Download Impressionism - Mallaig High School Music Dept

th
20
Century Music
Learning outcome for unit
To be able to recognise stylistic
features of the 20th century in
several genres of music.
Impressionism
Impressionism
• 19th Century art
movement
Features of Impressionist Art
Lots of contrasting, vibrant colours
Visible brush strokes
Emphasis on the effect of light
Vague
Impressionist Artists
• Claude Monet
• Edouard Manet
• Edgar Degas
• And many more…
Impressionist Music
• A combination of Romanticism and
Classicism
• Refinement of emotion and form
Features of Impressionist Music
• Dissonance
• Whole tone scale
• Parallel 3rds, 4ths and 5ths
• 7th chords
Dissonance
Notes which seem to clash
when sounded together.
Whole tone scale
A scale containing no semitones but
built entirely on whole tones.
Parallel 3rds, 4ths and 5ths
Parallel 3rds
Parallel 4ths
Consecutive intervals of a
third, fourth or fifth
Parallel 5ths
7th Chords
• Dominant 7th –
Chord built on
the dominant
(5th) note of a
key which adds
the 7th note
above its root.
7th Chords
• Diminished 7th – A
chord consisting of three
intervals of a minor 3rd
built one on top of the
other, the interval
between the lower and
top note being a
diminished 7th. This can
be a very useful chord for
modulation to distant
keys.
Expressionism
Expressionism
• Art movement at the
turn of the 20th
Century
• Expressing innermost
thoughts and
emotions through
works of art,
sculptures, poetry,
music
Features of Expressionist Art
• Artists aimed to capture the emotion of
their subjects rather than depict reality.
• They did this by using powerful, bold
contrasting colours, distortion and
creating a two-dimensional piece of art.
Some Expressionist Artists
• Edvard Munch
• Vincent Van Gogh
• Franz Marc
Expressionist Music
• The most central figure of Expressionism
in music is Arnold Schoenberg
• Schoenberg experimented with tonality.
Often his music had no tonal centre. This
is called atonality.
Features of Expressionist Music
• Dissonance
• Atonality
• Polyphony
• Complicated rhythms
Dissonance
Notes which seem to clash
when sounded together.
Atonality
Major
Minor
Atonal
Music which is neither major or minor.
The music has no tonal centre or key
Polyphony
Texture which consists of two or more
melodic lines, possibly of equal importance
which weave independently of each other
Complicated Rhythms
These extracts are from Schoenberg’s “Five Pieces for Orchestra”
This excerpt uses 4/8 and 3/8 time at the same time.
This makes the music sound very unsettling.
Here, Schoenberg writes rhythms that cross over barlines
Minimalism
Minimalism
• A development in the
second half of the 20th
Century
• Artwork is “stripped
down” to its most
fundamental features
• “Less is more”
Minimalism in Art
• Simple forms
• Geometric shapes
• Hard straight lines
• Focus on physical
presence of artwork
rather than illusion and
metaphor
• Reaction to
Expressionism
Features of Minimalism in Music
• Repetition of simple figures
• Ostinato
• Steady pulse
• Consonance
• Often pre-recorded sounds are used (Musique
concrète)
Repetition
A musical idea which is
heard more than once
Ostinato
A short musical pattern heard many times
Consonance
Notes which sound well together
Musique Concrète
• Recorded natural sounds which are
transformed using simple editing
techniques such as cutting and reassembling, playing backwards, slowing
down and speeding up
Serialism
Serialism
A 20th-century method of musical
composition invented by Schoenberg in
which the twelve notes of the Chromatic
scale are organised into a series or tone row.
Each note can be used once in a
tone row and in any order
Serial Techniques
• Retrograde
• Inversion
• Retrograde inversion
Retrograde
To go backwards. A melody or a section
of music can be written or performed
from the end to the beginning.
Inversion
• In serial composition the tone row may be
used in inverted form. This appears as a
mirror image (in contrary motion).
Retrograde Inversion
Retrograde inversion means the music
can be written or performed backwards and
upside-down at the same time.