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Editor|Hanshi
«—Preface—»
At the end of the 2020s, Alban Berg began to conceive his second opera after the great success of his first opera, "Wocek". Berg's admiration for the German playwright Frank Weidkins and the compassion of those at the bottom of society drove him to show a keen interest in the female figure. Influenced by the social environment, Berg adapted two of Weidkin's theatrical productions, Earth Spirit and Pandora's Box, and named them Lulu. Known in the expressionist style, this opera is one of the most popular works of the 20th century.
«—Background of creation—»
Berg was slow to work on Lulu. He completed only part of the orchestration of the first two and third acts of the opera in the limited time of his life. During this time, Berg was deeply affected by the death of Marle's widow's widow, Manon Gropius, and composed the famous Violin Concerto to express his mourning. After Berg's death, Lulu premiered in unfinished form at the Staatstheater Zurich. After the death of Berg's wife, the Austrian composer Friedrich Zelha acquired the manuscript of Lulu and completed the orchestration of the third act of the opera. In 1979, Lulu was staged in its entirety at the Opéra National de Paris, conducted by Boulez.
Berg adapted and cut two of Weidkind's plays to form a clear story framework. The story describes a young, beautiful and seductive woman driven by lust to become the wife and mistress of multiple men and pursued by different men. In a capitalist society full of decay, she destroyed the men who had fallen in love with her and eventually perished. With sex as the theme, Lulu satirizes the darkness of social reality and the decadence and depravity of the end of the century through the emotional entanglements and unfortunate encounters of Lulu, a debauched female figure.
Berg's work was influenced by the socio-political and cultural atmosphere of the end of the century in Vienna. He experienced the decline and disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the First World War, and the upheaval after the war, and the anxiety and disillusionment caused by these social upheavals, which left a deep mark in his work. The cultural trends and philosophical changes of the time had a profound impact on composers, giving them unique creative connotations. These changes have also raised concerns about issues such as sexual liberation and sexual orientation, which are also reflected in Lulu. During this period, music creation pursued novelty and breakthroughs, and no longer followed traditional methods of expression. The shaping of the character image is not limited to typical laws, but often becomes a symbol of some abstract concept. This phenomenon is not only present in Lulu, but is also a common phenomenon among the composer community at that time.
«—Synopsis—»
Lulu is an opera in three acts that presents a series of extreme and intense emotional expressions in an expressionist musical style. This opera inherits the basic idea of emotional musical aesthetics, and through atonal music and the twelve-tone system, it conveys the composer's inner stirring feelings to the audience, causing them to stir their inner emotions. Although this style of music may be considered unbeautiful, it can express the truth and substance that the composer wants to present.
As one of the important members of the New Viennese School, Berg distinguished himself from his teacher Schoenberg and his best friend Webern in his composition. Berger combines atonality and twelve-tone techniques with emotional expression, enabling this more abstract musical language to express human feelings and give people artistic appeal. In addition, in his composition, he did not limit himself to sequences and twelve-tone techniques, sometimes using the typical structure and tonality of classicism. Berger's musical composition has obvious lyrical characteristics, which makes the seemingly boring procedural language of twelve tones have an emotional temperature, forming a unique, Bell-style musical emotional expression.
The first act, titled "Enchantment", focuses on the seductive image of the heroine Lulu. Lulu first marries a jealous doctor and later has an affair with a painter that results in her husband's death from a heart attack. Lulu has no mercy for her husband's death and only wants to inherit his inheritance. Although the painter understood Lulu's debauchery, he could not resist her temptation and married her. Later, the painter learned of Lulu's life history and entanglement with Dr. Schaene, and committed suicide because of the shame of being deceived.
Lulu was unmoved by the painter's death and still insisted on marrying Dr. Schöne. At this time, a duke proposed to Lulu, which aroused Dr. Schöne's jealousy. In the end, Dr. Schoen gave up his original fiancée, meaning he gave up worldly morality and became Lulu's third husband.
The second act, titled "Entanglement," depicts Lulu's homosexual relationship with Miss Geshewitz, and Dr. Schon's son, Alva, playing an important role in Lulu's life. In addition, the appearance of Sigorhi, Hercules Rodrigo and a high school student makes Lulu's life even more chaotic and absurd. In a state of gratitude, Dr. Schoen scuffles with Lulu and eventually kills himself by mistake. Lulu is then taken away by the police and contracted cholera in prison, but is eventually rescued by Alva, and the second act ends in Alva's hymn.
The third act is titled "Death", at which point only Alva and Geshewitz are left with Lulu. After Alva's death, Lulu becomes a prostitute and suffers the brutal murder of a perverted "Jack".
«—Opera Techniques -»
The composition technique of the twelve-tone series runs through Berg's opera Lulu, which includes factors such as pitch, rhythm and timbre to promote the development of the plot and jointly create the unique musical image of each character.
