Twentieth-Century Developments

1
Twentieth-Century Developments

• Extremes in violence and progress
• 1st half of century
• World Wars I II
• Dictatorships
• Global Depression
• 2nd half of century
• Breakup of colonial empires
• Cold War between USA and Soviet Union (USSR)
• Armed conflicts
• Rapid economic growth
• Equal rights movements

2
Twentieth-Century Developments

• Technology and science
• First flight / Walk on the moon
• Communications
• Albert Einstein theory of relativity
• Sigmund Freud understanding the unconscious
• Structure of DNA
• Arts
• Shock as a goal
• Modern dance
• Picassos and Kandinskys artwork
• Emphasis on pluralism and diversity
• Contradictions coexist / alternations between
  contradictions

3
Twentieth-Century Developments

• Summary of arts developments
• USA powerful force in culture, entertainment,
  politics, economics
• Nonwestern cultures/thought affect the arts
• New technologies affect artists
• Human sexuality explored
• Minority representation
• Reactions to wars and massacres
• Postmodern approach less serious / blur lines
  between elite and pop culture

4
Musical Styles 1900-1945

• More fundamental changes in language of music
  than 1650-1900
• New approaches
• Pitch and rhythm organization
• New vocabulary of sound
• Originally met with hostility
• Now commonly heard in jazz, rock, TV, Movies
• No single system governs pitch organization for
  all music
• Relies less on pre-established relationships and
  expectations

5
1900-1945 An Age of Musical Diversity

• Great diversity of musical styles
• Different musical languages vs. dialects
• Reflects diversity of life
• Agency freedom to choose
• Global communication and travel
• Wider range of music available
• Unconventional rhythms, sounds, melodic patterns
• Influence of non-European music
• American jazz Improvisation, syncopations,
  unique tone colors
• Inspiration from wider historical range,
  including forms

6
Characteristics of Twentieth-Century Music

• Tone Color
• More important Variety Continuity Mood
• Noiselike / percussive sounds
• Uncommon playing techniques
• Glissando
• Col legno
• Flutter-tongue
• More percussion instruments
• Harmony
• Consonance and dissonance
• Emancipation of dissonance
• New chord structures
• Polychords
• Quartal chords

7
Characteristics of Twentieth-Century Music

• Alternatives to the Traditional Tonal System
• Less gravity to tonic key maj/min
• Tonal center around a chord or tone
• Use of church modes
• Polytonality / bitonality
• Atonality
• Twelve-tone system
• Rhythm
• Emphasis on irregularity and unpredictability
• New structures free and varied
• Irregular phrases / meters
• Rapid changes
• Polyrhythm
• Ostinato

8
Characteristics of Twentieth-Century Music

• Melody
• No longer tied to chords, harmony or tonality
• Lack of tonal center
• Wide leaps
• Series of irregular phrases

9
Music and Musicians in Society

• Living Room becomes the new concert hall
• Technology radio, recordings, TV
• Larger audience
• Larger repertoire
• Radio broadcasts
• 1920s reach large audience
• 1930s radio networks form orchestras
• NBC Symphony Orchestra
• Regular broadcasts of Saturday matinee
  performances of the Metropolitan Opera
• Television broadcasts
• 1951 Amahl and the Night Visitors
• First opera created for television
• New York Philharmonic / Bernstein
• Public television
• Live from Lincoln Center / Live from the Met

10
Music and Musicians in Society

• Repertoire dominated by music of earlier periods
  during the first half of 20th century
• Contemporary works neglected / difficult
• Formation of new music groups
• International Society for Contemporary Music
• 1950s More contemporary music performed
• In concert by major orchestras and opera
  companies
• Recordings
• Musicians more accustomed proficient

11
Music and Musicians in Society

• Many modern compositions commissioned
• Tied with developments in dance
• Film scores
• Philanthropic foundations
• Few composers lived on commissions alone
• Earned living by teaching, conducting, performing
• composers in residence
• Latin American composers
• Hieter Villa-Lobos, Silvestre Revueltas, Carlos
  Chávez, Alberto Ginastera, Astor Piazzolla
• Women composers
• Amy Beach, Ruth Crawford-Seeger, Miriam Gideon,
  Vivian Fine, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich

