Music in the Renaissance (1450-1600)
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Transcript Music in the Renaissance (1450-1600)
Twentieth-Century Developments
Extremes in violence and progress
1st half of century
World Wars I & II
Dictatorships
Global Depression
2nd half of century
Breakup of colonial empires
Cold War between USA and Soviet Union (USSR)
Armed conflicts
Rapid economic growth
Equal rights movements
Twentieth-Century Developments
Technology and science
First flight / Walk on the moon
Communications
Albert Einstein – theory of relativity
Sigmund Freud – understanding the unconscious
Structure of DNA
Arts
Shock as a goal
Modern dance
Picasso’s and Kandinsky’s artwork
Emphasis on pluralism and diversity
Contradictions coexist / alternations between contradictions
Twentieth-Century Developments
Summary of arts developments
USA – powerful force in culture, entertainment,
politics, economics
Nonwestern cultures/thought affect the arts
New technologies affect artists
Human sexuality explored
Minority representation
Reactions to wars and massacres
“Postmodern” approach less serious / blur lines
between elite and pop culture
Musical Styles: 1900-1945
More fundamental changes in language of
music than 1650-1900
New approaches
Pitch and rhythm organization
New vocabulary of sound
Originally met with hostility
Now: commonly heard in jazz, rock, TV, Movies
No single system governs pitch organization
for all music
Relies less on pre-established relationships
and expectations
1900-1945: An Age of Musical Diversity
Great diversity of musical styles
Different musical languages vs. dialects
Reflects diversity of life
Agency – freedom to choose
Global communication and travel
Wider range of music available
Unconventional rhythms, sounds, melodic patterns
Influence of non-European music
American jazz – Improvisation, syncopations, unique tone colors
Inspiration from wider historical range, including forms
Characteristics of Twentieth-Century Music
Tone Color
More important – Variety – Continuity – Mood
Noiselike / percussive sounds
Uncommon playing techniques
Glissando
Col legno
Flutter-tongue
More percussion instruments
Harmony
Consonance and dissonance
Emancipation of dissonance
Polychords
Quartal chords
New chord structures
Characteristics of Twentieth-Century Music
Alternatives to the Traditional Tonal System
Less gravity to tonic key; maj/min
Tonal center around a chord or tone
Twelve-tone system
Use of church modes
Polytonality / bitonality
Atonality
Rhythm
Emphasis on irregularity and unpredictability
New structures – “free and varied”
Irregular phrases / meters
Rapid changes
Polyrhythm
Ostinato
Characteristics of Twentieth-Century Music
Melody
No longer tied to chords, harmony or
tonality
Lack of tonal center
Wide leaps
Series of irregular phrases
Music and Musicians in Society
Living Room becomes the new “concert hall”
Technology – radio, recordings, TV
Larger audience
Larger repertoire
Radio broadcasts
1920s – reach large audience
1930s – radio networks form orchestras
NBC Symphony Orchestra
Regular broadcasts of Saturday matinee performances of the Metropolitan
Opera
Television broadcasts
1951 – Amahl and the Night Visitors
First opera created for television
Live from Lincoln Center / Live from the Met
New York Philharmonic / Bernstein
Public television
Music and Musicians in Society
Repertoire dominated by music of earlier
periods during the first half of 20th century
Contemporary works neglected / “difficult”
Formation of “new music” groups
International Society for Contemporary Music
1950s – More contemporary music
performed
In concert by major orchestras and opera
companies
Recordings
Musicians more accustomed & proficient
Music and Musicians in Society
Many modern compositions commissioned
Tied with developments in dance
Film scores
Philanthropic foundations
Few composers lived on commissions alone
Latin American composers
Earned living by teaching, conducting, performing
“composers in residence”
Hieter Villa-Lobos, Silvestre Revueltas, Carlos Chávez, Alberto
Ginastera, Astor Piazzolla
Women composers
Amy Beach, Ruth Crawford-Seeger, Miriam Gideon, Vivian Fine, Ellen
Taaffe Zwilich
Music and Musicians in Society
African American composers and
performers
William Grant Still, Howard Swanson, Ulysses
Kay, Olly Wilson, Tania Léon, George Walker
Admitted to music schools / banned from
opera companies and orchestras
1945 – Todd Duncan, baritone, performs at the
NYC Opera Company
1955 – Marian Anderson, contralto, performs at
the Metropolitan Opera
Music and Musicians in Society
Political, economic, social upheavals
Russian Revolution (1917)
Rachmaninoff and others leave Russia
Musicians’ lives and careers strictly controlled
1930’s – Communist Party demands that Soviet
composers:
Reject modernism
Write music that praise the regime
