Berg began his Violin Concerto in 1935 on a commission from the American violinist Louis Krasner. Later that year he received news of the death of Manon Gropius, the 19-year-old daughter of Alma Mahler and Franz Gropius, a girl whom Berg had known well and been very fond of. Deeply saddened, Berg turned the Violin Concerto into a memorial for her (“to the memory of an angel”). The Violin Concerto was the last work that Berg completed before his own death (from blood poisoning) on Christmas Eve, 1935.

The Violin concerto is a 12-tone work in that the entire piece is based on an ordered series in which all 12 notes of the chromatic scale are heard before any is repeated. Berg uses Schoenberg’s techniques (transposition, inversion, retrograde, etc.) to vary the row and make it usable for both melody and harmony. However the row Berg constructs for the concerto is unusual because it has strong tonal implications:

This row contains 2 minor triads and 2 major triads, as well as 2 augmented triads and 1 diminished triad. (Can you find them?) It then ends with four notes from a whole-tone scale. Working with a row like this, Berg creates frequent reminiscences, both melodic and harmonic, to tonal music. In addition he quotes literally from tonal music. In the first movement he quotes an Austrian folk song (“A bird in the plum tree”). In the second he quotes a Bach chorale, “Es ist genug” – a meditation on death from Cantata 60: “It is enough. Take my soul, O Lord, to be with souls in Zion.” Thus Berg communicates his feelings about Manon’s life and her death by alluding to tonal music in the context of a 12-tone piece.

The first movement begins with clarinet and harp, then solo violin playing open 5ths – pitches 1, 3, 5, 7 of the row (transposed up a third in the orchestra). Next pitches 2, 4, 6, 8 are heard (mm. 3-4), and the perfect 5ths become augmented and diminished 5ths. The last 4 notes of the row (B, Db, Eb, F) are added in mm. 5-8, interspersed among pitches that have been heard before. This introduction shows how Berg uses notes from the row freely and in tonally significant intervals, and that he doesn’t mind repeating notes before all 12 have been heard.

The exposition begins after the double bar with the row stated in the first violin as a melody of rising thirds (mm. 15-18). The orchestra accompanies with notes from the row, rearranged and organized into triads. In mm. 24-47 the violin plays the row in inversion, easy to hear, since the thirds are now inverted and the whole-tone scale goes downward. Over and over in this section the row is heard as rising or falling thirds, accompanied by more thirds, in counterpoint and in chords. In the following section (allegretto, m. 105) the thirds become pairs of thirds and 6ths in the winds and solo violin, while other instruments accompany with the open 5ths from the introduction. All these procedures can be explained on the basis of 12-tone theory, but what the ear hears is familiar, often consonant intervals both horizontally and vertically. These intervals, however, have no harmonic function – that is, they do not refer to a tonic, and they do not determine the voice leading.

The allegretto slides into a waltz at m. 114; the descending thirds in the melody are the inversion of the row at its original pitch. Waltz rhythms come back again and again in this section (e.g. mm. 126, 176), marked by tavern-style virtuosity in the violin and oom-pah accompaniment. The waltzes are said to be a portrait of Manon – young, lively, and Viennese. Measure 204 is a recap of sorts, with the row in the solo violin at the original pitch, but in triple meter and with the registers displaced so that now it sounds like a waltz. In m. 214 the song about the plum tree is heard, first in the horn, then in the solo violin: “A bird in the plum tree has woken me up, / Otherwise I would have overslept in Mizzi’s bed.” Another brief recap at m. 246 and the movement is over, suspended in anticipation of the second movement, which will be a story of death and transfiguration.

The Berg Violin Concerto is has been described as “the most accessible 12-tone music ever written.” The brief account above does not come close to explaining how the piece works or why it is so beautiful. But it does show how Berg made 12-tone music seem familiar – by starting with a row that has strongly tonal features, by using dance rhythms, by having the violinist play in styles familiar from both romantic violin concertos and gypsy fiddling, by quoting from earlier music, and finally by infusing the piece with an emotionalism that listeners respond to, whatever the harmonic idiom..