Alban Berg's Wozzeck is arguably the most important opera composed in the first half of the 20th century. It is certainly one of the most powerful, and its emotional impact remains as strong today as when it was first performed in 1925.
The text for the opera is drawn from Woyzeck, a play by German playwright Georg Büchner that is one of the most extraordinary dramas ever written.
Read more: Decoding the music masterpieces: Rossini's opera, Otello
Wozzeck is beaten up and the Drum Major leaves. Act 3 Marie is reading the Bible. Her son tells her a story about a hungry orphan. Marie and Wozzeck walk in the woods. A blood-red moon rises and Wozzeck stabs Marie. Wozzeck goes to a tavern where he drowns his guilt by drinking. Someone notices blood on his hand and Wozzeck panics and rushes out. The first recording of Wozzeck was of a 1951 New York Philharmonic concert performance (that is, complete but in an auditorium without any staging) led by Dmitri Mitropoulos (now on Sony MH2K 62759). Despite a gaffe that nearly ruins the crucial rhythm of the ending, it remains a swift, vibrant, hugely powerful and altogether gripping rendition.
Büchner died at the age of 23 in 1837. He left several works behind, including fragmentary drafts of his masterpiece – Woyzeck. The play was not published in the posthumous 1850 edition of Büchner's works, whether because of its occasional obscenity, its incompleteness, or the difficulty involved in deciphering the author's cramped handwriting.
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It eventually appeared in print in 1876. The drama had an enormous influence on the development of modern playwriting (Brecht was one of its warmest admirers), but it was not staged until 1913. The composer Alban Berg attended the first Vienna performances in 1914, and at once decided to make it into an opera, which became Wozzeck. (It was only discovered that the correct name of the hero was Woyzeck after Berg had composed most of the opera from an edition which printed it as Wozzeck).
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The torment of the humble fusilier
Woyzeck is the first significant tragedy of 'low' life, written in prose and with a common man as the hero. The titular Woyzeck is a fusilier in the army of his city-state (unnamed in the opera).
Nature plays a dominant role in Büchner's drama. For Büchner, there is only a fragile boundary between the underlying animal aspects of human nature and morality and reasoning. These are only a veneer, easily broken down by passion into a reversion to nature. In Woyzeck, this happens when Marie, Woyzeck's common-law wife and the mother of his child, allows the army's Drum Major to take her to bed.
A doctor's research, which involves placing Woyzeck on a diet of only peas, and Marie's infidelity, push Woyzeck over the thin line between moral reasoning and instinctive, natural action; between sanity and insanity. Woyzeck goes mad. But Woyzeck's 'madness' gives him an insight into the workings of nature which is superior to that of the paranoid Captain whose Batman he is and the megalomaniac Doctor. Woyzeck can see into the abyss.
Having studied medicine and philosophy and lectured in natural history, Büchner possessed a unique combination of a compassionate human vision and scientific detachment. He viewed life as consisting of a sequence of separate pictures, apparently disconnected fragments. So each one of the play's 27 short scenes presents one episode relevant to the drama of Woyzeck's relationship with Marie.
This technique, which was revolutionary in the theatre – and indeed rendered Woyzeck unstageable before the 20th century – is reminiscent of German expressionist films created immediately after the first world war, particularly The Cabinet of Dr Caligari.
Büchner depicts Woyzeck's descent into madness as the inevitable consequence of his existential terror. He imbues Woyzeck, his tormented, humble Fusilier and the victim of sexual betrayal and the Doctor's medical experiment, with an extraordinary nobility. The text deploys language of vivid intensity, as Woyzeck struggles to express the visions which drive him to murder and madness.
Visions of terror
These visions are almost beyond expression in words – but not in music. In Act I, scene 2 of Berg's opera, where Wozzeck is tormented by the apocalyptic power of Nature, the orchestra illuminates and makes real for the audience the terrors which in Büchner's scene the audience can only imagine.
In the opera, the audience is forced to experience the visions from inside, from the point of view of Wozzeck. Creating that music required a creative leap by the composer, one which is still astonishing even today.
The Viennese composer Alban Berg (1885-1935) saw Wozzeck at exactly the right moment in his own compositional development. Berg's composition teacher Arnold Schoenberg had begun around 1905 to write short pieces within an idiom which abandons the system of keys and key-relations, known as tonality, which is the fundamental basis of 19th-century classical music. Instead, he favoured atonality, a style in which all sounds, even piercing dissonances, are permitted.
