Uploaded September 2010 | Updated September 2026, 4 days ago
The newly found freedom from the classical harmonic system, which atonality provided, went hand in hand with the freedom to introduce a whole new approach to form, rhythm, and texture, making listeners feel "the air from another planet," to quote the Stefan George poem that Schoenberg set to music in his Second String Quartet (1908). In Alban Berg's Op. 3, one is immediately struck by the work's "gestural" quality: from the beginning, one hears a successor of brief motifs, each with a strong rhythmic profile, repeated and varied as they are passed from one instrument to another. The tempo fluctuates constantly, with some instruments taking occasional rhythmic liberties while others play strictly in time. Even though the stylistic means were radically new in 1910, the powerful emotional charge of the work comes across without the slightest difficulty. In the 1970s, musicologist Constantin Floros spoke to a friend of Berg's wife, and learned that for Alban and Helene, this quartet was symbolic of a turbulent time during their courtship when Helene's father was trying to prevent the young lovers from seeing each other. Thus Op. 3 shows Berg at a crossroads in more ways than one. It was in 1910 that he ended his formal studies with Schoenberg. The quartet was completed in the spring. By the end of the year, Alban Berg and Hele Nahowski were engaged.
Peter Laki, Bard College
from the program of the Bard Music Festival, Summer, 1910
The Kohon Quartet: Harold Kohon, Raymond Kunicki, Bernard Zaslav, Ray Schweitzer
The second movement is now posted at:
youtube.com/watch?v=wXpxVb0tXvo
The newly found freedom from the classical harmonic system, which atonality provided, went hand in hand with the freedom to introduce a whole new approach to form, rhythm, and texture, making listeners feel "the air from another planet," to quote the Stefan George poem that Schoenberg set to music in his Second String Quartet (1908). In Alban Berg's Op. 3, one is immediately struck by the work's "gestural" quality: from the beginning, one hears a successor of brief motifs, each with a strong rhythmic profile, repeated and varied as they are passed from one instrument to another. The tempo fluctuates constantly, with some instruments taking occasional rhythmic liberties while others play strictly in time. Even though the stylistic means were radically new in 1910, the powerful emotional charge of the work comes across without the slightest difficulty. In the 1970s, musicologist Constantin Floros spoke to a friend of Berg's wife, and learned that for Alban and Helene, this quartet was symbolic of a turbulent time during their courtship when Helene's father was trying to prevent the young lovers from seeing each other. Thus Op. 3 shows Berg at a crossroads in more ways than one. It was in 1910 that he ended his formal studies with Schoenberg. The quartet was completed in the spring. By the end of the year, Alban Berg and Hele Nahowski were engaged.
Peter Laki, Bard College
from the program of the Bard Music Festival, Summer, 1910
The Kohon Quartet: Harold Kohon, Raymond Kunicki, Bernard Zaslav, Ray Schweitzer
The second movement is now posted at:
youtube.com/watch?v=wXpxVb0tXvo
![Edison Denisov, Symphony [No.1], USSR Ministry of Culture Orchestra, Rozhdestvensky](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/xiH4u8B_glg/mqdefault.jpg "Edison Denisov, Symphony [No.1], USSR Ministry of Culture Orchestra, Rozhdestvensky
It seems to me that one of the greatest values of music is its spiritual power, its ability to carry a great spiritual charge. Music carried this charge during pre-Bach and Bach epochs, as well as for some time afterwards (Mozart, Brahms). In the 20th century, this charge was, to a considerable degree, lost. During our lifetime, for a long while, the loss of spiritual values has progressed, - or their leveling, or even a negative attitude to them revealed by the growth of so-called atheism - a phenomenon very dangerous to mankind. I remember Shostakovich telling me a few times a year or two before his death: Earlier, there were ten commandments: thou shall not kill; thou shall not steal; thou shall not seduce your neighbors wife; etc. But now we have just one single commandment - do not violate the purity of the teaching of Marx and Lenin. A lot of artists perceived the leveling of spiritual values and their replacement by false values. In music - both in academic and in new - there is a lot of what we may call bluff. Currently, even some prominent names, experiencing intense professional scrutiny closely follow all the slightest changes of fashion - and, since they possess a certain technique and skills in the application of cliché, they often deceive the audience. Take the great artists of the past - Mozart, Bach, or Brahms; from Russian music, take Mussorgsky, Glinka, Tchaikovsky. Those never cheated the audience, never fooled anyone - they were always honest and sincere. At present, unfortunately, the idea of honesty often disappears from art. Even significant composers, and to a much greater extent, artists, often indulge in bluffing, whereas the audience, having lost the criteria, takes this bluff at face value.
In our society, false art has often substituted true one. There was a long period when the true art was suppressed, whereas false art was hailed, presented as true, and the entire mass media industriously persuaded the people that this was true art. This was how, in particular, they managed to fend the people off the concert hall. When before the war, Soviet music was played, people went to listen to it. In the 20s, concert halls were packed. Nowadays, one has to organize the audience; there is even an expression, filling groups. Once there was an authors concert of some secretary-composer, related to his nomination for the Lenin award. I asked a clarinetist from the State Orchestra: How was the concert? And he told me: It was wonderful - one to five. - What do you mean? - Fifty people on the stage, ten in the stalls. This is a standard picture. Here also lies one of the reasons for the fact that opera houses, especially provincial ones, stay empty. For a long time, all had been done to divert the public from art.
Unlike some other composers who got carried away by serialism, I have never rejected intention, because purely abstract reasoning deprived of any intentional content, makes music more superficial. One may compose a lot of good pieces, but they will be, so to say, beautiful musical architecture with very little spiritual content. For example, I appreciate Xenakiss music, but objectively speaking, it is very superficial - it has almost no psychological content. In a sense, this is objective music. If we attribute Xenakis to French music, he will appear to continue the tradition of Roussel and Varèse, but in no way is he even close to Debussys tradition. To me, other things are more appealing. In my opinion, Debussy is one of the greatest composers of the twentieth century. I think that he is even more innovative, if we use this word, than Stravinsky or Webern - but Debussys innovations do not lie on the surface. In Stravinskys music, the new immediately strikes you; whereas one initially takes Debussy as very traditional. However, when you start to analyze, you see that he was a much more daring thinker than many of his contemporaries. In this respect, Debussys music, in his best pieces, like Pelleas and Melisande, is to me as promising as Mussorgskys music - which was really appreciated almost one hundred years after [his death], or possibly has not yet been appreciated even today.
Edison Denisov
Denisov was born in Tomsk, Siberia into the family of a radio-physicist, who gave him the very unusual first name Edison, in honour of the great American inventor. He studied mathematics before deciding to spend his life composing. This decision was enthusiastically supported by Dmitri Shostakovich, who gave him instructions in composition.")
