Download 6-Many Streams Flowing

SECTION 6: MANY STREAMS FLOWING One of the hallmarks of art music from the Twentieth century to the present, and a frustration if you’re one of those music historians who like to assign labels to entire periods of music, is the many creative and aesthetic streams that flow during the era. In this Learning Activity, we’ll highlight some of these streams and discuss some thoughts on why there seem to be so many. We can’t possibly visit with each stream, though, since there are so many! TWO STREAMS: GERMAN (tonal) vs. FRENCH (timbre) TRADITION Imagine the body of Western concert art music at the end of the 19th‐century as a huge river flowing. One way to look at what was happening at the start of the 20th‐
century is a bifurcation, or splitting off, of this river into two smaller streams. The divide was because of an approach to tonality and dissonance. One camp – rooted in the tradition of German music – was interested in pushing tonality (and its listeners) “to the next level.” Let’s back up for a moment. Think of the forward march of tonality from the Baroque to this point. Baroque composers like J.S. Bach had more‐or‐less defined the tonal system, but were already breaking its rules with “non‐harmonic tones” and chromaticism (little visits to keys other than the home key) to add interest. Classical composers like Beethoven felt they had to do even more, and they did. Romantic composers felt they had to do more, and they did…to the point that in the late‐Romantic music of composers like Richard Strauss and Richard Wagner sometimes the music is so chromatic that you can’t even tell what key you’re in! Early 20th‐century composers like Arnold Schoenberg felt they had to do more, and they did. Schoenberg felt the music had abandoned the rules of tonality so much that no one note or key was strongest anymore; there was no TONIC. So, he invented his 12‐tone system that did away with keys and tonics and pretty‐much traditional tonal relationships. To someone listening for a tonal home base (a tonic), which is most folks, his music is confusing and frustrating. So we have the German thread from Bach to Beethoven to Wagner to Schoenberg that ended up with atonal, dissonant music. The other camp – rooted in the tradition of French music – was more interested in timbre, or tone color. The history of timbre in Western art music is partially dependent on the invention of more instruments, but it also involves how the instruments are played. French harpsichordist/composers like Francois Couperin played the same harpsichord as Bach, but added many embellishments and ornaments – with names like trill, turn, and mordant – to their music, making the surface of the music shimmer. While German composers of the Classical and Romanitc periods were pre‐occupied with WHAT NOTES to write (remember the above discussion on taking tonality/dissonance to the next level?), French composers were experimenting with timbre. For evidence of this, contrast the piano music of Schumann with that of Chopin; or the orchestrations of Brahms with those of Berlioz. Composers in this French stream weren’t uninterested in tonality, though; it’s just that they solved the problem of increasingly more chromaticism in a different way. Rather than eliminate the tonal center, they moved toward a slower harmonic movement. This stream manifested itself in the music of French impressionists like Claude Debussy and French‐influenced Russians like Igor Stravinsky. Rather than chords changing several times in a measure, they would allow the same chord to sound for measures at a time. Unusual chords and scales were used not to support tonal movement, but rather for their coloristic effects. With tonal impulse sidelined, they were free to highlight colorful orchestral scoring and changes in timbre. So we have the French thread from Couperin to Chopin/Berlioz to Debussy/Stravinsky. Of course, like any categorizations, there are exceptions so don’t get too carried away. But, also, like any categorization, we now have a frame of reference that may be useful. MORE STREAMS: SCHOOLS AND ISMS Smaller threads have broken off of both the German and the French streams. Usually these smaller streams have are referred to as “schools” or perhaps they are given names that end with the suffix, “ism.” For instance, Arnold Schoenberg’s 12‐
tone system achieved its tonal ambivalence via ordering the notes so that no one of the 12 notes in an octave predominates. From this idea of ordering we get the term “serialism.” Rhythm also broke from tradition and became unpredictable and expressive. In an obvious nod to the idea of a German‐tradition‐concerned‐more‐
with‐notes‐than‐timbre, Schoenberg and his students Anton Webern and Alban Berg are referred to as the 2nd Viennese School (you’ll remember that the 1st Viennese School was Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven). Webern’s use of disjunct melodic lines, scored for constantly shifting instruments, was dubbed pointillism, after the dot‐
style painting of Georges Seurat. The works of the 2nd Viennese School, the musical equivalent of Freudian analysis laid bare, were called Expressionist after the art movement that produced Edvard Munch’s famous painting, The Scream. There was a lot of optimism that “atonal” music was the direction music would take. All that was needed for it to catch on was time and exposure. Anton Webern said of his own dissonant, serial music, “In fifty years one will find it obvious; children will understand and sing it.” In 1969, Pierre Boulez was able to state that, “Since the discovery by the Viennese, all composition other than twelve‐tone is useless.”1 (Of course, nothing like this has happened. Yet, we will see a bit later how this music has been absorbed into the mainstream in a particular way.) Impressionism described music by Debussy and Ravel and is named for a visual art movement of the same name. Impressionist painters were concerned primarily with the effects of light, color, and atmosphere ‐ with impermanence, change, and 1David
Cope, New Directions in Music, 4th ed., (Dubuque, William C. Brown Co.,