12
Music and Musicians in Society

• African American composers and performers
• William Grant Still, Howard Swanson, Ulysses Kay,
  Olly Wilson, Tania Léon, George Walker
• Admitted to music schools / banned from opera
  companies and orchestras
• 1945 Todd Duncan, baritone, performs at the NYC
  Opera Company
• 1955 Marian Anderson, contralto, performs at
  the Metropolitan Opera

13
Music and Musicians in Society

• Political, economic, social upheavals
• Russian Revolution (1917)
• Rachmaninoff and others leave Russia
• Musicians lives and careers strictly controlled
• 1930s Communist Party demands that Soviet
  composers
• Reject modernism
• Write music that praise the regime
• Hitler in Germany (1933)
• Avant-garde, socialist, and Jewish musicians lose
  jobs
• Onset of WWII largest migration of artists in
  history
• Stravinsky, Bartók, Schoenberg, Hindemith leave
  Europe for USA

14
Music and Musicians in Society

• USA influence on music
• Jazz and American popular music sweep the world
• Post-1920 Large group of composers / wide
  spectrum of contemporary styles
• Most first-rank symphony orchestras
• American colleges and universities
• Train and employ leading composers, performers,
  scholars
• Expand course offerings
• Sponsor 20th century music specialty groups
• Electronic music studios

15
Impressionism and Symbolism

• French Impressionist Painting
• 1874 Exhibition by French painters
• Monet, Renoir, Pissaro and others
• Critic comments negatively on Monets Impression
  Sunrise
• Critic mocks show as exhibition of
  impressionists
• Term impressionist sticks
• Loses negative implication
• Impressionist paintings
• Appreciated today
• In 1870s seen as formless collections of tiny
  colored patches (viewed too closely)
• Painters concerned with light, color, atmosphere
  (impermanence, change, fluidity)
• Outdoor scenes from contemporary life
• Obsessed with water

16
Impressionism and Symbolism

• French Symbolist Poetry
• Emphasized fluidity, suggestion, and the purely
  musical, or sonorous, effects of words
• Mallarmé, Verlaine, Rimbaud symbolist poets
• Debussy (composer) was a friend of many symbolist
  poets
• The Afternoon of a Faun by Mallarmé inspires
  Debussys most famous orchestral work

17
Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

• Impressionist composer / links Romantic era with
  20th Century
• Age 10-22 studies at Paris Conservatory
• Regarded as talented rebel by teachers
• 1884 wins Prix de Rome
• 3 years of study in Rome subsidized
• Leaves after 2 years / lacking musical
  inspiration away from Paris
• Musical influences
• Russian music / visits to Russia
• Worked with Nadezhda von Meck
• Asian music Paris International Exposition
  (1889)
• Wagners music / both attracted and repelled

18
Claude Debussy

• Earns small income teaching piano
• Attended literary gatherings regularly
• Little known to musical public
• 1902 Pelléas and Mélisande (opera)
• Critics sharply divided
• Soon catches on / most important living French
  composer
• Financial and emotional crises
• Constantly borrowing money
• Love affairs
• Concert tours to pay for luxuries
• Not a gifted conductor / hated appearing in
  public
• 1918 - Dies in Paris

19
Debussys Music

• Descriptive titles
• Fleeting moods / misty atmosphere
• Inspired by literary and pictorial ideas
• Impressionism in music
• Sounds free and spontaneous
• Stress on tone color and fluidity
• Treatment of harmony
• Chords used more for their tone color and
  sonority than in a progression
• Lack of traditional resolutions
• Parallel chords / planing
• Adds 5-note chords to harmonic vocabulary

20
Debussys Music

• Tonality
• Pentatonic / whole-tone scales
• Rhythmic flexibility
• Debussys Output
• One opera
• Art Songs
• Piano Works
• Works for Orchestra and Chamber Ensembles

