Music History II

1
Music History II

• Lecture Notes 8

2
The Musical Landscape

• Innovative approaches in stark contrast to those
  who embraced tradition
• To some a positive kind of diversity
• To others a fragmented musical experience when
  tonality is abandoned

3
Civil Rights

• Women gained the right to vote in 1920
• The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s

4
Sovereign Nations in the 20th C.

• Norway, Sweden, Finland, Czechoslovakia, Poland,
  Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania
• Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium,
  The Netherlands
• Others?

5
WW I

• Territorial rivalries (France, Great Britain,
  Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia)
• United States entered the conflict in 1917
• Treaty of Versailles redrew the map of Europe
  laid groundwork for formation of the League of
  Nations

6
Soviet Union

• First communist state
• WW I a factor in the Russian Revolution
• Collapse of the monarchy
• Provisional government overthrown by the
  Bolshevik party of Lenin in October 1917

7
Nazism in Germany

• Economic uncertainty made democratic government
  unfavorable to the people

8
The Great Depression

• Resulted from a collapse in prices on the NYSE in
  October 1929
• Often referred to by many who experienced it as
  the Stock Market Crash

9
WW II

• Outline for a paragraph 1Hitler rose to
  power in Germany (1930s) 2Germany invaded Poland
  (1939) 3The Axis (Germany, Italy, Japan) v. the
  Allies (Great Britain, France, Soviet Union) and
  the United States in 1941 4Fifty million
  deaths 5Nazis tried to exterminate the Jews
• 6Pearl Harbor battles against Japanese in the
  South Pacific
• 7Ended with two atom bombs over Japan in 1945
  (United Nations founded that same year)

10
Cold War

• U. S. Soviet Union became enemies
• Soviet U. controlled several countries
• Tension between East and West
• Berlin wall erected in 1961
• Korean War (1950-53) Vietnam (1964-73)
• Soviet U. loses control over satellite states
• Berlin wall down (1989) Germany reunited
• Breakup of Soviet Union (1991)

11
20th Century Events

• Which did you choose?

12
Transportation

• Travel by ship in 1900 compared with air travel
  in 2000
• On the ground by rail, wagons, early autos in
  first decades of the 20th century compared with
  the interstate highway system by the end of the
  century

13
Communication

• Telephone average citizen (40 calls in the year
  1915 2300 by the year 2000) faxes introduced in
  1966
• Film Movies (dev. by Edison in 1891) marketed
  in 1902 Talkies in 1927 feature films in
  color in the late 1930s
• Radio Invented by Marconi (1894) first
  commercial license (U. S. 1920) FM (1939)
  10,300 stations in U. S. in 2000
• TV 1927 9 in 1950 92.6 by 1965 cable TV in
  1980s satellite technology in 1990s
• Computer WW II business/industry through 1960s
  PC in 1981 internet/email in early 1990s

14
Firsts

• 1860 phonautogram on soot coated paper (France)
• 1877 cylinder recording (Thomas Edison)
• 1897 78s
• 1920 radio KDKA in Pittsburg
• 1927 film with dialogue (The Jazz Singer Al
  Jolson)
• 1935 tape recording (Berlin)

• 1948 LPs
• 1949 45s
• 1958 Stereo
• 1963 Cassette tapes
• 1982 CDs
• 1990s music over the internet

15
Modernism

• The self-conscious striving for novelty at
  almost any cost, based on a conviction that the
  new must be as different as possible from the
  old.
• Manifested in composition through the abandonment
  of conventional forms and of tonality clear
  distinction between new and old goal is to erase
  all links to the past.
• An attitude that gave rise to a variety of
  important styles affected all the arts in the
  20th century

16
10 Literary Figures

• And your selections?

17
Schoenberg

• Society for Private Musical Performance

18
Stream of Consciousness

• Prose resembling the fragmented manner in which
  most people think their private thoughts
• Randomness

19
Visual Artists

• One each in the following categories Impression
  ism Expressionism Realism Surre
  alism Abstract Art
• And what about cubism and modern music?

