Twentieth Century First Half

1
Twentieth Century(First Half)

• 1900-1950

2
Historical Background

• Early 20th Century was a time of revolt.
• The years following 1900 saw more fundamental
  changes in the language of music than any other
  time since the beginning of the baroque era.
• Some compositions adopted such new approaches as
  to the organization of pitch and rhythm that that
  they were met with violent hostility(1913 Paris)
  Stravinskys Rite of Springthe police were
  callednow it is recognized as a masterpiece.

3
Historical Background

• From the 1600-1900, musical structure was
  governed by certain general principlesbut after
  1900, no single system has governed the
  organization of pitch in all compositions.
• This was an age of musical diversity due to the
  great differences among individual stylesit was
  radicaleven within the output of each
  individual.
• It is linked to the fact that people were
  freerto choose where to live, how to earn their
  living, and how to spend their time and their
  money.
• Composers drew inspiration from a variety of
  sourcesfolk music and popular music of a number
  of continents (Europe, Asia Africa).
• Jazz was another non-European influence on 20th
  century music and found its way into the works of
  Debussy, Stravinsky Coplandand the
  Afro-American Symphony by William Grant Still.

4
CHARACTERISTICS

• Tone Color
• More important element of music than ever before.
• Noise-like percussive sounds are used
• Instruments are played at the very top very
  bottom of their ranges
• Uncommon playing techniques glissando (rapid
  slide up or down a scale)
• Woodwinds/brassfluttery sound while rapidly
  rolling their tongue.
• String players strike the strings with the stick
  of the bow.
• Percussion instruments are more prominent and
  numerous
• Composers will often assign each line to a
  different timbre.
• Less emphasis on a blend of sound.

5
CHARACTERISTICS

• Harmony
• Used more dissonant chords, and treated
  dissonances with more freedom.
• The traditional distinction between consonance
  and dissonance was abandoned in much of the
  music.
• No general principle to determine whether a chord
  is stable or not
• New chord structures polychord-one traditional
  chord against anothertwo chords heard at the
  same time.

6
Harmony

• Tone cluster a chord made up of tones only a
  half step or a whole step apart.
• Alternatives to the Traditional Tonal System
• The tonality or key that governed the
  organization of pitch from the 1600-1900 was
  weakened by rapid frequent key shifts.
• Used church modes in a different way and borrowed
  scales from the musical tradition of lands
  outside Western Europe.
• Compositions are often organized around a central
  chord other than the triad.
• Another approach to pitch organizationpolytonalit
  ytwo or more keys at one time. Bitonalityonly
  two different keys are used at oncethis
  technique is most common.
• Departure from traditionatonalityabsence of
  tonality or key

7
Rhythm

• Rapid changing meters
• Rhythmic irregularities such as syncopations and
  accents on weak beats heard against a pervasive
  meter.
• Nontraditional meters (with five or seven beats
  to the measure)
• PolyrhythmTwo or more contrasting independent
  rhythms at the same time.
• Different meters are used at the same time (one
  instrument in duple meter, another in triple
  meter)
• Ostinatoa motive or phrase that is repeated
  persistently at the same pitch throughout a
  section.

8
Melody

• No longer necessarily tied to traditional chords
  or to major and minor keys.
• May freely use all 12 chromatic tones and have no
  tonal center.
• Often contains wide leaps that are difficult to
  sing.
• Rhythmic irregularity and changing meters make
  them unpredictable.
• Often consist of a series of phrases that are
  irregular in length.

9
MUSIC IN SOCIETY

• The living room became the new concert halldue
  to recordings, TV, and radio.
• At the same time, listeners were confused and/or
  disturbed by these new dissonancesso a lot of
  conductors at the time didnt want to alienate
  their audiences so they chose not to perform
  these new worksand many of these composers were
  neglected.

10
MUSIC IN SOCIETY

• In the middle of the 20th century, women and
  people of color have become increasingly
  prominent.
• This country initially saw a color barrier that
  prevented talented people of color from
  performing and conductingjust as Stalin (in the
  Soviet Union) controlled musicians lives and
  careersand Hitler in Germany, had Jewish
  musicians ousted from their jobs, and their works
  were no longer performed.
• Many of these composers came to the US, and
  people of color went to Europe to find permanent
  positionswhere they were more welcomed

11
Impressionism and Symbolism

• Claude Debussy (1862-1918).
• Best represented by this French composer.
• He linked the Romantic era with the 20th Century.
  
