Alban Berg's Op. 5/2 and the Concept of Recomposition

ABSTRACT This article analyses the connection between two miniature works that are often casually compared but whose harmonic relationship has been theorised in only scant detail by existing scholarship. The second of the Sechs kleine Klavierstücke , Op. 19 (1911), Arnold Schoenberg's most‐discussed nine bars, provides a backdrop for scrutiny of the second piece from Alban Berg's Vier Stücke für Klarinette und Klavier , Op. 5 (1913). Drawing on Jack Boss's referential collection approach to Schoenberg's miniature (2019), this article suggests that the relationship between these two works can be thought of as recomposition. The slippery nature of this term and its myriad uses notwithstanding, in this instance recomposition involves the extraction of salient features from a predecessor work and the manipulation of such features in oblique directions within their new context, pulling apart the earlier entity at its seams to reveal a new stage of life. In essence, the new work stages a pupal eclosion. Though such a notion might appear superficially Bloomian, it in fact involves no anxiety of influence whatsoever. Rather, Op. 5/2 exists as a recomposition of Op. 19/2 because the fundamental tenets of Op. 19/2 were worth placing into chrysalis, a simultaneous acknowledgement of efficacy as old material is adapted for new context.