Lev Semenovich Berg
Born	March 14, 1876 Bender
Died	December 24, 1950 Leningrad
Fields	Geographer and biologist

Lev Semyonovich Berg (also known as Leo S. Berg) (Russian: Лев Семёнович Берг; March 14, 1876, Bender - December 24, 1950, Leningrad) was a leading Soviet geographer and ichthyologist who served as President of the Soviet Geographical Society between 1940 and 1950. He also developed his own evolutionary theory as opposed to the theories of Darwin and Lamarck.

Bio[link]

Berg was born in Moldova in Russia, he enrolled at a Moscow University early in his life where he studied hydrobiology and geography. He later studied icthyology and in 1928 was awarded he was also a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Lev Berg graduated from the Moscow University in 1898. Between 1903 and 1914, he worked in the Museum of Zoology in Saint Petersburg. He was one of the founders of the Geographical Institute, now a Faculty of Geography of the Saint Petersburg University.

Berg studied and determined the depth of the lakes of Central Asia, including Balkhash and Issyk Kul. He developed Dokuchaev's doctrine of natural zones, which became one of the foundations of the Soviet biology. Among his pioneering monographs on climatology were "Climate and Life" (1922) and "Foundations of Climatology" (1927).

During his lifetime, Berg was a towering presence in the science of ichthyology.^[1] In 1916, he published four volumes of the study of Fishes of Russia. The fourth edition was issued in 1949 as Freshwater Fishes of the Soviet Union and Adjacent Countries and won him the Stalin Prize.^[2] He was said to have discovered the symbiotic relationship between lampreys and salmon. Berg's name is featured in the Latin appellations of more than 60 species of plants and animals.

In 2001, the Central Bank of Transnistria minted a silver coin honoring this native of today's Transnistria,^[3] as part of a series of commemorative coins called The Outstanding People of Pridnestrovie.

Berg was honored for a lifetime of scientific achievement by the Imperial Russian Geographical Society and presented with the P.P. Semenov-Tian-Shansky Gold Medal.^[1]

Nomogenesis[link]

Berg is most well known for his evolutionary theory called nomogenesis, which was a type of orthogenesis. Berg's ideas were collected in his book Nomogenesis; or, Evolution Determined by Law and was first published in 1922 in Russia; it was later translated into English in two editions the first appearing in 1926 and the later edition appearing in 1969. In the book Berg collected a large amount of empirical data which offered a strong criticism of Darwin's theory of evolution.^[4]

Berg's theory of nomogenesis combined arguments from paleontology, zoology and botany to claim that evolution is not a random process. The theory of Nomogenesis emphasized the limitations of natural selection which determine the directionality of evolution.^[5]

Berg claimed that the variation of characters in species is confined within certain limits due to both internal and external factors. The limitation of the variability, Berg argued, left hardly any space for natural selection; he claimed this was supported by the paleontological record because all the phylogenetic branches look more or less like straight lines. Berg distanced himself from both Darwinism and Lamarckism. Instead he proposed the concept of directed mass mutations as the main mechanism for directing evolution.^[4]

Influenced by the paleontologist Wilhelm Waagen, he labeled the directed mutations Waagen-Mutations:

"New species arise by means of mass transformation of a great number of individuals, which happens due to Waagen mutations... This mass transformation is a phenomenon of geological magnitude. It is connected with the alteration of the fauna of a certain horizon and comes about in certain periods only to be absent for a long time"^[6]

Thus Berg claimed evolution was caused by mass mutations, which are directed by internal and external factors, so that new species occur with a high probability of being almost perfectly adapted. According to Berg, newly evolved species beget the subordinate taxonomic categories, and appear to be perfectly adapted to their environments. Although Berg's theory was anti-Darwinian, and anti-Lamarckian, it still advocated adaptive evolution.^[4]

J B S Haldane called Nomogenesis "by far the best anti-Darwinian book of this century".^[7]

Works[link]

