Germany and Russia

1
Germany and Russia

• MUSC315

2
Germany after WWI

• The fall of Germany in WWII caused the collapse
  of the old monarchy and the establishment of the
  Weimar Republic. The sense of liberation from
  older modes in the first decade after the war,
  was directly reflected upon the arts. This period
  promoted musical experimentation and avant-grade
  activities centered in Berlin.
• The experimental spirit came to an end when
  Hitler came to power in 1933.
  
• German art was banned by the regime as
  degenerated
  
• Anti-intellectual and anti-artistic attitude
• Genocide of the Jews
• Many artists emigrated during the 1930s
  (Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Hindemith, among many
  others).
  

3
Paul Hindemith (1895-1963)

• Extraordinary talent for music. Was an
  accomplished violinist (and also played the
  piano, viola, and clarinet with excellent
  proficiency).
• He attended the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt to
  study violin when he was 13, and later started
  composition lessons with Mendelssohn.
  
• In 1927, he was appointed as professor of
  composition at the Music Academy in Berlin.

4
Hindemiths music style in the 1920s.

• By the early 20s, he established himself as one
  of the most radical composers of his time,
  embracing different modern approaches such as
  atonality, expressionism, jazz, parody, and
  satire.
• His anti-romantic and parodistic attitude similar
  to the French contemporaries, Cocteau and Les
  Six. Yet, Hindemith music, German to the core,
  sounds fundamentally different to the French
  onesit is less graceful, and more complex.
• Listening Kammermusik No. 2 (1922).
• Neo-classical trends
• small ensemble,
• orchestration is modeled after the Baroque
  concerto grosso (soli-tutti)
  
• Back to Bach attitude contrapunctual textures
  and spinning motives
  

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• Gebrauchsmusik (music for use)
• A new concept for music an utilitarian approach.
  
  
• Music to be played (not just to listening to) by
  amateurs as well as professionals.
  
• The composers mission was to make music
  comprehensible for the audience.
  
• In light with this ideology, Hindemith composed a
  good amount of intermediate level pieces that
  could be played by music amateurs.
  

6
Hindemiths style in the 1930s

• Hindemiths output in the 30s reveals a
  significant simplification.
  
• He left behind the satire and humor of the 20s.
  
  
• In 1937, he published the book The Craft of
  Musical Composition, in which he explained his
  compositional method.
  
• He was quite critical of atonal and 12-tone
  composers. He considered tonal music as a
  natural force, like gravity.
  
• Listening
• Mathis der Maler (Mathis the Painter, 1935),
  based on the life of the 16th century German
  painter Matthias Grunewald.

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• He was forced to resign his position in Berlin in
  1937
  
• In 1938 he emigrated to Switzerland and later to
  USA.
  
• From 1940 until his retirement in 1953, he taught
  composition at Yale University.
  
• He returned to Switzerland for the last decade of
  his life. He died in 1963.

8
Russia

• Cultural life in Russia has many parallels to the
  fate of art in Nazi Germany.
  
• Russian Revolution (1917) brought and end to the
  Russian Empire and led to the formation of the
  Soviet Union.
  
• The unstable political situation urged many
  composers to live the country immediately after
  the revolution (Stravinsky, Rachmaninov).
  
• Under Lenin, conditions were favorable for
  progressive view of arts.
  
• a popularization of art by proclaiming that art
  belongs to the people. It must have its deepest
  roots in the broad masses of workers. It must be
  understood and loved by them. It must be rooted
  in, and grow with, their feelings, thought and
  desires.

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• Therefore, in the 20s, the regime promoted a
  progressive and experimental climate for the
  development of the arts.
  
• The progressive character of Russian art during
  these years did not last much. There was a
  widespread disagreement about what kind of art
  was or was not suitable for the new society.
• Two opposed schools of composition developed
• The Association for Contemporary Music felt that
  the ideology of communism could be achieved by
  following the most advanced tendencies of modern
  music
• The Russian Association of Proletarian Music
  believed that music should be simple, primitive,
  and free of all artistic pretension. Art should
  be direct, conventional, in idioms rooted in folk
  and popular traditions.

10

• After Lenins death in 1924, Joseph Stalin began
  to gain power, assuming complete control in the
  early 1930s.
  
• Stalin was not very fond of music or any other
  art, and consequently assumed the position of the
  Russian Association of Proletarian Music.
  
• In the 30s, Russian music (and arts) were
  subjected to a period of systematic repression.
  
• In 1932, Stalin created the Union of Soviet
  composers which decided what music was suitable
  for the regime.
  
• Socialist realism music must depict social
  content (had to be about the people and their
  lives in relation to the socialist regime)

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• Any work that did not reflected the ideals of the
  regime was condemned as formalist, or without
  content.
  
• Artistic freedom was unknown in Russia. A
  composer had to always contemplate the ideals of
  the regime when attempting to write a new
  composition.

12
Sergey Prokofiev (1981-1953)

• Was born to a family that encouraged his
  exceptional musical talents from very early.
  
• From his 11 year he had a full-time summer music
  tutor.
  
• In 1994, he entered the St. Petersburg
  Conservatory, where he studied violin composition
  with Rimsky-Korsakov and Lyadov. He was
  self-confident, generally critical of his fellow
  students, and disapproving of criticism he often
  received from his teachers.
• 1917- Russian Revolution he wrote the Classical
  Symphony, a composition that established as the
  most prominent composer in his country.
  
• In 1918, he left Russia with the intention to
  stay away until political circumstances would
  improve. He was not able to return permanently to
  Russia for 18 years.

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• During the exile, he lived the United States
  until 1922 and then moved to Paris.
  
• When he returned to the Soviet Union in 1936,
  Andrei Zhdanov came into power establishing one
  of the worst periods for artistic expression.
  
• Those in power considered his works to be
  formalist and decadent because they incorporated
  foreign elements.
  
• From his return to Russia on, he permanently
  struggled between writing music that would
  achieve official acceptance and the dictates of
  his own desires.

14
Prokofievs musical style

• Neo-classical trends
• He was attracted by the principles of classicism,
  adopting many trends of the older style
  (classicism) into his compositions.
  
• He stated" I think the desire which I and many
  of my fellow composers feel, to attain a more
  simple and melodic expression, is the inevitable
  direction for the music of the futurethere is a
  return to classic forms that I feel very much
  myself
• Listening Classical Symphony (1917)
• Modeled after Haydn
• Explicit references to 18th century style
• Scored for a small orchestra (characteristic of
  the 18th century)
  
• Each movement follows a classical form type
  (sonata form, rondo, variation, etc.)
  
• Innovations the use of modern harmonic shift
  and rhythms.
  

15

• Listening
• Peter and the Wolf (1936)
• Composed after his return to the Soviet Union.
• Childrens story for narrator and orchestra.
• Music and text by Prokofiev
• Each character in the story has a particular
  instrument and a musical theme, or leitmotif
  
• Bird flute
• Duck oboe
• Cat clarinet
• Grandfather bassoon
• Wolf 3 French horns
• Hunters (gunshots) timpani and bass drum
• Peter string instruments