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A. Easter Rabbits and Early Work.
1. Feet.
a. Create two enormous cardboard feet.
b. Cover them with pink paint and glitter.
c. Lead them from an easter basket out to the street.
d. Stop at a train track.
e. Sprinkle red paint liberally.
2. Fertility.
a. Fill plastic easter eggs with:
1. condoms.
2. altered textbooks images of women giving birth to
chickens.
3. altered text book images of chickens giving birth to
rabbits.
3. Background:
a. Third and youngest member of the Second Viennese School
b. Early life
1. Born into a well-to-do Viennese family
2. Began composing songs while in his early teens
3. Circle of friends included other artists and
intellectuals
a. Painters: Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka
b. Writers: Stefan Zweig, Peter Altenberg
4. Studied formally with Schoenberg 1906-1910
B. Easter Baskets and Chamber Concerto for Piano, Violin and 13 Wind
Instruments
1. Yellow: "The Biohazard"
a. yellow easter basket.
b. green artificial grass.
c. A plastic bag filled with used tissues from the previous
year,
ground into a powder.
2. Blue: "The Childrens Gift."
a. Marshmallow Peeps.
b. An assortment of candy bars.
c. A chocolate rabbit.
d. Orange Chocolate.
e. Various inexpensive cards and trinkets.
3. Red: "Untitled."
a. Pages are cut from "Mille Plateaux" by Gilles Deleuze, "Alice
in Wonderland"
and "Peter Pan," as well as "Walden Two" By BF Skinner.
b. Pages are pasted in random order via paper mache into the
form of
a three foot tall rabbit holding in one hand an easter egg
and in the other,
a phallus.
c. The paper mache creature is set on fire and videotaped. The
video tape
is treated as the artwork itself, and is stored in a bag
containing the ashes.
4. Chamber Concerto for Piano, Violin and 13 Wind Instruments (1925)
a. Use of architectonic construction
b. First movement (theme with variations): 240 measures
theme 30m.variations: 30, 60, 30, 30, 60m. (respectively)
c. Second movement (240 measures)
1. Arch form
2. Second half recapitulates material of the first half
in reverse
d. Third movement (Rondo)
1. 480 measures in length (balances out mov't 1 &
2=480m.)
2. Music of first and second movements are combined.
C. The Easter Egg Hunt.
1. The Hiding Places.
a. an easter egg is placed inside the carcass of an infertile
steer.
b. an easter egg is placed inside a womans vagina, and is
removed during menstruation.
c. an easter egg is placed in with various "regular eggs," thus
bridging the esoteric and
divine.
2. Inside the Easter Egg.
a. a plastic easter egg contains the disembowled head of a
chicken.
b. various haiku poems.
c. various texts about consuming the body of christ, with egg
yolk.
d. jelly beans.
3. Stylistic differences with Webern
a. Webern typically uses a single row rigidly for a single
composition.
b. Berg alters the row from movement to movement in the Lyric
Suite.
c. Diatonic aspects of Berg's tone rows:
1. Sequences of rising or falling 5ths.
2. Sequence of rising or descending scalar passages.
D. Lent.
1. Abstinence.
a. eat no meat during lent, besides fish.
[Alban Berg Information by David Papandrew.]
