Alban Berg

Book excerpt: Adorno's study of Alban Berg is a unique document. Itself now a part of music history, it is a personal account, by a pre-eminent philosopher and aesthetician, of the life and musical works of his mentor, friend and composition teacher. Shortly after Berg's death in 1935, Adorno contributed several analyses to the first Berg biography. Thirty years later he incorporated these chapters and several subsequent essays into one volume. Beyond analyses of individual pieces, the book explores the historical and cultural significance of Berg's music, its relationship to that of other twentieth-century composers, and to the larger issues of contemporary life. This is a classic study, made available here for the first time in English, and it provides a key to understanding Adorno himself as well as offering an individual perspective on one of the major composers of the twentieth century.