5.22 Modernism Between the Wars

Maurice Ravel

French composer that studied for 16 years at the Paris Conservatory, and focused on clarity meticulously, along with being great with sonority (lived 1875-1937)

Béla Bartók

Talented and trained composer and pianist who directed the Budapest Academy of Music, wrote the Mikrokosmos and books on folk music, along with opposing the Nazis strongly (lived 1881-1945)

Ruth Crawford (Seeger)

Very early American avant-garde modernist, female, skilled pianist, wrote atonal music w/ dissonant harmonies full time 1925-1933, used counterpoint, collected/transcribed American folk music (lived 1901-1953)

William Grant Skill

Mississippian and (uniquely) African-American, w/ middle-class parents- studied science, then music on scholarship, winning two Guggenheim Fellowships, associated w/ the Harlem Renaissance, arranged important public music, remembered for pathbreaking concert music, opera, ballet, etc. (lived 1895-1978)

Aaron Copland

Russian-Jewish kid from Brooklyn, studied in Paris and worked w/ Nadia Boulanger, promoted American music, started w/ avant-garde modernism, then Stravinsky style, then more traditional (lived 1900-1990)

Sergei Prokofiev

Ukranian child prodigy, concert pianist, conductor, and composer, who first wrote radical music then music w/ clear tonality, tunefulness, and Russian folk themes, global star by 1930s, music banned in Russia for a time, wrote Peter and the Wolf(lived 1891-1953)

Primary source of creative energy

Radical Modernism

_________ of concert life grew in the early twentieth century

Formality

When did modernism in America take off?

In the 1920s

Who choreographed and danced in Appalachian Spring?

Martha Graham