Download Breaking Convention: Music and Modernism AK 2100 Nov. 9, 2005

Breaking Convention: Music and Modernism
AK 2100
Nov. 9, 2005
Music and Tradition
• A brief timeline of Western Music
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Medieval: (before 1450). Chant, plainsong or Gregorian Chant.
Renaissance: (1450-1650 Increased use of instrumentation and multiple melodic lines
Baroque: (1650-1750). Characterized by the use of counterpoint and growing popularity of
keyboard music and orchestral music
Classical: (1750-1820). A brief but important era dominated by a handful of composers
Romantic: (1820-1920). Equally important, with a few central figures. Greater emphasis on
individual style and expression
20th century. Challenged many musical conventions.
The terms contemporary music or new music are used to describe “serious” or art music
composed today.
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The Classical Form
• A written musical tradition
• Music for its own sake - not a vehicle for other forms of content.
Concerned with universality as opposed to the individual or local
• Classical Sonata form: a way of organizing a work of music. Linked to
the structures of other forms - symphony, concerto, sonata
• Commonly used in the “classical era” in Europe (1750-1820)
• Basic idea: introduction of theme, development of theme and closure
of theme. Key Figures:
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Ludwig van Beethoven (earlier works) (1770-1827)
Joseph Haydn, (1732 - 1809)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840)
Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
The Symphony
First Movement: fast, in sonata form
Second Movement: slow
Third Movement: ABA structure
Fourth Movement: fast, sonata or rondo form
(ABACADA)
Beethoven. Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67
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Modernism & Music
• 1907: possible date for the beginning of the modern period with the
figure of Arnold Schoenberg
• Collapse of traditional tonality
• Challenged common practice tonality (1700-1900)
• Invests expanded spans of music with a sense of clearly defined, goaldirected motion
• Some generalized formal types: sonata form, the song form, the rondo
developed in conjunction with tonality
• Logical pattern of formal connections
• By end of 18th century its evolution had made it a sort of universal
musical language
Modernism & Music
• Main currents in 19th century musical practices undermined this
common foundation
• Most important reason – growing preference for a more personal kind
of musical expression as opposed to a universal form
• Aesthetics of musical Romanticism – emphasis placed on the unique as
opposed to the general. (later Beethoven - string quartets, Claude
Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Frederic Chopin)
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Beethoven String. Quartet in A, Op 18 No. 5, II
Chopin. Nocturne in F#, Op. 15, No. 2
Debussy. Three Nocturnes, Clouds
Ravel. Spanish Rhapsody, 4th Movement, Feria
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Modernism & Music
• Striving for individuality is evident in virtually all aspects of 19th
century music.
• Many innovations undermined the foundation of Classical form
• In place of the Classical ideal of form as an interaction among well
defined and functionally differentiated units, a new Romantic ideal
emerged of form as process, of music as continuum of uninterrupted
growth and evolution
• Form thereby acquired a more open quality, quite different from the
closed character of Classical musical structure
Modernism & Music
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This can be seen with special clarity in openings and closings
Clarity is no longer the end goal
Program music: also lead to breakup of tonal music
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Also: rise of nationalism. Composers from other countries drew upon the very
different musical qualities found in the folk and ethnic music of their own
lands.
Music became increasingly autonomous from Church and Royal Court. Old
patronage system began to dissolve
At the close of the 19th century, music had reached a position fundamentally
different from the one it occupied at the beginning.
Composers were individuals, expressing themselves through their music.
Believed in musical progress and the constant emergence of new forms of
expression.
– Richard Wagner, Die Walküre, Act III, Finale. (c 1874)
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The Atonal Revolution
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The Second Viennese School - Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern and Alban Berg
Schoenberg: 1874-1951
Great impact on compositional practice
Took the pracatice of chromatic music to its logical extreme -- to completely abandon
tonal and harmonic conventions
First String Quartet (1905): extraordinary complexity and elaborate organization
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Two technical details Schoenberg later theorized but which are articulated here in the music are
Developing variation,--continuous transformation of thematic substance, avoiding literal
repetition,
And musical prose, constantly unfolding of an unbroken musical line without any symmetrical
balances in terms of phrases, or sections, and corresponding thematic content.
