Today is the 140th anniversary of the birth of Alban Berg.
By coincidence, I just finally got around to watching “Bride of the Wind” (2001), about the life of Alma Mahler – unquestionably a fascinating figure. A composer herself (and also an author), Alma’s lasting contribution would be as a socialite who often left scandal and ruin in her wake.
To its credit, the film does comment on the limitations imposed on women, even society women, at the time. Alma was the wife of composer-conductor Gustav Mahler, who firmly requested that she renounce her own ambitions to support his. Following his death, she would simultaneously promote and obscure his biography and intentions. She also married architect Walter Gropius (with whom she had had an affair during her marriage to Mahler), but not before a hot, crazy fling with the half-mad painter Oskar Kokoschka. Furthermore, she was romantically involved with writer Franz Werfel, and Lord knows who else.
The film was directed by Bruce Beresford, of “Breaker Morant”/”Tender Mercies”/”Crimes of the Heart”/”Driving Miss Daisy” fame. Unlike those titles, however, the only gold “Bride of the Wind” would ever see would be that on the Klimt canvases it aspires to evoke.
Underbaked, badly acted, poorly scripted, and blandly executed, it’s a missed opportunity, to be sure. Even the usually excellent Jonathan Pryce is ridiculous as Gustav Mahler. The scenes of him conducting teeter on the verge of parody. Well, come to think of it, he wasn’t all that convincing as Prince Philip on “The Crown,” either, but even with an actor of his caliber, surely 99-percent of the job comes down to casting. (I liked him fine as Pope Francis.)
Fin-de-siècle culture vultures will get more out of it. As with Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein biopic, “Maestro,” a cavalcade of significant artistic and historical figures drop by, and you’re expected to deduce that some shmo with no lines is Arnold Schoenberg, because he’s bald, or another is Alexander Zemlinsky, because he’s got the nose. (Yes, I knew who they were immediately, but only a fraction of a percent of potential viewers would.) It’s the kind of movie that allows the NPR crowd to chuckle knowingly to themselves because they get the joke that Gustav Klimt is always hanging around with nude women. You get Mahler’s declaration that the symphony must be like the world. You get Kokoschka’s life-size Alma doll. If only they had gotten Jeffrey Tambor to play Schoenberg, now THAT would have been something.
I streamed it for free on Tubi and still feel like I was overcharged. What a tepid movie about a figure who most certainly was NOT! The one thing it did bring home, through one of those “American Graffiti,” where-are-they-now-style epilogues, is just how astoundingly short history is, as some of the figures depicted lived well into my lifetime. There’s a famous photograph (not in the movie) of Bernstein genuflecting and kissing Alma’s hand, following a rehearsal of Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony at Carnegie Hall.
So what’s the Alban Berg connection?
While his is one of the few names that ISN’T dropped in the film, Berg composed his Violin Concerto of 1935 in memory of Manon Gropius, Alma and Walter’s daughter, who died of polio at the age of 18.
Always regarded as the Romantic among serialists – one critic described him as “the Puccini of twelve-tone music” – Berg processes loss and grief with the kind of humanity that seems have eluded Schoenberg, his teacher. The concerto is a fine example of a talented artist bending the rules of a particular system to achieve his own expressive ends.
A shimmering, unresolved longing imbues much of Berg’s music. It makes him effortlessly relatable and more easily discernible as a link to the more traditionally-minded among his Viennese contemporaries. His Violin Concerto really does touch people’s hearts. Furthermore, Berg is not above erecting signposts for the uninitiated, in his concerto alluding to a chorale melody employed by Johann Sebastian Bach and a Carinthian folk song.
Berg himself died of a blood poisoning, the result of an insect sting, later the same year, at the age of 50. His output may be comparatively small, but his stature endures as one of the most important musical voices of the early 20th century. He is certainly the most readily approachable of composers of the Second Viennese School.
Some scholars have pointed out that aspects of the anti-heroine of Berg’s opera “Lulu” – a femme fatale who captivates and destroys the men and women around her – may have been modeled in part on Alma’s personality. Berg was fascinated by Alma’s charm and the ease with which she navigated Vienna’s cultural milieu. The two definitely knew one another and in fact were close enough that the composer and his wife, Helene – who were childless – considered Manon their own daughter and kept a picture of her at their bedside.
The last time I watched “Lulu,” a tree fell on my house. Thematically, I think that’s a worthy addition to Alma’s legacy!
Happy birthday, Alban Berg.
Alma Mahler, “Laue Sommernacht” (“Balmy Summer Night”)
Berg, “Lulu Suite”
Berg, Violin Concerto
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: Berg with portrait painted by Arnold Schoenberg; poster for “Bride of the Wind;” Alma Mahler, stylin’; Bernstein genuflecting
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