• His music sounds free and spontaneous, almost
  improvised.
• His stress on tone color, atmosphere, and
  fluidity is characteristic of Impressionism in
  music.
• Tone color gets unprecedented attention in his
  works (sensuous, beautiful sound subtle but
  crucial changes of timbre).
• In his orchestral music, woodwinds are prominent
  and strings and brasses are often muted.

12
Debussy

• Piano musicwhich includes some of the finest
  piano works of the 20th Centuryhe creates hazy
  sonorities and uses a rich variety of bell and
  gong like sounds.
• His treatment of harmony was a revolutionary
  aspect of musical Impression.
• He used a chord more for its special color and
  sensuous quality than for its function in a
  standard harmonic progression.
• He weakened tonality by avoiding progressions
  that would strongly affirm a key and using scales
  in which the main tone is not emphasizedPentatoni
  c Scale.
• Whole-tone scaleMade up of six different notes
  each a whole step away from the next (unlike
  major and minor, the whole tone scale has no
  special pull from ti to do, since its tones are
  all the same distance apart.)
• .

13
Debussy

• His output is not large but very varied and
  includes works for piano, orchestra and chamber
  ensembles.
• No other musician can so fairly be describes as
  an Impressionisteven his younger French
  contemporary Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) wrote with
  greater clarity of form.
• Debussys style was both a final expression of
  Romanticism and the beginning of a new era.
• 1 - Debussy Prelude to the Afternoon of a
  Fawn. Miniature tone poem
• (Pages 307-308)

14
NEOCLASSICISM (1920-1950)

• Neoclassicism is marked by emotional restraint,
  balance, and clarity.
• Compositions use musical forms and stylistic
  features of earlier periods particularly the 18th
  Century.
• The movement reacted against Romanticism and
  Impressionism and the slogan was back to Bach
  (many Neoclassical compositions were modeled
  after Bachs music.)

15
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)- Russian

• He was a legendary figure during his lifetime.
• His once revolutionary works became modern
  classics.
• He influenced three generations of composers and
  other artists
• His friends were cultural giants like Picasso and
  T.S. Eliot.
• When he was eighty, he was honored at The White
  House by President J.F.K.
• His first two successful ballets commissioned by
  Diaghilev (the Firebird and Pertroushka were
  immensely successful.) His thirdThe Rite of
  SpringPremiered in Paris in 1913 and incited a
  riot.
• In the 1920s and 1930s, he was an international
  celebrity, and his compositions, which had
  originally been inspired by Russian folk music,
  became cooler and more objective.

16
Stravinskys Music

• Despite his stylistic changes from his early
  music inspired by Russian folk musicto his shift
  to the 12 tone system in the 1950s, all had an
  unmistakable Stravinsky sound.
• Tone color is dry and clear, beat is strong.
• Ostinati often unify sections of a piece
• He has abrupt shifts in his treatment of musical
  form, but the music sounds unified and continuous
• In his orchestration, highly contrasting tone
  colors are frequently combined-rich harmonies.
• He drew on a wide range of styles (Russian folk
  songs to Baroque melodies, Renaissance madrigals
  to tango rhythms.)
• 2 Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring Ballet
• (P. 314)

17
EXPRESSIONISM (1905-1925)

• This movement stressed intense subjective
  emotion.
• It was largely centered in Germany and Austria.
• Painters, writer, and composers explored inner
  feelings rather than depicting outward
  appearancesand used deliberate distortions to
  assault and shock their audience and to
  communicate the tensions and anguish of the human
  psyche.
• Expressionism grew out of the same intellectual
  climate as Freuds studies of hysteria and the
  unconscious (German Expressionist painting was in
  part a reaction against French Impressionism.)

18
Expressionism

• They rejected conventional prettiness
• Their works may seem ugly in their
  preoccupation with madness and death
• It is an art concerned with social protest
• It conveyed the anguish felt by the poor and
  oppressed
• Many Expressionists opposed WWI and used art to
  depict their horror of bloodshed
• There was close communication among them
  (writers, painters, musicians) and many were
  creative in more than one art form.

19
Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) Vienna

• Self-taught musician
• He acquired his profound knowledge by studying
  scores, playing in amateur groups, and going to
  concerts.
• He devoted himself to music at age 21 after he
  lost his job as a bank clerk.
• Performances of his own early works met with
  hostility
• In 1904, he taught music theory and composition
• Two of his loyal students were Alban Berg and
  Anton Webern (they became leading composers
  later)
• In 1908, he abandoned the traditional tonal
  system
• Around 1923-1925, he began publishing
  compositions using his twelve tone system
• In 1933, he and his family came to the United
  States because the Nazis seized power in
  Germany he was Jewish and was dismissed from his
  post.