Hitler in Germany (1933)
Avant-garde, socialist, and Jewish musicians lose jobs
Onset of WWII – largest migration of artists in
history
Stravinsky, Bartók, Schoenberg, Hindemith leave
Europe for USA
Music and Musicians in Society
USA influence on music
Jazz and American popular music sweep the
world
Post-1920 – Large group of composers / wide
spectrum of contemporary styles
Most first-rank symphony orchestras
American colleges and universities
Train and employ leading composers, performers,
scholars
Expand course offerings
Sponsor 20th century music specialty groups
Electronic music studios
Impressionism and Symbolism
French Impressionist Painting
1874 – Exhibition by French painters
Monet, Renoir, Pissaro and others
Critic comments negatively on Monet’s Impression: Sunrise
Critic mocks show as “exhibition of impressionists”
Term impressionist sticks
Loses negative implication
Impressionist paintings
Appreciated today
In 1870’s – seen as formless collections of tiny colored patches
(viewed too closely)
Painters concerned with light, color, atmosphere (impermanence,
change, fluidity)
Outdoor scenes from contemporary life
Obsessed with water
Impressionism and Symbolism
French Symbolist Poetry
Emphasized fluidity, suggestion, and the
purely musical, or sonorous, effects of words
Mallarmé, Verlaine, Rimbaud – symbolist
poets
Debussy (composer) was a friend of many
symbolist poets
The Afternoon of a Faun by Mallarmé inspires
Debussy’s most famous orchestral work
Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
Impressionist composer / links Romantic era with
20th Century
Age 10-22 – studies at Paris Conservatory
1884 – wins Prix de Rome
Regarded as talented rebel by teachers
3 years of study in Rome subsidized
Leaves after 2 years / lacking musical inspiration away
from Paris
Musical influences –
Russian music / visits to Russia
Worked with Nadezhda von Meck
Asian music – Paris International Exposition (1889)
Wagner’s music / both attracted and repelled
Claude Debussy
Earns small income teaching piano
Attended literary gatherings regularly
Little known to musical public
1902 – Pelléas and Mélisande (opera)
Financial and emotional crises
Constantly borrowing money
Love affairs
Concert tours to pay for luxuries
Critics sharply divided
Soon catches on / most important living French composer
Not a gifted conductor / hated appearing in public
1918 - Dies in Paris
Debussy’s Music
Descriptive titles
Fleeting moods / misty atmosphere
Inspired by literary and pictorial ideas
Impressionism in music
Sounds free and spontaneous
Stress on tone color and fluidity
Treatment of harmony
Chords used more for their tone color and sonority than in a
progression
Lack of traditional resolutions
Parallel chords / planing
Adds 5-note chords to harmonic vocabulary
Debussy’s Music
Tonality
Pentatonic / whole-tone scales
Rhythmic flexibility
Debussy’s Output
One opera
Art Songs
Piano Works
Works for Orchestra and Chamber Ensembles
Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun
(1894)
“free illustration” of Mallarmé’s poem
Dreams and fantasies of a faun
“long solo” on his flute
Tries to recall whether he carried off two beautiful
nymphs or not
Falls asleep, exhausted by the effort
“successive scenes through which pass the dreams
and desires of the faun in the heat of the
afternoon”
Woodwind solos, muted horn calls, harp
glissandos
Neoclassicism (1920-1950)
Emotional restraint, balance, clarity
Use of earlier techniques to organize 20th century
harmonies and rhythms
Slogan: “Back to Bach”
Preferred absolute music for chamber groups over
program music and gigantic orchestras
Fugues, concerti grossi, baroque suites
Post WWI economy affects this
Most use maj/min scales
Some use 12-tone system
Sounds modern /
Neoclassicism in other arts
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
Legendary figure / friends with T.S. Eliot and
Picasso / Honored by JFK
Born near St. Petersburg, Russia
Studied with Rimsky-Korsakov
1909 – heard by Diaghilev, director of Russian
ballet
Asked for orchestration of Chopin pieces
1910 – commissions The Firebird
1911 – Petrushka
1913 – The Rite of Spring
Riot erupts
Later recognized as masterpiece
Influences composers around the world
Igor Stravinsky
WWI – flees to Switzerland
After armistice – moves to France
WWII – comes to USA
1920’s-30’s – constantly tours Europe and
USA
Compositions less inspired by Russian folk
music
1950’s – adopts 12-tone system
Got well-paying commissions
Loved order and discipline
Kept “banking hours”
Stravinsky’s Music
Three early ballets
WWI – wrote for chamber groups
Unconventional instrument combinations
Incorporates ragtime rhythms / popular dances
Inspired by 18th-century music
Inspired by Anton Webern
1920-1951 – his “neoclassic” period
1950’s – shift to 12-tone music
“Stravinsky sound”
