Herwig Knaus, born in 1929 in St. Veit/Glan, Carinthia, lives in Vienna since 1948. He taught at University, at the conservatory of Vienna and was surveyor of musical education of the Vienna School Board. He is author of many books about music.
The for the first time deciphered personal notes by Alban Berg give a multilayer genre picture of the Viennese bourgeoisie after the turn of the century.
Alban Berg was undoubtedly the master of the Viennese musical modernity. Herwig Knaus tabulated and deciphered thousands of notes and letter drafts of Berg’s unpublished works. This unique biography which offers a new and authentic view at the artist emerged out of it.
The until now available sources that where sometimes heavily censured by his wife Helene Nahowski gave only a directed view at the composer. Many aspects of Alban Berg’s biography were left out: his difficulties with his own family and his lesbian sister, the economical troubles resulting from the war- and postwar period, his relation to women, collegues, and – seen in the background of the traditional Viennese anti-Semitism – his relation to his teacher Arnold Schönberg. Out of those unvarnished insights into Alban Berg’s private life not only a very vivid portrait of this musical rebel emerges but also an exciting genre picture of the period after the break-down of the Danube Monarchy.
