# 20th Century Chamber Masterpieces: Part Three - Berg's Lyric Suite



## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

20th Century Chamber Masterpieces: Part Three - Berg's _Lyric__ Suite_



















Berg's Lyric Suite abounds in secret messages. In purely musical terms, Berg here for the first time employs Schoenberg's 12-tone system, basing some of the third and fifth movements on rows using all 12 notes of the chromatic scale. (And in one row, Berg proudly told Schoenberg, he used not only all available notes, but all available intervals.) Also, the fourth movement carries a quotation from the Lyric Symphony of Zemlinsky, to whom the suite is dedicated. In more personal terms, the music documents the course of Berg's extramarital affair with Hanna Fuchs-Robettin. Not only do the movement titles suggest an all-too-familiar sequence (from jovial through amorous and ecstatic to gloomy and sorrowful), but Berg incorporates his and Fuchs-Robettin's initials into the melodies and ties the metronome markings to numerological associations with their names. The sixth movement's quotation of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde is a clear reference to illicit love.

The first movement, though freely atonal, lives up to its designation of Allegretto gioviale; it's a short, perky piece. Things become quieter and more intimate with the sensuous Andante amoroso, although the mood is still sometimes rather capricious, despite an elegiac interlude at its center. Intensity builds with the Allegro misterioso, which opens with nocturnal insect music, liberally employing pizzicato and other effects. This is, effectively, the work's scherzo movement, and at its center is a Trio estatico -- still keeping a fairly quick tempo, but now using mostly conventional bowing for longer-lined phrases. The scherzo music reappears, running in reverse to the movement's end.

The fourth movement, Adagio appassionato, forms the quartet's emotional center, with something tense and foreboding about much of the music's passion. A thrashing, dissonant climax gives way to a long passage of relative, but not quite settled, repose. The ensuing Presto delirando-Tenebroso alternates frantic music with quiet, dark, tense passages. The concluding Largo desolato maintains these moods at a much slower tempo, the music gradually dying away.

[Article taken from All Music Guide]

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For me, one of greatest chamber works of the 20th Century. Such intensity and expression in this work. I'm not sure what to make of the hidden program within this piece, but I wouldn't put it past Berg who loved puzzles and codes. Remember how Berg quotes a Carinthian folk song and a Bach chorale in his _Violin Concerto_, so he loved embedding his works with quotes and codes. Anyway, what do you guys think of this work?


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

The quotation from Zemlinsky is in the Lyric symphony sung to the words "Du bist mein eigen, mein eigen" (You are mine/my own) and fairly easy to spot (if one knows the Zemlinsky but it's a distinctive melodic gesture and hard to recognize), I am not sure without double checking about the Tristan quotation.
It's one of my favorite 20th century string quartets; the string orchestral version is also attractive but contains only half of the music, so not really an alternative.


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## RobertJTh (Sep 19, 2021)

It was one of the first truly "modern" pieces I encountered as a kid, and I vaguely remember an event at school, when I was 12 or 13, where everyone was asked to bring a favorite piece of music to class and have it played. So while everyone chose the latest pop fads, I brought a movement from the Lyric Suite. At least the teacher liked it, I think.

So yes, a perennial favorite. Thought it's been years since I last listened to it. Seeing it being mentioned here made me revisit it again:




I love these score videos - they give you so much more insight in the music than just audio would do. And it makes you realize the dazzling complexity of the score, and Berg's genius in creating an emotionally engaging and captivating masterpiece out of all those strange sounds and effects.


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## Lisztianwagner (2 mo ago)

The _Lyric Suite_ is one of my favourite Berg's works; it sounds very tense, sharp and gloomy in the dissonances, but it also shows such a expressive power, an inner poetry that seems to peer so deeply inside with its haunting harmonies, beautiful contrasts and changes of rhythms among the movements, to result at the same time absolutely mesmerizing and hauntingly thrilling; it is complex and thick in the instrumental lines, but the great use of counterpoint makes it so fluid, not heavy at all, absolutely brilliant. In the 6th movements, it isn't difficult to catch the Tristan quotation by ear, it appears in the molto rubato with a seventh chord (F-B-Eflat-Aflat) to remind the longing motive, then continuing with the desire motive too.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

There isn't any Berg I don't like including this great quartet.


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