Download MUSIC FOR THE PIANO SESSION SEVEN: THE AGE OF ANXIETY

MUSIC FOR THE PIANO
SESSION SEVEN: THE AGE OF ANXIETY, 1920-1950
The cover illustration for our seventh session is a photograph of the great
English pianist, Dame Myra Hess, in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. The date
was October 10, 1939, at the height of the Blitz, a months - long series of
nightly air raids by the German Luftwaffe. The event pictured here was the first
of over 1,700 free, lunchtime concerts organized by Dame Myra for the people
of London. The concerts, which continued for over six years until World War II
ended, were Dame Myra’s personal response to Adolf Hitler’s promise to break
the will of the English people by “reducing to rubble” their most beloved
buildings, including St. Paul’s.
THE AGE OF ANXIETY, 1920-1950
The thirty-year period from 1920 to 1950 prolonged the personal suffering,
social upheaval and financial chaos that followed the close of World War I.
From 1929 a world-wide financial depression consumed the attention of the
United States and Europe alike. From 1933, the rise of the fascist Adolph Hitler
reawakened Germany’s long-suppressed desires to dominate Europe. In Italy
Benito Mussolini pursued his desire for worldwide recognition. Joseph Stalin’s
many purges, mass murders, imprisonments and other forms of oppression
soon became well-known through the literary works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
Weak governments everywhere were helpless to prevent a Second World War
scarcely twenty years after the first.
But in 1945 World War II seemed to end in a more hopeful way than did the
First War. There were clear winners and losers, and the victors, led by the
United States, were quick to help the defeated nations rather than seeking
revenge from them. But the massive arms buildup of World War II, along with
the “cold war” between Capitalism and Communism, ushered in a prolonged
period of political and military confrontation. W.H. Auden’s long poem, “The
Age of Anxiety,” published in 1947, was widely discussed throughout the world,
and its name quickly became the defining label for the inter-war period.

How did the piano accommodate a less blended, more fragmented style of
the early twentieth century?

What kinds of piano music were created between 1920 and 1950?

What does it sound like?
NEW MUSICAL STYLES
Last week we took stock of three new musical styles that emerged around the
turn of the 20th century - Impressionism, Ragtime, and Dissonance. During the
interwar period all three styles gained popularity throughout the musical
world. During the 1920s composers in every nation experimented with them,
but ultimately their limitations made their influence fairly short-lived;
Impressionism, because it was too consonant, too “pretty;” and Ragtime,
because, apart from its rhythms, it sounded too conventional. Dissonance, by
contrast, soon became an almost universal component of music designed to
express the age of anxiety.
EXPRESSING VIOLENCE AND ANXIETY
Throughout the long history of music for the piano, from the cheerful sonatas
of Haydn in the 1770s to the lengthy, complex works of Brahms and
Rachmaninoff around 1900, the piano had secured its place as the dominant
musical instrument because of its wonderful ability to create complex, blended
sounds – sounds in which each tone could be heard individually and at the
same time, in combination with other tones to create rich, orchestral-like
musical effects. The word commonly used for these sounds was harmony:
blended tones that have a pleasing effect. Another word to express these
sounds was concord, meaning an agreeable blend of sounds.
As the horror and destruction of World War I was experienced; as political
Empires crumbled; and as the class system that provided a secure social and
economic place for every citizen disintegrated, composers no longer believed
that a musical style based on harmony and agreeable blends of sounds was
adequate to express the anxiety, fear, and abandonment so widely experienced.
During and after World War I some composers stopped writing music
completely. Others searched for new styles of music based on discord rather
than concord, on dissonance rather than consonance. Still others continued to
write music in the prevailing style of the pre-war era, hoping that somehow
they could coax new and more relevant sounds out of the musical style of the
19th century.
NEW SOUNDS
We can compare the old and the newly emerging musical styles this way:
18th-19th Centuries
BLENDED SOUNDS
20th Century
DIVERSE SOUNDS

