Compositional process in Wozzeck and Lulu: a glimpse of Berg's atonal method

Review of Patricia Hall,Berg’s “Wozzeck”(Oxford University Press, 2011)

“…This stage also includes the onset of comprehensive studies of sketches and other materials, and the revelations of the secret programs in Berg's music. The third stage is a continuation and expansion of the directions in the second; it includes my own book (Headlam 1996), Hall's Lulu book (Hall 1996), exegeses of further secret programs in the Chamber Concerto, Violin Concerto and other works, and a number of collected and individual volumes on Berg's music. (1) Hall's present book and the passing of George Perle (January 2009) may turn out to mark the completion of this third stage.…”

“…As early as 1985 Hall pointed out a two-part compositional structure for Lulu: measures 85-528 in Act I are, with a few exceptions, based on the original sketch material (1927), and the Prologue (written last) and remaining sections of the opera follow from correspondence between Berg and Willi Reich and the composition of Der Wein (1929). This in turn leads to an expanded set of materials derived from the row, most notably the order position cycles creating most of the character rows of the opera (Hall 1985). We can detect an analogous two-part compositional process for Wozzeck, based on the increased use of permutational alignments of intervals cycles (described by Berg in a letter to Schoenberg of 1920) and his general implementation of "serial ordering, but in a more comprehensive fashion" than before (110, identified in sketches from 1919).…”