WAM Exam 3 (copy)

Sergei Prokofiev

• 1891-1953 (Russian)

• Symphony No. 1 in D major (“Classical”), 3rd mvt.,“Arise, Ye Russian People” (4th mvt.) from Alexander Nevsky, Op. 78

• Radical modernist (striking dissonance, motoric rhythms) in 1910s

• Fled Russia after revolution but returned in 1936, created Alexander Nevsky film

• Turned to absolute music in WWII—Harmonic juxtapositions, tonal, lyricism, motoric rhythms

• Condemned in 1948 for being formalist

• Sympathetic to soviet populsit ideology

Marcel Duchamp

• Dada painter

Pablo Picasso

• Spanish cubist painter

• Ignored all assumptions of a rationally ordered 3-D space

Piet Mondrian

• Dutch Neo-Plasticism/De Stilj painter

Wassily Kandinsky

• Abstract artist

• First major artist to create completely non-representational paintings in Munich right before WWI

Igor Stravinsky

• 1882-1971 (Russian)

• Octet for Wind Instruments, 1st mvt. only (“Sinfonia”), Bransle Double –dance piece from Agon, Pulcinella (Also the Rite of Spring)

• High priest of Neoclassicism

• Worked in Russia (Ballet Russes) until revolution, then France, then US

• Adapted Schoenberg’s serial technique 1953 onward (pathetic)

• Undermining meter through unpredictable accents and rests or through frequent changes of meter; pervasive ostinatos; layering and juxtaposition of static blocks of sound; discontinuity and interruption; dissonance based on diatonic, octatonic, and other collections of notes; and dry, anti-lyrical, but colorful use of instruments.

• said "Expression has never been an inherent property of music"

Darius Milhaud

• 1892-1974 (French)

• First tableau from La création du monde, Op. 81a

• Part of Les Six

• Open to American sounds/styles

• Jewish heritage

Paul Hindemith

• 1895-1963 (German-American)

• Morgenmusik—brass chamber work from Plöner Musiktag, Symphonic Metamorphisis

• Started in late Romantic style, then expressionist, then Gebrauchsmusic

• Nazis banned his music

• Neo-Rom: Less dissonant counterpoint, more systematic tonal organization

• Harmonic fluctuation: Fairly consonant chords progress towards combos with more tension then resolved suddenly or slowly

• Moved to Switzerland in 1938, then US in 1940 when WWII broke out

Kurt Weill

• 1900-1950 (German-American)

• Act I, No. 1, “Ballad of Mac the Knife”—cabaret song from Die Dreigröschenoper (threepenny opera)

• Berlin opera composer and new objectivist

• Sympathetic to the left rather than intellectual elite

• Nazis banned his threepenny opera in 1933 so he and his wife fled to Paris then US

• NYC Broadway composer

Erik Satie

• 1866-1925 (French)

• de Podophthalma (No. 3) from Embryons desséchés, Parade, Tros Gymnopedies

• French nationalist like Debussy (they were friends) and Ravel but more radical—anticipates Neo-classicalism

• Modal and unresolved chords, surrealist titles, commentary to players (satirical, programmatic)

• Critiqued concert music and program notes, challenged assumptions

• Honorary member of Les Six

• Connections to Dada

Sergei Diaghilev

Impresario for Ballet Russes

Arnold Schoenberg

• 1874-1951 (Austrian)

• Prelude (No. 1) from Suite for Piano, op. 25, Piano Piece op. 33a, String Quartet No. 3, 1st mvt. only, Piano Piece, op. 11, No. 1, Pierrot Lunaire, Variation for Orchestra, (Nacht and Enthauptung)

• Discussed the emancipation of the dissonance.

