ÿþ<html> <head> <title>Forest Hill Chamber Music Festival 2004</title> <style> a:link {color:888888;text-decoration: none} a:active {color:888888;text-decoration: none} a:visited {color:888888;text-decoration: none} a:hover {color:000000;text-decoration: none} </style> </head> <body bgColor=ffffff topmargin=15 leftmargin=0 text=555555 link=000000 alink=000000 vlink=000000> <center> <a href="index.html"><img src="title01w.gif" border=0></a><BR> <BR><font size=3> { <a href="p1.html">6/11</a> &nbsp; <a href="p2.html">6/12</a> &nbsp; <a href="p3.html">6/13</a> &nbsp; <a href="p4.html">6/13</a> } &nbsp; { <a href="artists.html">artists</a> } &nbsp; { <a href="notes.html">program notes</a> } &nbsp; { <a href="photos.html">photos</a> } &nbsp; { <a href="contact.html">tickets</a> } &nbsp; { <a href="ack.html">acknowledgements</a> } &nbsp; { <a href="intro.html">about</a> } <BR><BR><BR> <table border=0 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0> <TR> <Td align=right valign=top> <table border=0 cellpadding=15 cellspacing=0><TR><TD align=right> <a href="n01-bach.html">Johann Sebastian Bach </a><BR> <a href="n02-beet.html">Ludwig van Beethoven </a><BR> <a href="n03-berg.html">Alban Maria Johannes Berg </a><BR> <a href="n14-druk.html">Jacob Raphael Druckman </a><BR> <a href="n04-dvor.html">Antonín DvoYák </a><BR> <a href="n05-hind.html">Paul Hindemith </a><BR> <a href="n06-mech.html">Kirke Mechem</a><BR> <a href="n07-mess.html">Olivier Messiaen</a><BR> <a href="n08-moza.html">Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart </a><BR> <a href="n09-rohde.html">Kurt Rohde</a><BR> <a href="n10-ss.html">Charles Camille Saint-Saëns </a><BR> <a href="n11-scho.html">Arnold Schönberg </a><BR> <a href="n12-schub.html">Franz Peter Schubert </a><BR> <a href="n13-schum.html">Robert Schumann</a><BR> </td></tr></table> </td> <TD valign=top> <img src="black.gif" width=1 height=310><BR> </td> <TD valign=top width=500> <Table border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=15><TR><TD> <font size=5><center><b>Alban Maria Johannes Berg</b><font size=2><br><i> b. 1885 Vienna, Austria; d. 1935 Vienna, Austria</i> </center><font size=3><br><br> <b>Four Pieces for Clarinet and Piano, Op. 5 (1913)</b><br> <br> Though he received early piano lessons from his younger sister s governess and wrote some songs as a youth, Alban Berg had no serious musical education before he began his lessons with Arnold Schönberg in 1904. Anton Webern was also a Schönberg pupil at the same time, and the three were later to become known as the  Second Viennese School, second to the earlier triumvirate of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. <br><br>Schönberg said contradictory things about the compositions which Berg showed him at the outset of his studies. Emphasizing how much he had taught the young composer, he pointed out that Berg s work had previously been limited to Lieder (art songs) and that  even the piano accompaniments to them were songlike in style. He was absolutely incapable of writing an instrumental movement or inventing an instrumental theme. At another time Schönberg wrote that he  recognized at once that [Berg] had real talent. <br><br>Two significant early compositions which Berg produced under the influence of Schönberg s tutelage, but not directly under his supervision, were the  Altenberg Lieder, Op. 4, and the  Four Pieces For Clarinet and Piano, Op. 5, often considered something of a stylistic pair. <br><br>The March 1913 premiere of the  Altenberg Lieder, five songs for soprano with large orchestra set to miniature poems inspired by post card photos, was a disaster, in part due to Schönberg s less than supportive presentation of only two of the songs within a concert of his own works, and sung by a tenor. Many other factors contributed to a riot at that event, and Berg suppressed any further performances of the  Altenberg Lieder during his lifetime. <br><br>The Four Pieces, composed in May 1913, was the first of Berg s compositions to bear a dedication to Schönberg as his teacher. By this time, however, Schönberg had long since left Vienna for Berlin, ending Berg s formal lessons with him. Berg had, in fact, taken on some of Schönberg s former pupils. <br><br>Several months after the  Altenberg Lieder disaster, Berg visited Schönberg in Berlin, and the visit went well until the last day, when Berg received a dressing-down from his revered teacher. Schönberg pointed out to him in no uncertain terms various weaknesses that he had found in the current work of his one-time pupil, meaning the  Altenberg Lieder and  Four Pieces. <br><br>This harsh criticism, from the man whose respect Berg most wished for, compounded the embarrassment of the  Altenberg premier. With his confidence ruined, Berg then set out to create something that would placate Schönberg and his own self-doubt, leading into quite different directions for his later musical compositions. <br><br>The Op. 5 pieces are strictly atonal and formally unstructured. One analysis states that  Four Pieces...has only cells. That is, the key to the work is groupings of notes rather than sequences of notes. However, Berg s techniques of repetition, symmetrical structure, chromatic inflection, and patterns of progressive transformation have given these pieces structural coherence, unity, and direction. <br> </td></tr></table> </td> </tr> </table> </body></html>