Berg's Lyric Suite Analysis

I’ve been doing my own detailed analyses of some important 20^th century pieces to keep me up to speed and I figure some of my findings may be of use to those of you here who compose or want to start composing atonal music or anybody who is just trying to understand what the hell atonal music is all about! Anyway, I figured I’d do one thread looking at a work in detail and see how it goes from there.

The first piece I’ll look at is Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite of 1926. It’s an important piece in Berg’s output as it is his first large-scale work to use serial technique. The piece is for string quartet and is in 6 movements: The 1^st movement, outer sections of the 3^rd movement and ‘B’ sections of the 5^th movement are all serial while the rest of the work is composed freely. For now, I’m just going to focus on the 1^st movement.

1st Movement Row:

F E C A G D Ab Db Eb Gb Bb B

The tone row used throughout the movement is of interest for several reasons. The 2^nd 6-note group (hexachord) of the row is the retrograde (reverse) of the 1^st hexachord transposed up a tritone. Notice that the 1^st hexachord of the row contains all natural notes, whereas the 2^nd hexachord contains all flats apart from B. The first half of the row can be said to be in the ‘key’ of F while the second half can be said to be in the ‘key’ of B. Also, if we look at note groups <1-2-3> and <8-9-10> we’ll notice that each group forms a minor triad. When the row is inverted, these same groups form major triads. These tonal implications aren’t accidental and will be fully exploited by Berg throughout the work.

1^st movement link:

The 1^st movement, believe it or not, is in a standard sonata form. Rather than relying on separate key areas to mark the structure, Berg uses changes in tempo. The exposition’s 1^st subject is marked ‘Tempo I’ while the 2^nd subject is marked ‘Tempo II’. Development of the material from each subject is marked by a return to that particular subject’s tempo. This is a key technique used by 20^th century composers to structure their music in the absence of tonality and can be observed throughout Berg’s music, even back to his Op. 1 Piano Sonata.

Although the 1^st movement is serial, Berg isn’t always totally strict with the method. On occasions he uses a system invented by Josef Hauer known as trope technique. The idea is that you construct a 12 note row and the notes can appear in any order as long as all of the notes of the 1^st hexachord appear before any of the notes of the 2^nd hexachord. As we discovered before, Berg’s row lends itself perfectly to this system because it can be split into 2 different ‘keys’. Using the trope technique allows Berg some freedom whilst retaining the same character as the strict serial parts as the F-B key divide stays intact.

There is another reason for Berg using the trope technique. In bars 8-9, Berg uses the trope technique to create a cycle of 4ths in the cello part. This is one of Berg’s favourite tools known as an interval cycle. Interval cycles are literally cycles of notes that are all the same interval apart. A cycle of minor 2nds (otherwise known as a 1-cycle) would simply be a chromatic scale, eg. C-C#-D-D#-E-F-etc. A cycle of major 2nds (2-cycle) is otherwise known as the whole-tone scale, eg. C-D-E-F#-G#-A#. A 3-cycle forms a diminished 7^th chord, a 4-cycle forms an augmented triad and a 5-cycle forms a cycle of 4ths as shown above.

There are 2 things that are significant about interval cycles:

1. They can all be found in tonal music. 1-cycles are familiar from chromatic scale runs, 2-cycles are familiar from the whole-tone based music of Rimsky-Korsakov and later, Debussy, 3-cycles as diminished 7^th chords have been in use since the Baroque period, 4-cycles can be found in the music of Liszt and Wagner as well as many composers who followed them and 5-cycles form the bass line to any cycle of 4ths progression which pops up in virtually all tonal music and is easiest to identify in the development sections of classical sonata-form movements.

2. They don’t suggest or lean towards any particular key and can therefore be used in atonal music without the fear of accidentally setting up a certain key.

The fact that interval cycles are familiar to us from tonal music can be exploited by the composer, and Berg often does this. Berg uses interval cycles in the same way that a composer such as Chopin may use a major scale as a device to pad out the music or move smoothly from one section to another. As well as having this use as almost ‘filler’ material, cycles can be used to construct the main themes or motives of a piece. If this is done, the theme can be recalled or suggested to the listener simply by playing around with the cycle from which it is constructed. This is in fact done by Berg in later movements of the suite. Most importantly, interval cycles provide structure for the listener and are easy to follow due to their familiarity from earlier music. They are useful simply as material for transitions or even for the main thematic material of a piece and are probably the reason why Berg is possibly one of the most widely accepted serial composers. While others were looking to break completely free of the past, Berg was simply looking for a bridge to link the past to the future, taking what he could work with from it and combining it with his teacher, Schoenberg’s serial method.

I’ll leave it there for now. I'm sure there's plenty I can improve upon but I’ve tried to make it understandable, hopefully without going too far and patronising people who may already know this stuff or taking for granted that people will know things and leaving important bits out. If anyone has any questions about any of this ask away either in the thread or PM me.

I am following this thread. although i have several books on twelvetone music that talk about and analyse this landmark Berg piece, I am always interested in the personal musings of individual member at YC. keep them coming, please :)

I am following this thread. although i have several books on twelvetone music that talk about and analyse this landmark Berg piece, I am always interested in the personal musings of individual member at YC. keep them coming, please :)

Also feel free to add any of your knowledge to this Jaap! The more contributions the better really. I'm going to look at the 3rd movement next and leave the rest of them because they all use devices I've either mentioned here or am going to mention when talking about the 3rd movement. I'll get it up here as soon as I can.