1984), p. 339. Quoted from “An Interview with Pierre Boulez,” by Cope and Wilson. fluidity, often depicting outdoor scenes and especially water. It evokes a mood, atmosphere, or impression. Analogous to the impressionist painter’s concern with color and light was Debussy's careful treatment of timbre and orchestration, all above floating, slowly changing harmonies. While Stravinsky’s music features long, static harmonies (chords that don’t change for a while), and vivid use of orchestral colors, his harmonies can veer into more strident dissonance when he is trying to convey a rough, earthy primitivism, like in his ballet, The Rite of Spring. Primitivism is a thread in music that also taps into folk and peasant tunes. Another stream that uses folk tunes (and newly composed tunes that sound like folk music) and merges them with art music is nationalism. The music of Bela Bartok, who collected and incorporated many Hungarian folk tunes into his music, is sometimes called primitivistic. But he also used a variety of modes, special scales (whole tone, diminished, augmented, etc.), and even the Fibonacci series of numbers to generate chords and form. All of this allowed him to sound progressive and traditional at the same time – avoiding the German vs. French question altogether while yielding a “one­of­a­kind” sound. The Romantic period had its emotional excesses and the serial movement had its dissonant expressionism. In the wake of these, much of the music of both Aaron Copland and Igor Stravinsky has been called Neoclassical for its return to the classical ideas of absolute music, balance, and objectivity. Some think the popular, accessible music of Aaron Copland constitutes American nationalism. The composer does use, for instance, the Shaker melody, “Simple Gifts,” in his ballet, Appalachian Spring. But biographer Howard Pollack, in his excellent biography Aaron Copland, demonstrates convincingly that a lot of what we believe are sounds of poor mountain folk and the new frontier really emerge from Copland’s experience with Blues, jazz, and Jewish klezmer music! There is no question that the music of George Gershwin is a merging together of the pop and jazz of his day with art music. Since jazz is an American commodity, I guess you could say Gershwin’s music is both popular/classical fusion and is nationalism. Much of Leonard Bernstein’s music merges popular idioms with art music forms as well. More recently, minimalist composers like Philip Glass and John Adams have revisited the French idea of static harmony and features long, carefully/slowly developed themes. Other influences cited for this hypnotic style is the use of repetition in rock and Indian music. The harmonic language of minimalism is very consonant and accessible. Another example of recent art music that rejects the extreme dissonance of mid‐
Twentieth century serialism is the spiritually–influenced tintinnabulation of Estonian composer, Arvo Pärt. The term tintinnabulation comes from the Latin word form ringing of bells. Some call Part’s style “spiritual minimalism.” Interestingly, Pärt passed through a phase writing more modern‐sounding serial music, but it was the study of medieval and Renaissance music that inspired his style shift. A tent under which both minimalism and tintinnabulation could live is Postmodernism. Although the term Postmodernism was first used in the 1970s to refer to architecture, it has come to mean in music a reaction against the harsh dissonance of serialism. Postmodern composers using a myriad of approaches have returned to using artifacts of tonal music – tonal centers, major and minor chords, more regular rhythms – while still sounding fresh and inventive. WHY SO MANY STREAMS? Serialism, Pointillism, Impressionism, Expressionism, Primitivism, Nationalism, Neoclassical, Minimalistic, Postmodernist….and these aren’t half of the many streams of musical creativity of the recent era. “Why so many different approaches?” you might reasonably ask…..“Can’t everyone just agree on what to do?” An idealist would say that composers of the modern age are engaged in a search for artistic truth, and that later generations will sort it all out and acknowledge what is great. As a composer myself, I hate to admit it, but I think fashion, trend, vanity and pride has a lot more to do with it. I think Russian composer, Sergei Prokofiev, said it best when explaining his own unique sound: “The cardinal virtue (or, if you like, vice) of my life has always been the search for originality. I hate imitation. I hate the hackneyed methods. I do not want to wear anyone else’s mask. I want to be myself.” In their yearning for originality and uniqueness, many art music composers of our era have established their own systems, schools, and philosophies of writing. And who can blame them. As Tom Wolfe points out in his scathing and hilarious critique of the modern art scene, The Painted Word, having a theory has become an ever more prominent part of perceiving new visual art ‐‐ to “getting it”. He quotes New York Times art critic, Hilton Kramer, who wrote in 1974 that “...to lack a persuasive theory is to lack something crucial ‐‐ the means by which our experience of individual works is joined to our understanding of the values they signify.”2 In other words, as Wolfe points out, “Frankly, these days, without a theory to go with it, I can’t see a painting.”3 I think sometimes the same is true with modern music: composers felt compelled to explain and justify everything they did, sometimes to the point of the explanation – the theory – being more beautiful and important than the music itself. MUSIC FOR FILM With the splintered landscape of art music over the last hundred or so years, you might well ask if there is anyone synthesizing all the styles together into a more unified language, perhaps a language that years later will identify our age. In fact, 2Tom
Wolfe, The Painted Word,, p. 4.
3Ibid.,
p. 118.
there is a class of contemporary composers who have found use for all styles from the early Twentieth century to the present. These are composers of music for film. Film composers appropriate and synthesize more according to pragmatic concerns of their projects than principled aesthetic stances. In that way they aren’t much different than utilitarian composers like Bach or Haydn. John William uses the angry, militant sound of “Mars, Bringer of War,” the first movement of Gustav Holst’s orchestral suite, The Planets (premiered in 1918) in his score for the 1977 film, Star Wars. Battle music by film composer James Horner from the 1995 film, Braveheart, sounds inspired by Carl Orffs great choral masterpiece, Carmina Burana, from 1936. And much to the chagrin of modern composers, many‐a‐scary scene in horror films use expressionistic, serial style to convey what’s happening. The list goes on and on, and includes the use of popular music styles as well. Pretty much every time I see a movie I notice some musical style being appropriated by the film composer to serve the storyline. In my opinion, right before our eyes and ears, film music composers are gathering together the musical trends of the last hundred or so years and are summing them up in the great cinematic output. The best of these represents – like J.S. Bach did during his lifetime – the synthesis and epitome of all these styles into one language. Just which few will rise to the surface and be acknowledged as composers of music of lasting worth, to be listen to and regarded highly for centuries to come, is anyone’s guess, but I could make a few predictions.