Page 266 - Vinkler, Jonatan, in Jernej Weiss. ur. 2014. Musica et Artes: ob osemdesetletnici Primoža Kureta. Koper: Založba Univerze na Primorskem.
P. 266
musica et artes
binations of timbre (the flageolets of the solo violin, the unison of the harp
and horn, the double bass, trombone and timpani solos, and so on), making
a substantial contribution to the accumulation of tension, towards the cli-
mactic moment of Marie’s murder. The murder is also presaged by a themat-
ic complex reminiscent of the leitmotivs associated with Marie (eroticism, the
Drum Major, the lullaby), with Wozzeck (the idée fixe), and with death and
the moon. After Marie’s death, the B gradually spreads to the whole of the or-
chestra, until it reaches a burning, harrowing unison, abruptly interrupted by
the dance rhythm that introduces a new tavern scene.
The absolute simplicity of a note has an emotional effect that is hard to
describe in words. Why B and not some other note? Undoubtedly, Berg was
familiar with the sombre affects suggested by B Minor in the history of Ger-
man music: Bach’s B Minor Mass, Kaspar’s demonic aria in Carl Maria von
Weber’s Freischütz, the musical description of Wagnerian characters connect-
ed with a curse, with death, with revenge–Alberich, Hagen, Klingsor. On
the other hand, Berg was not the first composer to build a musical structure
based on an obsession with a single note: Chopin had done it (in a prelude for
piano) and so had Debussy (in Nuages), albeit with different expressive pur-
poses. However,
it is not the fact that a composer writes music on a single note that is important, but
that by doing so he creates a perfectly coherent and meaningful system of musical im-
ages capable of productively affecting people’s hearing and the hearts.7
Referring to the third scene of the last act of Wozzeck, the invention on a
rhythm, Berg himself explains its mainspring (in a polemic with one of his
critics):
If the formal principle that guides it consisted merely in the fact that a rhythmic
figure is repeated, ‘ here and there’, then certainly its structural value could not be
declared. In actual fact, the scene is entirely build on this figure, which strikes the
listener as a theme, it is subject to every combination, every imaginable form of coun-
terpoint, fugato and stretto, augmentation and diminution. It articulates every har-
monic, melodic and thematic event.8
The dramatic contrast between the backdrop of the Schnellpolka and
party songs, on the one hand, and the discovery of Marie’s blood on Wozzeck’s
hands, on the other, reveals the hand of a master of musical theatre, the same
as the polyphonic fine details demonstrate the composer’s constructivist tal-
7 Pascal Bentoiu, Capodopere enesciene (Bucharest: Editura Muzicală, 1984), 70.
8 Berg, Écrits, 105.
264
binations of timbre (the flageolets of the solo violin, the unison of the harp
and horn, the double bass, trombone and timpani solos, and so on), making
a substantial contribution to the accumulation of tension, towards the cli-
mactic moment of Marie’s murder. The murder is also presaged by a themat-
ic complex reminiscent of the leitmotivs associated with Marie (eroticism, the
Drum Major, the lullaby), with Wozzeck (the idée fixe), and with death and
the moon. After Marie’s death, the B gradually spreads to the whole of the or-
chestra, until it reaches a burning, harrowing unison, abruptly interrupted by
the dance rhythm that introduces a new tavern scene.
The absolute simplicity of a note has an emotional effect that is hard to
describe in words. Why B and not some other note? Undoubtedly, Berg was
familiar with the sombre affects suggested by B Minor in the history of Ger-
man music: Bach’s B Minor Mass, Kaspar’s demonic aria in Carl Maria von
Weber’s Freischütz, the musical description of Wagnerian characters connect-
ed with a curse, with death, with revenge–Alberich, Hagen, Klingsor. On
the other hand, Berg was not the first composer to build a musical structure
based on an obsession with a single note: Chopin had done it (in a prelude for
piano) and so had Debussy (in Nuages), albeit with different expressive pur-
poses. However,
it is not the fact that a composer writes music on a single note that is important, but
that by doing so he creates a perfectly coherent and meaningful system of musical im-
ages capable of productively affecting people’s hearing and the hearts.7
Referring to the third scene of the last act of Wozzeck, the invention on a
rhythm, Berg himself explains its mainspring (in a polemic with one of his
critics):
If the formal principle that guides it consisted merely in the fact that a rhythmic
figure is repeated, ‘ here and there’, then certainly its structural value could not be
declared. In actual fact, the scene is entirely build on this figure, which strikes the
listener as a theme, it is subject to every combination, every imaginable form of coun-
terpoint, fugato and stretto, augmentation and diminution. It articulates every har-
monic, melodic and thematic event.8
The dramatic contrast between the backdrop of the Schnellpolka and
party songs, on the one hand, and the discovery of Marie’s blood on Wozzeck’s
hands, on the other, reveals the hand of a master of musical theatre, the same
as the polyphonic fine details demonstrate the composer’s constructivist tal-
7 Pascal Bentoiu, Capodopere enesciene (Bucharest: Editura Muzicală, 1984), 70.
8 Berg, Écrits, 105.
264
