Although Berg decided immediately after seeing Buchner's play Woyzeck in May 1914 to set it to music, he did not complete his opera until 1922, with the Berlin premiere taking place in 1925. Berg's Wozzeck traces the composer's slow but determined progress. Using compositional sketches, diaries, notebooks and other archival material, author Patricia Hall reveals the challenges Berg faced-from his induction as a soldier in World War I, to the
hyper-inflation of the twenties. In addition to the precise chronology of the opera, the sketches show how Berg derived large-scale form from the Buchner text, and how his compositional style evolved during the nine years in which he composed the opera. A comprehensive visual database on the book's companion website of the
extant sketches from seven archives in the United States, Germany and Austria allows the reader to examine, for the first time, Berg's sketches in high resolution color scans.
- ISBN10 0195342615
- ISBN13 9780195342611
- Publish Date 9 June 2011
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 8 March 2021
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 224
- Language English