Alban Maria Johannes Berg is one of the central figures of twentieth century musical composition.

As
one of the triumvirate of the Second Viennese School, Berg produced a rather small body of work that is
nonetheless distinguished by a strongly Romantic aesthetic and a distinctive dramatic sense.

Berg's father was an export salesman, his mother the daughter of the Austrian Imperial jeweler. The
young Alban's musical training consisted mainly of piano lessons from his aunt. By his teenage years,
however, he had composed dozens of songs without the benefit of formal compositional studies. Berg
was a dreamy youth and an indifferent student. In 1903, he endured the end of a passionate (if
adolescent) love affair, failed his school finishing exams, and became despondent over the death of his
idol, composer Hugo Wolf, all of which led to a suicide attempt. However, he survived to repeat his final
year of school and went to work as an apprentice accountant. In 1904 Berg's brother, Charley, took
Alban's compositions to Arnold Schoenberg, who accepted Berg as a student. In 1907 Berg met the
singer Helene Nahowski, overcame her parents' objections over his poor health (he had severe asthma)
and lack of prospects, and married her in 1911.

The composer was drafted into the Austrian army in 1915, served for eleven months, and was
discharged for poor health. The army experience led him to revisit Woyzeck Georg Büchner's tragedy
about a horribly brutalized private. In 1917, Berg began an operatic adaptation of the play, which
occupied him for the next five years. When the Austro-Hungarian empire collapsed in the wake of World
War I, Berg found work as business manager of Schoenberg's Society for Private Musical Performances,
an organization which allowed Vienna's musical avant-garde to enjoy professionally prepared
performances before friendly, critic-free audiences.

After a number of interruptions related to personal and familial affairs, Berg completed Wozzeck in
1922. Though initially savaged by critics, the opera eventually gained momentum, enjoying
performances throughout Europe and recognition as a masterpiece. Berg's next major work, the
Chamber Concerto (1923-1925) was among his first to demonstrate the influence of Schoenberg's
twelve-tone method, though the work does not make rigorous, consistent use of twelve-tone practices.
In 1925 and 1926, Berg wrote the Lyric Suite for string quartet, parts of which systematically employ
twelve-tone principles. The Lyric Suite remains one of the composer's most often performed works;
George Gershwin, it is said, had a particular admiration for this music. Years after Berg's death, scholars
confirmed that the composer had originally included a sung text in the last movement, a tribute to his
"secret" lover, Hanna Fuchs-Robertin. The Suite is now sometimes performed with this restored text.

The last of Berg's works are among his most important. The Violin Concerto (1935) is dedicated "to the
Memory of an Angel," a reference to the daughter of Alma Mahler (a close ally) and Walter Gropius,
Manon, who had died at the age of 19. The work is particularly striking in its lyrical expressiveness and
for the incorporation of tonal elements into its 12-tone idiom. At the time of his death from blood
poisoning in 1935, Berg was in the middle of work on his opera Lulu, a sexual horror story, which he had
begun in 1929. The opera's unfinished third act was completed by Friedrich Cerha in 1976, after 12 years
of work.