Violin Concerto

Attempting to persuade Berg to write a Violin Concerto for him - which the composer was very reluctant to do while he was still working on Lulu - Louis Krasner clearly said the right thing: “If you undertake to write a Violin Concerto, it will certainly have to be a very serious, deliberate and communicative work for the violin - for the violin is a lyrical and songful instrument which I know you love. Think of what it would mean for the whole Schoenberg movement if a new Alban Berg Violin Concerto should succeed in demolishing the antagonism of the ‘cerebral, no emotion’ cliché and argument.”

That was in January or February 1935. Six or seven months later Berg had completed just the communicative kind of Violin Concerto Krasner had hoped for. If it did not demolish arguments against Schoenberg’s twelve-note technique - it clearly indicates that Berg did not subscribe to serialism in its pure, strictly non-diatonic form - it won an unassailable place in the repertoire through its obviously high quality and the emotional inspiration implied in its dedication “to the memory of an angel.” Manon Gropius, the beautiful and much-loved seventeen-year-old daughter of Alma Mahler and her second husband Walter Gropius, died of polio in April 1935, just as Berg was seriously getting to work on the Concerto. The shock of that event was such that it moved him to give expression, alongside his his tribute to Manon, to intimations of more general mortality. In fact, he died four months after he completed the work, which he never heard performed with orchestra.

Unusually forBerg, the Violin Concerto is cast in two movements, each consisting of two parts in distinctly different tempi. The purpose of the opening Andante is to set the memorial tone of the work which, if it is not already clear in the hushed ten-bar preface, is unmistakably established by the G minor harmonies and the sobbing syncopations which precede the soloist’s introduction of the twelve-note basic theme. Rising in alternating major and minor thirds and three whole tones, the theme is supplemented here by an extra interval falling through a sigh more than two octaves in depth. The Allegretto section, on the other hand, is about life. It is a distinctively Viennese inspiration, a scherzo with two trios, cheerfully characterised by its waltz and ländler rhythms. On its final recall the scherzo incorporates nostalgic echoes of a folksong from Carinthia - an allusion which is now considered (contrary to the evidence of the work itself) to have less to do with Manon Gropius than the Carinthian servant-girl on whom Berg fathered a child in a teenage aberration in 1902.

“Isn’t that remarkable,” said Berg when he realised how appropriate the Bach chorale Es ist genug was to his expressive purpose. “The first four notes of the chorale (a series of whole tones) correspond exactly with the last four notes of the twelve-note series on which I am constructing the whole concerto.” But before its consoling four-part harmonies can be heard there has to be a catastrophe. The Allegro first section of the second movement represents precisely that. Although it is not denied its lyrical material, least of all in the cadenza, it is overpowered by heavily aggressive rhythms and, at the climax of the section, a passionate outcry from the whole orchestra.

The Bach chorale steals in on solo violin - at first in twelve-note harmonies, before the clarinets take it up as Bach presented it - at the beginning of the final Adagio section. The implied reconciliation is confirmed in two beautifully conceived chorale variations. But should the touching memory of the Carinthian folksong just before the Coda bet taken to meant that Berg was still thinking of Marie Scheuchl rather than Manon Gropius? Surely not.

Gerald Larner

The Violin Concerto was the last work Berg completed. The score is dated August 1935 and Louis krasner, who had commissioned it, gave the first performance in April 1936, four months after the composer’s death. Krasner had first asked for the concerto in February 1935 but Berg had no idea at that time what form the work would take. What moved him to begin the work was the sudden death, two months later, of Manon Gropius, the beautiful nineteen-year-old daughter of Mahler’s widow and her second husband, Walter Gropius. Berg, who was much attached to Manon, knew then that his Violin Concerto would be a kind of requiem, dedicated (as the title page has it) “to the memory of an angel.”

It was only when the work was well advanced that the composer discovered the Bach chorale, Es ist genug, which he introduced into the last movement and which is so apt to both the musical and the emotional context. As Berg said to a friend, “Isn’t that remarkable: the first four notes of the chorale (a series of whole tones) correspond exactly with the last four notes of the twelve-note series on which I am constructing the whole concerto.” Another reason why a Bach chorale - and, indeed, a Carinthian folk tune - can be introduced without incongruity into a twelve-note work is that there is so much diatonic harmony in it anyway. Apart from the three whole tones at the end, the series consists of four overlapping triads (G minor, D major, A minor, E major). Even strictly employed, a series like that is bound to throw up diatonic harmonies; and Berg’s use of it, to produce whatever harmonies or melodic progressions he wants, is by no means strict.

The gentle introduction, for example, with its quiet rise and fall of fifths and sixths on the harp, clarinet and solo violin (makings its first entry on the open strings) is not strictly derived from the basic series. The introduction ends on an unambiguous chord of G minor, and the violin introduces the 12-note series, starting at the top, and leads the orchestra in an apparently spontaneous improvisation on it. In fact, this Andante, is a closely organised (if not exactly literal) palindrome, with a central climax and an eventual return to the gentle fifths of the introduction.

In the Allegretto, which follows without a break, Berg intended to reflect something of the personality of Manon Gropius. It is a distinctly Viennese movement, a scherzo with two trios, melodically characterised by it waltz and ländler echoes. The clarinets present the main scherzando theme which, with its prominent dotted rhythms, is repeated by the solo violin in intricate double-stopping. The soloist adds two more ideas, one in Viennese style in parallel thirds and one marked rustico. The first trio, though it retains the waltz rhythm of the scherzo, is more forceful and is carried to a climax of intensity by the soloist. At the heart of the movement, introduced by flutes, there is the short and intimate second trio. The first trio is repeated in varied form, with the melody at first on the tuba. On its return, the scherzo incorporates (on horn and then trumpets) a nostalgic folksong from Carinthia, where Berg was staying when he was working on the concerto. The movement ends on a chord of G minor with an added seventh.

Then the catastrophe. The Allegro begins with a protest from the whole orchestra, including a grim tatto in G minor on the timpani. The violin panics in a cadenza accompanied by anticipations of the chorale which, at this stage, seems fierce rather than consoling. Beneath the soloist's continuing complaint, horns and bassoons introduce the main theme of the movement - a threatening figure ironically related to the dotted-rhythm scherzando theme and the Viennese waltz from the first trio. It is taken up by all the woodwind and then by the violin itself in heavy multi-stopped chords. Memories of the earlier movements lighten the atmosphere and the main cadenza is based on either a more lyrical anticipation of the chorale or on melodies from the Allegretto - accompanied mainly the soloist himself in left-hand pizzicato, bowed counterpoint, or (in the case of the second-trio melody) in three-part canon.

The reconciliation is confirmed in two chorale variations. The first begins with the melody low on muted cellos and passing then to first trombone, while the violin weaves around it an eloquent and elaborate lament. At this point the soloist takes over the leadership of the orchestral violins and violas as gradually more and more of them join in his lament. The accumulation of intensity proceeds in this way until the climax of the second variation - with the chorale melody in inversion on horn and then most of the brass - after which the orchestral strings gradually fall away from the solo line. The soloist is left alone to reflect sadly on a distant echo of the Carinthian folksong on first horn and clarinet.

For the last time the woodwind find consolation in the chorale melody which, in counterpoint with the soloist’s lament, merges into the 12-note series rising slowly upwards through a quintet of solo strings. The violin finally takes it up to top G, and this quasi-key note is sustained over a whispered memory of the opening bars of the work.