Screening | 140 Years of Composer Alban Berg: Screening and Discussion

Celebrating the 140th anniversary of the birth of Austrian composer Alban Berg and come for a film-screening of Secret Song.

2025 marks the 140th anniversary of the birth of Alban Berg (1885-1935), a key figure in 20th-century music and a leading member of the Second Viennese School, founded by Arnold Schoenberg. Known for his groundbreaking work in blending atonality and serialism with a rich, emotional expressiveness, Berg's compositions continue to resonate with modern audiences. His operas Wozzeck and Lulu stand as masterpieces of modernist opera, while his Violin Concerto is celebrated for its poignant lyrical beauty.

Secret Song tells the gripping true story behind a musical masterpiece: Alban Berg's Lyric Suite for string quartet has long been hailed as one of the cornerstones of 20th-century musical modernism. But for decades, few suspected that behind this powerful music lies an explosive secret. In 1925, Berg fell passionately in love with Hanna Fuchs-Robettin, a married woman living in Prague. Soon afterwards, Berg composed the Lyric Suite for string quartet, which he intended as an explicit musical portrayal of his love affair with Hanna. Berg explained the music's secret meaning in a color-coded copy of the score that he annotated for Hanna, making clear that the main events of their romance are vividly dramatized in the piece. But to the rest of the world -- including his wife, Helene -- Berg presented the piece as he wanted it to be seen: a purely abstract work of chamber music. Among the work's secrets is that its last movement was originally conceived as a song about doomed love, set to a poem by Baudelaire. Secret Song brings this tale to life as an innovative film narrative. At the heart of the film is a cinematic re-enactment of the love story hidden within the notes of the music, with the music itself as the soundtrack.