As far as we know, they were never performed - anywhere. Except, perhaps, for one song - Der Nachtwandler (The Night Wanderer) - a setting of a poem by Gustav Falke (remember that name!). This was probably rehearsed at the theatre with Schönberg conducting but it was never heard by the public. It has the odd accompaniment of piccolo, trumpet, side-drum and piano and at that first rehearsal it appears that the trumpet player took exception to his part, claiming it was too hard. (How many times has a composer heard that!) So into a drawer it went, along with the other six songs which are more conventionally scored for soprano voice and piano!
He struggled on at the Überbrettl but things were quickly unravelling, not least because von Wolzogen’s whole Buntes Theater was experiencing a ‘liquidity crisis’ - it was fast running out of money and the theatre closed its doors in 1902. Schönberg’s contract with the Buntes Theater was terminated in July 1902. He turned in desperation to Richard Strauss for assistance. Strauss, at that time, thought very highly of Schönberg both as a composer and a teacher, however amazing this may seem. Strauss, by coincidence, was based in Berlin and had enormous influence locally. He secured a teaching post for him at the Stern Conservatoire, one of Berlin’s leading music schools, and Schönberg supplemented his teaching income with jobs from music publishers, orchestrating dozens of forgotten operettas and Singspiele (musical plays). However, things continued to prove very difficult for the Schönbergs now there were three mouths to feed. So, by July 1903, they were back home in Vienna.
Now let’s ‘fast-forward’ 6 years or so. Schönberg is now back in Vienna, his little ‘adventure’ in Berlin a fairly dim memory. He had set up his own private teaching practice in 1904, advertising for students in Viennese newspapers and they were coming to him in quite large numbers. One of the first to ’sign up’ was a young composer and musicologist called Anton von Webern. He later dropped the aristocratic ‘von’ from his name. He was joined later that first year (1904) by Alban Berg, a shy and diffident young man who had come to the attention of Schönberg when Berg’s sister, Smaragda, had visited him with an armful of songs her brother had written from 1900 onwards. These songs impressed Schönberg enough to accept Berg as his student - in fact, because of the precarious state of the Bergs’ finances, Schönberg waived his fee until it could be paid without financial embarrassment to the family, such was his faith in his new student. So, with Berg happily ensconced as a student of Schönberg, who musically ‘took Berg apart and put him back together’, we can now start to talk about this funny little song which Berg composed sometime in 1907.
Let’s start with the text. Remember the name Gustav Falke I asked you to ‘file away’ for a minute? Well, the poem Berg has chosen as the basis for his song, Die Sorglichen, is by Falke. It seems to me that this is no coincidence. Berg has chosen a poem of Falke’s to honour his teacher and to show, in his honest and naïve way, his unbounded admiration. How would this little song show all that? Let me explain.
I think it is highly likely that Schönberg told at least some of his students of his sojourn in Berlin in 1901-2. He was a great raconteur and I’m sure the young impressionable young men who surrounded him would have been hugely entertained by these stories. Remember that this is a time before television and even radio. Social story-telling was an art cultivated by many, and not just the educated and articulated. So a ‘good yarn’ was appreciated as part of any social activity. Berg, however, was more impressionable and imaginative even than his peers in the ‘Schönberg circle’ and it is not beyond the bounds of possibilities that his imagination ran away with him.
It must have been immensely exciting to hear Schönberg’s stories about Berlin and the Überbrettl and to imagine his teacher as the musical director of a ‘music-hall’ orchestra - rubbing shoulders with flamboyant actors and coquettish actresses, with singers, dancers, comedians and acrobats, too. A ‘colourful’, daring and glamourous world. If Berg had learnt about the ‘Überbrettl Adventure’, it is a given that he would have drunk in every word of Schönberg’s and further, he would have used them as the jumping-off place for fantasies of his own - the way children used to dream of running away to join a circus. This remains speculation, of course, since we have no written evidence that any of this is true.
