Alban Berg’s secret

He would compose the Lyrische Suite for her and never forgot her again. Twenty years lie between these two events.

Between the two loves, there was no choice. Berg spent the rest of his life trying to hold together what the world would have wanted him to choose. He did so in the only way he knew how: he wrote. He wrote Wozzeck, he wrote the Lyrische Suite with Hanna's initials hidden in the notes and Baudelaire's words beneath the string parts; he wrote fiercely passionate letters in the dead of night. And then he wrote Lulu. Helene outlived her husband by forty years and kept everything to herself in silence. Hanna kept a brown leather folder locked away until her death. It contained a score annotated in three pastel colors. The secret held until 1976. The music was the key—the only thing needed to know.