Wozzeck

• (left) Georg Büchner, illustration in an 1879 French edition of his complete works
• (right) Plaque marking Wozzeck's composition at the present-day Alban Berg Villa in Trahütten

Alban Berg wrote Wozzeck from 1914 to 1922, stalled partly by World War I. He wrote his own libretto after Junges Deutschland writer Georg Büchner's unfinished play Woyzeck (1836), inspired by its 5 May 1914 Vienna premiere. Editor Karl Emil Franzos misread the name Wozzeck from Büchner's challenging manuscript.^[1][2]

Trained in biology and medicine, Büchner (1813-1817) taught anatomy at the University of Zurich. As a writer, he stressed characterization over narrative. He had radical politics and studied the French Revolution for his first play, Danton's Death. It crushed him. History seemed grimly fixed against revolt. People were "froth on the waves", greatness coincidental, and genius futile under "iron law".^[3]

In Woyzeck, Büchner mixed the grotesque with tragicomedy. He used real cases of romantic femicide, mainly physician Johann Christian August Clarus's report on Johann Christian Woyzeck, a poor soldier from Leipzig. Despite a long medical history of mental disorders and psychosis, Woyzeck was found competent in 1821 and beheaded in 1824. When Büchner died of typhus, he left an untitled, fragmentary script with shifting character names.^[3]

Berg saw strange potential in this dark social criticism, perhaps after Richard Strauss's Salome or his mentor Arnold Schoenberg's Erwartung (Expectation).^[4] He used short interludes to bind scenes after Claude Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande^[5] while retaining the jagged brutality and eerie realism of Büchner's work.^[1][2] He added bits of his life, a habit: scripted coughs echoed his asthma, and the Doctor's salamanders line mocked scientist and musician Paul Kammerer, the first failed love of his wife Helene [de].^[6]

Berg mainly used writer Paul Landau [de]'s Wozzeck–Lenz: Zwei Fragmente (1909, reprinted 1913; Insel–Verlag [de]), which reordered Franzos's 26 scenes. Theater director Arthur Rundt [de], whose cuts Berg mostly followed, had used it in 1914.^[7] That year, scholar Hugo Bieber [de] tied the play to Woyzeck the man.^[8] In 1919, scholar Georg Witkowski issued a critical edition. Franzos ruined Büchner's play with omissions, edits, and additions, he wrote.^[9]

Franzos's publisher lost rights, so Berg left the title. He mostly chose Franzos's freer, livelier text over Witkowski's. Franzos's form (exposition, development, catastrophe) shaped Berg's, whose staging and lighting showed time passing, adding to Franzos's flow ("The drama ... must go forward ... breathlessly", he replied to Hanns Heinz Ewers's 1925 offer to collaborate). Berg's epilogue, Marie's son trailing friends to her corpse, was mostly Franzos's invention.^[10]

Berg mostly focused on music but saw more subjugation than poverty in the tale, likely from his war service,^[11] which he wrote Schoenberg was "slavery" that might go on "for years" in 1917. "[T]he fate of this poor man [Wozzeck], exploited and tormented by all the world ... touches me", he wrote Webern in 1918.^[12] Publicly, he backed Alexander Landau's 1926 socialist view (Wozzeck's suffering is not his, but ours) and Otto Brües [de]'s 1929 Biblical view (suffering is from God).^[13]

Patriotic when war erupted in 1914, Berg soon lost his zeal. His letters show naive hope cooled by Karl Kraus's attack on "the cash register of world history".^[14] First unfit, he was drafted in 1915.^[15] He struggled to compose, writing Helene: "For months I haven't done any work on Wozzeck. Everything suffocated. Buried!"^[1] He had an Einjährig-Freiwillige Korporal (lit. 'one-year volunteer corporal') post by 1916 and never saw the front line.^[16]

The war troubled Berg and shaped his opera.^[17] He passed "horrible" news to Schoenberg that a large bell's sound, perhaps evoking a "past time" or "beloved place", was used to lure Russian heads from trenches for "fatal bullets", adding, "had I been declared fit ... my spirit ... would have broken."^[18] He wrote Helene in 1918: "There is a little bit of me in [Wozzeck], ... spending these war years just as dependent on people I hate, ... in chains, sick, captive, resigned, ... humiliated."^[19]

Berg wrote much of the opera at the piano in Helene's small family villa in Trahütten during frugal Sommerfrischen (summer vacations), first while on leave (1917–18). He read, hunted mushrooms, and hiked, enjoying the mountains, lakes, and springs. Helene identified this "love of nature" in his music, including Wozzeck.^[20] He finished act 1 by summer 1919, act 2 in August 1921, and act 3 two months later,^[21] then spent six months revising the orchestration, completing Wozzeck in April 1922.

