Theodor Berger

Theodor Berger (Traismauer, Lower Austria, 1905 – Vienna, 1992) was an Austrian composer whose output was almost entirely devoted to the orchestra. His importance lies in having conceived music as a means of depicting nature or the experiences one lives through it, so that his pieces are built around clearly defined instrumental ensembles.

He studied at the Vienna Academy of Music between 1926 and 1932, where his teachers included Franz Schmidt and Hubert Kessler. In his view, melody did not precede sound; rather, it emerged from the sounds employed. Thus the first movement of the Sinfonia parabolica (1956), entitled «Scivolando», evokes the practice of skiing, while Hydromelos (1965) reproduces what is heard when diving underwater. Although he wrote almost exclusively for orchestra, his occasional use of voices, as in Frauenstimmen im Orchester (1959), fitted his interest in timbral colour.

In the 1930s he moved to Berlin, where he absorbed some of the ideas of the Neue Sachlichkeit, particularly those that suited his taste for mechanical rhythms, evident in pieces from Impressionen, op. 8 (1938) such as «Sägewerk» and «Werkstattrhythmen». He returned to Vienna in 1939. His music, however, did not achieve wider dissemination until after the Second World War, and among those who championed it were Wilhelm Furtwängler and Karl Böhm.

Among his best-known works are also the Homerische Symphonie (1946–1948), the Concerto manuale (1951) and Fonofolium (1987). His legacy is bound up with an aesthetic that sought sonic painting and the value of timbre above traditional melody, and his manuscript archive is held at the Austrian National Library in Vienna.