Editing Alban Berg (section)

===Final years (1930–1935)===
[[File:WP Alban Berg.jpg|thumb|Sketch of Berg by [[Emil Stumpp]]]]

Life for the musical world was becoming increasingly difficult in the 1930s both in Vienna and Germany due to the rising tide of [[antisemitism]] and the [[Nazi]] cultural ideology that denounced [[modernity]]. Even to have an association with someone who was Jewish could lead to denunciation, and Berg's "crime" was to have studied with the Jewish composer [[Arnold Schoenberg]]. Berg found that opportunities for his work to be performed in Germany were becoming rare, and eventually his music was [[proscribed]] and placed on the list of [[degenerate music]].{{sfn|Notley|2010}}

In 1932 Berg and his wife acquired an isolated lodge, the ''Waldhaus'' on the southern shore of the [[Wörthersee]], near [[Schiefling am See]] in [[Carinthia]], where he was able to work in seclusion, mainly on ''[[Lulu (opera)|Lulu]]'' and the [[Violin Concerto (Berg)|Violin Concerto]].{{sfn|Hailey|2010a}} At the end of 1934, Berg became involved in the political intrigues around finding a replacement for [[Clemens Krauss]] as director of the [[Vienna State Opera]].

As more of the performances of his work in Germany were cancelled by the [[Nazis]], who had come to power in early 1933, he needed to ensure the new director would be an advocate for modernist music. Originally, the premiere of ''Lulu'' had been planned for the [[Berlin State Opera]], where [[Erich Kleiber]] continued to champion his music and had conducted the premiere of ''Wozzeck'' in 1925, but now this was looking increasingly uncertain, and ''Lulu'' was rejected by the Berlin authorities in the spring of 1934. Kleiber's production of the ''Lulu'' symphonic suite on 30 November 1934 in Berlin was also the occasion of his resignation in protest at the extent of conflation of culture with politics. Even in Vienna, the opportunities for the Vienna School of musicians were dwindling.{{sfn|Notley|2010}}

Berg had interrupted the orchestration of ''Lulu'' because of an unexpected (and financially much-needed) commission from the Russian-American violinist [[Louis Krasner]] for a [[Violin Concerto (Berg)|Violin Concerto]] (1935). This profoundly elegiac work, composed at unaccustomed speed and posthumously premiered, has become one of Berg's frequently performed compositions. Like much of his mature work, it employs an idiosyncratic adaptation of Schoenberg's "dodecaphonic" or [[twelve-tone technique]], that enables the composer to produce passages openly evoking tonality, including quotations from historical tonal music, such as a [[Johann Sebastian Bach|Bach]] chorale and a Carinthian folk song. The Violin Concerto was dedicated "to the memory of an Angel", [[Manon Gropius]], the deceased daughter of architect [[Walter Gropius]] and [[Alma Mahler]].{{sfn|Pople|1991|page=28}}