Wozzeck uses a large orchestra. There are onstage musicians four times: a marching band (act 1, scene 3), a chamber orchestra (act 2, scene 3), a tavern band (act 2, scene 4), and an out-of-tune upright piano (also at the tavern; act 3, scene 3).^[22]

Roles, voice types, premiere cast

Role	Voice type	Premiere cast, 14 December 1925 Conductor: Erich Kleiber
Wozzeck	baritone	Leo Schützendorf
Marie, his common-law wife	soprano	Sigrid Johanson
Marie's son	treble	Ruth Iris Witting
Captain	buffo tenor	Waldemar Henke
Doctor	buffo bass	Martin Abendroth
Drum Major	heldentenor	Fritz Soot
Andres, Wozzeck's friend	lyric tenor	Gerhard Witting
Margret, Marie's neighbor	contralto	Jessika Koettrik
First Apprentice	deep bass	Ernst Osterkamp
Second Apprentice	high baritone	Alfred Borchardt
Madman	high tenor	Marcel Noé
A Soldier	baritone	Leonhard Kern
Soldiers, apprentices, women, children

Berg marks when marching band musicians may be taken from the pit orchestra in a footnote near the end of act 1, scene 2.

This instrumentation matches Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony No. 1.

Berg innovated on past operas. Each act and scene has some old or abstract musical form as word painting (e.g., a passacaglia for the Doctor's exam, a prelude and triple fugue as the Doctor and Captain hint at Marie's infidelity). Variation techniques dominate act 3, monomaniacally focusing on a pitch (B♮, scene 2), rhythm (scene 3), hexachord (scene 4), key (D minor, interlude), or duration (a perpetuum mobile of quavers, scene 5). With these forms, Berg knew Wozzeck would not seem simply post-Wagnerian.^[23]

He knew few, if any, might hear it all but also used these forms' patterns and the play's linked scenes and repeated lines to structure his own dramatic and musical repetition. Büchner's text repeats and develops some ideas into short, recurring sections or tableaux (e.g., Wozzeck's visions, Apocrypha or Bible quotes) and short phrases as motifs: "ein guter Mensch" (a good person), "wir arme Leut" (we poor folk), and "eins nach dem andern" (one after the other).^[23]

Fritz Mahler summarizes the opera's form:^[24]

Drama		Music
Expositions	Act 1	Five character pieces
Wozzeck and the Captain	Scene 1	Suite
Wozzeck and Andres	Scene 2	Rhapsody
Wozzeck and Marie	Scene 3	Military march and Lullaby
Wozzeck and the Doctor	Scene 4	Passacaglia
Marie and the Drum Major	Scene 5	Andante affettuoso (quasi Rondo)
Dramatic development	Act 2	Symphony in five movements
Marie and her son, then Wozzeck	Scene 1	Sonata movement
The Captain and the Doctor, then Wozzeck	Scene 2	Fantasia and fugue
Marie and Wozzeck	Scene 3	Largo
Garden of a tavern	Scene 4	Scherzo
Guard room in the barracks	Scene 5	Rondo con introduzione
Catastrophe and epilogue	Act 3	Six inventions
Marie and her son	Scene 1	Invention on a theme
Wozzeck kills Marie	Scene 2	Invention on a note (B♮)
Tavern	Scene 3	Invention on a rhythm
Wozzeck drowns	Scene 4	Invention on a hexachord
	Interlude	Invention on a key (D minor)
Children playing	Scene 5	Invention on a regular quaver movement

Expressionist music evokes Wozzeck's and other characters' emotions and thought processes, especially his madness and alienation. Though atonal, it generally has some function in its voice leading, extended tonicizations, or tonal passages. Pitch and harmony structure the drama, with recurring pitch sets for continuity: the dyad B–F, a tritone, signifies the struggle of and tension between Wozzeck and Marie, while the dyad B♭–D♭, a minor third, reflects Marie's bond with her son.