However, we do have the ‘evidence’ of Die Sorglichen in the sense that it exists. There is no doubt that Berg wrote this song and to this we can add the clue that there are no other songs by Berg which are like it. It is definitely a ‘one-off’. Unique. Like all of his other early songs, with the exception of the famous ‘Seven Early Songs’ which he reprieved, Die Sorglichen was suppressed by Berg - publication was forever forbidden - and it only appeared in print in 1985, in a collection of Berg’s early song by his publishers, Universal Edition, edited by Christopher Hailey. So, Die Sorglichen, on the surface, looks like an experiment that he later disowned as a ’sin of his youth’ although I don’t think there is anything about it which should have caused him to feel ashamed.
Before I talk about the music, I would like to go back to the text. Falke’s poem isn’t, if I am honest, a true cabaret lyric. It concerns a group of pessimistic country folk who, when it is spring, long for summer’s warmth. When summer comes, though, it’s too hot for them, so they long for autumn. Autumn comes but it’s too windy, so they hanker after winter but, you’ve guessed it, winter’s too cold so they long for spring… you get the picture. The country ‘Goldilocks’ are never happy with the weather, whatever the time of year! It’s full of old German sardonic humour and a German or Austrian audience (a cabaret audience, perhaps?) would have laughed uproariously at the ‘country bumpkins’. So what does Berg do with this poem?
Berg’s music employs a strophic, ‘mock folksong’ style, neatly counterpointing the satire of the poem, complete with a dour section which grinds along at half-speed when the poor ‘worriers’ are really in their cups, as they huddle round their rustic stove and dream of the coming thaw. Berg had a highly developed - one could say, highly-tuned - sense of humour. He was a great mimic and would poke fun at people who he considered pompous or irritating with devastating effect. His wife, Helene, shared this ‘gift’ and their targets were often those in position of authority or members of the musical ‘establishment’ who either did not share the views of the ‘Schönberg circle’ or who actively opposed them. The majority of critics writing for Viennese newspapers would often come under attack from Berg!
Having said this, Berg also had a highly developed moral sense which, I would say, kept him on an ethical as well as an artistic and spiritual ’straight and narrow’ path. Here is one of my favourite stories about Berg. It may strike readers as rather ‘politically incorrect’ now since it involves that diabolical weed, tobacco. In 1928, when his first opera, Wozzeck, was meeting with international acclaim, the Austrian National Tobacco company, Austria Tabak, announced a new cigarette, aimed at the middle class smoker. It was named Jonny, after the eponymous hero of Ernst Krenek internationally successful musical: ‘Jonny Spielt Auf’ usually translated as ‘Jonny Strikes Up’ since he is a violinist - although that in itself is a pun on smoking parlance in English and the transliteration is just as ironically cruel: ‘Jonny Plays Up’. Those two meanings are lost in German but a bit a fun, nevertheless, at Krenek’s expense.
When he heard about the ‘Jonny’ cigarette, Berg wrote to the directors of Austria Tabak with the suggestion that they call their cheapest, coarsest cigarette ‘Wozzeck’ after the similarly eponymous hero (or rather anti-hero) of his own successful opera. The suggestion was politely but firmly declined and that rankled with Berg until the end of his life. I think this shows a sardonic sense of humour at work. I’ve no doubt that Berg was completely genuine in his motives in offering Wozzeck as a name for a cheap cigarette - one that could be afforded by all. He was a heavy smoker himself. At the same time, a heavy sense of ironic satisfaction would have accompanied the acceptance of his suggestion for the very reason that Wozzeck is the most abused, most ‘put upon’ character Berg ever brought to the stage: or at least that Georg Büchner, on whose play, Woyzeck, Berg’s based his opera, brought to the stage. In turn, Büchner’s Woyzeck is based on real people and events. In relating all of this, I am suggesting that Die Sorglichen is ‘all-in-all’ with Berg’s sense of humour and enjoyment of lampooning people whose sense of pompous indignation is taken to the point of absurdity.