Large orchestra / Russian folklore and folk tunes
Strong beat / dry, clear tone colors
Changing & irregular meters / abrupt rhythmic shifts
Ostinatos
Drew on wide range of styles / used existing music at times
Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring)
1910 – “fleeting vision”
Primitivism – the deliberate evocation of primitive
power through insistent rhythms and percussive sounds
2 parts subdivided into sections / without pause / each
has slow introduction and final frenzied climactic dance
Part I:
Introduction
Omens of Spring – Dances of the Youths and Maidens
Ritual of Abduction
Expressionism 1905-1925
artistic movement that stressed intense, subjective
emotion
centers in Germany and Austria
explore inner feelings rather than depicting outward
appearance
deliberate distortions used to assault and shock the
audience
reaction against French impressionism
Expressionist art
reject conventional prettiness
social protest
poor and oppressed
opposition to WWI
Expressionism in Music
grows out of emotional turbulence from
late Romantic composers
ex. Wagner and Mahler
Characteristics
harsh dissonance
fragmentation
extreme registers
unusual instrumental effects
many avoid tonality and traditional chord
progressions
Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)
born in Vienna, Austria
almost entirely self-taught musician
studies scores
plays in amateur chamber groups
attends concerts
age 21 – loses job as bank clerk
earns poor living
conducts choir of industrial workers
orchestrates popular operettas
Arnold Schoenberg
Early works met with hostility
1904 – teaches music theory and composition
loyal students – Alban Berg, Anton Webern
1908 – abandons traditional tonality
1908-1915 – incredible productivity (“I have a
mission…”)
1915-1923 – publishes nothing; searching for way
to organize his musical discoveries
1921 – announcement of discovery
1923-25 – begins using twelve-tone system
appointed to position at Prussian Academy of
Arts in Berlin
Arnold Schoenberg
Nazis seize power in Germany
Feels neglected in USA
1933 – dismissed from Academy (Jewish)
moves to USA
joins music faculty at UCLA
music rarely performed
financially unsuccessful
After death –
twelve-tone system used increasingly throughout
the world
remains an important influence today
Schoenberg’s Music
“new music … destined to become
tradition”
evolves from the past
early works show features of late Romantic style
large orchestras
dissonances
angular melodies
modulate through remote keys
1903-1907
farther from Romanticism
whole-tone scales
quartal chords
Schoenberg’s Music
atonality – the absence of key
evolves from use of chromatic harmonies and scales
all 12 tones used without regard to traditional
relationships
“emancipated dissonances”
jagged melodies
novel instrumental effects
extreme contrasts in dynamics / register
irregular phrases
Sprechstimme – halfway between speaking and singing
early works lack musical system of organization
longer works only possible with longer text
Schoenberg’s Music
Twelve-tone system
“method of composing with twelve tones”
tone row, set, or series
the ordering or unifying idea
serial technique
no pitch occurs more than once in a tone row
number of possibilities – 479,001,600
original form, retrograde, inversion, retrograde
inversion
12-tone matrix calculator
example of 12-tone music
Pierrot lunaire, Op. 21 (1912)
cycle of 21 songs for female voice and 5-member
instrumental ensemble that play 8 instruments
based on weird poems by Belgian poet Giraud,
translated in to German by Hartleben
Pierrot – tragic clown puppet derived from commedia
dell’arte
represents isolated modern artist
songs 1-7: Pierrot, a poet, drunk in moonlight, deranged
songs 8-14: nightmare filled with death, martyrdoms
songs 15-21: refuge from nightmare through clowning, sentimentality,
and nostalgia
3 groups of 7 songs
No.1 Mondestrunken
voice, piano, flute, violin, cello
A Survivor from Warsaw, Op.46
cantata for narrator, male chorus, and orchestra
about a single episode in the Holocaust
based partly on a direct report by a survivor
from a Warsaw ghetto
over 400,000 Jews from this ghetto died in
extermination camps or of starvation
many others died during 1943 revolt against the
Nazis
English, German, and Hebrew – 3 languages in
Schoenberg’s life
12-tone composition written in 1947
Anton Webern (1883-1945)
born in Vienna
studied piano, cello, music theory
earned doctorate of music from University of
Vienna
modest income from conducting
studied privately with Schoenberg
rare performances of own music met with ridicule
shy / devoted to family / Christian / loved to
commune with nature
mistakenly shot and killed by American soldier
near end of WWII
Webern’s Music
most works last only 2-3 minutes
Works
half for solo voice or chorus
rest for chamber orchestra and small chamber groups