20
From melting pot to mosaic

• People from all over the world could blend into a
  homogeneous society
• Found out that the many different units combined
  to form a larger whole that could not be
  homogeneous

21
Equal Opportunity Offenders

• Schoenberg and Stravinsky Perceived
  to threaten the existing social order
• Ragtime, jazz, rock and roll also met with
  condemnation because they were different

22
Scandal Concert

• Altenberg Lieder by Alban Berg, performed in
  Vienna, March 31, 1913
• Led to an open revolt by the audience
• Schoenberg is conducting
• Is that Schubert on the floor?
• What was Oscar Strauss take on the concert?

23
New Music

• A source of controversy until the later decades
  of the 20th century

24
Cultural Pluralism

• With TV and radio, to each his own became a
  cultural reality
• There are so many radio stations, surely you will
  like one of them.

25
Diversity in jazz, pop and rock

• Joplin ragtime in opera
• Gershwin jazz in the traditional genre
• Ellington he did it all
• Zappa rock bands and orchestras
• Morrison Alabama Song
• Jarrett improvisation in jazz, jazz-rock,
  classical, etc.

26
The Grammy Awards

• Pop and Rock Hard rock Latin
  Metal Traditional pop Latin pop

• Gospel Popular Contemporary Southern Tradi
  tional soul contemporary soul

27
Marketing

• Its impact? Your observations

28
The Early Music Movement

• Arnold Dolmetsch (1858 - 1940) Pioneer in
  performance on period instruments (Period
  instruments?)
• Examples Harpsichord Winds Clavichor
  d Percussion Spinet Viola da
  gamba Viola damore

29
And 20th Century Composers?

• Many found it difficult to find recognition for
  their work
• Competing against traditional masterworks,
  contemporary compositions and old music as well

30
Canned or Live?

• Live A shared experience in listening to or
  performing in a local musical group
• Canned Made it easier to become a passive
  listener

31
Is it real?

• Editions scrupulously prepared
• Improved editorial techniques
• Use of period instruments
• Historical accuracy in performance
• Are you singing or playing from an Urtext
  edition?

32
Robert Palmer on Rock

• Rock musicians are heirs to one of our
  civilizations richest, most time-honored
  spiritual traditions.
• A favorable comparison with the Dionysian
  celebrations of ancient Greece

33
Live Aid Concert

• Held on July 13, 1985, to raise money for famine
  relief in Ethiopia

34
You cant do that

• Government control dates back to the time of
  Plato
• Beethoven used by both sides in WW II
• Nazis tried to suppress certain music, like jazz
• Nontraditional music unacceptable in the Soviet
  Union later on, leaders encouraged native
  composers absolute music subject to censure
  Khrushchev condemned serial music

35
Influence of ragtime, jazz, rock

• Originally associated with African Americans
• Elvis Pressley came on the scene
• End of legal segregation in the 1960s
• Integration had already begun with ragtime, jazz
  and rock
• White musicians in the Duke Ellington band in the
  1930s

36
Music as Protest

• The Labor Movement (1910-1950)
• The Civil Rights Movement (1950s-1960s)
• Opposition to the Vietnam War (mid 1960s early
  1970s)

37
For better health or just there

• Music Therapy
  In use since biblical times
• Currently used in the treatment of
  psychological, physical and cognitive
  problems
• Helpful to wounded and traumatized soldiers
  after WW I
• For Alzheimers and Parkinsons patients
• Ambient Music just there in the background

38
Impressionism

• 1st use to denote the style of a group of
  painters
• Derived from Monets Impression Sunrise
• What makes it so? Color more than line
• Music avoids goal-oriented structures flows
  from moment to moment structured around masses
  of sound 9th, 11th, 13th chords non-diatonic
  scales independent voice leading parallel
  motion part of the distinctive sound fluid
  rhythm for an allusive sense of motion new
  sounds from traditional instruments

