MUSI 432: The Early Twentieth Century - Vernacular Music Study Notes

MUSI 432: The Early Twentieth Century - Vernacular Music

Chapter Overview

• Focus on the rise of vernacular music between 1889 and 1918, highlighting critical changes in classical music and emphasizing the significance of vernacular styles.

The Impact of Sound Recording on Music

• Invention of Sound Recording (1877)

  • Enabled the preservation and distribution of vernacular music.

  • Increased accessibility to a broader audience, enhancing composers’ and listeners’ experiences.

• Definition of Vernacular Music

  • Music characterized by broad appeal and lacking specialized requirements for comprehension.

  • Includes popular music, folk music, brass band music, church hymns, and children’s songs.

  • Much of this music was performed by amateurs in the late 19th century.

• Influence of Aural Traditions

  • Genres like ragtime and jazz originated from oral traditions, allowing them to transcend local origins.

  • These styles became sources of inspiration for composers, impacting contemporary music.

The Birth of Modernity: Artistic and Cultural Shifts

The Paris Universal Exposition of 1889

• The period from the 1889 World’s Fair to World War I (1914) marked significant societal transformations.

• Characteristics of the Era:

  • Self-conscious modernity reflected in artistic, literary, musical, technological, scientific, and philosophical advancements.

  • Innovations included electricity, automobiles, airplanes, refrigeration, telephones, film, sound recording, and radio.

Technology, Politics, and Nostalgia

• Urbanization

  • Cities grew denser as individuals migrated for manufacturing jobs, leading to a collective yearning for a romanticized rural past.

• Economic Expansion and Inequality

  • This expansion created significant social inequality, spurring the labor movement and political unrest (e.g., the Russian Revolution in 1917).

• Darker Implications of Technology

  • Technological advancements contributed to mass destruction during WWI through weapons like machine guns, land mines, mustard gas, and aerial bombings.

Changes in Artistic and Intellectual Perspectives

• Significant shifts occurred in how individuals understood and depicted the world:

  • Psychological Developments

  • Freud’s theories on the unconscious mind and psychoanalysis challenged notions of free will and the Romantic ideal of the heroic self.

  • Pavlov’s behavioralism contributed to a rethinking of human behavior.

  • Scientific Innovations

  • Physicists, including Albert Einstein and Max Planck, introduced theories of relativity and quantum mechanics, fundamentally altering scientific paradigms.

  • Literary Progressions

  • French symbolists like Paul Verlaine and Stéphan Mallarmé focused on the sound of language, often distorting syntax and semantic meanings.

  • Artistic Evolutions

  • Impressionists (e.g., Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne) transformed their focus from historical realism to capturing atmospheric sensations and perceptions from nature.

Artistic Movements of the Early Twentieth Century

Development of Abstraction

• Cubism

  • Picasso and Braque advanced abstraction with Cubism by 1912, fracturing objects and highlighting the artificiality of representation itself.

The Birth of American Vernacular Music

The United States as an Emerging Power

• Industrialization led to increased economic and political strength.

• The U.S. became a colonial power post-Spanish-American War (1898) and reinforced its influence through active participation in WWI, beginning in 1917.

Cultural Exchange During and Post-WWI

• American soldiers introduced American popular culture to European audiences.

• The Great Migration

  • Massive relocation of African-Americans from the South to the North and West altered the American music landscape, introducing distinct African-American influences.

  • Notable figures included band leaders like James Reese Europe (1880-1919), who popularized syncopated music through army bands.

Rise of Popular Music

• The traditional transmission of music as sheet music gave way to the recording industry and broadcasting via radio.

• Innovations in performance styles included:

  • Musical Theater

  • George M. Cohan’s Little Johnny Jones (1904) established a new format for musicals, increasingly integrating influences from ragtime, blues, and jazz.

  • Film Scores

  • Studios designed cue sheets for specific musical arrangements, enabling composers to create scores for silent films, exemplified by Saint-Saëns' The Assassination of the Duke of Guise (1908).

  • Wind Bands

  • Amateur wind bands flourished, mixing popular and classical music; composers like Holst, Grainger, and Vaughan Williams contributed to the classical repertoire.

African-American Musical Traditions

• Wind and string bands prevalent in Black communities profoundly shaped ragtime, jazz, and blues styles.

• Ragtime

  • Emerged in the 1890s from a tradition of African-American syncopated song improvisation.

  • While piano ragtime is widely recognized, the form includes numerous ragtime songs and ensemble performances.

  • Marks the first significant African-American aural tradition translated into written popular music by both Black and White composers.

Notable Figures in Ragtime Composition

Scott Joplin (1868-1917)

• A prominent composer of piano ragtime, originating from Texas and establishing his career in Missouri before moving to New York.

• Viewed ragtime as classical music inspired by vernacular forms, akin to how Chopin’s works drew from European folk traditions.

• Key Composition: Maple Leaf Rag (1899)

  • Exhibits hallmark characteristics of the ragtime style.

Maple Leaf Rag Characteristics

• Contains a regular duple left-hand part with a syncopated right-hand pattern suggesting a 3/16 feel.

• Employs repeating strains resembling a march format.

The Emergence of Early Jazz

Cultural Diversity in New Orleans

• The late 19th to early 20th century in New Orleans presented a blend of African-American, Creole, Caribbean, French, and Spanish cultural influences.

• Collective Improvisation

  • Emphasized in local ensemble ragtime, featuring instruments such as cornet, clarinet, trombone, bass (string bass or tuba), guitar/banjo, and drums.

  • This music centered on improvisation and varied textures, often eluding standard notation systems.

• Evolution into Jazz

  • By the 1910s, the genre evolved beyond the South and became known as jazz, marking a significant musical transition.

• Notable Compositions:

  • Jelly Roll Morton’s Maple Leaf Rag

  • King Oliver’s Dippermouth Blues