506 Notes to pp. 82–85
Chapter 6 The Danube Metropolis1 Walter Gerlach, who was head of the Board of Trustees, also deserves a
mention for his part in overcoming the crisis at the university. But even he
was forced into crisis management for a while. For even after the introduc-
tion of the stable new currency, the Rentenmark, the Finance Ministry still
kept public expenditure on a very tight rein.
2 Adorno, Minima Moralia, p. 66f.
3 See Benjamin and Adorno, The Complete Correspondence 1928–1940,
p. 120. Berg was particularly pleased by the production in Oldenburg in
north Germany in March 1929 under Johannes Schüler. For the first time
he had given an introductory talk about the work for this production. At a
production of Wozzeck in Prague in the Czech National Theatre, protests
by right-wing radicals and anti-Semitic groups led to a scandal. See Adorno
and Berg, Briefwechsel 1925–1935, pp. 121ff. and 197f.
4 Ibid., p. 74.
5 See Ibid., p. 42ff.; Heinz Steinert, in his Adorno in Wien, p. 127, has an
illuminating explanation for this slightly obsequious form of address. He
claims that it was directed against the sobriquet of the ‘Schoenberg school’,
and its aim was to stress Berg’s independence. For this it was necessary for
Berg to abandon his status as Schoenberg’s pupil, which he had essentially
been up to 1908, and instead to become a ‘master’ in his own right. He had
long since earned this right as a composer, and in Adorno’s eyes he had
also deserved it as a personality since the 1920s.
6 Adorno, ‘Alban Berg’, in Sound Figures, p. 70.
7 In a portrait of the conductor published in 1926, Adorno praised him for
his ability ‘to free the works from the rottenness of individual psychology.
He was inspired by the idea of shedding light on the work’s structure’
(Adorno, ‘Drei Dirigenten’, GS, vol. 19, p. 455f.).
8 Adorno, Alban Berg: Master of the Smallest Link, p. 13.
9 Adorno attempted to accede to this request, but how could he do so, given
that he had his own ‘secret agenda’: ‘namely to write the essay in the same
style that you [Berg] employ in composing such pieces as your quartet’
(Adorno and Berg, Briefwechsel 1925–1935, p. 44).
10 Adorno, ‘Alban Berg: Zur Uraufführung des “Wozzeck”’, GS, vol. 18,
p. 462f.
11 Adorno, ‘Schoenberg: Serenade, op. 24’, GS, vol. 18, p. 335.
12 Adorno, ‘Der dialektische Komponist’, GS, vol. 17, p. 201. According to
Adorno, Schoenberg’s musical development proceeds from the free tonal
compositions, notable both for their melodic qualities and for their wealth
of dissonance (e.g., Pelleas und Melisande and the Gurrelieder), to the
chamber-music period. Here he develops a polyphonic form carried by a
four-part string movement, a form of counterpoint in which the harmony
merges completely with the overall progression of the music (e.g., the First
Chamber Symphony, the Second Quartet). The third period is the phase
of free atonality (e.g., the George Songs, Pierrot lunaire), in which the
twelve-note technique appears in its full form (the Piano Suite, op. 25, the
Wind Quintet, op. 26, the Variations for Orchestra, op. 31). This is an
integrated form of composition in which all the components are related to
one another. ‘The twelve-note technique that is supposed to make such