5.21 Early Modernism

• Major phase of avant-garde music took place in ^^Paris and Vienna^^ around ^^1890-1914^^
• Leading figures were ^^Igor Stravinsky^^ and ^^Arnold Schoenberg^^
• ^^Rapid development^^ in all arts
• 19th century musical ideas were “under attack”
• Large ^^revolution^^ especially in tonality, also melody and harmony

Debussy and Impressionism

• Claude Debussy is right ^^in between^^ late 19th century and early 20th century styles
  • New ^^tone colors^^ and rich ^^harmonies^^ are similar to Romanticism
  • Tone colors ^^avoid “heavy sonorities”^^ (different from romantic) and are “subtle” and “mysterious”
  • Fragmentary/tentative melodies/motives
  • Vague harmonies
  • Tonality often ^^clouded^^
• Gustav Mahler had more ^^contrapuntal^^ orchestra

Clouds, from Three Nocturnes (1899)

• Debussy’s ^^Three Nocturnes^^ is reminiscent of ^^impressionist symphonic poems^^
• Clouds is the least “nocturnal” of the collection
  • Others are Festivals and Sirens
• Begins w/ quiet woodwind chords (suggesting clouds), then an English horn motive (octatonic scale), then parallel chords (same structure in chords, parallel pitches)
• Approximate ^^ABA’^^ form

Stravinsky: The Primacy of Rhythm

• ^^Igor Stravinsky^^ was taught by Russian nationalist composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
• Wrote 3 ballet scores for the ^^Ballets Russes^^ (Russian Ballet) in Paris
  • Stravinsky used his quickly developed “powerful, hard-edged” avant-garde style
  • More abstract use of folk tunes
• First ballet is ^^The Firebird^^ (1910)
  • Romantic fairy tale
  • Magical Firebird, ogre Kastchei, and Prince Ivan Tsarevitch
  • Half-Asian setting
  • “Beautifully colored” folk music
• Next is ^^Petrushka^^ (1911)
  • Mardi Gras in St. Petersburg
  • About a carnival baker and his puppet
  • Satirical?
• ^^The Rite of Spring^^ (1913)
  • “Bold” and “brutal”
  • Uses Russian folk music
  • Repeated, fragmentary motives
  • Imagines fertility cults of prehistoric Slavic tribes

Claude Debussy (1862-1918) Biography

• Debussy entered the strict ^^Paris Conservatory of Music^^ at 10
  • Great in ^^theory and composition^^
  • Not so great in piano
  • Awarded the coveted ^^Grand Prix^^ (top prize; 3-year fellowship to study in Rome)
• Worked with Madame von Meck (“eccentric” patron of Tchaikovsky)
• Influenced by Russian music and the Indonesian gamelan
• Rejected previous influence of French symbolist poets and impressionist painters
• Also ^^rejected Wagner and German^^ music despite their influence due to his time in Bayreuth
• Famous for innovations in ^^orchestration^^ and piano writing
• Impressive ^^preludes and etudes for piano^^ (miniatures)
• Wrote music criticism for a short time
• Hated Germans
• Died of cancer in Paris during WWI

The Rite of Spring, Part I, “The Adoration of the Earth” (1913)

• First performance caused ^^riots^^
• ^^Violent and dissonant^^ sounding, w/ “provocative choreography”
• Suggests rape and ritual murder
• Ballet has ^^no real story^^
  • Stravinsky thought of this as an “abstract concert piece”
• Second part (“The Sacrifice”) involves a virgin being danced to death
• Structure:
  • Introduction
  • Omens of Spring and Dance of the Adolescents
  • The Game of Abduction
  • Round Dances of Spring

Expressionism

• Austrian and German composers still had ^^emotional and complex music^^
  • Exploited extreme states
  • Expressionism
• Sigmund Freund
• Influenced by ^^psychoanalytic theory^^
  • Erwartung (Anticipation) is a monologue written by Schoenberg for soprano and orchestra
  • Reasonably dark (dead bodies)
  • Sense of hysteria
• ^^Schoenberg^^ was the leading expressionist in music
  • Pioneered the “emancipation of dissonance,” “breakdown of tonality,” and serialism
• ^^Second Viennese school was Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and Alban Berg^^
  • First was Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) Biography

• Son of important opera singer
• Studied ^^law^^ until age 19
• Studied w/ ^^Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov^^ (kuchka member; nationalist)
  • Helped him write his 3 Ballets Russes ballet scores
• Composed more b^^allets^^ and other things after WWI
  • Also ^^modeled his music on that of Bach, Handel, and Mozart^^, transforming it w/ his “unique rhythmic and harmonic style” (This style was called ^^Neoclassism^^)
• Advocate of “^^objectivity^^” in music
  • Rejected Romantic emotionality
• Died in NYC, buried in Venice

Schoenberg, Pierrot lunaire (Moonstruck Pierrot) (1912)