Excerpt from String Quartet No. 2 (1907-8)
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1. Massing
3. Litanei. Langsam
The Atonal Revolution
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1907-1909-very creative period for Schoenberg where he made his break with
tonality and triadic harmony and moved into free chromaticism
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Second String Quartet Op. 10
Three Piano Pieces Op 11
Two Songs
Book of the Hanging Gardens Op 15
Five Orchestral Pieces Op 16
Erwartung Op 17
Die Gluckliche Hand
During this period, Schoenberg had two main goals:
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The emancipation of dissonance
Complete abandonment of conventional tonal and harmonic conventions
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The Atonal Revolution
• The Book of the Hanging Gardens, No. 7
• Again, each piece asks a particular question and illustrates different
organization structures
• Erwartung (1909):Erwartung can especially be viewed as part of the
Expressionist movement, that dominated the arts during the first 20
year of 1900s
• Pierrot Lunaire (1912) - excerpts
– No. 18 “The Moonfleck”
– No. 19 “Serenade”
• After 1916, Schoenberg published no pieces again until 1923
• Long silence due to a search for new organization principles for this
new language
12 Tone Music (Serialism)
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Schoenberg no longer believed in the intuitive mode of composition
Saw atonal system as inadequate for longer pieces
1921—“discovery” of 12 tone system
Conviction was that order, logic, comprehensibility and form could not
be present without obedience to laws (ZKIF)
– Coherence, Counterpoint, Instrumentation, Instruction in Form.
(Zusammenhang, Kontrapunkt, Instrumentation, Formenlehre) (ZKIF).
• Schoenberg claimed that his discovery of the 12 tone system would
“insure the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years”
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12 Tone System
Each composition draws its
basic material from a
uniquely chosen sequence of
the 12 pitches of the
chromatic scale. This is the
12 tone row or series. This
is called the “prime” form or
P for short.
12 Tone System
In addition to “P” there are
three other related forms:
The retrograde R reverses
the sequence of pitches and
intervals
In I each of the original
intervals is inverted so that a
perfect fifth upwards
becomes a perfect fifth
downwards
The retrograde inversion RI
is a inversion of R
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Glen Gould, piano.
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Schoenberg quotes
Schoenberg developed the system “as in a dream . . . . Strongly
convincing as this dream may have been, the conviction that these
new sounds obey the laws of nature and our manner of thinking - the
conviction that order, logic, comprehensibility and form cannot be
present without obedience to such laws - forces the composer along
the road to exploration. He must find if not laws or rules, at least
ways to justify the dissonant character of these harmonies and their
successions.”
Schoenberg quotes
"One may say: coherence is based on repetition, inasmuch as parts of A
recur in B, C, etc. And:
Coherence comes into being when parts that are somewhat the same,
somewhat different, are connected so that those parts that are the same
become prominent.
Contrast (relational) is likewise based on coherence, insofar as the same
parts as mentioned above are connected so that the unlike parts
predominantly attract attention.
Change and variation are based on repetition, insofar as several of the
like parts as well as several of the dissimilar parts become discernible.
Development is one such succession of related ideas, in which disparate
parts that are initially subordinate in importance gradually become the
principal ideas. (ZKIF: 20-23)
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Stravinsky
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1882-1971
Rite of Spring, May 29, 1913 premier in Paris. Caused a riot
Pagan Russian rituals
High level of dissonance
Chromaticism
Pervasive rhythmic technique
Excerpts
Continuations of the atonal revolution…
John Cage. Music of Changes (1951)
Edgar Varese. Poeme electronique (1958)
Gyorgy Ligeti. Lux Aeterna (1966)
George Crumb. Black Angels (1970)
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