In his Three Pieces for Orchestra (1914) Berg was the first composer working in this style to incorporate structural devices that enabled him to compose atonal pieces on a larger scale.
The final March of the Three Pieces, which Berg wrote (prophetically) just before and after the assassination of the Archduke at Sarajevo, begins quietly enough, but rapidly becomes grotesque, terrifying and brutal.
This apocalyptic intensity and musical structure paved the way for Wozzeck. This opera required both extreme emotional intensity, as Berg responded with all his eloquence to the compassion and social protest of Büchner's text – and a firm musical structure, to create unity among the diverse characters and episodes of the play.
Berg selected 15 of Büchner's 27 scenes, and divided them into three Acts, each of five scenes. He then chose a musical form for each Act – Five Character Studies (Act 1), a Symphony in five movements (Act 2), and a set of six Inventions (Act 3). Within this overall design, each scene also has its own musical form.
Read more: Decoding the music masterpieces: Rossini's opera, Otello
Whether individual audience members consciously apprehend them or not, Berg's chosen forms bring familiar resonances from classical music, and each one has been chosen to illuminate the dramatic and psychological essence of its scene.
The creative tension between overt emotional power and concealed but rigorous control is clear not only in the opera's formal design, but also in the range of modes of vocal delivery, which extend far beyond those of classical opera. Once again, the pressure towards incoherence is counterbalanced by a minute attendance to volume and phrasing, together with precise notation of every grade of sound, from ordinary speech via pitched but half declaimed words, to full song and on to florid ornamentation.
Nearly a century after Wozzeck was first performed, it maintains a central place in the international repertory today, despite the challenges it presents to designers, directors and performers. Berg's ability to use his extraordinary music to chart Wozzeck's descent into madness, and the compassion with which he views his character's suffering, have ensured its continuing acclaim.
Wozzeck is being staged by Opera Australia in Sydney from January 25 - February 15 2019.
Wozzeck is an opera by the AustriancomposerAlban Berg (1885-1935). It was composed between 1914 and 1922 and first performed in 1925.
Berg wrote this opera before the period when he used serialism in his works. His teacher Schoenberg had not yet developed the twelve tone system. The music of Wozzeck has tonal music in the tradition of Mahler, but also some atonal music (music which is not based on any key) as well as melodies which are based on the whole tone scale. The music sounded very modern at the time it was written. Berg also writes for the voices in unusual ways: sometimes they have to half-speak, half-sing (this is called Sprechgesang).
The opera is based on a play called Woyzeck by the German playwright Georg Büchner. Woyzeck was an unusual drama because, instead of being a story about someone important such as a king or a god, it was about a poor man who is not very smart and is bullied and misused by other people. When Berg wrote the opera nearly a century later, it was still an unusual story for an opera. The heroes in operas were usually important people, while working people often had comic parts: they were often servants. But Wozzeck is a simple man who cannot help what is happening to him. In drama this is sometimes called an 'anti-hero'.
Wozzeck 1947
The story of the opera[change | change source]
Act I[change | change source]
Scene 1 (Suite): Wozzeck is working as a barber. While he is shaving the Captain, the Captain tells Wozzeck that he thinks Wozzeck leads a bad life because he has had a child with a woman (Marie) without being married to her. Wozzeck says that it is hard for him to be good because he is poor. He reminds the Captain that Jesus said 'Let the little children come to me,' (Mark 10:14). The Captain is confused by this remark.
Scene 2 (Rhapsody and Hunting Song): Wozzeck and his friend Andres are cutting sticks as the sun is setting. Wozzeck has scary visions: he sees the sinking sun covering the world in flames.
Scene 3 (March and Lullaby): Soldiers march by outside Marie's room. Her neighbour, Margret, tells Marie she is bad because she is flirting with the soldiers. Then Wozzeck comes and tells Marie of the terrible visions he has had.
Scene 4 (Passacaglia): The Doctor tells Wozzeck that he should not cough in the street (Büchner wrote: 'piss in the street'). He says he is doing a medical experiment. Wozzeck is so simple that he believes him. The doctor is glad to hear about Wozzeck's terrible visions.
Scene 5 (Rondo): Marie admires the Drum-major outside her room. He wants to love her. At first she turns away from him, but then she gives in and they rush out together.
Act II[change | change source]
Scene 1 (Sonata-Allegro): Marie is telling her child to go to sleep while admiring earrings which the Drum-major gave her. Wozzeck arrives. He asks her where she got the earrings. She says she found them. Wozzeck does not know whether to believe her, but gives her some money and leaves. Marie knows her behaviour is wrong.
