Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Checking out Alban Berg

Driving back and forth between Vallvidrera and the Eixample, I listen to Alban Berg. Berg's lyricism, his anguished expressionism, put him squarely in the great German classical tradition, reinvented by the Viennese school. But this music does not renew this tradition. Rather it brings it to an end.  It is, literally, a dead end. There is no enjoyment here. There is beauty but no life. There is craft but no wit. The great master was Stravinsky, not Schoenberg.

1 comment:

caroline okapi said...

It took a lot of driving....you could also run over john adams, varese, spill the blood of boulez, corner stockhausen and squash jorge peixinho and nunes...
Gorecki, Bernstein and L.Cohen are better rides.