• Invented 12-tone system

• Expressionist before WWI

• Recognized Brahms as a progressive due to his developing variation (parallels to 12-tone serialism in that the whole work comes out of one small piece)

Alban Berg

• 1855-1935 (Austrian)

• Wozeck act 3 scenes 2 and 3

• Studied with Schoenberg at 19, adapted atonality and 12-tone system but made it more approachable

• Post-tonal idiom and forms/procedures of tonal music—heir of Mahler/Strauss (Sprechsang)

• Often chose rows that allowed for tonal-sounding chords and progressions that were emotional

• Part of 2nd Viennese school

Anton Webern

• 1883-1945 (Austrian)

• Neoclassicist

• Symphony, op. 21, 1st mvt. only

• Led the avant-garde trend of total serialism because he was the one interwar Neoclassical composer showing the way to the future

• Studied with Schoenberg, got PHD in musicology from University of Vienna

• Music involves presentation of ideas that can be expressed in no other way, operates according to rules of order based on natural law rather than taste

• Idioms and practices can only move forward

• 12-tone system as inevitable result of musical evolution—discovery, not invention

• Used palindromes (Symph mvmt 2)

Béla Bartók

• 1881-1945 (Hungarian)

• Fekete fód, Staccato and Legato (No. 123) from Mikrokosmos, Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1st and 3rd mvmts)

• Created an individual modernist idiom by synthesizing elements of Hungarian, Romanian, slovak, and Bulgarian peasant music with elements of Austro-German and French traditions

• Nationalist—worked as an ethnomusicologist, collecting the music of peasants and uneducated agricultural laborers and studying their music as part of society (inspired after hearing a transylvanian woman singing women in 1904)

• Used audio recording to help build folk collection

• Folk tonality/pitch center, small repeating/varying motives, rhythmic complecity, classical counterpoint/form

• Used palindromes

Heitor Villa-Lobos

• 1887-1959 (Brazillian)

• Aria (No. 1) from Bachianas brasileiras

• Studied in Paris, criticized for collaborating with totalitarian regime

Grant Wood

• American populist (more American gothic) artist

William Grant Still

• 1895-1978 (African American)

• Afro-American Symphony, 1st mvt. only

• First African American to conduct major symphony in US (1936), to have opera produced by major company (1949)

• Combined African American elements with European style

• Later composed for film

• The dean of african american composers

Aaron Copland

• 1900-1990 (American, also gay and jewish and socialist)

• Variations on a Shaker Hymn from Appalachian Spring

• Had lots of dissonance in 20s, became more streamlined in 30s, nationalist/modernist in 40s

• Studied in France with Nadia Boulanger—clear, logical, elegant

• Sought mass appeal

• Populist phase

Dmitri Shostakovich

• 1906-1975 (Russian)

• More aligned with Modernists in early 20s

• Stalin singled out his opera Lady Macbeth as formalist (life threatened)

• 5th symphony corrects/apologizes for this

• Reflects accommodations people had to make when full expression was illegal

Krzysztof Penderecki

• 1933-2020 (Polish)

• Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima

• Found new potential in traditional instruments

• work is animated by a search for new sounds and textures

Jackson Pollock

• Abstract expressionist painter

Mark Rothko

• American abstract painter

Robert Rauschenberg

• Early American pop art painter

Nam June Paik

• South Korean artist, founder of video art

• Postmodern, multimedia, pluralism

Milton Babbitt

• 1916-2011 (American)

• Used total serialism

• Said that composers should abandon efforts to write for the broad public and should instead aim to communicate only with other like-minded composers in his essay "The Composer as Specialist"?

Olivier Messiaen

• 1908-1992 (French)

• “Mode de valeurs et d’intensités”

• Most important French composer born in 20th c.

• Catholic

• Student of Webern

• Taught Boulez—impartial, students could go their own way

• Music was ecstatic contemplation

• Rhythm was about duration, not meter

• Preferred beautiful timbres and colorful harmonies

• Used added values

Pierre Boulez

• 1925-2016 (French)

• Structures 1a for Two Pianos, Bourreaux de solitude (6th mvt) from Le marteau sans maître

• Used total serialism (Inspired by his teacher, Messiaen (was also a student of Webern))

• Used added values

• The consciousness of total serialism

John Cage

• 1912-1992 (American)

• Sonatas and Interludes (1 and 5), Music of Changes, 4’ 33’’