21
Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (1894)

• free illustration of Mallarmés poem
• Dreams and fantasies of a faun
• long solo on his flute
• Tries to recall whether he carried off two
  beautiful nymphs or not
• Falls asleep, exhausted by the effort
• successive scenes through which pass the dreams
  and desires of the faun in the heat of the
  afternoon
• Woodwind solos, muted horn calls, harp glissandos

22
Neoclassicism (1920-1950)

• Emotional restraint, balance, clarity
• Use of earlier techniques to organize 20th
  century harmonies and rhythms
• Slogan Back to Bach
• Preferred absolute music for chamber groups over
  program music and gigantic orchestras
• Post WWI economy affects this
• Fugues, concerti grossi, baroque suites
• Most use maj/min scales
• Some use 12-tone system
• Sounds modern /
• Neoclassicism in other arts

23
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)

• Legendary figure / friends with T.S. Eliot and
  Picasso / Honored by JFK
• Born near St. Petersburg, Russia
• Studied with Rimsky-Korsakov
• 1909 heard by Diaghilev, director of Russian
  ballet
• Asked for orchestration of Chopin pieces
• 1910 commissions The Firebird
• 1911 Petrushka
• 1913 The Rite of Spring
• Riot erupts
• Later recognized as masterpiece
• Influences composers around the world

24
Igor Stravinsky

• WWI flees to Switzerland
• After armistice moves to France
• WWII comes to USA
• 1920s-30s constantly tours Europe and USA
• Compositions less inspired by Russian folk music
• 1950s adopts 12-tone system
• Got well-paying commissions
• Loved order and discipline
• Kept banking hours

25
Stravinskys Music

• Three early ballets
• Large orchestra / Russian folklore and folk tunes
• WWI wrote for chamber groups
• Unconventional instrument combinations
• Incorporates ragtime rhythms / popular dances
• 1920-1951 his neoclassic period
• Inspired by 18th-century music
• 1950s shift to 12-tone music
• Inspired by Anton Webern
• Stravinsky sound
• Strong beat / dry, clear tone colors
• Changing irregular meters / abrupt rhythmic
  shifts
• Ostinatos
• Drew on wide range of styles / used existing
  music at times

26
Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring)

• 1910 fleeting vision
• Primitivism the deliberate evocation of
  primitive power through insistent rhythms and
  percussive sounds
• 2 parts subdivided into sections / without pause
  / each has slow introduction and final frenzied
  climactic dance
• Part I
• Introduction
• Omens of Spring Dances of the Youths and
  Maidens
• Ritual of Abduction

27
Expressionism 1905-1925

• artistic movement that stressed intense,
  subjective emotion
• centers in Germany and Austria
• explore inner feelings rather than depicting
  outward appearance
• deliberate distortions used to assault and shock
  the audience
• reaction against French impressionism
• Expressionist art
• reject conventional prettiness
• social protest
• poor and oppressed
• opposition to WWI

28
Expressionism in Music

• grows out of emotional turbulence from late
  Romantic composers
• ex. Wagner and Mahler
• Characteristics
• harsh dissonance
• fragmentation
• extreme registers
• unusual instrumental effects
• many avoid tonality and traditional chord
  progressions

29
Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)

• born in Vienna, Austria
• almost entirely self-taught musician
• studies scores
• plays in amateur chamber groups
• attends concerts
• age 21 loses job as bank clerk
• earns poor living
• conducts choir of industrial workers
• orchestrates popular operettas

30
Arnold Schoenberg

• Early works met with hostility
• 1904 teaches music theory and composition
• loyal students Alban Berg, Anton Webern
• 1908 abandons traditional tonality
• 1908-1915 incredible productivity (I have a
  mission)
• 1915-1923 publishes nothing searching for way
  to organize his musical discoveries
• 1921 announcement of discovery
• 1923-25 begins using twelve-tone system
• appointed to position at Prussian Academy of Arts
  in Berlin

