The three leading atonalists, Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and
Anton Webern flourished in Vienna during the decade that
aesthetician Adorno was both friend and student of Berg. Adorno's
critical biography is one part memoir and the rest musical analysis
of Berg's small body of thirteen works. Small? Not with the operas
Wozzeck and Lulu to his credit. Wozzeck is a moonlit,
expressionistic tragedy - a weird, stunning tearjerker that
absolutely fulfills the composer's every intention. He was at work
on act three of Lulu when he died in 1935. The story of a sensual
archdemoness who infects every man or woman who knows her, Lulu
"sometimes. . .seems as though the composition itself actually
overpowers the orchestra!" Adorno's Berg is a warm, tall, fragile,
pessimistic giant full of self-mockery and "a gift for making
rather depressing punch lines and puns." He is also a connoisseur
of good food and fine wines (he looked a lot like Oscar Wilde) and
had an immense longing for happiness. "This was expressed in his
respect for every sort of fortune: even a fatal disease was 'all
right' - it had to be." Adorno on Berg's music is often discerning
but sometimes confusing in his use of the dreadful jargon of
esthetics. Special; in no sense a popular biography. (Kirkus
Reviews)
Adorno's study of Alban Berg is a unique document. Itself now a
part of music history, it is a personal account, by a pre-eminent
philosopher and aesthetician, of the life and musical works of his
mentor, friend and composition teacher. Shortly after Berg's death
in 1935, Adorno contributed several analyses to the first Berg
biography. Thirty years later he incorporated these chapters and
several subsequent essays into one volume. Beyond analyses of
individual pieces, the book explores the historical and cultural
significance of Berg's music, its relationship to that of other
twentieth-century composers, and to the larger issues of
contemporary life. This is a classic study, made available here for
the first time in English, and it provides a key to understanding
Adorno himself as well as offering an individual perspective on one
of the major composers of the twentieth century.
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