• Nomogenesis; or, Evolution Determined by Law (1922)^[8]
• "Fresh-water fishes of Russia" (1923)
• Discovery of Kamchatka and Bering's Kamchatka Voyages (1924)
• Russian discoveries in the Pacific (1926)^[9]
• "Principles of climatology" (1927)^[10] (reprinted 1938) ^[11]
• Geographical zones of the U.S.S.R. (1937)^[12]
• "Freshwater fishes of the U.S.S.R. and adjacent countries. Volume 1-3. Israel Program for Scientific Translations Ltd, Jerusalem. 1962-65 (Russian version published 1948-49)."^[13]
• "Natural regions of the U.S.S.R." (1950)^[14]
• "Classification of fishes, both recent and fossil" (1940)^[15]
• Loess as a product of weathering and soil formation ^[16]

See also[link]

• Orthogenesis
• Lysenkoism
• Eclipse of Darwinism

References[link]

External links[link]

• Article in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Berg's "Nomogenesis" Review by Professor E.W. Macbride, F.R.S

Alban Berg

Alban Maria Johannes Berg (February 9, 1885 – December 24, 1935) was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.

Biography[link]

Early life[link]

Berg was born in Vienna, the third of four children of Johanna and Conrad Berg. His family lived comfortably until the death of his father in 1900.

Education[link]

He was more interested in literature than music as a child and did not begin to compose until he was fifteen, when he started to teach himself music. In late February or early March 1902 he fathered a child with Marie Scheuchl, a servant girl in the Berg family household. His daughter, Albine, was born on December 4, 1902.

Berg had little formal music education before he became a student of Arnold Schoenberg in October 1904. With Schoenberg he studied counterpoint, music theory, and harmony.^[1] By 1906, he was studying music full-time; by 1907, he began composition lessons. His student compositions included five drafts for piano sonatas. He also wrote songs, including his Seven Early Songs (Sieben Frühe Lieder), three of which were Berg's first publicly performed work in a concert that featured the music of Schoenberg's pupils in Vienna that year. The early sonata sketches eventually culminated in Berg's Piano Sonata, Op. 1 (1907–1908); it is one of the most formidable "first" works ever written.^[2]

Berg studied with Schoenberg for six years until 1911. Berg admired him as a composer and mentor, and they remained close lifelong friends.

Among Schoenberg's teaching was the idea that the unity of a musical composition depends upon all its aspects being derived from a single basic idea; this idea was later known as developing variation. Berg passed this on to his students, one of whom, Theodor Adorno, stated: "The main principle he conveyed was that of variation: everything was supposed to develop out of something else and yet be intrinsically different".^[3] The Piano Sonata is an example—the whole composition is derived from the work's opening quartal gesture and its opening phrase.

Innovation[link]

Berg was a part of Vienna's cultural elite during the heady fin de siècle period. His circle included the musicians Alexander von Zemlinsky and Franz Schreker, the painter Gustav Klimt, the writer and satirist Karl Kraus, the architect Adolf Loos, and the poet Peter Altenberg. In 1906, Berg met the singer Helene Nahowski, daughter of a wealthy family (said by some to be in fact the illegitimate daughter of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria from his liaison with Anna Nahowski);^[4] despite the outward hostility of her family, the two were married on May 3, 1911.

In 1913, two of Berg's Five Songs on Picture Postcard Texts by Peter Altenberg (1912) were premièred in Vienna, conducted by Schoenberg. Settings of aphoristic poetic utterances, the songs are accompanied by a very large orchestra. The performance caused a riot, and had to be halted. This was a crippling blow to Berg's self-confidence: he effectively withdrew the work, which is surely one of the most extraordinarily innovative and assured first orchestral compositions in the literature, and it was not performed in full until 1952. The full score remained unpublished until 1966.

