Music to the Present
Impressionism
| German Romanticism | Frensh Impressionism |
|---|---|
| 1820-1900 | 1880-1920 |
| Symphonies & Concertos | Tone poems types (mood pieces) |
| Narrative music | Mood music |
| Goal oriented (chord prog.) | Stasis (ostinato) |
| Contrary motion | Parallel motion |
| Major & minor scales | Whole tone & pentatonic |
- Clair de Lune, Claude Debussy
- No pulse, suppressed beat and meter
- Descending melody
- 7th chords = triad + 3rd
- Parallel motion, as opposed to German style contrary motion
- Augmented triad
- Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, Claude Debussy
- “A sequence of moods”
- Anti-climax
- Voiles, Claude Debussy
- Whole-tone scale + Parallel motion + Ostinato
- Glissando on Pentatonic scale → Non-western style
- Exoticism
- Paris world exposition
- From Spain style
- Recuerdos de la Alhambra, Francis Terraga
- Instrumental color independent of melody, as in impressionism arts, the color overrun the lines between objects
- In this period, the color is still subservient to the line. Melody enters with a new instrument.
Modernism
- Starting around 1900, until after WWII
- Modernism = A radical departure from classic traditions
- Igor Stravinsky
- Hyper-Romanticism by Rimsky-Korsakov, Stravinsky’s teacher
- Firebird 1910 → Petrushka 1911 → The Rite of Spring 1913
- Sound signature of Modernism
- Syncopation
- Polymeter and Polyrhthm and Polychord
- Violin played using down bow, so that it becomes a percussion
- Percussive and woodwind, brittle bright “metallic” sound
Stylistic Elements of Musical Modernism
- Great percussion (xylophone, glockenspiel, celeste)
- Use of strings as percussion instruments (not lush)
- More woodwinds to create bright, brittle orchestration
- Irregular meters and polymeters contribute to disjointed sound
- Heavy dissonances created by polychords (chords slightly off center)
-
Arnold Schoenberg
- His family is now prominent is LA law profession, even played a role in OJ Simpson trial
- Impressionism vs Expressionism
- Sprechstimme = Speech/Song
- Twelve-tone Music, Serial Music
- “The Emancipation of Dissonance”
-
Atonal Music
- Western scales removed
- Triads removed
- Chord progressions removed
- Plus octave displacement
-
Twelve-Tone Music
- Composer choses any pleasing sequence of pitches, but all twelve (all chromatic tones) within the octave have to be used and come in a sequence of twelve=the row.
- The row may start on any pitch.
- The pitches in the row may sound vertically as a chord.
- Rows may overlap.
- The row may go backward=retrograde motion.
- The row may go upside down (be inverted)=inversion.
- The row may go upside down and backward=retrograde inversion.
- Composer can use any meters and rhythms (rhythm not the primary issue).
Post Modernism: Music for Everyone
- Aaron Copland
- “It made no sense to ignore them (the general public) and to continue writing as if they did not exist.”
- Appalachian Spring
- A Gift to Be Simple
- Fanfare for Common Man
- To understand Copland, it is best if we know some about the traditions.
- Postmodernism asks to pay attentions to the minimal things around us.
- Minimalism = a subset of postmodernism. Not teleological, no apotheosis climax. It has no where to go, listeners get lost in it.
- Glassworks and Floe, Philip Glass
- John Adams and beyond Minimalism
- Short Ride on a Fast Machine
- Opera Nixon in China