Large Ensemble: blended,
string-dominated symphony

Large Ensemble: diverse
instruments, none dominates

Small Ensemble: String Quartet

Small Ensemble: diverse
instruments

Solo Instrument: piano

Solo Instrument: piano?
*PREVIEW: STRAVINSKY, “THE SOLDIER’S TALE,” 1918
Now let’s listen to where this emerging, unblended sound came from. Igor
Stravinsky was a young, upper-class Russian who fled to neutral Switzerland
at the outbreak of World War I. His 1918 composition, “The Soldier’s Tale,”
expressed in a fresh and memorable way the new realities of European life. In
this piece, the smooth, blended sound of the piano, string quarter, and
orchestra gave way to a harsher, more discordant sound.
L’HISTOIRE BAND, 1918
Stravinsky scored the piece for seven instruments deliberately chosen because
they produced sounds that do NOT easily blend: violin, trombone, clarinet,
percussion, string bass, trumpet, and bassoon. Notice that the strings do not
dominate, as they had in classical and romantic music. And as for the piano, it
is completely absent.
The sound of “The Soldier’s Tale” was to become the new standard for
instrumental music in the first half of the 20th century: harsh, non-blending,
disjointed, and discordant sounds, with a stronger emphasis on brass and
percussion sounds.
PLAY
DIXIELAND BAND, 1916
At about the same time, in the United States, a slightly different-sounding
group of instruments was the foundation of early jazz: piano, cornet,
saxophone, trombone, and drums. In contrast to the Stravinsky band, this
group produced a slightly more blended, less harsh, but still diverse sound. It
developed completely separately from the new European model, but as we
know, it would soon influence composers worldwide.
*PREVIEW: BARTOK, THE NIGHT’S MUSIC, 1926
You have probably noticed that all of our discussion so far begs the question of
the piano. What role, if any, might a rich, blending instruments such as the
piano play in this new musical world? The young Hungarian pianist and
composer Bela Bartok was one of the first to try to answer this question.
Bartok started life as a concert pianist. Feeling too confined by playing just the
traditional 19th piano literature, he began writing short piano pieces that he
might use as encores in his recitals. At the same time he began a life-long
study of eastern European folk music, and started incorporating folk songs and
folk rhythms into his concert pieces.
In The Night’s Music Bartok uses the piano to conjure up non-musical sounds
and sound-effects, in this case the real and imagined sounds that one might
hear in the middle of the night, out of doors. This is one of Bartok’s most
original works, and among his most popular, here in a wonderful performance
by the young Italian pianist, Marco Vergini.
PLAY
*PREVIEW: CAGE, THE PERILOUS NIGHT, 1944
The music of John Cage illustrates yet a third approach that resulted to
creating new piano sounds. Cage was an American composer whose inspiration
came from an interest in expanding the expressive qualities of the instrument
itself.
PREPARED PIANO
His long piano piece, The Perilous Night, uses what Cage called a “prepared
piano,” in which the sounds made by certain piano keys are altered by placing
objects such as screws, pieces of paper, or small wooden or rubber objects on,
under, or between the piano strings. In these “prepared piano” compositions,
Cage changed the sounds made by some keys while the sounds made by other
keys remain the same. The result is a novel combination of familiar and
unfamiliar sounds. Here is a performance by the young Russian pianist,
Viacheslav Poprugin, who specializes in playing contemporary music,
PLAY
COMPOSERS 1920-1950
Today’s session focuses on the following composers:

Bela Bartok, the leading Hungarian composer of the age, also a concert
pianist and internationally-respected Ethnomusicologist (folk music
scholar). He writes a great deal of solo piano music, originally for himself
to play in recitals, three piano concertos, and an epoch-making piece of
chamber music for two pianos and percussion.

Benjamin Britten, a young English composer and the very first
Englishman to appear in these sessions. Britten wrote primarily for the
voice, including three widely popular operas. But he was also a master
pianist and wrote one of the most energetic piano concertos of the 20th
century.

John Cage, an experimental American composer, composes for what he
called the “prepared piano,” in which piano sounds are altered by
inserting various objects between, under, and on top of the piano strings.

Serge Prokofiev, a great piano virtuoso and prolific composer of music in
all genres. Today he is best known for his eight piano sonatas, most of
extreme technical difficulty, and six piano concerti, and for his satirical
opera, “The Love for Three Oranges.” And above all, of course, for his
children’s fable,”Peter and the Wolf.”

Dmitri Shostakovich, a masterful pianist and composer in all genres. His
13 symphonies include some of the greatest of the 20th century. His
satirical opera, “Lady Macbeth,” earned the disgust of Joseph Stalin and
nearly derailed Shostakovich’s career. His two piano playful concertos
are among the best of the era. Many musicians believe that Shostakovich
was the best able of all composers to express the bitterness, anxiety, and
violence of the age of anxiety. The major vehicle for doing this was his 15
string quartets and other chamber works, many with piano.
SOLO PIANO MUSIC, 1920-1950
PROKOFIEV, PIANO SONATA NO. 7, 1942
Prokofiev was from a wealthy, cosmopolitan Russian family. As a very young
composer he wrote fiercely dissonant music, including two piano concertos. He
fled the country after the revolution and spent his the next 20 years in
Germany, France, and the United states.
In 1936 he returned to Russia, where he had to contend with the strict rules
about musical composition imposed by the Communist Party. His style
mellowed as he aged., but his output of music was vast, including seven
operas, even symphonies, eight ballets, five piano concertos, and nine piano
sonatas.
Prokofiev’s piano Sonata No. 7 was written in 1942, during the siege of the
Russian city, Stalingrad, which was the decisive battle of World War II. This
battle, which raged for seven months, resulted in almost two million casualties.
The seventh sonata conveys the extreme anxiety endured by the Soviet people
in wartime. It has long been considered one of the very most difficult pieces to
play in all the piano literature. Here is a performance by the great Russian
pianist, Mikhail Pletnev.
STALINGRAD, 1942
PLAY
CHAMBER MUSIC WITH PIANO, 1920-1950
*SHOSTAKOVICH, PIANO QUINTET, 1940
Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet, written just as Hitler’s army was advancing
toward Moscow and Leningrad. It is one of his most intense and popular works.
Compared to the music of some avant-garde composers, this piece may sound
a bit old fashioned - no Stravinsky-like band sounds here. It contains a good
deal of dissonance, but uses rich harmonies, extended themes and short
motives in ways reminiscent of Beethoven.
But the expression of cold-war anxiety, discord, and almost unbearable tension
could only come from a composer who had witnessed first-hand the steeped
violence and suffering of the 20th century. This very intense performance
includes Joshua Bell, violin, Misha Maisky, cello, and Martha Argerich, piano.
PLAY
CONCERTED MUSIC WITH PIANO, 1920-1950
*BRITTEN, PIANO CONCERTO, 1935
Benjamin Britten’s only piano concerto is a 20th century masterpiece. Written
in 1935 when the composer was 22, it is an, energetic, four movement concerto
with a dazzling, show-off solo piano part. This performance is by 18-year-old
English pianist Benjamin Grosvenor with the National Youth Orchestra of
Great Britain.
PLAY