Wozzeck what's that?

            One of the things that has surprised me most in this week’s study of Wozzeck and the Secessionist art movement in Vienna is the extent to which recognizable artistic tropes and traditions were used. I am used to hearing about Schoenberg mainly in connection to the “emancipation of tonality” and all his radical ideas about music theory and serialism. Partially this is probably because I have been exposed to quite a lot more serial and otherwise unconventional music since three years ago and my ear is growing used to it, but the chronological proximity of the Secessionists to late Romantic composers like Brahms stood out more than it has for me in the past.

Schoenberg was already in his mid-twenties when Brahms died, and Berg and Webern were teenagers. I was surprised to learn that Schoenberg’s view of Brahms was largely positive. Even though Brahms was well-known for his more traditional approach to composition, observes Schoenberg in Brahms the Progressive, he often uses traditional idioms in forward-thinking ways. There is a direct link between Brahms’s use of falling thirds in his Intermezzo and the basics of early atonal music. This idea of using old methods to accomplish new goals is one of the most important principles of the Secessionist movement. It crops up all over. Otto Wagner’s architecture is ornate enough to resemble architecture from a century or more previously. Picasso and Schoenberg himself both famously use Shakespearean commedia dell’arte stock characters, Picasso in many of his works and Schoenberg most notably in Pierrot Lunaire, a song cycle which includes a passacaglia, a fugue, and a number of other classical forms.

Berg’s Wozzeck also uses many time-honored musical traditions to help accomplish its 20^th-century goals. The orchestration is full and often very beautiful, especially during the interludes, where Berg gives the music room to grow into recognizable high and low points, even if there is little doubling of voice parts or musical cues for the singers during the action of the opera. Berg also frequently includes brief passages of tonally-centered music, such as the arrival in a comfortable A minor at the end of Marie’s cradle song. Many of the characters are identified via musical motifs that announce their presence or influence throughout the opera. The cradle song in Act One resembles alternatively a lullaby (during its 3/4 sections) and a driving German Lied (during its 6/8 sections). When the piece is in 3/4, the orchestra moves slowly from chord to chord and the voice arpeggiates triads on legato quarter notes. The 6/8 sections are much more rhythmically and harmonically active in both orchestra and voice. These are all pretty traditional moves, and illustrate not just Wozzeck’s connection to the Secessionist movement, but also the Secessionist movements ties to all the music that came before it.