Berg adapted tonal juvenilia for Wozzeck. In Marie's Bible scene, he reworked a sonata fragment in F minor that has been called Schumannesque in its abiding melancholy.^[25] After Wozzeck's mad scene, "Wo ist das Messer?" ("Where is the knife?"; act 3, scene 4), there is an adagio interlude adapted from a Mahlerian student piece in D minor; its climax is a loud, dominant-functioning aggregate sonority crescendoing into a potent statement of the "anguish" leitmotif (act 3, scene 5, mm. 364–365).^[26]

Folk song and popular dance idioms appear in the field and tavern scenes. Berg transforms a polka into a danse macabre in the later tavern episode (act 3, scene 3). Its opening rhythm is a retrograde of a tango, alluding to Kraus's play Die letzten Tage der Menschheit (1915–1922; The Last Days of Mankind), drafts of which appeared in Die Fackel [de] by 1916.^[27] Marie's orphan plays among children singing "Ringel, Ringel, Rosenkranz, Ringelreih'n" (like "Ring a Ring o' Roses") in the epilogue.

Berg's notes and sketches for Wozzeck (and for the March from his Three Orchestral Pieces, 1913–1915) were mingled with fragments of military papers. Drafts include Austrian army bugle calls rendered atonal in the final score (act 1, scene 2). His war experience of sleeping in barracks informed his word painting of snoring soldiers (act 2, scene 5), which he described as "polyphonic breathing, gasping, and groaning ... the most peculiar chorus I've ever heard ... like some primeval music that wells up from the abysses of the soul".^[28]

The plot depicts the militarism, callousness, social exploitation, and casual sadism of a small town.^{[citation needed]} Transitions between day and night reflect cyclical wartime themes of life and death, as in Schoenberg's Lied "Der verlorene Haufen" (referring to forlorn hope) or the popular soldiers' Volkslied "Morgenrot".^[29][a]

Leitmotifs are given to characters like the Captain, Doctor, and Drum Major, whose music recurs when Marie muses on him. Wozzeck has two: one as he runs, and one languidly expressing his misery and helplessness. Marie's motifs convey sensuality, as when she accepts a pair of earrings from the Drum Major.

The central "anguish" motif, sung by Wozzeck (act 1, scene 1), traces a minor chord with an added major seventh:

As in Berg's next opera Lulu, an isolated C-major major triad signifies affection and money. In his Wozzeck Lecture, Berg joked, "How could the objectivity [Sachlichkeit] of money ... be better represented?"^[31]

The smallest leitmotif is the single pitch B, symbolizing the murder. Soft at the end of act 2, when Wozzeck, beaten, whispers "einer nach dem andern" (one after the other), it intensifies during the murder, expanding from unison B₃ into crescendoing octaves. Marie's last cry for help spans two octaves, B₅ down to B₃.

A pair of chords closes each act, oscillating into a blur.

Scene 1 (Suite)

Wozzeck shaves the Captain, who orders him to go slow and lectures him on morality. Wozzeck dutifully replies, "Jawohl, Herr Hauptmann" ("Yes sir, Captain"). The Captain scorns his illegitimate son. Wozzeck says it is hard to be good when you are poor, quoting Mark 10:14, "Lasset die Kleinen zu mir kommen" ("Let the children come to me"). The Captain asks what he means. Growing agitated, Wozzeck cries that if the poor reached Heaven, "we'd all have to manufacture thunder!" to crackling, tumultuous music. Unnerved, the Captain concedes Wozzeck is "a decent man, only you think too much!"

