"WOZZECK'S WORST HOURS" ALBAN BERG'S PRESENTATION COPY OF WOZZECK TO EDUARD STEUERMANN

• Published in: Notes (Music Library Association) Vol. 76; no. 4; pp. 527 - 534
• Main Author: Bonds, Mark Evan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Philadelphia Music Library Association 01.06.2020
• Subjects: Berg, Alban; Composers; Inscriptions; Library collections; Opera; Opera houses; Piano; Rare materials; Sonatas
• ISSN: 0027-4380; 1534-150X; 1534-150X
• DOI: 10.1353/not.2020.0044

Alban Berg's presentation copy of the privately published 1922 pianovocal arrangement of Wozzeck to Eduard Steuermann has recently come to light in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. The score includes an intriguing inscription from the composer to Steuermann that speaks of "Wozzeck's worst hours," a reference to a trip undertaken with Steuermann in December 1921 to persuade the directors of the principal opera houses in Frankfurt and Darmstadt to produce the new work. During those visits, Steuermann had played from Berg's particell manuscript. The composer later engaged his pupil Fritz Heinrich Klein to make the piano-vocal version that would be published privately a year later, and it was this version of the work Berg presented to Steuermann with the inscription. The inscription also includes a reference to Steuermann's "dear secondo, without whom [the score] is not really usable at all)," an allusion not only to the difficulty of realizing the arrangement without a second player but also to Steuermann's recent marriage to the pianist Hilda Merinsky.