(At the time, the play was still known as Wozzeck, due to an incorrect transcription by Karl Emil Franzos, who was working from a barely-legible manuscript; the correct title would not emerge until 1921.)

He adapted the libretto himself, retaining "the essential character of the play, with its many short scenes, its abrupt and sometimes brutal language, and its stark, if haunted, realism..."[1] The plot depicts the everyday lives of soldiers and the townspeople of a rural German-speaking town.

Toward the end of act 1, scene 2, the title character (Wozzeck) murmurs, "Still, all is still, as if the world died," with his fellow soldier Andres muttering, "Night!

[5] He nurtured his creativity there by reading books, walking through the forests, collecting mushrooms, and admiring the mountains, lakes, and springs—habits of a "love of nature" that Helene identified in Berg's music, including that of Wozzeck.

Berg also wrote Helene in 1918 that he identified with Wozzeck:[3]There is a little bit of me in his character, ... spending these war years just as dependent on people I hate, ... in chains, sick, captive, resigned, ... humiliated.

An Apprentice is drunkenly preaching when an Idiot stumbles toward Wozzeck, crying, "Lustig, ... aber es riecht ... Ich riech Blut!"

Scene 5 (Invention on an Eighth-Note moto perpetuo, quasi toccata) The next morning, children play and sing in the sunny street outside Marie's door.

Berg notes that marching band members may be taken from the pit orchestra, indicating exactly where the players can leave with a footnote near the end of act 1, scene 2.

The second scene of act 2 (during which the Doctor and Captain taunt Wozzeck about Marie's infidelity), for instance, consists of a prelude and triple fugue.

Wozzeck is clearly associated with two motifs, one often heard as he rushes on or off stage, the other more languidly expressing his misery and helplessness in the face of the pressures he experiences.

The most significant is the "anguish" motif first sung by Wozzeck in the first scene with the Captain, to the words "Wir arme Leut" ("we poor folks").

Tracing out a minor chord with added major seventh, it is frequently heard as the signal of the characters' inability to transcend their situation.

For example, the reappearance of military band music in the last scene of act 1 informs the audience that Marie is musing on the Drum Major's attractiveness.

In Marie's Bible scene, he reworked an early sonata fragment in F minor, which Christopher Hailey described as Schumannesque in its abiding melancholy.

[12] In an adagio interlude adapted from a Mahlerian student piece in D minor, Berg brings the opera to a climax with a dominant-functioning aggregate sonority marked ff, which crescendos into a potent statement of the "anguish" leitmotif (act 3, mm.

Berg's war experience also informed his word painting of snoring soldiers in barracks (act 2, scene 5): "this polyphonic breathing, gasping, and groaning is the most peculiar chorus I've ever heard.

[16] The inner turmoil and self-destructive trajectory of its outcast antihero[7] has also prompted comparison to other major operas with similar male title roles, including Verdi's Macbeth and Nabucco, Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, and Britten's Peter Grimes.

[33] John L. Stewart suggests that Wozzeck was influenced not only by Schoenberg's Erwartung but also by Schreker's Der ferne Klang, the piano-vocal score of which Berg prepared in 1911.

[41] When Berg examined Gurlitt's piano-vocal score, he considered it "not bad or unoriginal", but a weak "broth ... even for arme Leut (poor folks)".

[37] Erich Kleiber conducted the world premiere of the entire work at the Berlin State Opera on 14 December 1925, having personally decided on it.

[1] Hailey writes that it was "the event of the season", achieving a noted combination of coherence and expressivity over a substantial length of time despite its post-tonal musical language.

It provoked a "scandal", Berg wrote his pupil Theodor W. Adorno, staged by "Czech Nationalists (virtually Nazis)" and "clerical lobbies".

[44] At its third premiere (1927) in Leningrad, the Association for Contemporary Music and Nikolai Roslavets staged Wozzeck at the Mariinsky Theatre with Berg and Shostakovich in attendance.

Henry Wood and the BBC Symphony Orchestra gave a studio concert of the Three Fragments from Wozzeck, which Edward Clark, a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg, produced for broadcast on 13 May 1932.

[48] On 14 March 1934, Adrian Boult conducted a complete concert performance of Wozzeck, again produced by Edward Clark, in the Queen's Hall.

[37] He traveled not only to Germany, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, and England, but also to Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, France, and Italy for performances of and talks about the opera.

[37] Busy attending to his newfound success and enjoying financial independence, Berg declined Schreker's offers of an appointment at the Berlin Musikhochschule as well as subsequent vacations with Schoenberg, though the two remained committed friends.

[37] He benefited from new relationships with Karl Böhm, Erich Kleiber, and Gian Francesco Malipiero, among others, and was appointed to serve on the jury of the ADMV.

[52] Berg responded at length, citing (and transcribing) examples from Wagner, Mozart, and Bach to support what he said was his treatment of the human voice as "the supreme instrument".

[citation needed] Working with Berg,[56] Erwin Stein made an arrangement of Wozzeck for smaller theaters, reducing the orchestra to about 60 players.