Scene 2 (Rhapsody and Hunting Song)

Wozzeck and his fellow soldier Andres gather firewood at sunset. Andres sings a hunting song, while Wozzeck is terrified by visions. Calming down, he ominously murmurs that all is still, as if the world were dead. They must return before dark, Andres reminds him. As they do, a funeral march begins. It transforms as night falls and the scene segues.^[32]

Scene 3 (March and Lullaby)

Morning brings a rowdy military band marching toward Marie's window.^[33] She has a wandering eye for the soldiers. Her neighbor Margret notices and teases her about it. Marie slams the window shut and sings a self-soothing lullaby to her son. Wozzeck arrives and shares not only his visions, but also his affection and money (C-major triad).^[34] As he leaves in a hurry, Marie reminds him to look at their boy. She laments their poverty. He runs to the doctor.

Scene 4 (Passacaglia)

The harried but rational Doctor, whom Wozzeck hails as "Herr Coffin Nail",^[34] scolds Wozzeck for disobeying medical orders (Wozzeck is part of a paid experiment involving a restricted diet and urine collection). The Doctor's anger turns to delight when Wozzeck's mental illness becomes apparent, and he takes his own pulse, reassuring himself.

Scene 5 (Rondo)

Marie admires the Drum Major from her doorway. He makes advances. She briefly resists, then yields.

Scene 1 (Sonata-Allegro)

Marie admires the Drum Major's gift (earrings) and puts her son to bed. Wozzeck arrives and asks about the earrings. Doubting that she found a matching pair, as she claims, he gives her money and leaves her wracked with guilt.

Scene 2 (Fantasia and Fugue on Three Themes)

Echoing the opening, the Captain urges the Doctor to slow down. The Doctor mocks him with dire diagnoses of his ailments. As Wozzeck passes, they hint at Marie's infidelity.

Scene 3 (Largo)

Wozzeck confronts Marie about her infidelity. She does not deny it. Enraged, he nearly strikes her. She stops him: "Better a knife in my belly than your hands on me". He repeats her words, thinking aloud.

Scene 4 (Scherzo)

Marie and the Drum Major dance in the tavern. Wozzeck watches. Soldiers sing a hunter's chorus. Andres notices him alone and asks why. A drunken Apprentice preaches. An Idiot stumbles toward him, crying, "Lustig, ... aber es riecht ... Ich riech Blut!" ("Joyful, ... but it reeks ... I smell blood!")

Scene 5 (Rondo)

At night in the barracks, soldiers snore. Unable to stop thinking about Marie, Wozzeck talks to Andres and prays. The Drum Major enters and humiliates Wozzeck with a beating. Roused, some watch. Wozzeck dissociates.

Scene 1 (Invention on a Theme)

At night in her room, Marie reads the Bible and cries for mercy.

Scene 2 (Invention on a Single Note (B))

At a forest pond, Wozzeck stabs Marie as she tries to run, declaring that if he can't have her, no one can. A blood-red moon rises.

Scene 3 (Invention on a Rhythm)

Wozzeck and Margret dance in the tavern among others as he celebrates doom and the Devil's arrival.^[35] He pulls her onto his lap, insults her, and demands she sing. Others see blood on him, raising alarm. He runs.

Scene 4 (Invention on a Hexachord)

Wozzeck frantically searches the pond for his knife. Paranoid and psychotic, he speaks to Marie, imagining the blood-red moon exposing him to the world. He drowns (possibly by suicide) in the red, moonlit water, which he sees as blood. The Captain and Doctor, walking slowly nearby, are disturbed by the sound of it and return to town.

Interlude (Invention on a Key (D minor))

This interlude provides some catharsis.^[26]

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. News of her death spreads. They run to see her body. Marie's son appears unaffected by this, even when it is shouted at him. After some delay, he follows, oblivious.

