Alban Berg

“Fall 1904 | Started lessons and from then on until my marriage | May 1911 | and after that until the end of my lifetime Arnold Schönberg’s pupil | Alban Berg”. For his 50th birthday Schönberg received a voluminous photo album, that was presented to him on 12 September 1924 at the private celebration of the Schönberg circle in Mödling. The album is a historical document of the significant role that Schönberg’s teaching played in Vienna during the first quarter of the 20th century. It consists of sixty-four cardboard leaves with a photograph on the left side and a manuscript note on the right hand side of each leaf. Eight of the students in this album started in 1904 at the school of educational reformer Eugenie Schwarzwald and continued as private students (among them Alban Berg, Anton Webern and Egon Wellesz). The bulk of the students in the album studied with Schönberg between 1917 and 1924 in Vienna and Mödling.