Alban Berg as a symphonist is considered in this article in two aspects. The first of them is connected with the genre of the symphony in the composer’s work. Berg did not write a single symphony, which does not indicate a lack of interest in this genre: the composer wrote about his intention to compose symphonies throughout his life. Berg’s early symphonic experiments, which were preserved in the sketches, remained incomplete for various reasons.
Firstly, it is the discrepancy between the large-scale symphonic utterance and the expressionist poetics of the New Vienna School. Secondly, the idea of writing a symphony was not supported by Schönberg, who in the pre-war years retained a significant influence on his former pupil and was convinced that the task was excessively difficult for Berg. After the completion of Wozzeck, Berg sees himself primarily as an opera composer, the idea of a symphony fades into the background. Nevertheless, Berg thinks of some of his orchestral works (Orchestral Pieces оp. 6 and Symphonic Pieces from the opera Lulu) as full-fledged symphonies, seeing there the patterns of a four-part symphonic cycle. The symphony also realizes itself in each of the two operas, where its purpose is to cement a structure permeated with end-to-end development, as well as to clarify the drama, interpret it using the laws of pure music. In Wozzeck, the fivepart symphony, according to Berg’s interpretation, is contained in the second act (peripeteia). In Lulu, the symphony has a dispersed character, a large-scale instrumental form in three movements (sonata, rondo, variations) runs dotted through all three acts of the opera.
The second aspect of the topic under consideration is related to the concept of “symphonism” and “symphonic” as properties of Berg’s musical thinking, manifested outside the symphony genre. The “symphonic” was understood as a large-scale, dynamically and variously organized whole, permeated by continuous development based on developing variation and a system of interconnections, which claims to create a kind of universal picture of the world. Many of Berg’s compositions possess such properties, primarily both concertos — Chamber and Violin — and the Lyric Suite for string quartet.
Thus, Berg, who went down in history primarily as an opera composer, is undoubtedly a symphonist, but the idea of symphonism was realized in his work outside the symphony genre.
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