Music History Final Essays

Pre-WWI Aesthetics

• Modernism: new ways of making, seeing, thinking

• Break from traditional norms

• New Harmonic languages: atonality, modality, whole-tone scales

• New timbres, complex rhythms, form disruption

• Symbolism, expressionism, primitivism, abstract, mythic

Pierrot lunaire, Op. 21: Excerpts No. 8 Nacht - Arnold Schoenberg

Pre-WW1

Nationality: Austrian

Genre: Melodrama (song cycle) for speaker and chamber ensemble

• Atonal

  • no tonal center, unresolved dissonance (don’t resolve traditionally)

• Expressionism

  • Sprechstimme (speaking voice)

  • Fragmented, dreamlike structure (mythic, broken form)

  • Based on Symbolist poem (dark, nightmarish, mythic)

• Klangfarbenmelodie

  • Melodic line split across instruments for tone color

  • Instruments used for color not blend (unusual combinations and such)

The Rite of Spring Excerpts - Igor Stravinsky

Pre-WWI

Nationality: Russian

Genre: Ballet

• Primitivism

  • Dissonant and harmonically static even tho inspired by folk-inspired melodies

  • “pre-civilized”/tribal culture

• Rhythmic Violence

  • Asymmetrical rhythms/frequent meter changes (5/8,7/8)

  • Sudden changes/chaotic

• Orchestration

  • Break from classical norm

  • Huge, percussive orchestration (new sounds/timbres)

  • Blocks of sound with sharp contrasts

Nocturnes: No.1, Nuages - Claude Debussy

Pre-WWI

Nationality: French

Genre: Symphonic Poem (orchestral tone poem)

• Symbolism

  • Evokes atmosphere and imagery over narrative

  • Ternary structured (loose structure) but no goal-directed motion

  • Blurred textures and ambiguous harmonies (clouds drifting)

• Modal/Whole-tone Scales

  • Parallel chords, whole-tone scales

  • Lack of harmonic tension or resolution = floating effect

• Timbre

  • Orchestration emphasizes tone color and blend

  • Muted horns, divided strings, woodwind colors shape form

Interwar Politics and Nationalism

• Music as Political Expression

  • Commenting on, resisting, or aligning with political idealogies

  • Art became space for national identity, propaganda, or social critique

• Nationalism and Cultural Identity

  • Resurgence of national/regional styles

  • Composers wanted to reclaim/invent national sound through folk music, regional rhythms, etc

  • Traditional instruments

• Marginalized Cultures

  • African American/non-European styles entered classical forms

  • Appropriation

Back Water Blues - Bessie Smith

In Between Wars

Genre: Blues

• Politics of Race and Marginalization

  • Written after 1927 Mississippi River flood → racialized impact of natural disasters

  • Lived in Jim Crow South

  • Blues → vehicle for political and social expression for African Americans

• Cultural Identity and Nationalism

  • Harlem Renaissance - asserting Black art as American art

  • Influenced Gershwin, Still, Milhaud

• Musical features

  • 12-bar blues form

  • AAB poetic

  • Slow swing and harmonic tension

Homenaje: Le Tombeu de Claude Debussy - Manuel de Falla

In Between Wars

Nationality: Spanish

Genre: Homage for guitar

• Nationalism through style

  • Spanish idioms during strong regional cultural identity

  • Spain was trying to gain cultural independence from France/Germany

• Musical Features

  • Phrygian mode, dry timbre, Spanish rhythms (flamenco? or Habanera?)

  • sparse resonance

  • modernism: Debussy with Spanish nationalism

La creation du monde, Op. 81a: First tableu - Darius Milhaud

In Between Wars

Nationality: French

Genre: Ballet

• Politics & Cultural exchange

  • Inspired by Jazz after Harlem visit in 1920s

  • Jazz as modernism, but cultural appropriation?

  • French fascination with Black American culture

• Musical Features

  • Jazz harmonies, syncopation, blues gestures

  • Hybrid of classical counterpoint + jazz

  • Exoticized African creation myth

• Notable National stuff:

  • disagreement about what qualities French music should have

  • use of counterpoint, eighteenth-century forms and genres, neotonal harmony, emotional restraint

Post-WWII to Present

• Ultramodernist

  • Experimental approaches (new instruments)

  • Electronics, tape, spacial audio

• Americanist

  • Copeland and company

  • Audience accessibility

  • New Deal optimism/American populism

Philomel: Section 1 - Milton Babbitt

Genre: Monodrama for soprano, recorded soprano, and synthesized sound

Aesthetic Aims and Compositional methods:

• Ultramodernist Approach

  • Total serialism (pitch, rhythm, dynamics all pre-determined)

  • Pre-recorded electronic with live soprano

  • Based on Greek myth who was silenced - tape becomes symbolic

• Musical features

  • Twelve-tone row governs all musical material

  • Vocal samples that echo or distort live voice

  • No traditional tonality

  • Alienates casual listeners

• Aesthetics

  • Explores extremes of musical control

  • Creates new art form

Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima - Krzysztof Penderecki

Genre: Tone poem for string orchestra

• Expressionist/Avant-Garde approach

  • Aims to honor atomic bomb victims

  • Connects music with collective trauma

• Musical Features

  • 52 string instruments, no melody or rhythm

  • Techniques include:

    • Tone clusters, Indeterminate

  • Time measured in seconds

  • Listeners experience shock, disorientation

Blue Cathedral - Jennifer Higdon

Genre: Orchestral work

• Postmodern Approach

  • Written in memory of her brother

  • Reminiscent of Debussy

  • Major mode pitch collections

• Musical features

  • Rich tonal harmonies

  • Flute (brother’s instrument) and clarinet (her instrument)

  • Accessible, cinematic, NOT experimental

  • Had wide appeal