• Leading avant garde composer/philosopher who challenged the core concepts of music

• Called into question silence, ambient sounds, experience of music

• Influenced by zen buddhism (anticipates pluralism)

• Change, intederminancy, blurring boundaries between music, art, and life

• work is animated by a search for new sounds and textures

• Shared goals but Fallout with Boulez (Ironic because indet. of comp. sounds like serialism)

Edgard Varése

• 1883-1965 (French-American)

• Hyperprism, Poème électronique

• Refugee from WWII to US

• Interwar: Experimentalism, ultramodern, nationalist/european style

• Sound masses—music is spatial

• work is animated by a search for new sounds and textures

• Loved electronic music—new instruments

George Crumb

• 1929-2022 (American)

• “De dónde vienes?”—song from Ancient Voices of Children

• Unique instruments, special effects

• Non-western sounds (anticipates pluralism)

Terry Riley

• Born 1935 (American)

• In C

• Interested in rock/pop music (pluralism)

• Influenced by textural music

Steve Reich

• Born 1936 (American)

• Come Out, Piano Phase

• Sometimes post-minimalist

• Style over aesthetic

• Developed a quasi-canonic procedure in which musicians play the same material out of phase with each other—phasing

• Formed his own ensemble and was able to make a living by performing, touring, and recording his works

John Adams

• Born 1947 (American)

• Short Ride in a Fast Machine, “News” from Act I, scene 1 of Nixon in China

• Blended minimalist techniques with a variety of other approaches—style over aesthetic

• Marks a later stage of minimalism by combining minimalist textures with traditional forms and genres

modernist style elements

• Ostinato

• Non-functional harmony

• Rich/extended chords

• Unusal scales

• Extended techniques

common practice period

• 1600-1900

• Traditional expectations in regards to basically every musical quality

extended techniques

• Flutter tongue, col legno, harmonics, playing on bridge, holding down the keys of the piano silently so they resonate when other notes are played. Sprechsang

NOT una corda

Neo-Classicism

• A reaction to WWI—no more crazy emotional expression and individuality

• It rejects Romanticism even as it retains the Romantic concept of originality.

• Draws on the styles of Mozart and/or Bach

• Neutral titles

• traditional forms

• Reduced classical scoring

• remote/reticent mood

• Systematization/objectivity

• Hard-edged, brittle (winds/percussion)

• Intellectual systems

• Mocking the art tradition

• anti-nationalistic, often self-consciously internationalist

• Original in its mix of old and new

• Accessibility is less important than newness

historicism

• Revival of old music (think neo-classicism)

Modernism (three stages)

1. Late Romanticism

2. Neo-Classicism

3. Avant-Garde

Primitivism

• The deliberate incorporation of the unsophisticated, elementary, naive art for purposes of stylistic innoation and social criticism

• Parallels Romantic elements (folk)

anti-Romanticism

• Many neo-classical works had traits that directly contradicted romantic goals

• Ex. pre-compositional planning, serialism (prevents spontaneity)

neutral titles

• Neo-classical trait

• completely devoid of the programmatic/extramusical or “poetic” implications so characteristic of Romanticism. This is music about music.

objectivity

• Goal of Neo-Classicism so that they can find order and clarity

Dada

• Irrationality, nihilism

• Influence surrealism

• Mockery idea lived on

• Aim to destroy all things—tear it all down and leave the rubble because art is complicit with human arrogance

• Aim to move away from Romanticism

De Stilj

• Dutch group

• Mathematical purity in art

• More moderate (aim for functionality)

• Aim to move away from Romanticism

• Also called objectivism, neo-plasticism

• Has cubist elements

• Mondrian

Bauhaus

• German architecture house

• Geometric shapes and functionality

• More moderate (aim for functionality)

• Aim to move away from Romanticism

League of Nations

• Created after WWI with the aim of showing cooperation

• Failed in the rise of Facism

Les Six

• Honegger, Milhaud, Ponlenc, Tailleferre, Auric, Durey

• Inspired by Satie

• Goal of escaping old political ideologies (Anti-german sentiment between WWs)