Wozzeck is among the most renowned 20th-century modernist operas. John Deathridge called it "one of the undisputed masterpieces of modern opera".^[36] Its dissonant, psychological idiom recalls Schoenberg's Erwartung,^[37] and its tormented, outcast antihero^[38] has prompted comparisons to operas with similar male title roles, such as Giuseppe Verdi's Macbeth and Nabucco, Modest Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, and Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes.^[39] Wozzeck has also been described as more "highbrow" than Grimes, sometimes polemically.^[40]

Berg's critical engagement with militarism and war in Wozzeck faded from view as the work became a repertoire standard increasingly separated from its original context, not unlike Maurice Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin.^[41]

Wozzeck comes from the same Expressionist milieu, rooted in Symbolism,^[b] as novelist Franz Kafka, painters Oskar Kokoschka^[c] and Emil Nolde, and poets Gottfried Benn, Rainier Maria Rilke,^[d] and Franz Werfel.^[53] In German opera, Strauss's Elektra is an early example, followed by Schoenberg's more radical Erwartung and Die glückliche Hand.^[54] Wozzeck, Paul Hindemith's Cardillac, Kurt Weill's Protagonist, and Ernst Krenek's Zwingburg and Der Sprung über den Schatten all premiered within a year of each other.^[55]

The other main composers of the Second Viennese School, Schoenberg and Anton Webern, influenced Berg most, but his operas show openness.^[56] Viennese coffee house culture at forums like the Café Museum exposed him to innovative figures across styles, including the popular composers Franz Lehár, Oscar Straus, Erich Korngold, and Strauss.^[56] In Wozzeck, he drew on Schoenberg's Erwartung and possibly Schreker's Der ferne Klang, having prepared its piano-vocal score in 1911.^[57] But he valued Schreker, whose work remained more Wagnerian, less than Mahler or Schoenberg, and disliked Schreker's next opera, Das Spielwerk und die Prinzessin.^[58]

In his 1929 "Lecture on Wozzeck", Berg said he preferred strict musical form to "the Wagnerian recipe of 'through-composing'",^[59] prompting comparisons of Wozzeck to Ferruccio Busoni's Doktor Faust and Hindemith's Cardillac.^[60] Yet the opera remains Wagnerian,^[61] and he may have stressed form to counter his reputation for quasi-Romantic music.^[60] Werfel, likely the Bergs' closest literary friend, disparaged Wagner's "bloated excess" and "garrulous monotony" in favor of Verdi, perhaps shaping Berg's 1920s view of Wagner as "antiquated".^[62]

The delayed discovery and staging of Büchner's incomplete Woyzeck inspired Berg and Manfred Gurlitt.^[63] Gurlitt's Wozzeck, premiered four months after Berg's^[64] and also published by Universal Edition, discomfited Berg.^[63] They worked without any knowledge of each other,^[64] and Gurlitt's work has remained in the shadow of Berg's.^[64] Examining Gurlitt's piano–vocal score, Berg found it "not bad or unoriginal" but a weak "broth ... even for arme Leut [poor folks]". Gurlitt's leaner musical textures and polystylism align with Hindemith and Weill, with frequent, socially oriented use of the chorus. His opera may be closer to Büchner's original conception.^[63]

Wozzeck and Berg's strategy made him famous.^[65]

Schoenberg, first against Wozzeck, saw the Particell (short score) in 1921 and urged Universal Edition's Emil Hertzka to publish the imminent piano–vocal score by Berg pupils Fritz Heinrich Klein and Gottfried Kassowitz: "This is an opera! Genuine theater music! Everything is flawlessly done, as though Berg had never composed anything but theater music!"^[66]

With funds from dedicatee Alma Mahler, a U.S.-dollar hyperinflation-proof inheritance from his brother Herman's estate, and a loan from May Keller, his lesbian sister Smaragda's companion, Berg paid a hesitant Universal Edition to print private piano–vocal score copies in 1922. He sold few but sent many to critics, conductors, and theaters in early 1923.^[67] Die Musik published the lullaby with Ernst Viebig [de]'s rapt April review: "It is in the form of the piece that the composer opens up new paths", "perhaps" to a "truly 'musical opera'".^[68]

Then Universal Edition published Three Orchestral Pieces plus Wozzeck,^[69] two of which (Präludium and Reigen) Berg had Webern debut at Heinrich Jalowetz's and Paul Pella [de]'s "Austrian Music Week" in Berlin, drawing more press.^[70][71]

