Lyric Suite

The Lyric Suite is a six-movement work for string quartet written by Alban Berg between 1925 and 1926 using methods derived from Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique. Though publicly dedicated to Alexander von Zemlinsky (from whose Lyric Symphony it quotes), the work has been shown to possess a "secret dedication" and to outline a "secret programme" (Perle 1977a,). Berg arranged three of the "pieces" (movements) for string orchestra in 1928.

The title "Lyric Suite" also refers to a series of about 600 ink-on-rice-paper drawings created by Robert Motherwell in 1965. The drawings were given this title as a result of Motherwell having listened to a recording of the string quartet repeatedly while working on the drawings.

As Berg's friend and fellow Schoenberg pupil Erwin Stein wrote in the preface to the score, "The work (Ist and VIth part, the main part of the IIIrd and the middle section of the Vth) has been mostly written strictly in accordance with Schoenberg's technique of the 'Composition with 12 inwardly related tones." A set of 12 different tones gives the rough material of the composition, and the portions which have been treated more freely still adhere more or less to the technique" (Perle 1990, 123). Perle points out that the first movement is not strictly twelve-tone, with the opening four chords being derived not from the series but from the interval-7 cycle (Perle 1977a, 21).

According to René Leibowitz, the first movement is "entirely written in the twelve-tone technique, [it] is a sonata movement without the development. Thus the recapitulation follows directly upon the exposition; but, because of the highly advanced twelve-tone technique of variation, everything in this movement is developmental" (Leibowitz 1947,). The first analysis was undertaken by H. F. Redlich, who notices that "the first movement of the Lyric Suite develops out of the disorder of intervals in its first bar, the notes of which, strung out horizontally, present the complete chromatic scale, and from this in the second and following bars, grows the Basic Set in its thematic shape" (Redlich 1957,).

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