Alban Berg
“Alban Berg, he's like the Forrest Gump of music or something!!”
“Alban Berg is the Freud of music or the Krafft-Ebing of something less.”
“Berg's music is so revolutionary that it doesn't sound like music. It sounds like octopus porn. And that can only be admired.”
Alban Berg (February 9, 1885 – December 24, 1935) was an Austrian composer who thought he wrote operas. He was flattered to receive attention in a special attention class in Vienna, and later wrote works which to his surprise would gain the attention of millions of scene kids. Also, his severe mental disabilities received significant attention from the Gestapo. He was what we call an attention whore today.
Life[edit | edit source]
Physical and mental childhood[edit | edit source]
Alban "Bert" Berg Jr. was born in The Third Reich as the third child to Johanna and Maria Berg. Both of his parents were hanged, since it was popular to hang women in those days.
In 1906, Bert was adopted by Arnold "The Terminator" Schoenbert, a teacher, who allowed Bert to join his class for intellectually inferior children and taught him to read at the age of 21. Sex education proved important on the part of Bert; he had never heard of birth control, having fathered eight children and nurtured an impressive repertoire of sexually transmitted diseases. Schoenbert had a short temper, so every time Bert would make another girl pregnant, he was given detention. Bert wrote an opera in three minutes and dedicated it to his teacher; he was savagely beaten by Schoenbert for bringing up such a disgraceful abomination and disappointed, he tried to terminate himself. He also tried to pass the final exams, but he failed at both tasks. He figured he would have done better if he hadn't cheated off his own answers. Schoenbert had clearly become to see his mistake, and launched a fierce political campaign against adoption.
Physical puberty and mental childhood[edit | edit source]
Having been castrated, expelled, and bitten by several bugs, Bert said "ouch". God revealed Himself to Bert in a cocaine-clouded hallucination and told him to go compose operas. Bert revealed himself to God and bought himself a red magic marker, just like the one Schoenbert had used to decorate his assignments, and created a mockery of music.
His first works had a remarkable power of making people feel pissed off; while he was making horrible noises with the violin, a fight broke out between hobos below his window. When Bert had no money left, he had to take a part-time job cleaning latrines to support himself.
Physical manhood and mental childhood[edit | edit source]
In 1915, Austrian soldiers barged in through Bert's front door and dragged him out in the middle of the night for military service. Bert did not express any gratitude for the treatment he received. The officers however saw how handicapped he was, and threw him out the next morning. In an attempt to smell his way home, Bert was mislead by the scent of a cathouse.
To celebrate his freedom, Bert made a horrible noise on his toy piano, which he then decided to call an opera. His neighbours, a trio of Down's syndrome kids and an idiot savant, helped him to collect money for staging it. It took some effort, but in 1935 they had collected enough money to stage it in Berlin's Opera house. They were soon arrested, and Bert wrote the plot for the opera five minutes before the world premiere and named it "Bert". Thousands of teenagers arrived at the premiere and felt deeply moved.
The same year, Bert ended up marrying an old hag, and she ended up cheating on him. On Christmas Eve, Bert was about to attend the premiere of his opera Beep and Honk, but was arrested by the Gestapo and terminated accordingly with the T4 Euthanasia program. A bearded man in a red suit wanted to, but was prohibited from visiting his steaming corpse. Contrary to popular belief, Bert was not killed by snails. Before his death, Bert managed to complete the first two measures his last opera, The Hobo. What would have followed remains unknown, but the rest of it would have probably consisted mostly of hideous noises.
Following physical and mental inactivation[edit | edit source]
If not for talent, Bert is best known today for either his unwillingness or his failure to follow the trends and the fashion of his age. He made a spectacular attempt to write music which sounded pleasant and not just dissonant and ugly. Despite he failed spectacularly, today he is looked upon as a unique phenomenon who stood out from the rest.
Operas[edit | edit source]
Dumb and Dumber[edit | edit source]
The text is quite incomprehensible, but it's a comedy. The musical notation is probably best described as "original".
Pieces for Orchestra[edit | edit source]
Bert stole the name from another work he saw. Two winos are looking for some pieces for Orchestra. They go into an argument and put up a fight. The other one evaporates. Dumb and Dumber make cameo appearances.
Bert[edit | edit source]
Story about a Bert, who knows how to solve problems. The entire libretto consists of four sentences: "Bert is happy. Eats good dung. Wife says nasty habit. Bert kill wife." The music for the first sentence was copied from a single measure by Bach. The second sentence requires a massive orchestra to play a motif lasting three seconds. The third sentence calls to repeat the previous, but noise is added to the background. The fourth sentence calls for nothing but noise. Together these four musical phrases barely satisfy the definition of a musical sentence.
Beep and Honk[edit | edit source]
A tragedy of Beep and his friend Honk. In stark contrast to his previous work, the libretto of Beep and Honk contains over three thousand words. The order of the plot is regarded as less important. What is lost in consistency, is won in magnitude. Some of the words are not even recognized as belonging to any human language. The opera deals with a wide range of topics, including foot, eel, grrrr, doghouse, doofah, sook mai deek, gtyooodaguuuuuuuu, me, you, gooooooorgl, cp, poseur, and teddy was here. Evidence suggests that Bert composed the music in a coma.
The Hobo[edit | edit source]
Bert wrote the first two measures of Hobo during the last two minutes of his life. The opera tells about a slut who causes men around her to suddenly die, and a reeking hobo who owes her money. A sharp object is poked into the back of the filthy slut. We don't care about what happens to the hobo. A coherent sentence structure is retained through out the libretto, so Bert must have stolen the libretto from someone else.