• Radical modernism was a primary source of creative energy

• American modernists after Ives included Carl Ruggles (1876–1971), Roger Sessions (1896–1985), and Edgard Varèse (1883–1965; Varèse came to America from France)

• “More ambivalent view of avant-garde innovation”

  • Most avant-garde music was only played for a small audience

• More traditionalist American composers included Charlies Giffes (1884-1920), Samuel Barber (1910-1981), William Schuman (1910-1992), William Grant Still (1985-1978), and Aaron Copland (1900-1990)

• Some opera composers maintained popularity- Puccini, Richard Strauss

• Russians such as Sergei Prokofiev and Sergei Rachmaninov had nothing to do with avant-garde music

• Formality of concert life grew in the early twentieth century

Mixing Classical Form and Jazz: Maurice Ravel

• Ravel’s music was “marked by refinement, hyper-elegance, and a certain crispness”

• Between impressionism and Neoclassism

• Clarity, precision, and instant communication were priorities

• Musical exoticism (Vienna to Asia to Madagascar to America to ancient Greece)

Piano Concerto in G (1931)

• “Tribute to jazz”

  • Ravel was fascinated by jazz

• “Lighthearted” piece for piano and small orchestra

• First Movement (Allegramente)

  • Not jazzy

  • Long, lively, folklike tune

  • Fabulous orchestration

    • Whip, piccolo, pizzicato strings, piano, and a “special” high trumpet (in C), later more instruments like the harp

  • Uses short breaks (instrumental interludes)

    • High (E-flat) clarinet and muted trumpet

  • Three themes, each repetitively presented with different instruments

• Last work (except one other) before Ravel contracted a rare brain disease

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) Biography

• Born in France near Spain

  • Spanish mother, uses exotic Spanish resonances often

• Studied at the Paris Conservatory (16 years)

• Succeeded Debussy (in a sense) in France

• Amazing ear for sonority

• Meticulous, aimed for clarity over all else

• Lived a lonely and uneventful life in Paris

• Once went to America in 1928, met George Gershwin and Charlie Chaplin, and came back richer

• Had a rare brain disease (1932, died in 1937)

Folk Music, Nationalism, and Modernism: Béla Bartók

• Grew up in Hungary in 1890s

• Bartók was inspired first by Debussy and Richard Strauss, then by Stravinsky later in life

• Pianist, educator, musicologist, and composer

• Committed to folk music deeply

  • Not as abstract as much modernist music

  • Early feel

Béla Bartók (1881-1945) Biography

• Talented and trained from a young age in music

• “Prolific composer and fine pianist”

• Directed the Budapest Academy of Music

• Wrote Mikrokosmos (153 graded piano pieces)

• Wrote books on folk music

• Strongly opposed to Nazis

• Not popular in America, even after moving there

  • More popular in death

Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta (1936)

• Informal symphony (3 mvts) for a small orchestra

• Strings, piano, harp, celesta, timpani, and other percussion

• Second Movement (Allegro)

  • Motive a “energizes” the preface (pizzicato), theme 1, and contrapuntal bridge passage

  • Full stop after bridge

  • Second groups of 3+ short themes

  • Then piano theme w/ off note repetitions

    • Cadence theme

  • Exaggerated cadence ends exposition

  • Development has motive b

  • Syncopated passage for piano, snare drum, and xylophone

  • Imitative polyphony and folklike tunes

  • Recapitulation has a very unstable meter

Varieties of American Modernism

• Modernism in America took off in the 1920s

• Composers associated w/ European modernism

• Innovative musical styles

Ruth Crawford

• Aka Ruth Crawford Seeger

• Very early American avant-garde modernist

• Women in male-dominated field

• Composed full time 1925-1933

• Skilled pianist

• Atonal, w/ dissonant harmonies

• Counterpoint

• Later collected/transcribed American folk songs

Prelude for Piano No. 6 (Andante Mystico; 1928)

• Published in Henry Cowell’s New Music Society of San Francisco's quarterly NEW MUSIC publication