31
Arnold Schoenberg

• Nazis seize power in Germany
• 1933 dismissed from Academy (Jewish)
• moves to USA
• joins music faculty at UCLA
• Feels neglected in USA
• music rarely performed
• financially unsuccessful
• After death
• twelve-tone system used increasingly throughout
  the world
• remains an important influence today

32
Schoenbergs Music

• new music destined to become tradition
• evolves from the past
• early works show features of late Romantic style
• large orchestras
• dissonances
• angular melodies
• modulate through remote keys
• 1903-1907
• farther from Romanticism
• whole-tone scales
• quartal chords

33
Schoenbergs Music

• atonality the absence of key
• evolves from use of chromatic harmonies and
  scales
• all 12 tones used without regard to traditional
  relationships
• emancipated dissonances
• jagged melodies
• novel instrumental effects
• extreme contrasts in dynamics / register
• irregular phrases
• Sprechstimme halfway between speaking and
  singing
• early works lack musical system of organization
• longer works only possible with longer text

34
Schoenbergs Music

• Twelve-tone system
• method of composing with twelve tones
• tone row, set, or series
• the ordering or unifying idea
• serial technique
• no pitch occurs more than once in a tone row
• number of possibilities 479,001,600
• original form, retrograde, inversion, retrograde
  inversion
• 12-tone matrix calculator
• example of 12-tone music

35
Pierrot lunaire, Op. 21 (1912)

• cycle of 21 songs for female voice and 5-member
  instrumental ensemble that play 8 instruments
• based on weird poems by Belgian poet Giraud,
  translated in to German by Hartleben
• Pierrot tragic clown puppet derived from
  commedia dellarte
• represents isolated modern artist
• 3 groups of 7 songs
• songs 1-7 Pierrot, a poet, drunk in moonlight,
  deranged
• songs 8-14 nightmare filled with death,
  martyrdoms
• songs 15-21 refuge from nightmare through
  clowning, sentimentality, and nostalgia
• No.1 Mondestrunken
• voice, piano, flute, violin, cello

36
A Survivor from Warsaw, Op.46

• cantata for narrator, male chorus, and orchestra
• about a single episode in the Holocaust
• based partly on a direct report by a survivor
  from a Warsaw ghetto
• over 400,000 Jews from this ghetto died in
  extermination camps or of starvation
• many others died during 1943 revolt against the
  Nazis
• English, German, and Hebrew 3 languages in
  Schoenbergs life
• 12-tone composition written in 1947

37
Anton Webern (1883-1945)

• born in Vienna
• studied piano, cello, music theory
• earned doctorate of music from University of
  Vienna
• studied privately with Schoenberg
• modest income from conducting
• rare performances of own music met with ridicule
• shy / devoted to family / Christian / loved to
  commune with nature
• mistakenly shot and killed by American soldier
  near end of WWII

38
Weberns Music

• most works last only 2-3 minutes
• mature output can be played in less than 3½ hours
• Works -
• half for solo voice or chorus
• rest for chamber orchestra and small chamber
  groups
• atonal and 12-tone
• melodic lines atomized into 2-note or 3-note
  fragments
• often used strict polyphonic imitation
• works became a source of inspiration for
  composers after his death

39
Five pieces for Orchestra, Op.10

• atonal / not 12-tone
• expressions of musical lyricism
• among the shortest pieces ever written for
  orchestra
• 4th piece 6 1/3 measures long / less than 30
  seconds
• unconventional instruments used
• Third Piece Very slow and extremely calm

40
Béla Bartók (1881-1945)

• born in Hungary
• piano important instrument in his career
• mother taught him first lessons
• attended Budapest Academy of Music
• 1907-1934 teaches piano at the academy
• gives recitals throughout Europe
• influenced by Hungarian nationalist movement
• spends free time recording peasant folk songs in
  small villages
• becomes authority on peasant music

