] (1885–1976), daughter of a wealthy family (rumoured to be in fact the illegitimate daughter of Emperor Franz Joseph I from his liaison with Anna Nahowski ). Despite the outward hostility of her family, the couple married on 3 May 1911, although "her father insisted on a Protestant ceremony to facilitate the divorce he foresaw as inevitable." With little prior music education, Berg began studying counterpoint , music theory , and harmony under Arnold Schoenberg in October 1904. By 1906 he
2040-474: The technique of twelve-tone composition; and Leibowitz's influential study of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern, Schoenberg et son école , helped to establish the image of a school in the period immediately after World War II in France and abroad. Several of those mentioned (e.g. Jalowetz, Rufer) were also influential as teachers, and others (e.g. Kolisch, Rankl, Stein, Steuermann, Zillig) as performers, in disseminating
2091-421: The twelve-tone technique. Berg's major works include the operas Wozzeck (1924) and Lulu (1935, finished posthumously), the chamber pieces Lyric Suite and Chamber Concerto , as well as a Violin Concerto . He also composed a number of songs ( lieder ). He is said to have brought more "human values" to the twelve-tone system; his works are seen as more "emotional" than those of Schoenberg. His music had
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2142-512: The work in 1929 for the concert aria Der Wein which he completed that summer. Der Wein presaged Lulu in a number of ways, including vocal style, orchestration, design and text. Other well-known Berg compositions include the Lyric Suite (1926), which was later shown to employ elaborate cyphers to document a secret love affair; the post-Mahlerian Three Pieces for Orchestra (completed in 1915 but not performed until after Wozzeck ); and
2193-429: The work, and it was not performed in full until 1952. The full score remained unpublished until 1966. Berg had a particular interest in the number 23, using it to structure several works. Various suggestions have been made as to the reason for this interest: that he took it from the biorhythms theory of Wilhelm Fliess , in which a 23-day cycle is considered significant, or because he first suffered an asthma attack on
2244-501: The works of Webern conform to the rule stated by Schoenberg that only a single row be used throughout all movements of a composition—while Gerhard and Skalkottas were closely involved with the folk music of their respective countries) the impression of cohesiveness was enhanced by the literary efforts of some of its members. Wellesz wrote the first book on Schoenberg, who was also the subject of several Festschriften put together by his friends and pupils; Rufer and Spinner both wrote books on
2295-615: Was proscribed and placed on the list of degenerate music . In 1932 Berg and his wife acquired an isolated lodge, the Waldhaus on the southern shore of the Wörthersee , near Schiefling am See in Carinthia , where he was able to work in seclusion, mainly on Lulu and the Violin Concerto . At the end of 1934, Berg became involved in the political intrigues around finding a replacement for Clemens Krauss as director of
2346-462: Was a Moravian-Austrian musicologist and writer. Adler was born at Eibenschütz in Moravia in 1855 of Jewish parentage. He moved with his family to Vienna nine years later. His father Joachim, a physician, died of typhoid fever in 1857. Joachim contracted the illness from a patient, and therefore told his wife Franciska to "never allow any of the children to become a doctor". Adler studied at
2397-517: Was looking increasingly uncertain, and Lulu was rejected by the Berlin authorities in the spring of 1934. Kleiber's production of the Lulu symphonic suite on 30 November 1934 in Berlin was also the occasion of his resignation in protest at the extent of conflation of culture with politics. Even in Vienna, the opportunities for the Vienna School of musicians were dwindling. Berg had interrupted
2448-703: Was reprinted in Allgemeine Musikzeitung . Two years later, he completed his accreditation as a university lecturer, also known as Habilitation , with a dissertation on the history of harmony. In 1883 Adler became lecturer in musicology at University of Vienna , on which occasion he wrote Eine Studie zur Geschichte der Harmonie ( An Essay on the History of Harmony ), published in the " Sitzungsberichte der Philosophisch-Historischen Klasse der Wiener Academie der Wissenschaften ", 1881. In 1884 he founded (with Friedrich Chrysander and Philipp Spitta )
2499-403: Was studying music full-time; by 1907 he began composition lessons. His student compositions included five drafts for piano sonatas . He also wrote songs, including his Seven Early Songs ( Sieben frühe Lieder ), three of which were Berg's first publicly performed work in a concert that featured the music of Schoenberg's pupils in Vienna that year. The early sketches eventually culminated in
2550-420: Was that of variation: everything was supposed to develop out of something else and yet be intrinsically different". The Piano Sonata is an example—the whole composition is derived from the work's opening quartal gesture and its opening phrase. Berg was a part of Vienna's cultural elite during the heady fin de siècle period. His circle included the musicians Alexander von Zemlinsky and Franz Schreker ,
2601-514: Was therefore commissioned in secret from Friedrich Cerha and premièred in Paris (under Pierre Boulez ) only in 1979, soon after Helene Berg's own death. Berg is remembered as one of the most important composers of the 20th century and the most widely performed opera composer among the Second Viennese School. He is said to have brought more "human values" to the twelve-tone system , his works seen as more "emotional" than Schoenberg's. Critically, he
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