It’s 20 minutes till 11pm. Andy and I are finally eating dinner after a long day and we want to make up for some lost practice time. So, we started “Music Nibbles” a short music study session while we eat. We pulled out the score to Berg’s Lyric Suite along with a recording by the Kronos Quartet with Dawn Upshaw.

What Andy learned:

  • That Berg’s motivic development is similar to Beethoven’s
  • Dawn Upshaw is the best singer in the world and Kronos is awesome, don’t talk trash because they do crossover stuff
  • Berg’s scores are meticulously marked

What I learned:

  • We don’t play anything even as remotely intricate as any movement of this piece (nice perspective on what I thought was difficult for us).
  • I had a similar experience as when I heard Elliot Carter’s works last spring played by the Chicago Symphony. This piece made sense on a audible level. The first movement of Berg’s piece uses a twelve tone row. I used to only understand twelve tones rows as a concept based on pitch content printed on a score, now I am hearing pitch content as a set, and conceptually it doesn’t sound different than if the piece was based on tonal structures. I guess tonal and twelve tone concepts both end up as pitch sets either way…

Alban Berg and Anton Webern

berg_webern_20123

Their height is proportionate to their music? Can you guess who is who?