Abstract
Alban Berg's Violin Concerto is one of the most popular works of the so-called Second Viennese School. Despite its twelve-tone structure, it is strongly rooted in a Romantic tradition and often recalls the musical language of Gustav Mahler with its references to Bach and a Carinthian folk song. The concerto was composed in 1935 as a requiem for Manon Gropius, the daughter of Alma Mahler and Walter Gropius, who died of polio at the age of only 18. Berg dedicated the composition to «the memory of an angel».
Johannes Brahms announced his 2nd Symphony as «so melancholy» that the score had to appear «with a mourning edge», although it is in D major and was written in the summer of 1877; many consider it the most idyllic and cheerful of his symphonies. Nevertheless, the «lovely monster», as Brahms also called his Symphony No. 2, is melancholy: for example, in the brooding second movement, which contains astonishing foreshadowing of the crisis of tonality and can be considered to have paved the way for the music of Mahler and Berg.