Further Reading

When Berg began his studies with Schoenberg at the age of 19, he had no prior formal musical training. Schoenberg later recalled that he was “an extraordinarily gifted composer, but the state he was in when he came to me was such that his imagination apparently could not work on anything but Lieder [songs]. … He was absolutely incapable of writing an instrumental movement or inventing an instrumental theme.” Schoenberg was an exacting teacher and expected his students to perform various personal (and usually unpaid) errands on his behalf—such as domestic chores, financial bookkeeping, and more—even after the end of their studies. Berg spent his years as a student of Schoenberg working assiduously to merit his teacher’s approval and fearing his disapprobation, a personality trait that endured for the remainder of his life and which Berg once called “the great problem of my life—a problem that I've carried around for decades without being able to solve and which will be my downfall.”

Schoenberg never hesitated to pronounce his disapproval to Berg. On one occasion, following the scandalous premiere of Berg’s Altenberg Lieder in 1913 (which resulted in a riot, with the police called and the concert organizer arrested), Schoenberg complained to Berg of the “insignificance and worthlessness” of his recent compositions. Berg was thrown into a crisis of confidence. Several years later, when Berg was working on Wozzeck, Schoenberg complained of the opera’s subject matter: He did not find military servants to be appropriate subjects for an opera. He also believed it would be impossible to make something good of the subject because of the un-musical sound of the title character’s name. As late as 1923—even as he was recommending the work to his publisher, Universal Editions—Schoenberg was prophesying to Berg that he would never find success with Wozzeck because it was too difficult.

In the opera, however, Berg may have found a subtle way to take revenge on his overbearing teacher. Berg was fond of embedding extra-musical meanings into his music, often by creating musical ciphers based on the letters in people’s names. In Wozzeck’s Act I, Scene 4, the Doctor—arguably the most sadistic character in the work—enters as the bass line moves from A to E-flat (which in German musical spelling is rendered as Es): the initials of Arnold Schoenberg. The scene also includes a brief quotation from Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra and is built on the ostinato repetition of a 12-tone theme. (At the time, Schoenberg was progressing towards his theory of 12-tone composition.) It may be no coincidence that Berg buried these hints in a scene featuring a character of pompous learnedness and callous disregard for the health of his patient.

William Kentridge’s prolific artistic imagination encompasses works in myriad genres and media, and his work on one project often gives rise to another in an adjacent field. For instance, Kentridge’s early workshopping of Wozzeck—which took place in his Johannesburg studio with a creative team involving dancers, actors, and designers—resulted in not only this production of Wozzeck but also The Head and the Load, a new performance piece with music by South African composer Philip Miller and musical director Thuthuka Sibisi. Its title is taken from a Ghanaian proverb that translates as “the problems of the neck are the head and the load.” Using music, dance, film projections, mechanized sculptures, and shadow play, it tells the story of countless African porters and carriers who served in British, French, and German forces during World War I. The Head and the Load premiered at London’s Tate Modern in July 2018, and it had its U.S. premiere at the Park Avenue Armory in New York in December 2018.

As Kentridge writes, “The Head and the Load is about Africa and Africans in the First World War. That is to say, about all the contradictions and paradoxes of colonialism that were heated and compressed by the circumstances of the war. It is about historical incomprehension (and inaudibility and invisibility). The colonial logic towards the black participants could be summed up: ‘Lest their actions merit recognition, their deeds must not be recorded.’ The Head and the Load aims to recognize and record.”