Abstract
Helene told me that she often locked him in his study and took away the key in order to force him to compose, which he didn’t deny. However, in her absence, he explained to me that out of obstinacy, in such cases, he didn’t compose but rather took out a flask of cognac that he kept under the sofa for such occasions and consoled himself with it.1
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Notes
Much of the material from this study is published in Joan Allen Smith, Schoenberg and His Circle: a Viennese Portrait (New York: Schirmer, 1986).
Berg obviously did not succeed in carrying out the promise made to Schoenberg in a letter of late November 1915: ‘First of all: to achieve complete independence from my wife’s family. To limit dependence on my mother to the support due to me as a result of my administrative work. No more involvement in family quarrels, complete withdrawal from gossip and the like.’ Julianne Brand, Christopher Hailey, and Donald Harris, eds and trans., The Berg-Schoenberg Correspondence: Selected Letters (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), p. 257. I am grateful to Ms Brand and Mr Hailey for allowing me to read the manuscript before publication.
For more on Berg’s war views see Mark DeVoto, ‘Berg and Pacifism’, International Alban Berg Society Newsletter, no.2 (January 1971), pp. 9–11; Joan Allen Smith ‘The Berg-Hohenberg Correspondence’, Alban Berg Symposion Wien 1980: Tagungsbericht, ed. Rudolf Klein, Alban Berg Studien, vol. 2 (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1981) pp. 192–4.
Berg’s difficulties in school have been described in Rosemary Hilmar, Alban Berg: Leben und Wirken in Wien bis zu seinen ersten Erfolgen als Komponist (Vienna: Verlag Hermann Böhlaus Nachf., 1978) pp. 20–28. See also Joan Allen Smith, ‘The Berg-Hohenberg Correspondence’ pp. 189–91.
Hermann Watznauer, Biography of Berg, in Erich Alban Berg, Der unverbesserliche Romantiker: Alban Berg 1885–1935, (Vienna: Österreichischer Bundesverlag, 1985), pp. 10–11.
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© 1989 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Smith, J.A. (1989). Berg’s Character Remembered. In: Jarman, D. (eds) The Berg Companion. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09056-3_2
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