Page 259 - Vinkler, Jonatan, in Jernej Weiss. ur. 2014. Musica et Artes: ob osemdesetletnici Primoža Kureta. Koper: Založba Univerze na Primorskem.
P. 259
woyzeck and wozzeck – büchner and berg
all the key events in the opera, challenging the imagination to respond only
to the ear. Ardently, movingly, all the key motifs are repeated, within a se-
quence that can no longer take account of the teachings of Schönberg. Berg
here explicitly returns to tonality, in D Minor or D Major, to the symphonic
tradition that ended, in a way, with Gustav Mahler. And after this symphon-
ic poem it seems that there is nothing else to say. Nonetheless, the curtain
comes back up, and the child of Wozzeck and Maria is playing on a hobby-
horse, unknowing, innocent, even when the friends come to tell him that his
mother has been found dead on the shore of the lake. He continues to jump
around on the hobbyhorse, making a Hopp-hopp extended by the virtually in-
finite movement of the discreet, monotonous, sonorous orchestra. Berg is an
unsurpassed master of finales that gradually, almost imperceptibly fade into
silence, in fact suggesting the repetition ad infinitum (or perhaps within an
imaginary circle) of the musical action (such is also the case of his wonderful
Lyric Suite for string quartet).
Up until this finale, however, the composer was obviously concerned
with lending his own coherence to Büchner’s fragments. He configures three
acts (according to the classic principle of a form with an exposition, plot and
catastrophe), each with five scenes, thereby reducing the original number of
scenes from twenty-six to fifteen and opting for eleven singing parts, as op-
posed to the twenty-three speaking rôles. Other differences between the play
and the opera libretto reveal Berg’s economy of means: the composer discards,
for example, the scenes involving animals (probably aware of the difficulties
of staging them), as well as some moments that he did not feel were essential
to the unfolding of the dramatic conflict. But he does neglect their potential
to suggest tension and incorporates them into the music indirectly. The rear-
rangement of interior structures is kept to a bare minimum, and Berg is thus
one of the few composers to have both literary talent and enormous respect
for the source he is adapting.
The dialogue is for the most part Büchner’s original text. The first scene
of the opera is almost identical to the play (with the exception of the Cap-
tain’s penultimate line, which Berg omits), likewise scenes two, three, seven
and eight, corresponding to scenes two, three, four and five of Act One of
the play, and scenes six, nine, ten and twelve, corresponding to scenes one,
two, three and four of Act Two. In the opera, scene five of Act Two com-
prises scenes fourteen and seventeen of the play. Finally, the composer adapts
scenes nineteen (with the exception of the Madman’s passages), twenty-two,
twenty-three (with Käthe becoming Margret in the libretto) and twenty-four
(with the Doctor and the Captain replacing First Man and Second Man) of
257
all the key events in the opera, challenging the imagination to respond only
to the ear. Ardently, movingly, all the key motifs are repeated, within a se-
quence that can no longer take account of the teachings of Schönberg. Berg
here explicitly returns to tonality, in D Minor or D Major, to the symphonic
tradition that ended, in a way, with Gustav Mahler. And after this symphon-
ic poem it seems that there is nothing else to say. Nonetheless, the curtain
comes back up, and the child of Wozzeck and Maria is playing on a hobby-
horse, unknowing, innocent, even when the friends come to tell him that his
mother has been found dead on the shore of the lake. He continues to jump
around on the hobbyhorse, making a Hopp-hopp extended by the virtually in-
finite movement of the discreet, monotonous, sonorous orchestra. Berg is an
unsurpassed master of finales that gradually, almost imperceptibly fade into
silence, in fact suggesting the repetition ad infinitum (or perhaps within an
imaginary circle) of the musical action (such is also the case of his wonderful
Lyric Suite for string quartet).
Up until this finale, however, the composer was obviously concerned
with lending his own coherence to Büchner’s fragments. He configures three
acts (according to the classic principle of a form with an exposition, plot and
catastrophe), each with five scenes, thereby reducing the original number of
scenes from twenty-six to fifteen and opting for eleven singing parts, as op-
posed to the twenty-three speaking rôles. Other differences between the play
and the opera libretto reveal Berg’s economy of means: the composer discards,
for example, the scenes involving animals (probably aware of the difficulties
of staging them), as well as some moments that he did not feel were essential
to the unfolding of the dramatic conflict. But he does neglect their potential
to suggest tension and incorporates them into the music indirectly. The rear-
rangement of interior structures is kept to a bare minimum, and Berg is thus
one of the few composers to have both literary talent and enormous respect
for the source he is adapting.
The dialogue is for the most part Büchner’s original text. The first scene
of the opera is almost identical to the play (with the exception of the Cap-
tain’s penultimate line, which Berg omits), likewise scenes two, three, seven
and eight, corresponding to scenes two, three, four and five of Act One of
the play, and scenes six, nine, ten and twelve, corresponding to scenes one,
two, three and four of Act Two. In the opera, scene five of Act Two com-
prises scenes fourteen and seventeen of the play. Finally, the composer adapts
scenes nineteen (with the exception of the Madman’s passages), twenty-two,
twenty-three (with Käthe becoming Margret in the libretto) and twenty-four
(with the Doctor and the Captain replacing First Man and Second Man) of
257
