The Ellington Century (46 page)

The alternating presence and absence of the twelve-tone method, also duly noted in the introduction, suggested a musical conflict alongside the erotic one. Only two of the six movements (the first and last) employ the method throughout. The movements and sections with the strongest romantic character (Andante amoroso, Trio estatico, Adagio appassionato, and Presto delirando) were composed “freely.” The serial sections of the piece, by contrast, progress from jovial to desolate, becoming ever more menacing as the piece goes on. Berg clearly differentiated the expressive character of free and serial passages throughout the work. As the music unfolds the serial method becomes associated with mechanical, relentless, antihuman sounds. The free/serial conflict meshes with
the erotic drama. The alternation of serial and free sections also corresponds to masculine and feminine stereotypes. Through its apparent inconsistency of technique the work pursues a complex dialectic about gender and music, mastery and submission, freedom and order.

Methodologically Berg, who had published an analysis of Schoenberg's tone poem
Pelleas und Melisande
and had quoted its Melisande theme in his own Kammerkonzert, played the treacherous role of Pelleas to his teacher's Golaud. Berg proudly informed Schoenberg of his initial use of serialism in the
Lyric Suite
in his letter of July 13, 1926, but he may have poisoned the pill by pointing out that the series he employed was an all-interval set discovered by his student Fritz Heinrich Klein.

Most of the serial devices derived from Klein occur in the first movement of the suite; its jovial character can be heard as a friendly parody of Schoenberg's newly achieved twelve-tone normality. In its ordered form Klein's series (F-E-C-A-G-D-A
-D
E
-G
-B
-B
) contained all eleven intervals; both Klein and Berg mistakenly thought it was unique in this aspect. Berg, however, also pointed out its nonordered properties. The pitches of each of its hexachords could be presented as a cycle of fourths (E-A-D-G-C-F/E
-A
-D
-G
-B) or as a diatonic hexachord (C-D-E-F-G-A/G
-A
-B
-B-D