• Free french music from foreign domination

• Highly individual works

Ballet Russes

The Russian Ballet (Performed in Paris)

“low” art

• Ex. Afro-American symphony and Creation of the world

• Jazz, vernacular, pop music

precompositional planning

• Composing with rules (like one hand is tied behind your back)

• Curbs spontaneity

• Palindromes, canons, serialism, etc

Serialism

• Can be rhythmic or melodic (or more)

• Like. A series (tone row, 12-tone)

• You go through all the notes without repeating

• Became super crazy trend after WWII, Schoenberg was not praised for it though (he didn’t go far enough (total serialism)

dodecaphonic serialism (12-tone)

• System invented by Schoenberg

• Chromatic scale

• Anti-Rom because it curbs spontaneity/emotion/individuality

• P0 is the source of everything—ultimate thematic integration and evolution of New German School/Austro-German tradition

aggregate

Complete row/series present at that moment/section (Doesn’t have to be linear melody, can also be harmonic)

tone-row permutations (4 possibilities)

• Primary

• Transpose

• Retrograde

• Investion

• Retrograde Investion

Hauptstimme

• Distinguish main theme (H) from secondary theme (M)—counterpoint—needed because it’s atonal

• Schoenberg—Piano suite

• Berg—Wozzeck

• Heart voice

Nebenstimme

• Secondary voice (compare to Haupstimme)

Second Viennese School

• Schoenberg, who in turn taught Webern and Berg

• Compared to first viennesse school, which was Hayadn, Mozart, and Beethoven.

New German School

• Most progressive side of Austro-German tradition

• Most progressive of progressives

• Liszt, Strauss, Mahler, Bruckner, Wagner

• Led us to the modern era

Music of the Future

• The end goal for the progressives/new german school—Now the 12-tone serialism contributes to it

• Their atonal language signals a continuation and extension of Wagner's, Liszt's and Mahler's chromaticism.

• The permutations of the row, constantly spread throughout the entire texture, take Austro-German ideas of thematic integration to their logical conclusion.

Expressionism

• Grows out of the subjectivity of Romanticism

• Distorted images, pure colors, dynamic brush strokes

• Super innigkeit

Pointillism

• Non traditional texture, often the result of (total) serialism

mirror form/palindrome

• The same forwards and backwards (center is the reflection point)

Gebrauchsmusik

• Strongly associated with Hindemith

• Music for use

• Will help amateur rather than criticize them

• Rejects art-religion and pretentiousness

Populism

• Identification with the “people,” effort to communicate with society—similarities with Neoclassicism and Gebrauchmusik

• It was essentially "imposed" on composers who worked in the Soviet Union

• For all its similarities to Late-19th-century Romanticism, Populism usually mixes in elements of anti-Romanticism drawn from Neo-Classicism.

• Has some modernist elements

• Lush string textures are favored in Populist but not Neo-Classical compositions.

• more accessible to a broader public than Neo-Classicism.

• More lyrical, lush, expansive

• Less intellectual, more obviously emotional

• Copland, Prokofiev, Shostakovish, late Bartok

quartal and quintal harmony

• Aaron copland stylistic element

academic vs. popular canon

• Academic: repertory of works approved by universities (what professors like), developed with the rise of the Avant-Garde (Remember the Babbitt essay)

• Popular: What the general public likes, Populists

Socialist realism

• For the collective, not abstract, devoted to the Cause

• The ideal in USSR

• Use realistic style that positively portrays socialism

• Simple/accessible language, centered on melody, folk(like) styles, patriotic subject matter

• Intelligible, programmatic, triumphant nationalism)

formalism

• BAD if you’re a USSR Composer

• Interest in music for its own sake, modernist styles

• Accused of it if you weren’t enough of a socialist realist

• Heavily condemned

• Shoshtakovish wrote a formalist opera and was threatened by Stalin so he wrote a new, more acceptable symphony

• Inaccessible music (Abstraction, modernism)