• Most ^^famous/influential 20th century song cycle^^
• Poems are by symbolist Albert Giraud
• Pierrot is the “eternal sad clown”
• ^^Sprechstimme^^ (speech-song) is an invention of Schoenberg in which sound is not fully organized into pitches
  • “Extreme example” of avant-garde
  • In this case, soprano doesn’t quite sing, doesn’t quite speak (somewhere in between)
• ^^Soprano and 5 instrumentalists^^
  • 8 instruments
  • 1 person switches between flute and piccolo
  • 1 person switches between clarinet and bass clarinet
  • 1 person switches between violin and viola
  • Cello
  • Piano
  • Not all player in every song (unique accompaniment in each)
• No. 8: “Night”
  • Voice, piano, bass clarinet, cello
  • “Nightmarish”
  • Vision of “ominous insects”
  • Schoenberg called it a passacaglia (type of Baroque ostinato piece)
  • Mostly Sprechstimme
• No. 18: “The Moonfleck”
  • Voice, piano, piccolo, clarinet, violin, cello
  • “Dense, dissonant, atonal, and alarmingly intense” introductory piano passage
  • “Nagging bother of an obsession”
  • High-pitched scattered motives

Alban Berg, Wozzeck (1923)

• Berg was a ^^student of Schoenberg^^

• Berg began working on Wozzeck during WWI, and completed it in 1923

• ^^Wagnerian^^, but also similar to Pierrot lunaire

• Highly intense

• About Franz Wozzeck, a ^^“low cog” soldier^^

  • Tormented by his captain, the regimental doctor, and visions
  • His lover Marie sleeps w/ a drum major and then beats Wozzeck up when he objects, so he murders her and then drowns himself

• Act III, Scene ii is the murder scene

  • Followed by a blackout and 2 crescendos

• Act III, Scene iii

  • Wozzeck drinks w/ Marie’s friend Margret in a tavern
  • Distorted, dissonant ragtime
  • Disjoined, confused, shocking
  • People see blood on his hands and turn on him, he escapes
  • Built on a “master rhythm” w/ slight modifications in different tempos
  • More ostinato

• Act III, Scene iv

  • Wozzeck returns to the pond (scene of the crime)- he sees blood and goes in the water to wash himself, drowns

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) Biography

• Grew up in Vienna
• Self taught before Alexander von Zemlinsky trained him
• Wrote music theory books and literary texts for his compositions, also painted in expressionist style (^^versatile^^)
• Early music was similar to late Romantic
• Increased ^^chromaticism and atonality^^
  • Met w/ hostility from the public
  • Attracted interest of Mahler and Richard Strauss (students flocked too)
  • His music became more and more atonal
• ^^Developed twelve-tone (serial) system^^
  • Radical and fruitful
• Jew forced to leave Germany when the Nazis came to power
  • Moved to LA, become a US citizen
• ^^Strange^^ personality
• “First ^^great teacher^^ since Bach”

Schoenberg and Serialism

• ^^Twelve-tone system^^ was a “method of composing with the twelve tones solely in relation to one another” (according to Schoenberg)
  • Known as ^^serialism^^
  • “Ultimate systematizing of [Romantic] chromaticism”
• Twelve-tone row or series was an ^^ordered sequence of the 12 pitches^^
  • Schoenberg stuck to using the 12 pitches in a fixed order, w/o repetitions or backtracking before starting over again
  • Any octave
  • Sequence can be presented inverted (backwards, retrograde)
• Each piece has its own “sound world”

The First American Modernist

The ^^first major modernist composer in the US^^, Charles Ives, amazingly worked in isolation (composed in his spare time). He used mostly ^^American subjects^^ (nationalist). He wrote ^^highly experimental, dissonant music^^ (some was for piano tuned to 1/4 tones instead of 1/2)

Charles Ives (1874-1954) Biography

• Son of a Civil War military bandmaster and music teacher
  • His dad liked to play 2 tunes simultaneously in different keys for fun? Unconventional guy
• Church organist as a teenager
• Went to Yale
  • He thought his professor Horatio Parker had tame, traditional, and unmasculine
  • He wanted to make more ^^experimental and vigorous music^^
• After graduation, worked in insurance and as a church organist, then later just in business
  • Didn’t try to get his works published or performed
• He thought that ^^communal joy in music^^ making mattered much more than how a piece sounded
• Almost gave up music completely later in life
• He ^^did get to see his music admired^^ by the public at large :)

Second Orchestral Set, Second Movement, “The Rockstrewn Hills Join in the People’s Outdoor Meeting” (1909)

• Ives wrote ^^4 symphonies^^
• Has false starts, parts of hymns, irregular rhythms, etc.

The Unanswered Question (1906)

• Needs 2 conductors
• Three distinct, independent levels of music
  • Choir w/ consonant harmonies
  • Dissonant woodwinds
  • Trumpet which sounds “like a voice”
  • Strings are also playing ppp throughout w/ no change in tempo
  • ^^NOT traditional polyphony^^ (they don’t fit together at all)