Alban Berg

[… T]here are things that can't be measured by the yardstick of Nature – – things that have sprung solely from the human spirit, towering far above the material world—things that are real only in our longing for them, 'when the sublime and beautiful things, the good and wise things, that we long for, turn into reality—not a reality that can be picked and put in the mouth or that can be counted and put in one's pocket!' (Otto Ernst [de]).      Music is like that – – – and quite a few literary works that are written from within a longing-filled heart! – – : – –      – I've now got to A Doll's House. … Berg wrote in a typically freewheeling manner to share his reading of Ibsen's A Doll's House with Watznauer on 18 October 1906, here quoting from Ernst's Meersymphonie in relating music to dreams, fantasies, feelings, and desires, especially those of a counterfactual and universal nature. Such themes predominate in Berg's often quasi-autobiographical and programmatic œuvre, not only romantically as in his Lyric Suite, but also socially as in Lulu, politically as in Wozzeck, and even mortally as in his Violin Concerto. By contrast, Webern, who also started studying with Schoenberg in 1904, took from an evening with Mahler in 1905 that: "Nature is for us the model …." Berg was born in Vienna, the third of four children of Johanna and Konrad Berg. His father ran a successful export business, and the family owned several estates in Vienna and the countryside. The family's financ…

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