Narratives of Identity in Alban Berg’s Lulu by Silvio J. dos Santos (review)

This fascinating and excellent study is an important addition to the field of Alban Berg scholarship. It might be pointed out, in no way negatively, that the reader interested generally in the culture surrounding the music of the “Second Vienna School” or the knowledgeable amateur opera lover will encounter some frustration approaching this book. Dos Santos’s target audience is a professional one; it is a book written by a musicologist for musicologists, or at the least not only for those with a serious background and knowledge in the music of Wagner and Berg but also for those who can read musical notation and scores. The reader who understands the process of using all twelve chromatic tones equally and serially, usually referred to as dodecaphonic or serial music, will get the most from this book. It is written above all for those who know the theory, practice, and nomenclature of music composed by Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg.

The central concept explored in dos Santos’s book is that there is a conflict in Berg’s art between his forward-looking aesthetic and his backward-looking impulse to compose in the traditions of the past, and that the music of Wagner is the source of this conflict. Berg’s opera Lulu, composed 1928–1935, is the material of the study, chosen because of its place of maturity in Berg’s opus, and because, in dos Santos’s view, it represents a return to Berg’s developmental years in fin-de-siècle Vienna.

The author uses the idea of narrative identity as a way to increase understanding of Berg and his work both from Berg’s writing, sketches, and composition and also in the sense of a more comprehensive concept of identity. He warns the reader at the outset that narrative identity is a complex idea and that there is little agreement among scholars about it.

The book is divided into five chapters grouped into two sections. The first three chapters, Part I, address narratives of the composer as one who made an identity as a modernist and strove at the same time to continue musical tradition. The influence of Wagner on Berg and the role of that influence on his growing separation from his teacher and mentor, Schoenberg, are explored in chapter 1. By using good evidence, the author succeeds in his attempt to provide a nuanced view of this crisis in Berg’s development.

Chapter 2 looks at the affair between Berg and Hannah Fuchs and draws a parallel with the liaison between Wagner and Mathilde Wesendonck. To the proposal that Berg drew heavily on the Wagnerian concept of Erlösung durch Liebe, the author brings convincing arguments. Might it be going too far to say that Berg actually “modeled” his affair after Wagner’s? That speculation opens a possibility, but seems less substantial. In any case, building on George Perle’s identification of structures on “H” (German “B-natural”) and “F-natural” as “Hanna Fuchs,” in Berg compositions, the author makes a strong case for the importance of Hannah Fuchs to Berg to the end of his life and in the opera Lulu.

Berg’s use of Wagner’s “Tristan Chord” and love motif in Lulu form the core of chapter 3. The author brings into play theories about three stages of love from a book widely read in Berg’s time, Die Drei Stufen der Erotik by Viennese philosopher and poet Emil Lucka.

Part Two of dos Santos’s work, “Personal and Cultural Identities,” begins in chapter 4 with a fascinating and highly original analysis of the methods and motifs that Berg uses to represent Lulu’s portrait in the opera. He forcefully points out the importance of the portrait as an illustration of Lulu’s character at turning points in the opera. In this effort Berg’s concept sketches found in the Austrian National Library play an important role.

Chapter 5, “Marriage as...