Wozzeck Opera Summary
Scene 2 (Fantasia and Fugue on 3 Themes): The Doctor rushes by the Captain in the street, who tells him to slow down. The Doctor makes the Captain frightened by thinking of nasty illnesses that he might get. When Wozzeck comes, they tease him by saying that Marie loves someone else.
Scene 3 (Largo): Wozzeck talks about it to Marie. She admits that she has a boyfriend. Wozzeck is furious. He is about to hit her when she stops him, saying even her father never dared to hit her. She says: 'better a knife in my belly than your hands on me'. This gives Wozzeck an idea for revenge.
Scene 4 (Scherzo): Wozzeck sees Marie dancing with the Drum-major in a crowd. Andres asks Wozzeck why he is sitting by himself. My last password. A drunkard gives a sermon, then an idiot goes up to Wozzeck and says he can smell blood.
Scene 5 (Rondo): In the barracks at night, Wozzeck cannot sleep. He is keeping Andres awake. The Drum-major comes in. He is drunk. He gets Wozzeck out of bed to fight with him.
Act III[change | change source]
Scene 1 (Invention on a Theme): In her room at night, Marie reads to herself from the Bible. She wants to be forgiven.
Scene 2 (Invention on a Single Note (B)): Wozzeck and Marie are walking in the woods by a pond. Marie wants to leave, but Wozzeck stops her. The moon is shining bright red. Wozzeck becomes determined that if he can not have Marie, no one else can, and he stabs her.
Scene 3 (Invention on a Rhythm): People are dancing in a pub. Wozzeck enters, and when he sees Margret, he dances with her and pulls her onto his lap. He insults her, and then asks her to sing him a song. She sings, but then notices blood on his hand and elbow; everyone begins to shout at him, and Wozzeck rushes out.
Scene 4 (Invention on a 6-Note Chord): Wozzeck goes back to the place where he killed Marie. Wozzeck thinks that the knife he killed Marie with will prove that he is the murderer. He throws the knife into the pond. When the blood-red moon appears again, he walks into the pond to try to wash the blood of his body, but he drowns. The Captain and the Doctor, passing by, hear Wozzeck moaning and rush off in fright.
Intermezzo (Invention on a Key (D minor)): This interlude leads to the finale.
Scene 5 (Invention on an Eighth-Note moto perpetuo, quasi toccata): The next morning a group of children are playing in the sunshine. People are telling one another that Marie's body has been found. The children all run off to see. Marie and Wozzeck's little boy has been playing on a toy horse. He stops and runs after the other children to the pond.
History of the opera[change | change source]
Berg saw Büchner's play Woyzeck in 1914. It was the first time it had been performed in Vienna. The play had been advertised as Wozzeck because people could not read Büchner's handwriting. This is why Berg uses this spelling for his opera.
Berg knew at once that he wanted to make the play into an opera. Büchner, who had died in 1837 at the age of 23, had left the play unfinished. Berg took fifteen scenes from the play and made them into an opera with three acts. He composed music with a particular form for each scene so that the music develops in a very organised way. He made changes to the libretto himself.
Though Berg began work on the opera in 1914, he was serving in the army during World War I, so he did not have time to continue working on it until 1917. He finished the opera in April 1922. Erich Kleiber conducted the first performance at the Berlin State Opera on 14 December 141925. It quickly became famous and was performed in all of the big opera houses in Europe. It was so successful that Berg was able to live off of the money he earned from it.
Musical style[change | change source]
Wozzeck 1994
Wozzeck was the first major opera written in a modern 20th century style. A lot of the music is atonal (not in any key) so Berg was able to use this to express the madness of Wozzeck. Sometimes the music becomes more tonal, especially when the story is telling about love and humanity. He also bases some of the music about the soldiers on folksong which he treats in his own special way.
Another musical technique he uses is the leitmotif, in which particular characters or things are linked to particular themes or musical ideas. This technique can be very useful to suggest certain things. For example, there is a leitmotif for the earrings which the Drum major has given to Marie. When the major makes love to Marie we hear this leitmotif. The music makes us realize that he is not forcing her to love him but that she is willing. In another place, the military music tells us that Marie is thinking of the Drum major.
Wozzeck Is Sung In Which Language
Another leitmotif is the chord we hear when Wozzeck, near the beginning of the opera, talks about 'poor folk like us'. The chord we hear is used in other parts of the opera when characters are not strong enough to change their situation in life.