Post-1945 Avant Garde

• Origins in French Military—advance group that made way for full army

• Most radical/extreme stage of modernism (even more so than Late Romanticism)—rejection of common practice—cutting-edge, original, experimental

• Philistines are once again the enemy

Globalization

• Through rising communication and technology, unified world culture is created

• Increased knowledge of different cultures

• Acceptance of diverse ethnic, racial, religious, or social groups other than the dominant white male culture. Includes an interest in rock, pop, non-western style

60s youth “counterculture”

• Also civil rights movement (ex. of pluralism actually)

• Hippies, drugs, upend tradition

• Pop canon overtakes the classical

• “Don’t trust anyone over the age of 30” because they’re stuck in their ways and want newness

Pluralism

• Celebrate diversity, appreciate different subcultures

• Rose along with globalization and 60s social revolution (anti-elitism)

• Reaction to Avant-Garde

Postmodernism

• 1970s onwards

• Anything goes—Modernism is about innovation, now instead we combine different historical movements

• Denial of historical progress in the arts—true originality no longer possible, no new styles are possible, denial of the idea of the masterwork

• Overt use of music from the past (quotations)

• Radical mixing of styles from all periods

• Breaking down wall between art and pop (ex. minimalism’s rock roots)

• Return to more traditional means of composition

total (integral) serialism

• Everything is systematized

• Dynamics, rhythm, pitch, articulation, intensity

• Inspired by Webern, grew in popularity after WWII

• Used by Babbitt, Boulez

• Requires intense virtuosity as everything must be precise

• Non-traditional texture—pointilistic

added values

• Fixed value attached to every note in a row—add a fixed value to each new note in the row

• Destroys traditional meter

institutionalization of serialism (Darmstadt + university music depts.)

• (Summer) School in Germany focused on teaching serialism

• Developed in 40s-60s

• Composers came from all over the world to learn

• Composers/educational programs had to be Avant-Garde accepted—academic canon

• Shows dominance of serialism

prepared piano

• An invention of John Cage in which various objects—such as pennies, bolts, screws, or pieces of wood, rubber, plastic, or slit bamboo—are inserted between the strings of a PIANO, resulting in complex percussive sounds when the piano is played from the keyboard.

non-western music

• George crumb was super into this (created the sound from prepared piano)

• Grew in popularity with the rise of pluralism

conceptual art

• Where the concept behind the artwork is more important than the (often laughably simple) techniques used in creating it

• An important trend in post-1945 avant-garde (continues into pluralist and postmodern periods)

Chance/Aleatoric Music/Indeterminacy

• Composer relinquishes control

• New kinds of notation, varied performances

• Radical avant-garde development

verbal score

• Uses written word as opposed to symbols for notation

• Ex. telling performer to walk around and whistle

• Instruction in writing

• No notation at all

Textural Music

• Search for new sounds/textures during the avant-garde era

• Penderecki, Crumb

• New instruments

• Old instruments in new ways (Extended Techniques)

• Unusual sounds/combos

sound mass

Term coined by Edgard Varèse for a body of sounds characterized by a particular TIMBRE, register, RHYTHM, or MELODIC gesture, which may remain stable or may be transformed as it recurs.

graphic notation

• Non-Conventional Notation

• Ex. Penderecki, Threnody

electronic music

• At first—combining, modifying, and controlling in various ways the output of oscillators, then recording these sounds on tape

• Then oscillators, synth

• Resulted in new sounds on traditional instruments as well

• 1-Musique concrete (prerecorded sounds)

• 2-Electronically created sounds

musique concrète

• Work concretely with sound itself rather than notation

• Tape music

• Prerecorded sounds/music from real life, subject to electronic manipulation

minimalism

• Emerges in 1960s

• Started avant-garde but became more popular because of its accessible style

• Minimal material, not minimal length

• Materials are reduced to a minimum and procedures simplified so that what is going on in the music is immediately apparent.