20
Schoenbergs Music

• He began to write atonal music in 1908 (absence
  of key)
• His atonal compositions include five pieces for
  orchestra, Opus 16 in 1909, and Pierrot lunaire,
  Opus 21 in 1912.
• These pieces are characterized by Jagged
  melodies, novel instrumental effects, extreme
  contrasts of dynamics and register, and irregular
  phrases.
• Pierrot lunaire and some other works require an
  unusual style of vocal performanceSprechstimme
  (literally, speech-voice) half way between
  speaking and singing

21
The 12-Tone System

• A systematic method of organizing atonal music or
  method of composing with 12 tones.
• The 12-tone system is a 20th century alternative
  to tonality, a new way of organizing pitch in a
  composition.
• It gives equal importance to each of the 12
  chromatic tones.
• The ordering or unifying idea is called a tone
  row, set or series (the method is also referred
  to as serial technique or serialize.)
• The composer creates a unique tone row for each
  piece (the choice of rows is almost limitless
  since there are 479,001,600 possible arrangement
  of the 12 tones.)
• No pitch occurs more than once in a row

22
The 12-Tone System

• A composition is built by manipulating the tone
  row, which may be represented in four basic
  forms
• Forward (original form)
• Backward (retrograde)
• Upside down (inversion)
• Backward and upside down (retrograde inversion) A
  revolutionary masterpiece that profoundly
  influenced 20th C music.
• Cycle of 21 songs for female voice and 5
  musicians who play 8 instruments.
• Pervasive use of Sprechstimme (the technique of
  half speaking, half singing developed by
  Schoenberg
• Based upon weird poems about the puppet, Pierrot,
  a tragic clown character.
• 3 Pierrot lunaire (Moonstruck Pierrot) ( P.
  322)

23
Schoenberg

• A Survivor from Warsaw Overview
• A dramatic cantata for narrator, male chorus, and
  orchestra.
• The piece deals with a single episode in the
  murder of six million Jews by the Nazis during
  WWII.
• A 12-tone composition written in 1947, Schoenberg
  was 72.
• He wrote the text himself basing it partly on a
  direct report of one of the few survivors of the
  Warsaw ghetto.
• The narrator text is spoken in English, except
  for some terrifying Nazi commands, which are
  shouted in German.
• The narrators part is a kind of Sprechstimme
  (the novel speech-singing developed by
  Schoenberg)
• The rhythms of the spoken words are precisely
  notated, but their pitch fluctuations are
  indicated only approximately.
• The text also includes Hebrew.
• 4 A Survivor from Warsaw (P. 324)

24
Alban Berg (1885-1935) Vienna

• Student of Schoenberg
• Opera Overview 1925 - His opera Wozzeck
  premiered in Berlin and attracted international
  attention.
• Its the tragic story of a soldier who is driven
  to murder and madness by a hostile society.
• Wozzeck is an anti hero who is obsessed by
  strange visions, persecuted by his sadistic
  captain, used as a guinea pig by a half-demented
  doctor, and betrayed by the woman with whom he
  lives, Marie.
• He stabs Marie to death and drowns while trying
  to wash her blood from his hands.

25
Berg-Wozzeck

• Piece is atonal - does not use the 12-tone system
• Vocal line includes speaking, Sprechstimme,
  distorted folksongs, and melodies with wide leaps
  that are difficult to sing.
• Huge orchestra closely parallels the dialogue and
  stage action. Descriptive effects include the
  orchestras depiction of the moon rising, frogs
  croaking, and water engulfing the drowning
  Wozzeck.
• Rapid shifts between high and low ranges
  dynamics (ffff and pppp)

26
Anton Webern (1883-1945) Vienna

• Studied with Schoenberg
• Neglected during his lifetime, but music
  influenced other composer after his death
• His music is original comprised of poetic
  lyricism
• Most works are miniatures (lasting only 2-3
  minutes)
• Virtually all of his mature output could be
  played in less than 3 ½ hoursrarely has a
  composer exerted such worldwide influence on the
  basis of so little music.
• Half of the repertory is for solo voice or
  chorus the rest is for chamber orchestra and
  small chamber groups
• Wrote atonal works and adopted the 12-tone
  system.
• Textures are delicate and transparent with not
  more than a few solo instruments playing at once.
• 12-tone works has strict polyphonic imitation.

