Transcript Starting from Scratch

Starting from Scratch
Music in the Aftermath of
World War II
Zero Hour:
The Impact on the Arts
• Cold War
• Crisis in the arts
• Divide between “high” and “low” art became
greater
• Stunde Null (Zero Hour): time without a past
• Serialism
• Pierre Boulez (b. 1925), “Schoenberg est
mort” (Schoenberg Is Dead, 1952)
Total Serialism:
Messiaen’s Mode de Valeurs et
d’Intensites
• Mode de Valeurs et d’Intensites (1949)
[Anthology 3-49]
– “hypostatization”
• Influence on “total serialism”
• Boulez, Structures for two pianos (1951)
[Anthology 3-50]
Darmstadt
• Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik
(International Summer Courses for New
Music)
– influence of Anton Webern
• Pierre Boulez (b. 1925)
• Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928–2007)
• Bruno Maderna (1920–1973)
Indeterminacy: John Cage
and the “New York School”
• American counterpart to the European avantgarde
• John Cage (1912–1992)
– “The Future of Music: Credo” (1940)
Music for Prepared Piano
• Bacchanale (1940) [Anthology 3-51]
• Sonatas and Interludes (1946–48)
– Influence of Zen Buddhism
• Daisetz Suzuki (1869–1966)
• Influence of I Ching “Book of Changes”
• Music of Changes (1951)
• Boulez, Aléa (from the Latin for dice)
• aleatoric, chance operations or spontaneous decisions
Silence
• 4’33” (1952)
– “Tacet for any instrument or combination of
instruments”
“Permission”: Cage’s Influence
• Robert Rauschenberg: Cage “gave me license
to do anything.”
• Morton Feldman: Cage gave everybody
“permission.”
• Earle Brown (1926–2002)
– “graphic notation”
• “Happenings”
• Fluxus
Preserving the Sacrosanct:
Morton Feldman
• Morton Feldman (1926–1987)
• “Free rhythm notation”
• Rothko Chapel (1971) [Anthology 3-52]
Conversions
• Aaron Copland
– “popular” and “difficult” styles
– Piano Quartet (1950)
– Piano Fantasy (1957)
– Connotations (1962)
• Igor Stravinsky
– assistance of Robert Craft (b. 1923)
– Requiem Canticles (1966) [Anthology 3-53]
Academicism, American Style
• Milton Babbitt (1916–2011)
– Princeton University
– trained in mathematic, logic, and music
– “set theory”
– “pitch class,” “aggregate,” “combinatorial”
– Composition for Four Instruments (1948)
[Anthology 3-54]
Electronics: An Old Dream Comes True
• Edgard Varèse
• Cage, “The Future of Music: Credo”
• Italian Futurists
• Theremin
– 1920, Lev Sergeyvich Termen (1896–1993)
• Ondes martenot
– Maurice Martenot (1898–1980)
Musique Concrète versus
Elektronische Music
• Musique Concrète
– using real-world sounds
– Pierre Schaeffer (1910–1995)
• Concert de bruits (Concert of Noises, 1948)
• Étude aux chemis de fer (Railroad Study)
• Étude aux casseroles (Saucepan Study)
– Pierre Henry (b. 1927)
• Orphée 53
– Luciano Berio
• Thema “Omaggio a Joyce” (1958)
Musique Concrète versus
Elektronische Music
• Elektronische Music
– music based exclusively on synthesized sounds
– Herbert Eimert (1897–1972)
– Stockhausen
• Studien (1953,54)
Musique Concrète versus
Elektronische Music
• Use of both
– Stockhausen
• Gesang der Jünglinge (1956)
• Hymnen (1967)
The New Technology Spreads
• “Computer music”
– Columbia and Princeton Universities
– “transducer”
• converts audio signals to digital
• RCA Mark II music synthesizer
• Varèse
– Déserts (1949–54)
– Poème électronique (1958)
Electronics and Live Music
• Mario Davidovsky (b. 1934)
– Synchronisms
• for electronic sounds with a live, virtuosic performer on a
variety of instruments or voices
• György Ligeti
– Atmosphères
• originally for electronics, rewritten for “large orchestra
without percussion”
• Krzysztof Penderecki (b. 1933)
– Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (1960)
• “sonority piece”
Music in History:
Elliot Carter
• (b. 1908)
• “Philosophic conceptions” in “Music and the
Time Screen” (1971)
• “Metrical modulation”
• First String Quartet (1950–51) [Anthology 355]
– fixed vs. fluid tempi
Carter’s Later Career
• Variations for Orchestra (1953–55)
• Second String Quartet (1959)
– Pulitzer Prize winner
• Third Quartet (1971)
– Pulitzer Prize winner
• Double Concerto for Harpsichord and Piano
with Two Chamber Orchestras (1961)
• What’s Next? (1999)
– one-act comic opera
“Who Cares If You Listen?”
• Milton Babbit, 1957 article in High Fidelity
– “The Composer as Specialist”
– “Should the layman be other than bored and
puzzled by what he is unable to understand, music
or anything else?”