From 1915 to 1918, Berg served in the Austrian Army and during a period of leave in 1917 he accelerated work on his first opera, Wozzeck. After the end of World War I, he settled again in Vienna where he taught private pupils. He also helped Schoenberg run his Society for Private Musical Performances, which sought to create the ideal environment for the exploration and appreciation of unfamiliar new music by means of open rehearsals, repeat performances, and the exclusion of professional critics.

[edit] Success of Wozzeck

Three excerpts from Wozzeck were performed in 1924, and this brought Berg his first public success. The opera, which Berg completed in 1922, was first performed on December 14, 1925, when Erich Kleiber directed the first performance in Berlin. Today Wozzeck is seen as one of the century's most important works. Berg completed the orchestration of only the first two acts of his later three-act opera Lulu, before he died. The first two acts were successfully premièred in Zürich in 1937, but for personal reasons Helene Berg subsequently imposed a ban on any attempt to "complete" the final act, which Berg had in fact completed in particell format. An orchestration was therefore commissioned in secret from Friedrich Cerha and premièred in Paris (under Pierre Boulez) only in 1979, soon after Helene Berg's own death. The complete opera has rapidly entered the repertoire as one of the landmarks of contemporary music and, like Wozzeck, remains a consistent audience draw.

Berg had interrupted the orchestration of Lulu because of an unexpected (and financially much-needed) commission from the Russian-American violinist Louis Krasner for a Violin Concerto (1935). This profoundly elegiac work, composed at unaccustomed speed and posthumously premièred, has become Berg's best-known and beloved composition. Like much of his mature work, it employs an idiosyncratic adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique that enables the composer to produce passages openly evoking tonality, including quotations from historical tonal music, such as a Bach chorale and a Carinthian folk song. The Violin Concerto was dedicated "to the memory of an Angel", Manon Gropius, the deceased daughter of architect Walter Gropius and Alma Mahler.

Other well-known Berg compositions include the Lyric Suite (1926), which was later shown to employ elaborate cyphers to document a secret love affair; the extraordinarily elaborate post-Mahlerian Three Pieces for Orchestra (completed in 1915 but not performed until after Wozzeck); and the Chamber Concerto (Kammerkonzert, 1923–25) for violin, piano and 13 wind instruments: this latter is written so conscientiously that Pierre Boulez has called it "Berg's strictest composition" and it, too, is permeated by cyphers and posthumously disclosed hidden programs.

Death[link]

Berg died in Vienna, on Christmas Eve 1935, from blood poisoning apparently caused by an insect-sting-induced carbuncle on his back. He had been reduced to near-poverty and it is said that to save money his wife carried out an ill-advised operation using a pair of scissors. Later he was taken to hospital, although too late to prevent the onset of blood poisoning. He was 50 years old.

Legacy[link]

Berg is remembered as one of the most important composers of the 20th century and to date is the most widely performed opera composer among the Second Viennese School.^[5] He is considered to have brought more human values to the twelve-tone system, his works seen as more emotional than Schoenberg's.^[6] Critically he is seen to have preserved the Viennese tradition in his music.^{[7][verification needed]} His popularity has been more easily secured than many other Modernists since he plausibly combined both Romantic and Expressionist idioms. Though Berg's Romanticism at one time seemed a drawback for some more modernist composers,^{[weasel words]} the Berg scholar Douglas Jarman writes in the New Grove: "As the 20th century closed, the 'backward-looking' Berg suddenly came as [George] Perle remarked, to look like its most forward-looking composer."^[8]

Major compositions[link]

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Adorno, Theodor W. Alban Berg: Master of the Smallest Link. Trans. Juliane Brand and Christopher Hailey. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
• Jarman, Douglas. "Alban Berg", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed April 9, 2007), (subscription access)
• Warrack, John and Ewan West. The Oxford Dictionary of Opera, 1992. ISBN 0-19-869164-5

Further reading[link]

Analytical writings[link]

