Alban Berg

Alban Berg was born into a well-to-do and cultured Viennese family in 1885 and received the education that was the birthright of his class. Music had already begun to play a part in his life when he entered the Austrian Civil Service in 1904, and it was music that he decided to make his career when he was introduced to Arnold Schoenberg and the older composer found merit in his work. He took private lessons with Schoenberg, who helped to release his latent talent and whose influence left its mark on the development of his musical personality. Whereas his Seven Early Songs had still been indebted to the world of classical tonality, he now began to abandon the principles of functional harmony, first for atonality and, later, for twelve-note music. Attracted as much to literature as he was to music, Berg was profoundly attached not only to contemporary Austrian poetry but also to the works of Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler, for whom he felt enormous admiration. Together with Schoenberg and Anton Webern, he founded the Second Viennese School and, as such, was at the cutting-edge of the avant-garde movement in early 20th-century music. His opera Wozzeck caused a scandal at its first performance in 1925 but soon came to be acknowledged as one of the 20th century's most powerful music dramas. after completing his Violin Concerto, he was working on his opera lulu when he died of septicaemia on Christmas Eve in 1935.