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19 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) and his followers
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a) the twelve tone system he devised springs from late German Romanticism -
around 1908 he moved from a chromatic approach centered on a keynote to atonality 1: much late Romantic music - especially in Germany had been tending toward atonality 2: chromatic melody lines & chord progressions - ie. Wagner - had resulted in passages lacking a perceived tonal center |
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Atonal refers to music not based on the harmonic & melodic relationships
revolving around a key center |
1: note the term in not applied to "serial music" - music built on the 12 Tone Row
2: from 1908-1923 he composed atonal music - based upon "composing with the tones of a motive" with each motive have three or more pitches i- theorists later developed the concept of "pitch-class set" to describe the collection of notes from which melodies or harmonies were formed i- theorists later developed the concept of "pitch-class set" to describe the collection of notes from which melodies or harmonies were formed ii- arranged the notes in normal order, inverted, reverse, or in transposition iii- holding to the set, gave the music a consistent sound c) after 1923 he wrote music based upon the 12 Tone Row - which need not be atonal and may observe a tonal center |
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Expressionism
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a) Schoenberg & his pupil Alban Berg (1885-1935) were the chief exponents
b) like Impressionism, Expressionism is a term first used to describe painting 1: seeking to represent inner experience - as opposed the Impressionisms aim to represent objects of the external world at a given moment 2: dealt with the emotional life of the modern person - isolated, helpless in the grip of poorly understood forces, prey to inner conflict, tension, anxiety, fear, and all the elemental irrational drives of the subconscious 3: grew out of the subjectivity of Romanticism 4: Berg's opera "Wozzeck" is an outstanding example |
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Twelve Tone Method (dodecaphonic)
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a) as formulated by Schoenberg, it was a "method of composing with twelve tones
that are related only to one another" 1: basis for each compostition is a row or series consisting of the twelve tones or pitch classes of the octave arranged in the order the composer chooses 2: the tones may be used both successively (as melody) and simultaneously (as harmony or counterpoint) i- in any octave ii- any desired rhythm 3: the row may be used in its prime form (original) but also intervalically inverted form, in retrograde order (backward), or retrograde inverted form - and in transpositions of any of the four forms b) the composer exhausts all twelve pitches of the series before going on to use the series in any of its forms again 1: ultimately, it is intervals that count, not pitches 2: the unifying force between pitches (and the composition) is a basic set of intervals and the motives created out of them i- often broken into segments of three to six pitches ii- these used to create melodic motives & chords c) method may strike one as mechanical but the sensitivity and taste of the composer governs choice from many possibilities |
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Alban Berg (1885-1935)
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1. a pupil of Schoenberg
2. invested the 12 Tone technique with a warmth of feeling that gives it more immediate impact than it had in the hands of other 12 Tone composers |
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Anton Webern (1883-1945)
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1. a pupil of Schoenberg personifies the cool, constructive side of Schoenberg's method
2. passed through the stages of late Romantic chromaticism, free atonality 3. also used "pointillism" 3. also used "pointillism" a) spare, open texture, with numerous rests in all the parts, making every single note count b) music emerges as a succession of tiny points or wisps of sound 4. while his output was small and he received little acclaim during his life time, his work grew in recognition after WW II and launched important new developments in Italy, Germany, France, & the United States |
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After 1950
Background |
a) 1st half of the century witnessed the progressive breadup of the tonal harmonic
system that had prevailed for the preceding 200 years (Bach thru R. Strauss) b) Schoenberg with his 12 Tone System introduced a new conception of musical structure 1: with his "emancipation of dissonance" in effect abolished the traditional distinction between consonance & dissonance 2: Stravinsky arrived in the 1950's with his own accommodation to the 12 Tone System c) Darmstadt group - a group of young composers stimulated by Webern - centered around the "holiday courses for new music" at Darmstadt - started immediately after the end of the war in 1946 1: inspired experiments by composers in other countries including Eastern Europe 2: but there was no one defined "common practice", no one allegiance to a consistant body of principles |
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Serialism
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a) even before 1950, composers applied the principle of Schoenberg's tone rows to
musical elements or parameters other than pitch - in "total serialism" 1: if twelve tones could be serialized so could duration, texture, intensity, and timbre 2: the relationships had to be worked out in a way that made sense musically, not merely mathematically 3: the listener hears only successive, unrepeated, and unpredictable musical "events" 4: the rigidity of total serialism soon relaxed b) Pierre Boulez (b.1925) - fused the pointillist style and serial method with sensitive musical realization of text in his Le Marteau sans maitre |
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Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)
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a) his pupils include Boulez, Stockhausen, Luigi Nono (b. 1924), & Ton de Leeuw (b.
1926) b) experimented with assigning each pitch a duration, dynamic level, and articulation, to be used each time that pitch occurred |
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recent developments
new timbres |
a) post Webern music produced a large number of unaccustomed sounds
1: Earlier "new sounds" i- piano "tone clusters" of Henry Cowell (1897-1965) ii- "prepared piano" of John Cage (1912-1993) ii- "prepared piano" of John Cage (1912-1993) |
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now (?)