When Gustav Havemann's Quartet played Berg's String Quartet at the 1923 Salzburg International Society for Contemporary Music festival, Hermann Scherchen asked for a Wozzeck suite. Berg gave him the march, lullaby, and Bible scene as Three Fragments for Voice and Orchestra from the Opera Wozzeck. Intended for Berlin, Scherchen premiered them at Frankfurt's 1924 Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein (ADMV) festival to acclaim.^[72]

In late 1923, Berg had pianist Ernst Bachrich play Wozzeck excerpts for Berlin State Opera conductor Erich Kleiber in Vienna. Kleiber agreed to stage it. Universal Edition deemed this the best premiere offer.^[73] Berg helped with staging and rehearsals. Many were held, and intendant Max von Schillings quit over a funding clash. The dress rehearsal drew composers Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt and Stefan Wolpe, music writers Paul Stefan from Vienna and Erich Steinhard [de] from Prague, and Berg's pupil Theodor W. Adorno.^[73]

The 14 December 1925 premiere was a succès de scandale with some disruptions.^[21] Wozzeck achieved sustained expressive coherence despite its post-tonal musical language.^[60] It got substantial press coverage from Germany to London and New York,^[74] and was staged throughout Germany and Austria until Nazi Germany forbade "degenerate music".^[21]

In 1926, Otakar Ostrčil translated and led the Czech-language premiere of Wozzeck (Vojcek)^[74] at Prague's National Theatre. Some "Czech Nationalists (virtually Nazis)" and "clerical lobbies" staged "purely political!" disruptions, Berg wrote Adorno: "To them I am the Berlin Jew Alban (Aaron?) Berg. Ostrčil bribed by the Russian Bolsheviks, the whole thing arranged by the 'Elders of Zion' etc."^[75] Antonín Šilhan wrote as much in Národní listy, and Emanuel Žak [cs] linked the opera's degeneracy to Jewish Bolshevism in Čech [cs], while Zdeněk Nejedlý mocked them, praising Wozzeck in Rudé právo. The Bohemian State Committee quickly banned it.^[76][77][e]

In 1927, the Association for Contemporary Music, led by Nikolai Roslavets, staged Wozzeck at Leningrad's Mariinsky Theatre with Boris Asafyev's assistance,^[78] Vladimir Dranishnikov [ru] conducting. Berg rode trains for about three days to attend the first performances and wrote journalist Soma Morgenstern that he was "celebrated [as] never ... before".^[79] Here Wozzeck was, he continued, "a sensation ... in purely artistic, not political, terms".^[79] He wired Helene "huge, tumultuous success", but reviews were mixed.^[80] Dmitri Shostakovich attended all eight or nine performances.^[81][82]

It was not restaged in Russia amid Stalinism and worsening relations with Germany^[78] until 2008.^[83]

Oldenburgisches Staatstheater conductor Johannes Schüler proved the opera could succeed in a small-town theater with few rehearsals.^[79] Berg and Erwin Stein cut sections from four to three musicians, yielding an orchestra of about 60.^[84][85] Berg first gave his "Lecture on Wozzeck" before this premiere, then in eleven more cities.^[79]

For Wozzeck's 1930 Austrian premiere, led by Vienna's Clemens Krauss, Berg gave tickets to friends, family, and his illegitimate daughter, Albine Wittula. While on better terms with Kleiber, Berg was pleased with Krauss's performance and touched by his opera's hometown success.^[86] Neue Freie Presse critic Julius Korngold wrote a polemical review:^[86]

If there is ... "atonal" music, it is ... a music that cannot be ... deduced given its fanatic attachment to chromaticism—in both vertical [harmonic] and horizontal [melodic] dimensions. ... [W]e have here "negative composing" ... with its conscious dethronement of the evolving tonal system and rejection of tonal relationships and a tonal center.