27
Webern

• Five pieces For Orchestra - among the shortest
  orchestral compositions ever written. (the fourth
  piece is only 61/2 measures and lasts less than
  30 seconds.
• Uses chamber orchestra of 18 soloists include
  unconventional instruments mandolin, guitar,
  cowbells and harmonium (a small organ with metal
  reeds)
• Each piece is scored for a different number and
  combination of instruments.
• 5 WEBERN - THIRD PIECE from FIVE PIECES FOR
  ORCHESTRA (pg. 332)

28
Béla Bartók (1881-1945) Hungarian

• Had a successful career during the 1920s and
  1930s.
• Emigrated to the U.S. in 1940 because he was
  violently anti Nazi
• Influenced by the Hungarian nationalist movement
• Spent most of his time in small villages
  recording peasant folksongs.
• Concerto for Orchestra - his best-known work.
  Received the commission while in a hospital in
  New York. Died shortly thereafter.
• After his death in 1945, became one of the most
  popular twentieth-century composers.

29
Bartoks Music

• He evolved a completely individual style that
  fused folk elements, classical forms and 20th
  century sounds.
• His music embraces a wide range of emotions and
  is deeply expressive.
• His genius lies in is instrumental music - wrote
  many works for piano solo, six string quartets
  (which are considered among the finest since
  Beethovens) other chamber music, three piano
  concertos, two violin concertos and several
  pieces for orchestra.
• He always organized his works around a tonal
  center.
• Within this framework, he used harsh dissonances,
  polychords and tone clusters.
• Rhythmically - works are characterized by a
  powerful beat, unexplained accents changing
  meters.
• Drew unusual sounds from percussion instruments
  and percussion sounds from the piano.
• LISTENING 6 BARTOK - CONCERTO FOR ORCHESTRA
  (1943) Second Movement (Pg. 335)

30
Charles Ives (1874-1954) American

• Compositions deeply rooted in folk and popular
  American music revival hymns, ragtime, village
  bands, church choirs, patriotic songs, barn
  dances.
• polyrhythms, polytonality and tone clusters.
• His later works present musical events that seem
  unrelated two bands play in different keys
  consonant chords are set against dissonant
  chords conflicting meters and rhythmic patterns
  are intertwined
• Quotes snatches of familiar tunes, develops them
  and integrates them within his own music.
• A lot of his titles reflect New England heritage
  Concord Sonata, (the movements are Emerson,
  Hawthorne, The Alcotts and Thoreau) Three Places
  in New England.
• Won the Pulitzer Prize for his Third Symphony in
  1947. (written 40 years earlier)

31
George Gershwin (1898- 1937) American

• Wrote popular songs and musical comedies as well
  a jazz-flavored orchestral works and opera.
• Wrote his first complete musical in 1919 at the
  age of 20.
• Creator of the golden Age of American musical
  theater and a successful composer for the concert
  hall.
• Premiere of Rhapsody in Blue 1924 (His most
  famous composition)
• He premiered his Concerto in F at Carnegie Hall
  in 1925.

32
William Grant Still (1895-1978) American

• His Afro-American Symphony (1931) was the 1st
  composition by a black composer to be performed
  by a major American Symphony orchestra.
• He worked for the publisher WC Handy and arranged
  Handys St. Louis Blues for military band in 1916
• He lived a double life in NYC as a popular
  musician and as a composer of concert works.
• Wrote compositions with a uniquely African
  American flavor that were performed to critical
  acclaim.
• First African American to conduct a major
  symphony orchestra (the LA Philharmonic in 1936)
• First, to have an opera performed by a major
  opera company
• 7 Afro-American Symphony, III Movement
• (P. 343)

33
Aaron Copland (1900-1990) American

• Leading American Composer
• Music went through several phasesEarly works had
  jazz flavor, bluesor were very dissonant and
  sophisticated
• Late 30s modified his writing to more accessible
  works for larger audienceand drew on American
  folklore and patriotic works
• Later period reflected simple, yet highly
  professional music that evoked the openness of
  the American landscape
• They were tonal, yet embodied the 20th century
  techniques such as polychords, polyrhythms,
  changing meters and percussive orchestration.

34
Copland

• Wrote numerous compositions and directed
  composers groups, organized concerts, lectured,
  wrote books and articles, taught and conducted.
• Appalachian Spring was written initially as a
  ballet score for Martha Graham.
• Later arranged parts of the ballet for a suite
  for full orchestra.
• Uses one actual folk tune.
• Performed both as a ballet and concert piece.
• 8 Appalachian Spring (P. 347)