{"id":621,"date":"2014-10-07T11:05:46","date_gmt":"2014-10-07T18:05:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.timsummers.org\/?page_id=621"},"modified":"2020-03-13T06:16:45","modified_gmt":"2020-03-13T13:16:45","slug":"berg-alban-adagio-from-kammerkonzert","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.timsummers.org\/?page_id=621","title":{"rendered":"Berg, Alban: Adagio from Kammerkonzert"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The word \u2018romantic\u2019 is often apologetically applied to the music of ALBAN BERG<\/strong>, like a conceptual pillow, but it is hard to avoid the fact that, however \u2018romantic\u2019 it may be in some aesthetic, technical, or historical sense, Berg\u2019s music is unapologetically esoteric. It is full of codes and quotes and secrets, messages to friends, numerological biographies, and geometrical tricks with its tone-rows. The Kammerkonzert <\/span>(Chamber Concerto), for example, was designed around musical representations of himself and his friends Anton Webern and Arnold Schoenberg. \u201cIf it became known how much friendship, love and a world of human and spiritual references I have smuggled into these three movements,\u201d he wrote, \u201cthe adherents of programme music \u2013 should there be any left \u2013 would go mad with joy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second movement of the Chamber Concerto bears a special code referring to the decline and death of Mathilde Schoenberg (wife of Arnold, to whom the work is dedicated), who was devastated by the loss of her lover Richard Gerstl, who committed suicide after she left him to return to her husband. The central technique is to use a palindrome \u2013 music playing forward, then backward \u2013 around central bell-chords in the piano, showing music winding-up and then unraveling.<\/p>\n

To get lost in these codes is not a fault \u2013 it is, in fact, part of the aesthetic. The meanings are as much symbolic as systematic (as much numerological as mathematical), and even Berg\u2019s friends were not entirely privy to their contents. And we must also recognize, broadly speaking, that all music would have a hard time escaping mystery and numerology even if it wanted to. Imagining meaning in apparently arbitrary number-relations is an inescapable fact of our being emo- tionally, physically, and intellectually susceptible to pitch, harmony, and pattern. \u201cLines, circles, mysterious figures,\u201d sings Berg\u2019s Wozzeck, \u201cif only one could read them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The word \u2018romantic\u2019 is often apologetically applied to the music of ALBAN BERG, like a conceptual pillow, but it is hard to avoid the fact that, however \u2018romantic\u2019 it may be in some aesthetic, technical, or historical sense, Berg\u2019s music is unapologetically esoteric. It is full of codes and quotes and secrets, messages to friends, numerological […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":21,"menu_order":11,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t