A view of Berg's Lulu through the autograph sources

by Patricia Hall

After fifty years of analysis we are only beginning to understand the quality and complexity of Alban Berg's most important twelve-tone work, the opera Lulu. In 1959 Berg's widow deposited the first of Berg's autograph manuscripts in the Austrian National Library. The complete collection of autographs for Lulu was made accessible to scholars in 1981, beginning a promising new phase in Lulu scholarship. Patricia Hall's study represents the first detailed analysis of the sketches for the opera, as well as other related autograph material and correspondence.