He wrote songs as a youth but had no serious musical education before his lessons with Schönberg, which began in 1904. Webern was a pupil at the same time, a crucial period in Schönberg's creative life, when he was moving rapidly towards and into atonality. Berg's Piano Sonata op.1 (1908) is still tonal, but the Four Songs op.2 (1910) move away from key and the op.3 String Quartet (1910) is wholly atonal; it is also remarkable in sustaining, through motivic development, a larger span when the instrumental works of Schönberg and Webern were comparatively momentary. Berg dedicated it to his wife Helene, whom he married in 1911. 

Then came the Five Songs for soprano op.4 (1912), miniatures setting poetic instants by Peter Altenberg. This was Berg's first orchestral score, and though it shows an awareness of Schönberg, Mahler and Debussy, it is brilliantly conceived and points towards Wozzeck - and towards 12-note serialism, notably in its final passacaglia. More immediately Berg produced another set of compact statements, the Four Pieces for clarinet and piano op.5 (1913), then returned to large form with the Three Orchestral Pieces op.6 (1915), a thematically linked sequence of prelude, dance movement and funeral march. The prelude begins and ends in the quiet noise of percussion; the other two movements show Berg's discovery of how traditional forms and stylistic elements (including tonal harmony) might support big structures. 

In May 1914 Berg saw the Vienna premiere of Büchner's Woyzeck and formed the plan of setting it. He started the opera in 1917, while he was in the Austrian army (1915-18), and finished it in 1922. He made his own selection from the play's fragmentary scenes to furnish a three-act libretto for formal musical setting: the first act is a suite of five character pieces (five scenes showing the simple soldier Wozzeck in different relationships), the second a five-movement symphony (for the disintegration of his liaison with Marie), the third a set of five inventions on different ostinato ideas (for the tragedy's brutally nihilist climax). The close musical structuring, extending to small details of timing, may be seen as an analogue for the mechanical alienness of the universe around Büchner's central characters, though Berg's music crosses all boundaries, from atonal to tonal (there is a Mahlerian interlude in d Minor), from speech to song, from café music to sophisticated textures of dissonant counterpoint. Wozzeck had its premiere in Berlin in 1925 and thereafter was widely produced, bringing Berg financial security. 

His next work, the Chamber Concerto for violin, piano and 13 wind (1925), moves decisively towards a more classical style: its three formally complex movements are still more clearly shaped than those of the op.6 set and the scoring suggests a response to Stravinskian objectivity. The work is also threaded through with ciphers and numerical conceits, making it a celebration of the triune partnership of Schönberg, Berg and Webern. Then came the Lyric Suite for string quartet (1926), whose long-secret programme connects it with Berg's intimate feelings for Hanna Fuchs-Robettin - feelings also important to him in the composition of his second opera, Lulu (1929-35). The suite, in six movements of increasingly extreme tempo, uses 12-note serial along with other material in projecting a quasi-operatic development towards catastrophe and annulment. The development of Lulu was twice interrupted by commissioned works, the concert aria Der Wein on poems by Baudelaire (1929) and the Violin Concerto (1935), and it remained unfinished at Berg's death: his widow placed an embargo on the incomplete third act which could not be published or performed until 1979. As with Wozzeck, he made his own libretto out of stage material, this time choosing two plays by Wedekind, whom he had long admired for his treatment of sexuality. Dramatically and musically the opera is a huge palindrome, showing Lulu's rise through society in her successive relationships and then her descent into prostitution and eventual death at the hands of Jack the Ripper. Again the score is filled with elaborate formal schemes, around a lyricism unloosed by Berg's individual understanding of 12-note serialism. Something of its threnodic sensuality is continued in the Violin Concerto, designed as a memorial to the teenage daughter of Mahler's widow. 
 
 

Extracted with permission from  The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music edited by Stanley Sadie  © Macmillan Press Ltd., London.

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In his own words...
 

"I never entertained the idea of reforming the artistic structure of the opera with Wozzeck... I wanted to compose good music, to develop musically the contents of Büchner's immortal drama, to translate his poetic language into music; but other than that, when I decided to write an opera, my only intentions, including the technique of composition, were to give the theater what belongs to the theater. In other words, the music was to be so formed as consciously to fulfill its duty of serving the action at every moment."

Alban Berg's music demonstrates better than any other the individual expressive qualities possible within the highly structured style developed by the composers of the Second Viennese School. Even when writing in a pure twelve-tone style, Berg employs a lyrical and harmonic language that hearkens back to the late romantic style of Mahler. For this reason, he is the most easily approached composer of this style.

Berg was born into a well-to-do family in Vienna and was encouraged in his intellectual pursuits. But despite an aptitude for music, he never received strong formal training until he began his studies with Arnold Schoenberg in 1904. Under Schoenberg's guidance, Berg moved from a rather tonal approach to a purely atonal style over the course of his first three works. He continued in this path, writing mostly smaller works. A decisive moment came in 1914, when he saw a production of George Büchner's play Woyzeck. The play had a great impact on Berg, and he began immediately to transform the work into an opera (Wozzeck). He continued this project while serving in the army in World War I, finishing the work in 1922. It was premiered in 1925 in Berlin and proved a critical and financial success.

In Wozzeck Berg created a rich mix of styles and approaches. On the surface, the language ranges from post-romantic to purely atonal, freely mixing popular and folk elements. Underlying this is an exacting approach to form: the first act is a suite of five character pieces, the second is a symphony in five movements, and the third is a series of five variations set on different ostinatos. None of this, however, is merely intellectual diversion. Instead, each idea is developed to support the dramatic action on the stage.

Through his next works, Berg embraced the twelve-tone procedure more fully. This can be seen in his Lyric Suite (1926), his Violin Concerto (1935) and Lulu, his second opera, left incomplete at his death. In the concerto, especially, we can see how the twelve-tone approach becomes a transparent technique. Berg devised his pitch materials in such a way as to allow for rich, and surprisingly consonant, harmonies. From the opening, which comprises a series of open fifths in the violin and harp, to the final movement, which incorporates a quotation from a chorale setting by Bach, the work is both technically masterful and musically satisfying.

Berg's life came to an early end. The tensions of the Nazi rise to power and the effects of generally ill health began to take their toll. In the fall of 1935 a simple insect bite turned into fatal blood poisoning. He died on Christmas Eve.

Works:

• 2 operas: Wozzeck (1917-1922) and Lulu (unfinished, 1935)
• Orchestral music, including Three Orchestral Pieces, Op.6 (1915), Chamber Concerto (1925), Three Pieces from Lyric Suite (1928), and Violin Concerto (1935)
• Chamber music, including String Quartet (1910) and Lyric Suite (1926)
• Piano music, including Piano Sonata, Op.1 (1908)
• Songs, including Four Songs, Op.2 (1910)