Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-nmvwc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-17T18:38:17.620Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - Secret programmes

from Part 3 - After Wozzeck

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2011

Anthony Pople
Affiliation:
University of Nottingham
Get access

Summary

In January 1977 the American composer and Berg scholar George Perle made a trip to Mifflinburg, Pennsylvania to visit Dorothea Robetin, “the daughter of Herbert and Hanna Fuchs-Robettin, who had in her possession a previously unexamined copy of the first published score of the Lyric Suite given to her mother by the composer. Annotated in red, blue and green ink by Berg himself and consisting of ninety pages, only eight of which were without some annotation in Berg's hand, this extraordinary document revealed that the work had behind it a detailed extra-musical programme charting the course of a love affair between Alban Berg and Hanna Fuchs-Robettin.

For many years, scholars had known that extra-musical programmes of some kind lay behind much of Berg's music – Willi Reich's description of the programme of the Violin Concerto in the first article ever published about the work and Berg's own ‘Open Letter’ on the Chamber Concerto had made that much clear. Such things as the sequence of tempo directions that head the movements of the Lyric Suite (Allegretto giovale, Andante amoroso, Allegro misterioso and Trio estatico, Adagio appassionato, Presto delirando, Largo desolato), and the various musical quotations from Zemlinsky and Wagner that appear during the course of the work, had already led commentators to indulge in speculation about it. Only with the publication in the summer of 1977 of Perle's articles about his discovery, however, did the precise nature of the programme of what Adorno had called ‘a latent opera’ and the extent to which the details of the programme were incorporated into and influenced the structure of the final work become clear.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×