Music in the 20th Century

Music from 1900-1945

(Pre-World War II)

The turn of the century

Technology reaches dizzying heights.Mass communication – radio, TV, satellites, computers, the internet.Medical sciences conquer infectious diseases and prolong life.WWI & WWIISocio-economic gap expands.

History and the Arts, 1900-1939

1900 – Europe and US in period of economic stability and peace.

Modernism – optimistic experimentation and revolutionary new styles.

Composers reject tonality and rhythmic norms.

Impressionism & expressionism.

WWI shattered sense of optimism. (40 million died; 20 million wounded)

Bolshevik revolution and spread of Communism.

Great Depression (1929-1933)

Prohibition, women’s right to vote, New Deal.

History and the Arts 1939-2000

WWII brings more death and destruction to Europe and Far East. 30 million died, artwork destroyed, economic and

political outlook in shambles.

Immigration of refugees to US.Cold WarArt, music and literature tend toward intellectualism over emotionalism.Radical experimentation in sound led to use of technology and development of popular music.Cubism, post-modernism.

Arnold Schonberg

Viennese composer who invented a new system that would “free music from the tyranny of tonality.”Twelve-tone system – Each pitch is equal, no tonal center, no key.Pantonality (all-tonality) vs. atonality (nontonal).Allowed for new chord combinations and changed significance of consonance vs. dissonance.

Twelve-Tone Music

Each pitch is equal, there is no tonal center. Each pitch must sound before any can be repeated.Tone row – The “melody”Retrograde – Tone row played backwards.Inversion – Tone row played inverted.Retrograde inversion - Tone row played backwards and inverted.Tone clusters – Adjacent pitches sounding at once. Twelve-tone harmony.

Other Scales and Modes

Pentatonic scale – five note scale.Whole-tone scale – moves entirely by whole steps.Medieval modes.Polytonality – 2 or more keys played at the same time.Quartal chords – built on fourths instead of thirds.

More Musical Changes in 20th Century

Melody – very erratic and unexpected.Rhythm – Complicated, based on African or Indian music.Quarter tones – pitches between half steps.New instruments and old instruments played in new ways. Theremin is first electronic instrument.

Impressionism

Originally an artistic movement in which lines are blurred and details are left to the viewer’s imagination.Impressionist music is also harmonically vague and fluid and is meant to symbolize something.Claude Debussy – ComposerClaude Monet - Painter

Primitivism and Cubism

Artists became attracted to direct, instinctive and exotic cultures.Gaugin, Picasso Les Demoiselles d’AvignonSigmund Freud explores the power of the unconscious mind.Igor Stravinsky uses primitivism in music.

Igor Stravinsky

Born in St. Petersburg, RussiaOriginally studied law.Started music lessons at age 21 with Rimsky-Korsakov. Learned techniques in

orchestration.1910 – moved to Paris.Produced works for Ballets Russes (Serge Diaghilev)Polyrhythms, bitonality, ostinato (repeated patterns).Firebird, The Rite of Spring, Petrushka.

More on Stravinsky

Influenced by Jazz.

Later music in Neo-Classical style (Pulcinella)

Wrote a Mass and an opera called, The Rake’s Progress

Started writing music for films.

Twelve-tone music included an elegy for JFK, and a Requiem (in anticipation of his own death).

Highly rhythmic, unusual orchestration, original harmony (often with two tonal centers).

Expressionism

Artistic movement rooted in Germany, Norway and Vienna.Klimt and Kokoschka – artistsSchoenberg, Berg, Webern – composersFocus on inner states of being and evocation of extreme emotions (anguish, fear, hatred and death).

Arnold Schoenberg

Born in Vienna to Orthodox Jewish family.Felt that tonality had outlived its usefulness.Wrote atonal music.Stopped writing during WWI.Twelve-tone music offered a unifying principle to atonal music.Variations for Orchestra, Moses and Aaron (opera).Fired when Nazis took over and fled to USA.

Alban Berg

Both students of Schoenberg.Berg’s opera, Wozzeck, is the first atonal Expressionist opera (a masterpiece of 20th Century music). Shows his view of war.

Berg uses strict forms (sonata, rondo, fugue, symmetry).

Anton Webern

Student of Schoenberg

Link to first stages of Modernism.

Minimalism – everything was understated and there is never an extra note.

Wrote detailed instructions in his scores.

Short pieces (1-10 minutes).

Studied Renaissance music and used imitative counterpoint.

Bela Bartok

Hungarian composer influenced by the nationalist movement.Toured Europe recording and notating folk music of various cultures (ethnomusicology).Known for piano music and string quartets.Music of other cultures influenced his music.

Dmitri Shostakovich

Russian composer who lived most of his life under Soviet Communism.Music of Soviet Union was supposed to represent the policies of the state.Fought for creative freedom against demands of a totalitarian state.Composed 15 symphonies & 15 string quartets.Musical “signature” in his music.

Benjamin Britten

English composer.Child prodigy. Began composing at 5.The Young Person’s Guide to the OrchestraOperas – Peter Grimes, Billy Budd, Gloriana, The Turn of the Screw.War Requiem – written for dedication of new cathedral in Coventry that was destroyed in WWII. Mixed old with new (Latin text

with poems by Wilfred Owen).

American Composers

William Billings – psalms and choral music.

Lowell Mason – Hymns and music education.

Mostly influenced by European music. Inner turmoil – Civil War, Reconstruction

Shape-notes

Spirituals

Jazz

Charles Ives

First American Modernist composer (avant-garde).Insurance salesman who composed in spare time.Experimental in his ideas of music.Wrote music in two keys at the same time. The Unanswered

Question (Two ensembles play two different songs at the same time.)

Patriotic music.

Aaron Copland

Much more mainstream composer than Ives.Studied composition in Europe with Nadia Boulanger (most famous composition teacher of the 20th Century).Wrote in an American style by drawing on jazz.Ballets – Billy the Kid, RodeoAppalachian Spring & Fanfare for the Common Man

George Gershwin

Composed popular songs and jazz pianist.Also wrote classical pieces.Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris, Porgy and Bess (opera).Wrote musical plays with brother, Ira.Died at age 38 of brain tumor.

Leonard Bernstein

Continued blending popular and classical styles.Conductor of New York Philharmonic.Musicals – On the Town, Candide, Wonderful Town, West Side StoryChoral music and symphonic music.