The world of Alban Berg is full of paradoxes, secrets and allusions, but he was able to handle emotional and moral issues at a distance and with profound sympathy. His unhurried, almost aristocratic attitude to life and his extreme self-criticism in professional matters resulted in an extraordinarily small musical output, but it includes masterpieces such as the operas Wozzeck and Lulu, and his last work, the Violin Concerto. All of Berg's substantial works are discussed in this companion, which brings together a team of experts who write from a variety of historical and critical perspectives, outlining the place of the music in the cultural history of its time and recontextualizing it against the broader 20th-century interplay of fashions, aesthetics and ideas.
