Berger studied at New York University and also at Harvard University under Piston. He served as a professor at several universities, including the Juilliard School and Brandeis University. In addition to these duties, Berger was a music critic and editor, as well as a contributor to several papers and peiodocals. All of these activities were for the purpose of broadening his musical understanding and creativity, or to advance American composers. His early influences were Stravinsky and Schoenberg, and later Webern. One of his main compositional concerns had been that of musical space, vertical and horizontal. He made use of very wide linear leaps such as 7ths and 9ths and considered these to conjunct intervals. His goal in this matter was not to create abstract sound but to enhance the beauty of pitch relationships. Though a diatonic composer early on, he often displaced and fragmented chords to challenge the vertical space. His later works moved away from serialism, but he continued his effort to create spacial effects through the use of tone-cluster 'cells', or pitch classes that are diffused by shifting octave arrangements.