| Violin Concerto | |
| Composer: | Alban Berg |
| Dedication: | "To the memory of an angel" |
| Genre: | Concerto |
| Movements: | Two (in two sections each) |
| Scoring: | Violin and orchestra |
| Premiere Location: | Palau de la Música Catalana, Barcelona |
| Premiere Conductor: | Hermann Scherchen |
| Premiere Performers: | |
Alban Berg's Violin Concerto was written in 1935. It is probably Berg's best-known and most frequently performed piece. In it, Berg sought to reconcile diatonicism and dodecaphony. The work was commissioned by Louis Krasner, and dedicated by Berg to "the memory of an angel". It was the last work he completed. Krasner performed the solo part in the premiere at the Palau de la Música Catalana, Barcelona, in April 1936, four months after the composer's death.
The piece stemmed from a commission from the violinist Louis Krasner. When he received the commission, Berg was working on his opera Lulu, and did not begin work on the concerto for some months.
An event that spurred him to start the concerto was the death by polio of 18-year-old Manon Gropius, daughter of Walter Gropius and Berg's friend and patron Alma Mahler (Gustav Mahler's widow). Berg set Lulu aside to write the concerto, which he dedicated "To the memory of an angel"; he identified the "angel" to Alma as Manon. Alma felt abandoned by the Bergs in her time of mourning, and Berg was eager to repair the breach. Berg sent Alma some part of the score, possibly the dedicatory page and opening, in 1935. It was her 56th birthday, to which the opening metronome marking (56 to a quarter note) likely referred.
Berg worked on the piece very quickly, completing it in a few months; it is thought that his work on the concerto was largely responsible for his failing to complete Lulu before his death on 24 December 1935. The concerto was the last work he completed. In a letter to Krasner dated 16 July 1935, Berg wrote: "Yesterday I finished the composition [without the orchestration] of our Violin Concerto. I am probably more surprised by it than you will be ... the work gave me more and more joy. I hope – no, I have the confident belief – that I have succeeded."
The manuscript score carries the date 11 August 1935.
The concerto is scored for 2 flutes (both doubling as piccolo), 2 oboes (one doubling as a cor anglais), alto saxophone (doubling as 3rd clarinet), 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp and strings.[2]
Berg described the structure of the concerto in a letter to Arnold Schoenberg.[3] It is in two movements, each divided into two sections:
Like many of Berg's works, the piece combines the twelve-tone technique, typical of serialist music learned from his teacher Arnold Schoenberg, with passages written in a freer, more tonal style. The score integrates serialism and tonality in a remarkable fashion. Here is Berg's tone row:
The row's last four notes, ascending whole tones, are also the first four notes of the chorale melody "Es ist genug" ("It is enough"). Bach composed a four-part setting of the hymn by Franz Joachim Burmeister with a melody by Johann Rudolph Ahle to conclude his cantata O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort, BWV 60 (O eternity, you thunderous word).[4] The first four measures are shown below.
Berg quotes this chorale in the last movement of the piece, where Bach's harmonization is heard in the clarinets.
In 1957, Ernst Krenek identified another quoted tonal passage in the work as a Carinthian folk song.[5] Bryan Simms and Charlotte Erwin described it, "A Vögele af'n Zweschpm-bam", as a "yodeling song with a saucy, ribald text". It appears in the second section of the first movement and returns briefly before the coda in the second movement. This is perhaps the only section that does not derive its materials from the row.
Anthony Pople calls the concerto "less serial than Lulu", containing originally serial material later repeated or developed outside that framework, in addition to small adjustments throughout to avoid bare octaves.
Anton Webern was intended to be the conductor. Reports vary as to whether he was ill or was emotionally unable to cope with the subject matter of the music. In any case, Scherchen happened to be there for the Festival, and he was drafted at the literal 11th hour: the first time he ever saw the score was at 11 pm the night before the premiere, and the next morning there was time for only half an hour rehearsal.[6]
Berg did not have time to review the score or correct any errors. That was finally done in the 1990s by Professor Douglas Jarman, Principal Lecturer in Academic Studies at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester.[7] The premiere of the revised version was given in Vienna in 1996, with Daniel Hope as soloist. Hope also made the first recording of this version, in 2004 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Paul Watkins.[8]