• Discontinuities with avant-garde: now has repetition, static tonal structures, easy to play, clear process/simplicity

• Continuities with avant-garde: Novel genres (some elec. experimentation), chance operations (ind. of performance), textural music, interest in non-western music

phasing/phase music

• Superimposing tape loops of the same spoken phrase in such a way that one loop was slightly shorter and thus gradually moved ahead of the other

• Moving from one idea clearly to another—rejection of 3rd stage of modernism (Accessible)

postminimalism

• Merging of minimalism with more traditional forms/styles/genres (including populism)

quotation

• Became a trend in postmodernism

Final scene from Salome

• Strauss, 1905

• Music drama

• Based off of play by Oscar Wilde—libretto is directly taken from the script

• Large scale tonal planning: Salome is C# maj (Salome chord), Cminor is the key when she’s killed

• Ugliest chord: IV in C# or V/7 in D or Ger 6 in C#—Matches subject matter, still goal-driven harmony

• Leitmotifs: Ecstacy, Lust, Kiss

• Bitonality

• Triumphant, glittering, exotic (Glockenspiel)

• Recitative vocals—parlante

Piano Piece, op. 11, No. 1

• Schoenberg, 1909

• Piano work

• Pre-Rom: Genre and forms are Baroque, written repeats (no spontaneity), da capo, common practice techniques, clear texture, binary/ternary structure, familiar melodic gestures/phrases

• Anti-Rom: Systematic atonality (12-tone serialism)

• Modernist: Metrical ambiguityish, fragmentary melodies, no extended techniques

• Uses Haupstime (heart voice) to distinguish main theme (H) from secondary theme (M)—counterpoint—needed because it’s atonal

Nacht, excerpts from Pierrot lunaire

• Schoenberg, 1912

• Song cycle w/chamber ensemble

• Passacaglia

• Extended techniques: Playing on bridge, sprechsang, flutter tongue

• Atonal

Enthauptung, excerpts from Pierrot lunaire

• Schoenberg, 1912

• Song cycle w/chamber ensemble

• Appears to abandon thematic development for anarchic improvisation, unfolds by constantly varying the initial ideas to capture the images and feelings in the text.

• New voice style (Extended technique—Sprechsang)

• Atonal

• Metrical ambiguity

• Fragmentary melody

Symphony No. 1 in D major (“Classical”), 3rd mvt. only

• Prokofiev

• 1917

• Mozart/reduced orchestra, light mood, entertaining/easy

• Classical: Just strings, homogenous, homophonic, balanced phrasing (2+2 (antecedent/consequent))

• Baroque: Ornamentation, decoration, gavotte form (ABA’-ternary)

• Modern: Plays with functional harmony (3 deceptive cadences), leaps, exaggerated ornamentation, small metrical displacement, chromaticism

• Does NOT draw on some kind of vernacular or popular music

Rigaudon—dance piece from piano suite, Le tombeau de Couperin

• Ravel

• 1914-17

• Baroque: ABA, internal binary repeats, trio (B section), decorations, baroque dance form, no rubato (anti-rom), motoric rhythm

• Classical: Alberti bass, functional harmony

• Modern: Chromaticism, rich/extended harmonies, parallelism (debussy)

• Anti-rom: Anti-individualism/subjectivity

Octet for Wind Instruments, 1st mvt. only (“Sinfonia”)

• Stravinsky

• 1923

• Chamber work

• Pre-Rom: Reduced ensemble (un-pretentious), baroque ornaments (exaggerated tho), ant/con phrasing, clear sonata form

• Anti-Rom: Winds are less emotional (avoid sappy Rom-no strings), reference to light, popular music styles

• Modernist: Tweaked harmony, mixed meter, metrical ambiguity, chromaticism, ostaniti

First tableau from La création du monde, Op. 81a

• Milhaud

• 1923

• Ballet

• Pre-Rom: Fugue (bach-logic, clarity, system)

• Romantic: Theme is origin of the world, original design is Africa—Primitivism, exoticism, cubism

• Anti-Rom: Vernacular Music (Jazz band ensemble) (marginalized)

• Modernist: Metrical ambiguity/syncopation, low culture, chromaticism, polytonality, polymetric, blues scale