Radical Modernists (Ch. 33)

Expressionism:

radical break begins shortly after WWI

• composers of this school still somewhat grasping for the past, trying to develop a new identity in terms of the past

Second Vienese School: Schoenberg, Berg, Webern

• (1st = Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven)

• schoenberg taught berg + webern

Post Tonal: new ways outside of pitch center

Atonal: avoids tomal center, “free tonality”, NOT 12 tone

12 Tone: specific procedure

schoenberg = emancipation of the dissonance

sprech (speak) stimme (sung) = speaksong (not recitative)

webern = pointelistic

Stravinsky = neo classical

• primitivism = expressionism (sorta) and both are part of modernism

• diaghilev 1910s commissioned 3 ballets from stravinsky

  • the firebird

  • petrushka

  • rite of spring

• traits:

  • repetition of melodies and rhythms (unknown score = french publishers

  • static harmony

  • blocks of sound marked by interruption often without transitions

  • sharp dissonances

    • polytonal/pantonal atmospheres + octatonic collections

  • steady pulse with displaced accents

  • layering, blocking, juxtapositions, ostinato

Charles Ives and Bartok

• both synthesized nation elements with the austro german tradition

• bartok = use of tradition/classicalism (national meloodies) and use of innovation/modernism (palindrome, symmetry (inversionon), central tone)

  • strauss, debussy , shoenberg, stravinsky = influences

• Ives experiments later on with polytonal works, layered rhythms, etc

• kodaly