Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto (1935) holds a special place both in its composer's output and in the history of the genre. It is not everyday that so seemingly contradictory and incompatible elements be joined in such deep symbiosis. Dodecaphonic rigour is ideally combined with tonal reminiscences; formal coherence does nothing to dispel the impression of rhapsodic fantasy; and virtuosity in concert is subordinated to a deeply metaphysical message. The work was commissioned by American violinist Louis Krasner. Berg, usually reluctant to accept such offers, had to give in this time – financially in the clear for a time thanks to the success of Wozzeck, he was going under once again. Yet crucial for the entire conception of the piece were the news of the death of Manon Gropius, the 18-year-old daughter of Alma Mahler-Gropius-Werfel, an event which shook the composer to the core. Alma, an expansive personality of a truly fin-de-siecle flamboyance, was a close friend of Berg’s; their acquaintance was further strengthened by the composer’s close affinities with the music of Gustav Mahler. In 1923, Alma presented Berg with the manuscript of the first movement of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, which was, for Alban, the closest thing to a spiritual beacon. The author of Wozzeck was fascinated with the depth of the music stemming from Todesahnung (the premonition of death). The climactic points of this part of the symphonic cycle coincide with visions of failing life that emanate with expressions of horror. According to Berg himself, death appears there in its utter power (mit höchster Gewalt) to destroy the entirety of life forces. Mahler’s symbolism is the key to understand Violin Concerto, since Manon’s death opened up an entirely new spiritual perspective for the piece, a perspective so graphically stated in the work’s subtitle, To the Memory of an Angel.
Berg usually wrote slowly, like a jeweller meticulously working away on his consecutive scores. This work was different: it was coming to life fast, and the intensity of the creative process bordered on artistic frenzy. History of music contains a few inexplicable cases where, perhaps by sheer coincidence, emotions and the subject of a work in progress drag its author into a fatalist trap, anticipating later dramatic events taking place in real life. These cases include the sudden death of the Mahlers’ first little daughter just after the completion of Kindertotenlieder. And these cases include Violin Concerto “To the Memory of an Angel”. The Requiem for Manon became a Requiem for Berg himself – he died four months after composing the work.
It consists of two parts, each subdivided into two sections. The initial Andante is a prelude-like quasi-fantasia. The dramaturgy is constructed over gradually intensifying motion, which then recedes into silence. The following Allegretto functions as a dancing scherzo. The intricate and doubly symmetrical structure follows an ABCB1A1 outline, with the middle parts playing the role of a trio. Here, the composer quotes a Carinthian folk tune, and some of the appearing motives are akin to those of the scherzo in Mahler's Fourth. Eminent Berg commentators, Willy Reich and Constantin Floros, see this as musical symbolism of innocence – perhaps an image of Manon herself.
A collective “hue and cry” of the orchestra begins Movement Two. The concise Allegro is built on the basis of a sonata form blended with an ABA structure, and leads the work towards its climax. This dramaturgic crisis, an image of poignant catastrophe, is a counterpart of Mahler’s breaking-up Andante in his Ninth. The final Adagio now begins; Berg quotes, in an organ-like sound of three clarinets, the melody of the chorale Ich habe genug that closes Bach’s Cantata BWV 60. Two variations are built on the chorale’s theme; towards the end, the Carinthian melody is quoted again, this time as music “recalled from afar”, a reminiscence of the utterly temporal, distant, overcome. A bright coda with a B flat major chord, softly coloured with a major sixth, emphasises even more the symbolism of transcendence.
Marcin Gmys