The entire play runs through a basic sound sequence, from which the sound sequences of several other important characters are derived. The first six notes of the basic tone series are C, E, F, D, G, A, and the last six notes are ascending F, ascending G, B, ascending A, ascending D, and ascending C, forming a total of twelve tone sequences. This form of six-tone group is called a "combinatorial sequence", and a fully composed sequence must satisfy the form of half reflection, half shift, and two halves of their respective statement reflections. This echoes the palindromic structure of the work.
Lulu's theme tone column is similar to the scale progression as a whole, and the theme statement is often made in the form of a monophonic melody, maintaining the morphological characteristics of the first six notes ascending and the last six notes descending. In addition, Lulu's tone series also has obvious tonal and tonal characteristics. This sequence first appears in the prologue, when the "tamer" refers to the "viper". Here, Lulu is used as a symbolic language, a dramatic metaphor for the dangerous female figure: women use seduction to satisfy their own desires, while destroying others and themselves, and finally forming an artistic image that fears men like a poisonous snake.
Dr. Schon's tone sequence has a great echo of the basic sound sequence, using a jumping sound sequence to express Dr. Schon's entanglement, choice, and the intertwined tragedy of lust and death. This sequence mainly uses prototypes and large third degree shifts.
Alva's sequence is the most frequently used throughout the opera, as Alva is one of Lulu's most affectionate companions, and a large amount of music is devoted to depicting the emotions between Alva and Lulu. Since Dr. Schonne and Alva are father-son, the pitch of the two is very similar. In addition, Alva's sequence shift by four degrees is almost a rearrangement of the basic sequence. Berg gave Alva's vocals more tragic and lyrical in his compositions. In the work, each character is given a symbol of an animal, while Alva is seen as an independent, complete image of "man". According to many experts and scholars, this practice expresses Berger's agreement with Alva's view of women.
Through reflection on the entanglement of lust, Lulu explores the complex emotions in human nature, and thinks and critifies social concepts and morality. Berger breaks through traditional concepts in musical language, using twelve-tone technology to skillfully bring out the most powerful emotional expression in the plot, so that drama and emotion are perfectly integrated in the opera.
Opera, as an integrated art form, engages audiences with emotional and dramatic expression through a combination of elements such as music, scripts, stage performances, and visual effects. When composing an opera, composers need to consider the plot development of the script and transform it into clues of musical logic, while shaping characters and contradictions in a musical way to make the work full of lyricism and drama.
In Berg's opera Lulu, he expended a great deal of effort to integrate the script to ensure a clear story framework and to give full play to his theatrical talent in his musical composition. Berger uses digital character and large-scale melody layouts to combine music and drama to form complex musical forms. He achieves a lyrical and dramatic unity based on the independence of each part of the music and the connection of the overall structure.
From a musical aesthetic point of view, Berger's Lulu shows the characteristics of expressionist music, triggering the audience's inner emotions through tension, fear and stimulating content. This aesthetic feature exposes emotions in a direct, realistic way and examines reality in a confrontational and divisive manner. This form of expression can still have a strong inner impact in contemporary times, provoking people's examination of reality and self-reflection.
As an art form, opera is not only influenced by individual emotions and aesthetics, but also shaped by social and cultural backgrounds. In a specific social context, opera can reflect group psychology issues and become a topic of thought and discussion. Lulu exhibits a distinctly expressionist style, a feature of early 20th-century art movements. Through the tension, dissonance and intense expression of emotions in music, Berg reveals the dark side of human nature and the harsh reality of society. This musical style, combined with expressionist techniques such as stage sets, costumes and performances, gives Lulu a strong dramatic and impactful power. Through the fate of Lulu as a character, the opera explores themes such as gender, power, society, and critically reveals the injustices and moral concepts of society at the time.
«—Epilogue—»
"Lulu" caused widespread controversy and repercussions at the time, but also had a profound impact on later musical composition and drama. It pioneered musical modernism and provided new ideas and expressions for later composers. In addition, its exploration of theatrical innovation and social issues also provided inspiration for later stage art.
bibliography
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[2]. Popper, Anthony. "Berg's Lulu: Structure, Symmetry, and Sonata Form," Music Quarterly No. 75, No. 3 (1991): pp. 309-332.
[3]. Jarman, Douglas. Albanburg's music. University of California Press, 1979.
[4]. Catherine, Bailey. Anton Webern's twelve-note music: old forms in a new language. Cambridge University Press, 1991.
[5]. Delmar, Norman. Orchestra anatomy. University of California Press, 1981.
[6]. Jarman, Douglas. Alban Berg: Lulu. Cambridge Opera Handbook. Cambridge University Press, 1991.