Berg Piano Sonata, Op. 1: an Explanation (and Homebrew!)

Alban Berg's Piano Sonata, Op. 1 is one of his greatest works- and also the very first piece he ever wrote! What makes this piece tick, and what gave Berg the inspiration, and motivation, to get these ideas onto paper? In this video, we'll discuss a bit of Berg's life and the theory of his Sonata.

We've also paired this piece with one of our homebrews: Captain Lawrence's Liquid Gold, a Belgian style ale. We think it fits perfectly- but what beer would you pair with Alban Berg?

Alban Berg: Piano Sonata Op. 1, an Explanation
Illya Filshtinskiy, piano, film, editing, and all of the hard things
Katha Zinn, moral support, talking, research and hand gestures

[ivyssauro]

A talented musician and pedagogician which understands modernist/atonal music that is also an YouTuber?
We are blessed.

[idit]

I have known this piece since high school, which means a long long time ago, and always loved it very much. Thanks for the words, they add to my good memory of the piece!

[thomasjones]

Berg is a favorite of mine, especially the Altenberg Lieder. Thanks for filling in the background gaps in my knowledge of Berg.

[robertvarner]

LOL....A goddamn beer commercial!!! 🍺🍺🍺🍺🍻🍻🍻

[absinthesizer]

Berg composed MANY pieces before Op. 1, of which the Sieben Frühe Lieder are only the best known. The sonata was merely his first *published* work.

[wramaccorsi]

It is said that the twelve-tone system was developed not because tonal music had reached a final point of exhaustion (as music history might lead us to wrongly believe), but in order for music to avoid expressing ideas or feelings and being emotionally descriptive, concentrating instead on the "pure" aesthetic sounds of notes themselves and their aural effects upon listeners. While no doubt innovative and nice, the introduction of the twelve-tone system precipitated the "end" of symphonic tonal music as we know it, and prematurely so perhaps, diverting the natural course of musical history. One wonders which paths tonal music might have taken were it not for the emergence of the twelve-tone music mainly from Schoenberg and Berg, taking music to the route of the "iceBergs" (pun intended) in my estimation, though Berg's Sonata 1 constitutes wonderful music and a delight to hear (the same can't be said of many of the atonal works which followed it though). Therefore, while I acknowledge that atonal music is no doubt interesting, it did cut traditional tonal music short ahead of time. Isn't it that, in the end, the twelve-tone system's goal was almost the same as Brahms' in tonal music, that is, to compose music that would not be made up of sound description landscapes and mood-attached music? What was the price paid for twelve-tone music? It didn't let traditional tonal music come to its end in a natural way. Keep up the good work, congrats for your channel, from Brazil.