• Adorno, Theodor W. Alban Berg: Master of the Smallest Link. Trans. Juliane Brand and Christopher Hailey. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
• Bruhn, Siglind, ed. Encrypted Messages in Alban Berg’s Music. New York: Garland Publishing, 1998.
• Headlam, Dave. The Music of Alban Berg. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.
• Jarman, Douglas. Dr. Schon's Five-Strophe Aria: Some Notes on Tonality and Pitch Association in Berg's Lulu. Perspectives of New Music 8/2 (Spring/Summer 1970).
• Jarman, Douglas. Some Rhythmic and Metric Techniques in Alban Berg's Lulu. Musical Quarterly 56/3 (July 1970).
• Jarman, Douglas. Lulu: The Sketches. International Alban Berg Society Newsletter, 6 (June 1978).
• Jarman, Douglas. The Music of Alban Berg. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.
• Jarman, Douglas. Countess Geschwitz's Series: A Controversy Resolved?. Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 107 (1980/81).
• Jarman, Douglas. Some Observations on Rhythm, Meter and Tempo in Lulu. In Alban Berg Studien. Ed. Rudolf Klein. Vienna: Universal Edition, 1981.
• Jarman, Douglas. Lulu: The Musical and Dramatic Structure. Royal Opera House Covent Garden program notes, 1981.
• Jarman, Douglas. The 'Lost' Score of the 'Symphonic Pieces from Lulu'. International Alban Berg Society Newsletter 12 (Fall/Winter 1982).
• Lauder, Robert Neil. Two Early Piano Works of Alban Berg: A Stylistic and Structural Analysis. Thesis. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1986.
• Perle, George. The Operas of Alban Berg. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.
• Schmalfeldt, Janet. "Berg’s Path to Atonality: The Piano Sonata, Op. 1". Alban Berg: Historical and Analytical Perspectives. Eds. David Gable and Robert P. Morgan, pp. 79–110. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
• Schweizer, Klaus. Die Sonatensatzform im Schaffen Alban Bergs. Stuttgart: Satz und Druck, 1970.
• Wilkey, Jay Weldon. Certain Aspects of Form in the Vocal Music of Alban Berg. Ph.D. thesis. Ann Arbor: Indiana University, 1965.

Biographical writings[link]

• Brand, Juliane, Christopher Hailey and Donald Harris, eds. The Berg-Schoenberg Correspondence: Selected Letters. New York: Norton, 1987.
• Grun, Bernard, ed. Alban Berg: Letters to his Wife. London: Faber and Faber, 1971.
• Floros, Contantin. Trans. by Ernest Bernhardt-Kabisch. Alban Berg and Hanna Fuchs. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007.
• Redlich, H.F. Alban Berg, the Man and His Music. London: John Calder, 1957.
• Reich, Willi. The life and work of Alban Berg. Trans. Cornelius Cardew. New York : Da Capo Press, 1982.
• Monson, Karen. Alban Berg: a biography. London: Macdonald and Jane's, 1979.
• Carner, Mosco. Alban Berg: the man and the work. London: Duckworth, 1975.
• Redlich, Hans Ferdinand. Alban Berg, the man and his music. London: J. Calder, 1957.
• Leibowitz, René. Schoenberg and his school; the contemporary stage of the language of music. Trans. Dika Newlin. New York: Philosophical Library, 1949.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Alban Berg

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Alban Berg

• Alban Berg biography and works on the UE website (publisher)
• The Lied and Art Song Texts Page greated and mantained from Emily Ezust Texts of the Lieder of Berg with translations in various languages.
• Free scores by Alban Berg at the International Music Score Library Project
• Alban Berg at Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music
• Excerpts from sound archives of Berg's works.
• Three Pieces for Orchestra op.6

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (April 2011)

Amanda Wilson
Background information
Birth name	Amanda Wilson
Genres	House
Associated acts	Freemasons

Amanda Wilson , is a British singer in the UK house music act, Freemasons. As part of the act she has scored two major UK hit singles, one of which went on to success in several European charts, and the US Billboard Hot Dance Club Songs chart.

