The Lyric Suite of Alban Berg has several connections to Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. The final movement is strictly serial, yet Berg created borrowings from the music drama through the structure of his row forms. At one point, Berg even quotes the opening bars of the Prelude to Tristan, made possible through the structure of the pitch row. Furthermore, the set-type of the Tristan chord is a subset of one of the two row forms used in this movement. What is remarkable about the borrowings from Tristan is that they relate to the secret program of Berg's work. The names Alban Berg and Hanna Fuchs-Robettin create the pitches A, B flat, B, F (0, 1, 2, 6), a motive whose set type is the same as a Tristan motive, in the first four pitches of the cello, thus creating a correlation throughout the two works and an association between the Tristan myth and Berg's unfulfilled relationship. In Tristan, the cello part is heard in the highest voice in inversion. This motive, a minor sixth followed by three semitones in the opposite direction, creates the set-type (0, 1, 2, 3, 7). Berg's use of serialism thus creates a strong relationship with the past.

Works: Berg: Lyric Suite (33-41).

Sources: Wagner: Prelude to Tristan und Isolde (33-41).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Christopher Holmes