atonal and 12-tone
mature output can be played in less than 3½ hours
melodic lines “atomized” into 2-note or 3-note
fragments
often used strict polyphonic imitation
works became a source of inspiration for
composers after his death
Five pieces for Orchestra, Op.10
atonal / not 12-tone
“expressions of musical lyricism”
among the shortest pieces ever written for
orchestra
4th piece: 6 1/3 measures long / less than 30
seconds
unconventional instruments used
Third Piece: Very slow and extremely calm
Béla Bartók (1881-1945)
born in Hungary
piano – important instrument in his career
mother taught him first lessons
attended Budapest Academy of Music
1907-1934: teaches piano at the academy
gives recitals throughout Europe
influenced by Hungarian nationalist
movement
spends free time recording peasant folk songs in
small villages
becomes authority on peasant music
Béla Bartók
importance recognized abroad during 1920s
and 1930s
1940 – anti-Nazi / emigrates to USA
neglected in Hungary until premiere of ballet
(The Wooden Prince - 1917)
has little money / poor health / feels neglected
1943 – receives commission for Concerto for
Orchestra while in the hospital
receives other commissions
dies next year / becomes one of the most
popular 20th century composers
Bartók’s Music
“Hungarian influence is the strongest”
fused folk elements, classical forms, 20th
century sounds
arranged many folk tunes
most works use original themes that have a folk
flavor
Works:
many for solo piano
6 string quartets and other chamber music
3 piano concertos
2 violin concertos
several pieces for orchestra
Bartók’s Music
reinterpreted traditional forms
rondo, fugue, sonata, etc.
used harsh dissonances, polychords, tone clusters
always used tonal center
rhythm – powerful beat, unexpected changes,
changing meters
Concerto for Orchestra
offered $1000 in hospital by Koussevitsky,
conductor of Boston Symphony Orchestra
2nd movement – Game of Pairs
Allegretto scherzando / ABA’
different pairs of woodwind and brass instruments
William Grant Still (1895-1978)
1917-1935 – “Harlem Renaissance”
born in Woodville, Mississippi / grew up in Little
Rock, Arkansas
Afro-American Symphony – first composition by a black
composer performed by a major American symphony
orchestra
studied violin
age 16 – Wilberforce University – premed student
devoted himself to musical activities
abandoned medicine for music
did not graduate / popular music arranger and
performer
William Grant Still
worked for W.C. Handy in Memphis
1917 – Oberlin College Conservatory
arranged Handy’s St. Louis Blues for military band
(1916)
left to serve in navy in WWI
briefly returned to Oberlin
moved to New York
popular musician / composer of concert works
wrote band arrangements / played in all-black shows
studied with two opposing composers
George Whitefield Chadwick
Edgard Varèse
critically acclaimed in New York
writes in a uniquely African-American flavor
William Grant Still
1931 – premiere of Afro-American Symphony by Rochester
Philharmonic
1934 – awarded Guggenheim Fellowship
performed by 38 orchestras in US and Europe over next 2 decades
moves to Los Angeles
writes film scores, concert works, operas
1936 – conducts Los Angeles Philharmonic
first African American to conduct major symphony orchestra
Troubled Island – first opera by black composer performed
1981 – (3 years after death) A Bayou Legend (1941) televised
nationally
Afro-American Symphony (1931)
shortly after onset of Great Depression
devises own blues theme / “blues… could be
elevated to the highest musical level.”
unified by thematic transformation of blues
theme throughout movements
uses tenor banjo
themes recall spirituals, jazz tunes
movements prefaced by lines from poem by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
3rd movement – “Humor” – Animato
Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
born in Brooklyn to Russian-Jewish immigrants
age 15 – decided to be a composer on his own
was drawn to “modern” music, despite first teacher’s
objections
1921 – studied with Nadia Boulanger in France
Phases in Copland’s Music
“American in character” (i.e. jazz) – only lasted a few
years
1930s – serious, dissonant, sophisticated works
late 1930’s – American folklore, accessible to larger
audience
also jazz, revival hymns, cowboy songs
Copland’s Music
simple, yet highly professional
clear textures
slow-moving harmonies
strongly tonal
th
20 century techniques
polychords
polyrhythms
changing meters
percussive orchestration
serial technique
Appalachian Spring
ballet score for Martha Graham
took about a year to complete
wrote a suite for orchestra a year later
doubtful that it would be a timely piece
won important awards / Copland recognized by
a large public
“pioneer celebration in spring around a
newly-built farmhouse in the Pennsylvania
hills”