The Cambridge Companion to Berg

The world of Alban Berg is full of paradoxes, secrets and allusions, but he was able to handle emotional and moral issues at a distance and with profound sympathy. His unhurried, almost aristocratic attitude to life and his extreme self-criticism in professional matters resulted in an extraordinarily small musical output, but it includes towering masterpieces such as the operas Wozzeck and Lulu, and his last work, the Violin Concerto. All of Berg's substantial works are discussed in this Companion which brings together a team of experts who write from a variety of historical and critical perspectives, outlining the place of the music in the cultural history of its time and recontextualising it against the broader twentieth-century interplay of fashions, aesthetics and ideas.

Chronology; Introduction; Part I. Culture and Environment: 1. Defining home: Berg's life on the periphery Christopher Hailey; 2. Battles of the mind: Berg and the cultural politics of 'Vienna 1900' Andrew Barker; 3. Berg and Adorno Raymond Geuss; Part II. From Song to Opera: 4. Early works: tonality and beyond Anthony Pople; 5. Berg's aphoristic pieces Kathryn Bailey; 6. Berg, Mahler and the Three Orchestral Pieces, Op.6 Derrick Puffett; 7. The musical language of Wozzeck Anthony Pople; Part III. After Wozzeck: 8. Secret programmes Douglas Jarman; 9. Compositional process in Wozzeck and Lulu: a glimpse of Berg's atonal method Patricia Hall; 10. Compositional technique 1923-6: the Chamber Concerto and the Lyric Suite Neil Boynton; 11. In the orbit of Lulu: the late works Anthony Pople; 12. Lulu's feminine performance Judy Lochhead; Part IV. Postscript: Berg and the twentieth century Arnold Whittall.

'... offers an ideal introduction for the general musical reader to the music itself.' The Times Literary Supplement '... this is an intelligent and useful addition to the Berg literature'. The Musical Times

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