An advocate of late Romanticism and a disciple of twelve-tone theory, Alban Berg is associated with the Second Viennese School, and has left a body of work that, while not imposing, is nonetheless significant, with the operas Wozzeck and Lulu and bold instrumental pieces such as the Violin Concerto "In Memory of an Angel" and the Lyric Suite. Born into a wealthy Viennese family on February 9, 1885, Alban Maria Johannes Berg grew up in a flourishing cultural and artistic environment, conducive to his creative desires in writing and music. Tempted by poetry, he began composing songs on his own, when the death of his father in 1900 plunged the family into uncertainty and decline. The young Berg, suffering from chronic asthma, developed troubles that he tried to alleviate by writing and learning to play the piano. At seventeen, he had an affair with Marie Scheuchl, a maid fifteen years his senior, who gave birth to an illegitimate daughter, Albine, on December 4, 1902. After failing his school-leaving exam the following year, he plunged into a depression that led to a suicide attempt. In 1904, he passed his exams and began training as an accountant with the Lower Austrian Administrative Service, alongside courses in law and musicology at university. In October of the same year, he met Arnold Schoenberg, who tutored him for six years in counterpoint, harmony, composition and music theory, becoming his mentor. He composed the 7 frühe Lieder, performed in concert in 1907, and a Piano Sonata, Op. 1, published in 1910, inherited Schoenberg's concept of "developmental variation". In the same year, his String Quartet op. 3 took the step towards atonal music. The young composer, financially relieved by a family inheritance, immersed himself fully in the Viennese artistic milieu, rubbing shoulders with his peers Anton Webern, Alexander von Zemlinsky and Franz Schreker, the painters Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka, the architect Adolf Loos, the writer Karl Kraus and the poet Peter Altenberg, whose postcard texts inspired him to compose his 5 Lieder with orchestra op. 4 (1912). The premiere of two of them on March 31, 1913, in a program featuring the avant-garde of the day, including Gustav Mahler, caused a veritable riot in the famous Musikverein hall. On the private front, his meeting with the daughter of an Austrian officer, Helene Nahowski, led to their marriage on May 3, 1911, despite the disapproval of the wife's family, rumored to be the natural daughter of Emperor Franz Joseph I. He composed Four Pieces for Clarinet and Piano op. 5 (1913), Three Pieces for Orchestra op. 6 (1915) and was working on the opera Wozzeck, when the First World War broke out. Enlisted in the Austro-Hungarian army, Berg was subsequently transferred to the War Ministry because of his health problems. Returning to civilian life, he taught composition and supported Schoenberg in the creation of the Verein für Musikalische Privataufführungen (Society for Private Musical Performances), active from 1918 to 1923, whose aim was to promote the works of composers excluded from traditional programs and banishing professional critics. In 1922, eight years after seeing Georg Büchner's play, Berg completed the composition of the opera Wozzeck, premiered at the Berlin State Opera on December 14, 1925. A landmark work of Expressionism, the opera is a synthesis of classical forms and new compositional methods, including Baroque pieces, symphonic passages and a serial element. After an eventful premiere conducted by Erich Kleiber, Berg derided the critics whose arguments he displayed, and received the support of Leopold Stokowski, who performed at the American premiere in Philadelphia on March 19, 1931. European audiences eventually embraced the work, which was performed in several theaters. Berg's conversion to twelve-tone music is illustrated by the Kammerkonzert for violin, piano and thirteen wind instruments, completed in 1925, and even more so by the Suite lyrique, premiered in Vienna by the Kolisch Quartet on January 8, 1927, and subsequently orchestrated. The piece, dedicated to Zemlinsky, is the subject of debate, as a vocal part has been removed from the original score, borrowed from a poem in Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal, and evoking his adulterous affair with a married woman, Hanna Fuchs-Robettin. These works are also significant for the use of an encrypted numerical system by the composer, a numerology enthusiast haunted by the number 23. In 1929, after the premiere of the orchestral version of the 7 frühe Lieder by soprano Ruzena Herlinger, the latter commissioned him to write Der Wein, based on Stefan George's translation of the same Flowers of Evil. With the rise of Nazism to power in Germany in 1933, Berg found himself proscribed and placed among the figures of "degenerate art", even as he completed his poignant Violin Concerto "in memory of an angel", commissioned by Louis Krasner, who premiered it in Barcelona on April 19, 1936, conducted by Hermann Scherchen, and dedicated to Manon Gropius, the daughter of Walter Gropius and Alma Mahler, who died of poliomyelitis at the age of eighteen. Begun in 1928, his second opera Lulu, inspired by two works by Frank Wedekind, occupied his last years. In 1934, he produced a symphonic suite in five movements, premiered by Kleiber in Berlin on November 30, but was unable to complete the first twelve-tone opera in history, lacking the orchestration for the third act. A bee sting led to a boil infection and Berg's hospitalization, and he died on December 24, 1935, at the age of 50. Nevertheless, first performed at the Zurich Opera on June 2, 1937, Lulu was completed in 1979 by Friedrich Cerha and revived in this form by Pierre Boulez at the Paris Opera on February 24, in a version that has remained famous, directed by Patrice Chéreau.