Berg replied in a revised "Lecture on Wozzeck" called "The 'Atonal Opera'", which he delivered at the Kulturbund (lit. 'Cultural Association'), and in a scripted Radio Wien talk with critic Julius Bistron, "What Is Atonal?", framing atonality as tradition-based harmonic innovation.^[86]

Kleiber gave the Wozzeck Fragments their 1930 United States premiere at the New York Philharmonic, priming opera-goers. "Like Debussy in his Pelléas, Berg sought ... to probe the depths of consciousness", wrote Lawrence Gilman in the New York Herald Tribune.^[86]

In 1931, the Philadelphia Grand Opera Company, working with the Curtis Institute of Music and Philadelphia Orchestra, staged the U.S. premiere of Wozzeck at Philadelphia's Metropolitan Opera House under Leopold Stokowski. Composer George Gershwin rode a special Wozzeck train from New York (he'd met Berg in 1928 via pianist Josefa Rosanska, alias Josephine Rosensweet, Rudolf Kolisch's soon-to-be wife, and heard the Kolisch Quartet play Berg's Lyric Suite).^[87] Calling the audience "brilliant", The New York Times' conservative critic Olin Downes wrote of an "astonishing" success and hailed Berg's word painting:^[88]

You may hear the military band approaching, the crackling and cutting of the wood for the captain's fire, feel the approach of darkness and find reflected in the instruments the sulphurous sky of the field scene, and the setting of the sun. Or you will feel the blinding, insane thought of murder in Wozzeck's brain, and may be conscious, with weird distinctness and psychology of effect, of bubbles rising into the pool into which Wozzeck's body has sunk. All ... synthesized and reflected as in a transparent mirror [...]. ... [T]his score ... is beautiful.

Gilman agreed:^[88]

The layman, if he can accustom himself ... will find ... bitter and piercing loveliness, ... intensity, a compassionate wisdom [and] suffusing tenderness ... reveal[ing] Berg [as a] poet ... a pitiful humanitarian, even (let us whisper it!) a shameless romanticist—a social and spiritual rebel, no less than an aesthetic one.

Later that year, Stokowski's Philadelphia team staged Wozzeck's second U.S. premiere at New York's Metropolitan Opera, prompting another Downes review:^[88]

[Berg] is Wozzeck himself, and we ... know Wozzeck's terrors of the strange things ... his premonitions which he cannot explain, of the evil that dogs him, his hallucinations, his murderous revolt. This is the psychological and emotional quality of the music.

In 1932, Henry Wood led the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a studio performance of the Wozzeck Fragments broadcast by Schoenberg pupil Edward Clark.^[89] In 1934, Adrian Boult conducted Wozzeck in a Queen's Hall concert performance also broadcast by Clark.^[90][91] In 1952, it was staged at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.^[21]

Wozzeck brought Berg financial comfort, mostly via royalties from performances in Central Europe,^{[citation needed]} nearly until his 1935 death. He traveled not only to Germany, Czechoslovakia, Soviet Russia, and England, but also to Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, France, and Italy for performances of and talks about the opera. Busy attending to his success and enjoying independence, he declined vacations with Schoenberg and Schreker's offers of a Berlin Musikhochschule appointment.^[60] He benefited from new relationships with Kleiber, Karl Böhm, and Gian Francesco Malipiero, and was appointed to the ADMV jury.^[92]

Berg and Krenek were acquainted at the salons of Alma Mahler,^[93] a close friend of the Bergs^[94] and the wife or lover of Gustav Mahler, Kokoschka, and Werfel. Krenek studied Wozzeck's piano–vocal score and wrote Berg with praise and questions about vocal writing while working with Kokoschka on Orpheus und Eurydike in 1923.^[93] Berg replied with examples from Wagner, Mozart, and Bach, stressing music adapted to singers' limits and his use of voice ("the supreme instrument") for dramatic effect (as in Sprechgesang, or speech singing).^[95] Krenek denied modeling Orpheus on Wozzeck, but Berg likely influenced him. Hans Hartleb saw parallels in the operas' violence and music of "fatalism, melancholy, and sensuality" for Eurydike and Marie^[93] (whose role such music elevated).^[96]

In Sinfonia (1968–69), Luciano Berio quotes the rising orchestral chords Berg uses in the word painting of Wozzeck's drowning.^{[citation needed]}

Besides Stein's arrangement,^[84] John Rea's arrangement is for 22 singers and 21 instrumental parts.^[22]

The Hamburg State Opera's 1970 production was filmed at a deserted castle for director Joachim Hess [de]'s 1972 TV film Wozzeck, broadcast on Norddeutscher Rundfunk.^[97]