41
Béla Bartók

• importance recognized abroad during 1920s and
  1930s
• neglected in Hungary until premiere of ballet
  (The Wooden Prince - 1917)
• 1940 anti-Nazi / emigrates to USA
• has little money / poor health / feels neglected
• 1943 receives commission for Concerto for
  Orchestra while in the hospital
• receives other commissions
• dies next year / becomes one of the most popular
  20th century composers

42
Bartóks Music

• Hungarian influence is the strongest
• fused folk elements, classical forms, 20th
  century sounds
• arranged many folk tunes
• most works use original themes that have a folk
  flavor
• Works
• many for solo piano
• 6 string quartets and other chamber music
• 3 piano concertos
• 2 violin concertos
• several pieces for orchestra

43
Bartóks Music

• reinterpreted traditional forms
• rondo, fugue, sonata, etc.
• always used tonal center
• used harsh dissonances, polychords, tone clusters
• rhythm powerful beat, unexpected changes,
  changing meters
• Concerto for Orchestra
• offered 1000 in hospital by Koussevitsky,
  conductor of Boston Symphony Orchestra
• 2nd movement Game of Pairs
• Allegretto scherzando / ABA
• different pairs of woodwind and brass instruments

44
William Grant Still (1895-1978)

• 1917-1935 Harlem Renaissance
• Afro-American Symphony first composition by a
  black composer performed by a major American
  symphony orchestra
• born in Woodville, Mississippi / grew up in
  Little Rock, Arkansas
• studied violin
• age 16 Wilberforce University premed student
• devoted himself to musical activities
• abandoned medicine for music
• did not graduate / popular music arranger and
  performer

45
William Grant Still

• worked for W.C. Handy in Memphis
• arranged Handys St. Louis Blues for military
  band (1916)
• 1917 Oberlin College Conservatory
• left to serve in navy in WWI
• briefly returned to Oberlin
• moved to New York
• popular musician / composer of concert works
• wrote band arrangements / played in all-black
  shows
• studied with two opposing composers
• George Whitefield Chadwick
• Edgard Varèse
• writes in a uniquely African-American flavor
• critically acclaimed in New York

46
William Grant Still

• 1931 premiere of Afro-American Symphony by
  Rochester Philharmonic
• performed by 38 orchestras in US and Europe over
  next 2 decades
• 1934 awarded Guggenheim Fellowship
• moves to Los Angeles
• writes film scores, concert works, operas
• 1936 conducts Los Angeles Philharmonic
• first African American to conduct major symphony
  orchestra
• Troubled Island first opera by black composer
  performed
• 1981 (3 years after death) A Bayou Legend
  (1941) televised nationally

47
Afro-American Symphony (1931)

• shortly after onset of Great Depression
• devises own blues theme / blues could be
  elevated to the highest musical level.
• unified by thematic transformation of blues theme
  throughout movements
• uses tenor banjo
• themes recall spirituals, jazz tunes
• movements prefaced by lines from poem by Paul
  Laurence Dunbar
• 3rd movement Humor Animato

48
Aaron Copland (1900-1990)

• born in Brooklyn to Russian-Jewish immigrants
• age 15 decided to be a composer on his own
• was drawn to modern music, despite first
  teachers objections
• 1921 studied with Nadia Boulanger in France
• Phases in Coplands Music
• American in character (i.e. jazz) only lasted
  a few years
• 1930s serious, dissonant, sophisticated works
• late 1930s American folklore, accessible to
  larger audience
• also jazz, revival hymns, cowboy songs

49
Coplands Music

• simple, yet highly professional
• clear textures
• slow-moving harmonies
• strongly tonal
• 20th century techniques
• polychords
• polyrhythms
• changing meters
• percussive orchestration
• serial technique

50
Appalachian Spring

• ballet score for Martha Graham
• took about a year to complete
• doubtful that it would be a timely piece
• wrote a suite for orchestra a year later
• won important awards / Copland recognized by a
  large public
• pioneer celebration in spring around a
  newly-built farmhouse in the Pennsylvania hills