Berg was asked to write a violin concerto for the violinist Louis Krasner. At the time he was working hard on his opera "Lulu", which took him several years to write. He stopped working on the opera for four months in the summer of 1935 so that he could write the violin concerto. He had probably already started the concerto when he heard the sad news of the death of a girl called Manon Gropius, the daughter of Alma Mahler (who had once been Gustav Mahler's wife) and Walter Gropius. Berg decided to dedicate the concerto to Manon. He wrote at the top of the work: "To the memory of an angel."