This is analysis of his post tonal work expresses many key thoughts that came out of his work. Did you know that Schoenberg taught him? I liked the way you broke the matrix and then applied to his work. bravo. Keep the musical anyalize coming.

I wanted to look closely at the 3^rd movement over the others because Berg uses a very innovative method of rhythmic organisation that is used in a lot of later 20^th century music.

3^rd movement link:

The movement is a scherzo and trio. The outer scherzo sections are serial whilst the trio is composed freely and actually serves as a taster of the exposition of the following 4^th movement. Rather than using exactly the same row that was used in the 1^st movement, Berg takes the 1^st movement row and swaps the positions of notes 3 and 9 to create what is known as a permutation of the original row.

1^st movement row:

F E C A G D Ab Db Eb Gb Bb B

3^rd movement permutation of row:

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B

F E C Gb G D Ab Db Eb A Bb B

In this movement, the row isn’t only important as a means of determining pitch; the rhythmic content of the movement is almost completely derived from the row. Firstly, Berg splits the row into two groups based upon their position within a single octave: The first group, <0-3-4-6-9-A-B>, includes all notes that lie below C, with the second group, <1-2-5-7-8>, including all notes that lie above B. Berg then takes the interval content of each of these two groups and uses the quantity of semitones between each note of the group to form a durational pattern. The group <0-3-4-6-9-A-B> has the interval content [no. of semitones between each note] (3-1-2-3-1-1-1). This durational pattern, with one quaver as the standard unit, first appears in the cello part in mm. 6-8. The pattern derived from the second group, (1-3-2-1-1) follows the first pattern immediately in mm. 8-9 (The durations of certain notes in the group are irrelevant; it is the timing of the attack of the notes that is important. 2 could be a crotchet or it could be a quaver followed by a quaver rest). The majority of rhythmic organisation in the 3rd movement can be attributed to these two rhythmic motives and their augmentations, diminutions and variations.

Some may ask: what is the point of deriving the rhythm directly from the row? It’s not like the ear can make such a complex connection between pitch and rhythm so the only merits of using such a technique would be academic and not musical. This is true to an extent and is one of the issues with the total serialism of the 1950s. A lot of composers seemed to be overly concerned with achieving unity between all aspects of the music with pitch, rhythm, dynamics, timbre, tempo, articulation, register and pretty much anything else being derived from a single tone row. However, in this case, the procedure results in 2 very easily identifiable and well defined rhythmic motives that always reappear in connection with a specific series of pitches. A comparable classical example of a similar connection between rhythmic motive and pitch would be Beethoven’s 5^th symphony. The whole symphony, especially the 1^st movement, is dominated by the combination of the 3 quavers followed by a longer note rhythmic motive with the descending major and minor 3^rd melodic material. The constant recurrence of similar rhythm in combination with similar pitch content strengthens the overall effect of the motive. The premise with the Lyric Suite 3^rd movement is the same and the combination helps mark the divide between the scherzo and trio sections.

I would like to skip talking about the trio section of the movement because it doesn’t really deal with anything that we haven’t already come across in the 1^st and 3^rd movement to this point. Instead, I’ll skip to the return of the scherzo which is a retrograde of the 1^st scherzo section.

It is in the return of the scherzo that the significance of applying serial technique to rhythm becomes apparent. Berg doesn’t just simply write the notes out in reverse order as would normally happen in a traditional retrograde. Instead, Berg reverses the durational patterns used to create the original rhythmic motives, so (3-1-2-3-1-1-1) becomes (1-1-1-3-2-1-3), while (1-3-2-1-1) becomes (1-1-2-3-1). The consequence of this is that the retrograde mirrors the attack points of the original scherzo. Think of a sound that has been reversed; the attack of the sound now occurs at the end of it rather than at the beginning. If the sound was a crotchet in length and we truly reversed it, the attack would occur towards the end of the note, perhaps on the 2^nd quaver. So, we might write a truly retrograded crotchet as a quaver rest followed by a quaver. This is achieved when a series is used to organise rhythm. The attack points are left intact to create a true retrograde that can be perceived by the ear rather than a retrograde that simply looks nice on paper.

Well that pretty much covers all of the major techniques used by Berg in the Lyric Suite. I'll put together another analysis soon, probably something from a bit later in the 20th century that isn't serial. Maybe some Messiaen or Ligeti or something else.

I almost forgot. Here's the 1st appearance of the 2 main rhythmic motives in the 3rd movement.

Also, a lot of this obviously isn't down to my observations. There are some great books about Berg's music. The 2 books that I owe most of this to are both called The Music of Alban Berg. One is by Douglas Jarman and the other is by Dave Headlam.

I have to follow this now, for the the analysis of the suite is well done and well executed. May we see at some point a 12 tone matrix of his suite?

I have to follow this now, for the the analysis of the suite is well done and well executed. May we see at some point a 12 tone matrix of his suite?

http://www.musictheory.net/calculators/matrix Just follow this link here and enter the row and this will produce it for you because I can't be bothered writing it out. This is a handy site if you ever have serial analysis classes!