The Repertoire · 7 min read
Wozzeck and the Score You Cannot Hum
The most rigidly structured opera of the twentieth century sounds, from the audience, like the world coming apart. That is the point.
The first time Wozzeck lands on you, the sensation is of music without handholds. Alban Berg's 1925 opera — three acts, fifteen scenes, roughly ninety minutes — moves through expressionist sound-worlds that seem to resist melody the way water resists a fist. You leave the theatre shaken by something you cannot quite describe, and you probably cannot hum a bar of it. This is not a failure of attention. It is the work functioning exactly as designed.
Berg was explicit about the formal plan, and what he built is almost perversely rigorous.
