Wozzeck

Wozzeck (German pronunciation: [ˈvɔtsɛk]) is the first opera by the Austrian composer Alban Berg. It was composed between 1914 and 1922 and first performed in 1925. The opera is based on the drama Woyzeck, which was left incomplete by the German playwright Georg Büchner at his death. Berg attended the first production in Vienna of Büchner's play on 5 May 1914, and knew at once that he wanted to base an opera on it. From the fragments of unordered scenes left by Büchner, Berg selected fifteen to form a compact structure of three acts with five scenes each. He adapted the libretto himself, retaining "the essential character of the play, with its many short scenes, its abrupt and sometimes brutal language, and its stark, if haunted, realism..."

The plot depicts the everyday life of soldiers and the townspeople of a rural German-speaking town. Prominent themes of militarism, callousness, social exploitation, and a casual are brutally and uncompromisingly presented. Toward the end of act 1, scene 2, the title character (Wozzeck) murmurs, "Still, all is still, as if the world died.", with his fellow soldier Andres uttering, "Night! We must get back!", seemingly oblivious to Wozzeck's previous words. The dialogue is concluded and a funeral march begins, only to transform into the upbeat song of the military marching band in the next scene. Musicologist Glenn Watkins considers this, "as vivid a projection of impending world doom as any to come out of the Great War ... "

Though Berg began work on the opera in 1914, he was delayed by the start of World War I and it was not until he was on leave from his regiment in 1917 and 1918 that he was able to devote time to finishing it. Berg's experience of the war had a pronounced impact on the compositional direction of Wozzeck. In a letter to his wife written in June 1918, he wrote, "There is a little bit of me in his character, since I have been spending these war years just as dependent on people I hate, have been in chains, sick, captive, resigned, in fact, humiliated." His correspondence and notebooks dating from the war years reveal a painful obsession with completing Wozzeck.

Compositional sketches and notes for both Wozzeck and the Marsch of Three Pieces for Orchestra that Berg made during the war are strewn with disjointed fragments of military ordinances and terminology. In a draft page of the act 1, scene 2 libretto, Berg included notations in the dialogue that refer to Austrian army bugle calls. These military signals were later inserted into the score in a modified slightly atonal form, but still likely recognizable to Austrian audiences of the period. The scene of snoring soldiers in the barracks during act 2, scene 5 was influenced by Berg's similar such experience: "... this polyphonic breathing, gasping, and groaning is the most peculiar chorus I've ever heard. It is like some primeval music that wells up from the abysses of the soul ..."

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