Alban Berg

Born in Vienna in 1885, Berg started composing at fifteen and studied with Arnold Schoenberg from 1904 to 1911, absorbing the twelve-tone technique and principles of developing variation. Between 1914 and 1922 he completed Wozzeck, an opera that married the new system to Romantic lyricism; he followed with the Lyric Suite, Chamber Concerto, and began Lulu in 1928, left unfinished at his death. Where Schoenberg's modernism could seem austere, Berg's had what one observer called "surface glamour" - a way of folding entire worlds of emotion into the grid, winning admirers when his teacher had few. He died of sepsis in Vienna in December 1935, forty years into a life that left a small catalogue and an outsize mark.