Background[link]

Wilson provided lead vocals on the track "When We Were In Love" which made it to the semi final of The Great British Song Contest 1998 to select the UK's entry for the Eurovision Song Contest. She has a four octave vocal range and her vocals have been compared to Mariah Carey.^{[by whom?]} Her vocal skills brought her to the attention of music industry A&R. However most of Wilson's success has been found as a guest vocalist working with dance acts.

With the Freemasons[link]

Wilson provided lead vocals on many tracks on the Freemasons' album, Shakedown. It is believed that The Freemasons discovered Wilson while singing at a karaoke bar in the Méditerranée.^{[citation needed]} Her biggest hit was the Freemasons track, "Love On My Mind", which reached number 11 in 2005 on the UK Singles Chart.^[1] The song sampled vocals from "This Time Baby" by Jackie Moore, and lyrics from "When The Heartache Is Over" by Tina Turner. Wilson's vocals on the track were electronically lowered in pitch to blend in with the sampled vocals of Jackie Moore.^{[citation needed]}

Following her success with the Freemasons' first album, Wilson went on to provide lead vocals for their 2008 remix of Gusto's "Disco's Revenge", which gave her a third Top 40 hit in the UK (peaking at number 34).^[2]

She has also provided vocals for various other dance tracks, most recently on the Outsiders' single "Keep This Fire Burning".

Discography[link]

• "Love On My Mind" – Freemasons (2005) UK #11^[1]
• "Electric Love" – Glamour Katz (2006)
• "Watchin'" – Freemasons (2006) UK #19^[3]
• "I Feel Like" – Freemasons (2007)
• "Gotta Let Go" – A. Lee (2007)
• "Intoxicated" – Raw (2007)
• "Heaven In Your Eyes" Night Drive (2007)
• "The Right Way" – Wawa & Herd (2007)
• "Disco's Revenge" – Gusto (2008) UK #33
• "Good 4 Me" – Daytone (2008)
• "Pure Emotion" – Mr Fix It (2008)
• "Found A Miracle" – Loveless (2008)
• "Keep This Fire Burning" - Outsiders (2008) UK #80
• "Need In Me" - Danny Dove & Steve Smart (2008)
• "Love Resurrection" - Aurora (2008)
• "You're Not Good For Me" - Roxy ST (2008)
• "Falling For You" - Soulcatcher (2008)
• "Saturday" - Weekend Lovers (2008)
• "Something Gotta Give" - Thomas Gold (2008)
• "Break It Off" - Audiostar (2008)
• "The Right Way (Remixes)" - Wawa & Herd (2009)
• "Make It Real" - Signs (2009)
• "Surrender" - Night Drive (2009)
• "Just Because" - Thomas Gold (2009)
• "Underneath My Skin" - Nick Bridges (2009)
• "U Sure Do" (2010)
• "Satisfaction Guaranteed" - Mr Sam and Andy Duguid (2010)
• "Love U Seek" - Samuele Sartini (2010)
• "Caught Up" - Paul Harris, Michael Gray, Jon Pearn (2010)
• "Not Over You" - Olav Basoski & Redroche (2010)
• "Smile" - Sound Of Soho (2010)
• "Sometimes" - Dim Chris (2010)
• "Seek Bromance" - Tim Berg (2010) (Wilson re-recorded the vocals from "Love You Seek" for Berg's "Bromance")
• "You & I" Kalwi & Remi(2011)
• "Back Again" - Samuele Sartini (2011)
• "You Found Me" - Dim Chris (2011)
• "Runaway" (Ian Carey Remix) (2011)
• "Runaway" (Sidney Samson Remix) (2011)
• "Don't Throw It Away"(Dominatorz Extended Club Mix)(2011)

Solo releases[link]

• "Spin It Again" (2009)
• "Another Minute Remix 2010" (2010)
• "Amanda Wilson" (Album) (2012)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Amanda Wilson on Discogs