If you have seen earlier volumes in this excellent series, or reviews of them in these pages, you will by now know that each one deals with either a musical instrument or a composer. The “life and works” formula is perfectly all right for a composer like Alban Berg whose music, though it can perfectly well stand by itself, uses a number of private references which, when decoded, help the careful listener to a closer understanding of his message. In this respect Berg resembles Schumann or Shostakovich, and one wonders what he would have made of Finnegan’s Wake.
The contributions published here on Berg’s life and his circle of acquaintances (friends and enemies) in Vienna in the first third of this century are therefore very illuminating. It was a city rich in artistic talent: not only musicians (Krenek, Mahler, Schoenberg, Webern, Zemlinsky as well as Berg himself), but writers, architects, and painters ‐ several related to each other in various ways. Berg listened to them and read what they had to say, but perhaps was too fond of his own creature comforts to endanger them by contributing to their more aggressive polemics, unlike his more assertive teacher Schoenberg; it is no wonder that relations between the two men were sometimes strained.
Each section of this compilation takes a period of Berg’s creative career, rightly giving more space to the operas Wozzeck and Lulu without in any way neglecting the other major works. Three of the chapters are by Pople himself, and one (“Secret programmes”) by Douglas Jarman who has written about Berg several times elsewhere. He is very illuminating about the Lyric Suite though refers to Perle’s pioneering study of Berg’s annotated manuscript score for greater detail; he also has much to say about the violin concerto and other coded works. The treatment from all the contributors is uniformly intelligent but often and uncompromisingly assumes a high level of technical knowledge; the going can be a bit hard for musical semi‐literates like me who might prefer illustrated recorded lectures that can be played through several times. Nevertheless the essays deserve close study and are ultimately rewarding; although this is not really a reference book, it should be considered for all serious music libraries.
