Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Richard Wagner’s Dynastic Dreams
- 2 Gustav Mahler’s Resurrection and the Apostolic Succession
- 3 Of Forked Tongues and Angels: Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto
- 4 Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Return of the Muse
- 5 Here Comes the Sunset: The Late and the Last Works of Richard Strauss
- Postlude: The Telephone Call
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Eastman Studies in Music
3 - Of Forked Tongues and Angels: Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2023
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Richard Wagner’s Dynastic Dreams
- 2 Gustav Mahler’s Resurrection and the Apostolic Succession
- 3 Of Forked Tongues and Angels: Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto
- 4 Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Return of the Muse
- 5 Here Comes the Sunset: The Late and the Last Works of Richard Strauss
- Postlude: The Telephone Call
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Eastman Studies in Music
Summary
My Almschi, I don’t know when I will see you, nor whether I will
be able to express what is unspeakable—if only in a wordless
embrace. Nor do I wish to attempt in a letter to find words
where language fails… . And yet: one day—before this terrible
year is at an end—a score will be dedicated
to the memory of an angel
that might express, in sounds, to you and Franz
what I feel and that I can find no words to express today.
Your Alban
—Letter from Alban Berg to Alma Mahler-Werfel, ca. May 1935Here are the facts as given, virtually uncontested, throughout the literature. Commissioned in February 1935 to write a concerto for the Ukrainian-American violinist Louis Krasner, Berg found the project at first intractable. Tragedy provided the inspiration that he needed when on April 22, 1935, Alma Mahler’s eighteen-year-old daughter Manon Gropius died of polio. Work proceeded quickly thereafter, and the concerto was finished the following August. But as he was putting the final touches to the full score— with its title-page dedication “To the memory of an angel” [Dem Angedenken eines Engels] as promised—Berg was stung by an insect. His health deteriorated, blood poisoning set in, and he died on December 24, 1935. Berg’s pupil Willi Reich had already told the story of the Violin Concerto’s genesis and Manon’s role in it in early autumn 1935, in an article written with the composer’s collaboration (as Reich himself confirmed) and published variously in the Neues Wiener Journal, Anbruch, and the Schweizerische Musikzeitung (Reich added further detail two years later in his book-length study of Berg). The version of the article published in Anbruch was entitled “Requiem for Manon,” making its inspiration as evident as could be. After Berg’s early death, the concerto was soon seen by many as a requiem for the composer himself. Inevitably, comparisons were made with the Requiem by Mozart, long seen in the literature as that composer’s own farewell to the world.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Lies and EpiphaniesComposers and their Inspiration from Wagner to Berg, pp. 55 - 93Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2014