Allow me, though, one more journey back to Schönberg’s time at the Buntes Theater and the Überbrettl. One of the 7 songs which Schönberg wrote for von Wolzogen (who, by the way, wrote the libretto for Richard Strauss’ opera, Feuersnot) was ‘Galathea’, with text by Frank Wedekind. Note too, the latter’s connection with Berg: Wedekind was the author of the 2 plays on which Berg’s second (and last) opera, Lulu, is based. These do not concern us here but it is certainly interesting that Wedekind was closely associated with von Wolzogen’s ‘cabaret movement’ and, together with a fellow German poet, Otto Julius Bierbaum, published the above-mentioned ‘Deutsche Chansons’ which were intended to provide composers all over the German-speaking world with lyrics the new movement for ‘artistic taste’ in popular entertainment hoped would both ‘elevate’ performances and enlighten audiences. You will probably not be surprised to hear that the movement was short-lived! Schönberg did embrace the ‘ideology’ for this brief span while he lived and worked in Berlin.
And this Wedekind song - Galathea - a saucy little number, indeed, was the first to be written. Galathea is about a middle-aged gentleman who throughout the song, is kissing various parts of young Galathea’s body. It is only at the end of the song that we are told that he is fantasising about kissing her. In the vernacular: ‘In your dreams, mate!’ The interesting fact is: there are musical ‘correspondences’ between Galathea and Die Sorglichen. Remember again, Falke was one of the poets contributing to this populist oeuvre. So, too, did Wedekind, whose plays fascinated Berg. Musically, too, the songs seem to have an affinity. Both are in two-four, although in different keys - Galathea in G major; Die Sorglichen in A major. Both are strophic as, indeed, are the other Brettl-Lieder in keeping with popular song practice. Berg never again resorted to such an ‘old-fashioned’ form, redolent as it is of folksong which to Schönberg’s followers was taboo. The shape of the melodies are also, if not exactly the same, are at least similar as are the accompaniments. Schönberg using an almost continuous running semiquaver plus semiquaver triplets rhythm throughout each stanza. This is only broken once when the protagonist starts to feel reality creeping into his fantasy!
Berg utilises a similar scheme. Each strophe has the same rhythmic and melodic patterns to accompany it and a semiquaver ‘motor rhythm’ present almost throughout. The only exception is the dour half-speed section I have mentioned mirroring the place in Galathea where the fantasy breaks down. To this I would add that, although, Schönberg was after a banal, ‘belly laugh’, effect with these songs (and with Galathea, in particular) they are camouflaged with a sophistication which far outweighs the sentiments expressed in the subject matter. Schönberg knew precisely what he was doing. He refused to compromise his talent or his musical judgement. They were always paramount. It must have been galling to him, then, that these songs failed to get a public performance in Berlin.
The fact that Berg’s attempt at a lighter style works is as much a tribute to Schönberg as it is to Berg. I wonder whether Alban was ever shown these songs by his teacher. Perhaps Schönberg, after one of his Berlin ‘anecdotes’ went to fetch the songs for his students - perhaps Berg alone - to see. Maybe they would have served as a warning - stay away from music theatre and cabaret impresarios! - who knows? All I can suggest is that Berg did see Galathea, if not the other Brettl-Lieder. I think that much is provable, even without documentary or contemporary oral evidence. Certainly, Schönberg never mentioned them in his writings and the majority of his biographers have given them ’short shrift’.
We shouldn’t be surprised at this, if we bear in mind their provenance. Berg would have seen them in a much more romantic light than Schönberg’s biographers and I think Die Sorglichen shows his admiration for his teacher’s eclectic taste and sense of adventure - for in this little song he pays homage to these two qualities and he pays homage, also, to many of the qualities (for instance, his teacher’s ever-present steely determination to succeed) that Berg saw in his teacher and which he considered he lacked.
© Chris Gordon
September 2007