Episode Details

Alban Berg survived the trenches of World War I, the riots his music provoked, and the rise of the Nazi regime, only to die at 50 from an infected insect sting. This episode traces the Austrian composer's unlikely path from a failing, hyper-literary teenager in a wealthy Vienna family to a core member of the Second Viennese School, the group that dismantled traditional Western harmony alongside Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern.

We explore how Berg took Schoenberg's strict 12-tone technique and gave it a beating heart, weaving a secret love affair, his obsession with the number 23, and raw human tragedy into rigidly structured music. From the 1913 concert riot over the Altenberg Lieder to the psychological devastation of Wozzeck, the coded Lyric Suite, and the Violin Concerto dedicated to the memory of an angel, this is the story of a man who beat the system from the inside.

• How losing his father at 15 derailed Berg's schooling and pushed him toward literature before music
• Schoenberg's concept of developing variation and the mechanics of the 12-tone row
• Why Wozzeck, born from Berg's misery in the Austro-Hungarian Army, finally connected with post-war audiences
• The hidden ciphers in the Lyric Suite spelling out the initials of Berg and his married lover
• The Nazi ban on his music, the unfinished opera Lulu, and its 1979 Paris premiere