• By Crawford, influenced by Alexander Scriabin

• Triple layered counterpoint

• Ostinato

Ruth Crawford (1901-1953) Biography

• Minister’s daughter in Ohio

• Studied at the American Conservatory in Chicago, w/ Djane Lavoie-Herz, and also in Berlin and Paris for a year

  • Studied abroad using the Guggenheim Fellowship in composition (first woman to win it)

• Studied with Charles Seeger (met him through Henry Cowell) in NY, later married and had 4 kids with him

• Died from cancer after starting to write her own compositions again

William Grant Still

• Distinctive African American identity and sound in his music

  • Rare

• Involved w/ the Harlem Renaissance

• “Musical nationalism in modernist guise”

William Grant Still (1895-1978) Biography

• Born in Mississippi

• Middle-class parents

  • Father died when Still was an infant, mother and stepfather encouraged musical interest

• Studied science at Wilberforce University, but then studied music at Oberlin College and the New England Conservatory on scholarship

• Won two Guggenheim Fellowships, along with many other awards and commissions

• Arranger for dance bands, musicals, recordings, and radio shows, along with in Hollywood films

• Remembered for his concert music, opera, and ballet, etc.

  • Large output

  • Pathbreaking

Afro-American Symphony (1930)

• Still’s first symphony

• Relatively conventional Romantic orchestra, plus a few (tenor banjo…)

• Four movements w/ mostly conventional tempos and forms

  • First: fast, modified sonata form

  • Second: slow, melodic

  • Third: quick, dance-like

  • Fourth: slow, rondo-like

• Clear tense of key and tonic

• “Flavor” of jazz and blues in melodies, harmonies, and rhythms (syncopation, usage of the blues scale)

Aaron Copland

• America’s leading composer for a time

• Several stylistic phases

  • Started with avant-garde modernism

  • Dry, rhythmic, anti-Romantic (Stravinsky) style

  • More traditional music

• Nationalist

  • Used jazz, cowboy songs, square dancing, and old hymns

Appalachian Spring (1945)

• Ballet- choreographed and danced by Martha Graham

• Eight sections

• Consists of “a pioneer celebration in spring around a newly built farmhouse in the Pennsylvania hills”

Aaron Copland (1900-1990) Biography

• Russian-Jewish kid that grew up in Brooklyn with a musical education

• Studied in Paris and worked with Nadia Boulanger

  • Encouraged Stravinsky interests

• Promoted American music; formed the American Composers’ Alliance

• Avant-garde around 1930

• More accessible/populist style in later 1930s and 40s, w/ American folk roots

• Worked with the Boston Symphony Orchestra composing at a summer school

• Composed less and taught later in life

The Rise of Film Music

• Film reach large audiences, and use a wide variety of music

• Lots of films use symphony orchestras, similar to later Romanticism

  • Silent film (1910s-20s)

  • Leitmotiv techniques

Composers for Film

Film composers include Max Steiner (Gone with the Wind, King Kong), John Williams (Star Wars), Bernard Herrmann w/ Alfred Hitchcock (Vertigo, Psycho), William Grant Still, Aaron Copland (Our Town), Leonard Bernstein (On the Waterfront), and others, even for USSR propaganda.

Sergei Prokofiev, Alexander Nevsky Cantata (1938)

• Monumental and innovative early sound film

• Propaganda- about a 13th century Russian hero fighting against Germans

• Music consists of “a series of vivid sound-pictures of the action” and parts where the orchestra stops for battle noise.

• Battle calls, growing dynamics and texture

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) Biography

• Child prodigy, concert pianist, conductor, composer

• Born in Ukraine, worked w/ the St. Petersburg Conservatory

• Started w/ radical works, then moved towards “clear tonality, tunefulness, and the use of Russian folk themes”

• Global star by the 1930s

• Returned to Russia, 12 years later performances of his music were banned

• Wrote Peter and the Wolf

Music and Totalitarianism

• Economic, political, and military “upheavals”

  • Inflation

• Orchestras and opera companies commonly disappeared

• Nazi Germany- Beethoven and Wagner were promoted by Hitler, modernist music was banned, Richard Strauss was supported, Jewish composers/musicians fled

• Soviet Union- Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) was a (maybe) communist that used surprisingly dissonant harmonies