Background: A Concerto Born of Grief
Alban Berg composed his Violin Concerto in 1935, dedicating it "to the memory of an angel" — the young Manon Gropius, daughter of Alma Mahler and architect Walter Gropius, who had died at eighteen from polio. Berg worked on the concerto at extraordinary speed, completing it in just a few months. He himself died later that year, making this one of the last works he completed. The result is a piece saturated with mourning, tenderness, and something approaching transcendence.
The Tone Row: How Berg Loaded the Dice
Berg constructed his twelve-tone row with deliberate care so that it would serve his expressive purposes. The row contains two unusual properties:
- Tonal allusions: The first nine notes of the row can be heard as a series of overlapping minor and major triads (G minor, D major, A minor, E major), giving the music a lingering connection to tonality even within a twelve-tone framework.
- A whole-tone segment: The final four notes of the row form a whole-tone scale, which Berg uses to quote a Bach chorale in the second movement.
This was not an accident. Berg chose his row to allow the music to speak in a language that connects past and present, tonal and atonal.
Structure: Two Movements, Two Worlds
Part I: Andante – Allegretto
The first movement opens with the solo violin playing open-string harmonics — an eerie, ethereal sound that immediately signals this is music about something beyond the everyday. The opening material evokes Manon's life: her grace, her playfulness (the Allegretto section quotes a Carinthian folk song), her youth. The music here, while twelve-tone in its organisation, sounds lush and accessible. Listen for the long melodic lines in the violin and the warm orchestral textures — Berg never forgets that this is a portrait of a beloved person.
Part II: Allegro – Adagio
The second movement opens with shattering violence — a jarring, dissonant Allegro that depicts the catastrophe of Manon's illness. The music is turbulent and anguished, the violin hurled against a churning orchestra. Then, at the emotional climax, something extraordinary happens: out of the chaos, the solo violin plays the opening phrase of Bach's chorale "Es ist genug" (It is enough), from Cantata BWV 60. This chorale — itself a hymn about accepting death — fits perfectly into Berg's tone row because of the whole-tone structure Berg had planted there at the outset. It is one of the most calculated and devastating moments in all of twentieth-century music.
The Adagio that follows is a slow, grief-filled meditation, the violin's melody dissolving gradually as the orchestra thins and quietens. The concerto ends not with resolution but with something more honest: the gentle fading of a presence from the world.
What to Listen For: A Roadmap
- 0:00 – Opening harmonics: Notice the ethereal, floating quality of the violin's first sounds.
- Part I, folk-song section: A moment of lightness and warmth — Manon alive and dancing.
- Part II, opening Allegro: Brace yourself. This is grief and illness arriving suddenly.
- The Bach chorale quotation: When you hear it emerge from the turbulence, notice how naturally it fits — Berg planned this from the very construction of the row.
- The Adagio close: Let the music fade without trying to interpret it. It earns its silence.
Recommended Recordings
- Hilary Hahn / Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin / Nagano — technically immaculate, deeply felt
- Louis Krasner / BBC Symphony / Webern (1936) — historic recording by the concerto's dedicatee
- Anne-Sophie Mutter / Chicago Symphony / Levine — warmly Romantic approach, very accessible
Why This Piece Matters
The Violin Concerto is the single best argument against the idea that atonal or twelve-tone music is cold and intellectual. Berg used the system not as a constraint but as a vehicle — and what he drove through it was one of the most human pieces of music ever written. If you come to it expecting an abstract exercise, you will leave having been moved in ways you didn't anticipate.