Ten facts worth knowing (or ignoring)

1. BÜCHNER

When he died prematurely in 1837, the German author Georg Büchner left behind an unfinished play based on a true murder case. In 1821 Johann Christian Woyzeck, a soldier who had fallen on hard times, stabbed his common-law wife to death, for which he was publicly executed three years later. His trial became a much-discussed case because, for the first time, the notion of legal accountability was taken into account: according to many sources, Woyzeck suffered from depression, anxiety attacks and severe psychosis. Büchner drew on the medical reports in the court file and highlighted the social context of the murder in his play: what if this tragedy had in part been the result of the way in which this man had been impoverished and socially marginalized throughout his adult life?

2. THE PLAY

In 1914 the composer Alban Berg attended the Viennese premiere of Woyzeck. ‘This is really fantastic, incredible! Someone must set this to music!’, he is said to have stammered, deathly pale. On the eve of the Great War, Europe was marked by militarism and growing class inequality, and thus the zeitgeist did indeed seem ripe for the story of this simple soldier who is systematically humiliated by his Captain, used as an experimental subject by his Doctor, and betrayed by his wife Marie with the Drum Major. Berg’s personal experiences during his administrative military service are said to have only reinforced that feeling: in his letters home, he repeatedly mentions the inhuman pressure and mental disruption that soldiers at the front had to endure.

3. WOZZECK?

The unusual spelling of the opera to which Berg would devote himself feverishly from then on is the result of an innocent typo. When the manuscript of the play reached publisher Karl Emil Franzos 40 years after Büchner’s death, it was in such poor condition that he misread the protagonist’s name as ‘Wozzeck’. However, his spelling was quickly adopted and it was not before 1919 that it was corrected, at the same time as many other editorial changes were made. By that time, Berg had already been fine-tuning his opera for two years and felt that he was too deep into the writing process to correct his libretto.

4. SECOND VIENNESE SCHOOL

Berg’s innovative musical language proved to be particularly well suited for expressing psychological extremes. Berg had developed it under the wing of Arnold Schoenberg, the composer who, in both his music and his theoretical writings, had paved the way for a radically new approach to harmony. Until then, compositions had been structured within the tonal system, the harmonic building blocks relating to a single tonal centre. By the end of the nineteenth century, that system was bursting at the seams: harmonically ‘foreign’ tones lingered longer and longer, ambiguous chords kept piling up, and unexpected twists and turns increasingly caused the music to stray from the beaten path. For Schoenberg, it was clear that tonality was losing its organizing and hierarchical functions. Together with his pupils Anton Webern and Alban Berg, he decided to leave tonality behind and seek out new musical horizons. The Second Viennese School – following the ‘First’ of such classical composers as Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven – was a reality.

5. ATONALITY

These so-called atonal experiments had a major influence on Berg’s first opera, which immediately exposed a fundamental problem with atonality. Until then, the style had mainly proven itself in smaller pieces or in works that derived their coherence from an underlying text. Large-scale symphonies or full-length operas seemed hardly conceivable without the organizing power of major and minor keys. With Wozzeck, Berg therefore asked himself a question that was both musical and dramatic: how do you achieve completion and coherence without tonality, not only within individual scenes, but also in the overall architecture of an opera?

6. DRAMATIC UNITY

Büchner’s fragmentary text offered little guidance for a balanced dramaturgy. Berg therefore decided to restructure the source material in a targeted manner. He deleted a number of passages and rearranged the existing material into a libretto of three acts, each consisting of five scenes. These form a carefully constructed arc of tension according to the classical principle of dramatic unity. In the first part, the exposition, we are introduced to Wozzeck and his relation to the other characters. The B section brings the dramatic development to a head when Marie’s adultery is revealed – the irreversible trigger for the final section with its catastrophic outcome: Wozzeck uses a knife to murder his wife, and when he tries to cover his tracks in the nearby river, he steps too far into the water and drowns. For this musical ABA structure, Berg draws on classical instrumental forms. The second act, for example, takes on the framework of a five-part symphony: a large-scale structure that gives the dramatically heavier B section sufficient weight. The first and third acts, on the other hand, are given shorter and lighter instrumental structures. The third act consists of ‘five inventions’, and the first of as many ‘character pieces’. In these, each character is linked to a historical musical form.

7. PASSACAGLIA

A telling example of such a ‘character piece’ is the fourth scene, in which Wozzeck is subjected to a series of scientific experiments by the Doctor. Here, Berg opts for the passacaglia, a baroque form consisting of a number of variations over a continuously repeated bass line. This persistent musical form reflects the rigidity of the cold scientist who, quite full of himself, pushes through his series of experiments without looking back. It is all the more striking that Berg elaborates this very theme according to the principles of twelve-tone theory, a kind of prototype of what Schoenberg would systematically apply from 1923 onwards. Was this a playful nod to his teacher?

8. VERWANDLUNGSMUSIK

Berg even provided precise musical coherence for each scene change. He wrote ‘transition music’ that connects the last bars of one tableau with the start of the next. Strikingly, in doing so he directs not only the music in detail, but also the stagecraft. In the score, he notes precisely when and how quickly the curtain should rise and fall. For example, for the end of the passacaglia scene, he writes that the curtain should fall ‘first quickly, then suddenly slowly, and then steadily’ to express the ‘sudden change in the Doctor’s behaviour’. By placing the physical dividing line between the auditorium and the stage under musical control, Berg makes the theatre apparatus an integral part of the composition.

9. SPRECHSTIMME

In his score, Berg is very specific about how singers should use their voices. Spoken dialogue, rhythmic speech, half-singing, full singing: Wozzeck encompasses different types of voice use. With the term ‘Sprechstimme’, Berg again refers to Schoenberg who, in his composition Pierrot Lunaire (1912), had previously proposed a similar vocal technique, between speaking and singing. Without fully singing or holding the notes, the singers must nevertheless approximate the indicated intonation, maintain the rhythm and respect the suggested dynamics. According to Berg, it was ‘a very effective means of communication’ and, in terms of sound, a ‘welcome addition to the fully sung word’.

10. WOZZECK-VORTRAG

‘I would now like to kindly ask the orchestra to play the epilogue. But first I would like to ask you something – namely, to forget everything I have tried to explain here about music theory and my aesthetics when you come to see a performance of Wozzeck in this theatre.’

With these words, Berg concluded a lecture he gave to the audience of the Oldenburg Opera in 1929. It is a remarkable conclusion to a speech in which he, together with a singer and orchestra, had explained his music-theoretical principles for Wozzeck in minute detail, and something he would repeat at other performances in Germany. For Berg, however, it was essential that his technically ingenious and meticulously calculated compositional approach always remain at the service of an opera experience that gets under your skin, both musically and dramatically.

With these ten facts worth knowing about Wozzeck, you are well and truly ready to experience the performance live at La Monnaie from November onwards. But of course, you can just as well ignore them, entirely on the composer’s advice …