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i- unfamiliar sounds produced by new uses of conventional instruments
ii- dense chromatic clusters or "bands" of sound for strings or voices were used by Iannis Xenakis (b.1922), Krzysztof Penderecki (b.1933), Luigi Nono (1924-1990) iii- introduction of spoken & whispered sounds by vocalists and instrumentalists iv- new instruments such as the vibraphone and the Ondes Martenot appeared in the orchestra v- the percussion section was greatly expanded including instruments from Africa & Asia |
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Edgard Varese (1883-1965) wrote music in which timbre played a most
important role |
i- sounds as such were the essential structural components of music
ii- more basic than melody, harmony, or rhythm |
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Electronic Resources
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a) Musique Concrete (late 1940's)
1: raw material consisted of recorded musical or natural sounds that were transformed in various ways by mechanical and electronic means 2: then assembled on tape to be played back 3: next step was electronically generated sounds b) this new medium free composers from depending upon performers 1: in the electronic studio every detail could be calculated and recorded 2: whole new realm of sounds not producible by "natural means" became available |
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New Technology
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a) by 1980's electronic keyboards combined with computers made synthesized
music accessible outside the large complexes of the 50's & 60's b) combined with the MIDI protocol definition and control of all parameters of pitch, timbre, dynamics, and rhythm could be directly translated into music production |
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Influence of Electronic Music
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a) electronic & synthesized music has not superseded live music but did stimulate
the invention of new sound effects obtainable from voices and conventional instruments b) stimulated the experiment with spatial effects - the dispersing of the various sound sources throughout the concert hall - to manipulate space as an additional dimension of music 1: not a new discovery - the spatial effects of multiple choirs and instrumental ensembles of the 16th century in St. Marks in Venice 2: the use of space was more calculated and inventive - thus direction & location in space became a factor in the overall work |
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The Pitch Continuum
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a) from at least the end of the 17th century, Western music generally utilized a set of
12 - more or less - equidistant semitones dividing the space of an octave b) by mid 20th century, distinct pitches and intervals (including the octave itself) could be supplemented by a continuum b) by mid 20th century, distinct pitches and intervals (including the octave itself) could be supplemented by a continuum 1: an unbroken range of sound from the lowest to the highest audible frequencies 2: without distinguishing separate tones of fixed pitch c) related to this is the use of complex or unpitched non-musical sounds - from whatever source - in musical compositions d) Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (Krzysztof Penderecki b. 1933) 1: players may choose pitches relative to the instruments range (highest or lowest) rather than specific notes 2: when particular pitches are called for they may progress by quarter tones or multiples of these 3: string instruments may bow behind the tail piece or arpeggiate the four strings at that location 4: strings can bow on the tailpiece or strike the sounding board 5: different groups of instruments can be assigned narrow or wide pitchbands which can vary over time 6: the interval of time is measure not by note value but clock time |
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Indeterminacy (John Cage's term)
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a) covers a wide range of options that allows the composer to leave certain aspects
of the music unspecified - from improvisation within a fixed framework to situations where the composer gives only the minimum of directions to the performer 1: did not originate as had in the past by conventional choice such as to sing or play a melodic line or the impreciseness of notation 2: rather the degree of control - or determinacy - and freedom - or indeterminacy may be programmed for each compostion i- may be indeterminate sections within a composition fixed by the score ii- or a distinct series of musical events leaving their succession partly or wholly unspecified iii- choice can be guided by reactions to others in the group, members of the audience, devices to produce an apparently chance or random order b) the consequence of this is that no two performances are identical - not a matter of just differing interpretations but substantial differences in content and order of presentation 1: a recording of such a work would only capture one particular performance 2: in effect, a composition does not exist as such, but only as a performance or the sum of possible performances c) not to be confused with "chance" or "aleatory" music in which the composer (in some cases the performer) uses chance operations - rolling a dice, flipping coins, random instruction cards, etc. - to determine certain aspects of the music 1: becomes determined by chance 2: since "determined" it is not indeterminacy |
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d) Karlheinz Stockhausen (b. 1928)
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1: worked most consistently with indeterminacy
2: Quotation Music i- in corporated fragments of other works to provide reactions to create indeterminacy in performance i- in corporated fragments of other works to provide reactions to create indeterminacy in performance ii- in his words "not to interpret, but to hear familiar, old, preformed musical material with new ears, to penetrate and transform it with musical consciousness of today" iii- Composers - Peter Maxwell Davies, Hans Werner Henze, Witold Lutoslawski, George Rochberg, Lukas Foss, & Ellen Taaffe |
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one by product of indeterminacy was new kinds of notation - from fragments of
conventional notes to purely graphical representations |
yep
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