39
Debussy

• Why he did not like the term impressionism
• Sensory perceptions, impressions of the world,
  construct their own kind of reality as opposed
  to a conscious and objective external reality
  that may not even exist
• What is Mallarmés poem about?
• Ruminations of a mythological faun, half man,
  half goat re his encounter with a pair of wood
  nymphs
• The opening melody of Prelude to the Afternoon of
  A Faun where are the points of structural
  articulation? (mm. 30-31, 37, 55, 79, 94)

40
What about these non-traditional scales and
harmonies?

• Whole-tone 6 tones a whole step apart to subvert
  the basic elements of diatonic harmony
• Pentatonic 5 notes in some hymns and folk songs
• Octatonic alternates between half and whole
  steps to subvert idea of a tonal center
• Tetrachord 4-note units that form the octatonic
  scale
• Quartal chords built on the interval of a fourth

41
Two Bios

• What did you find about Claude Debussy?
• Charles Ives?
• Songs used in The Things Our Fathers Loved
• Dixie, My Old Kentucky Home, On the Banks of
  the Wabash, Nettleton, The Battle Cry of
  Freedom, In the Sweet Bye and Bye

42
Primitivism and Rhythm

• Rejection of the self-imposed arbitrary
  conventions of Western culture
• Elevates rhythm to a level of unprecedented
  importance
• Rhythm, the most basic of musical elements
• Foundation of musical movement
• Essence of the frame principle
• Rhythm essential among the three basic
  elements

43
Stravinsky

• The Rite of Spring
• An ethereal atmosphere created by the opening
  bassoon solo
• Polytonal harmony simultaneous playing of more
  than one tonality
• Instrumentation piccolo., 3 fl., 4 ob., E? cl.,
  3 other cl., bass cl., 4 bsn. contrabsn., 8 hn.,
  1 pic. tpt., 4 other tpt., bass tpt, 2 tubas,
  large percussion section
• The Stravinsky bio

44
Jazz

• Ragtime duple meter 8 or 16 measure units
  syncopation like a march in form repetition of
  opening theme after 2nd theme
• A definition? More an attitude than a style
  improvisation, rhythmic and intonational freedom,
  sees the musical world as existing in a
  performance rather than a written score

45
The Blues

• Origin The South among enslaved African
  Americans
• 12-bar pattern 4 mm. tonic, 2 mm. subdominant, 2
  mm. tonic, 2 mm. dominant, 2 mm. tonic
• Vamp Repeated pattern until solo comes in or the
  piece continues to flow
• Blue note slightly lowered 3rd or 7th degree in
  the major scale

46
The Swing Era

• Big bands with homogeneous section sound
  (saxophones, trombones, trumpets, rhythm)
• Strong metric flow but with subtle avoidance of
  cadences and downbeats
• Soloist plays just ahead or slightly behind the
  beat
• Song Form ABA B in contrast and as a link to A
• Scat singing syncopated nonsense syllables
  against the steady beat of the bass

47
Sargent and Ellington on Jazz

• Sargent Its appeal lies in its directness and
  simplicity
• Ellington Saw importance of the different mixes
  of other styles in jazz composition

48
Country Music

• Early 17th century in England, a lively type of
  courtly dance accompanied by one or two fiddles
  transplanted to American colonies
• Played on fiddle, banjo, guitar, mandolin,
  autoharp, double bass
• Musicians from humble origins
• Beyond the South with rise of radio in 1920s
• WSM in Nashville (1925) became Grand Ole Opry in
  1928 (weekly show in late 1930s)
• Bluegrass a subgenre (1940s) Foggy Mountain Boys
  (Lester Flatt Earl Scruggs) in 1949

49
Nationalism in the 20th Century

• Took on new importance with the growing political
  and cultural aspirations of ethnic groups
  throughout Europe and in the Americas
• Bartók Well known for his use of folk melodies
  from his native country in the photo, he is
  making field recordings of folk musicians in
  Hungary he is preserving the music for future use

50
Cowell and Varèse

• The Banshee
• One player sits at the keyboard and holds down
  the damper pedal for the entire performance the
  other player stands in the crook of the piano and
  touches the strings with his or her fingers
• Ionisation
• The first major composition written entirely for
  percussion