Chapter 32 - Early 20th Century Classical Tradition Flashcards
What is modernism?
Modernism is a class of artistic endeavors that reveres the past while seeking new and distinctive individual voices.
Modernist works are usually compared to what?
Modernist works are ultimately compared to their predecessors
Define post-tonal
Post-tonal is a category of composition that strays too far from common practice to be described as tonal.
Many composers continued to use what as a path to a new voice?
Composers delved deeper into national traditions and nationalistic themes as a way to establish an individual voice.
Birth and death dates: Gustav Mahler
1860-1911
Mahler was a master of song for what kind of ensemble?
Mahler was a master of song for voice and orchestra
List some traits of Mahler symphonies
- Stylistic contrasts (similar to Mozart)
- Large orchestra
- Vast scale of works (symphony as another world)
- Variety of colors in orchestra
- Varied instrumentation and texture (intimate vs. sublime)
Although later suppressed, many of Mahler’s symphonies are ____________
Mahler’s symphonies are programmatic or contain extramusical associations
After finding sucess with his tone poems in the late 19th century, Richard Strauss turned to what genre?
Strauss focused the second half of his career on opera
Strauss’ operas were influenced mainly by which two composers?
Mozart and Wagner
In what way was Strauss Wagner’s successor?
Strauss employed leitmotifs and keys associated with different characters. He also explored and pushed to the limit the inherent contrasts in tonality
How did Strauss find his own place in modernism and influence future composers?
Strauss’s works fit tonality but expand it through the use of extreme chromaticism, and deep exploration of the contrast of consonance and dissonance as well as stylistic contrasts
True or False: Mahler was a Wagnarian
True
The music in Strauss’s Salome is highly chromatic and dissonant, but it’s effectiveness relies on what familiar expectation?
It still ultimately relies on the fact that the dissonance will resolve
Who was the last great German Symphonist?
Mahler
Birth and death dates: Debussy
1862-1918
How did Debussy’s response to Wagnarian harmony differ from Strauss and Mahler?
While the Germans expanded the rhetorical intensity of the music, Debussy focused on the pleasurable and beautiful aspects
Birth and death dates: Ravel
1875-1937
Ravel and Debussy shared many similar traits techniques including drawing from earlier French music, use of exotic scales, etc. How did Ravel’s approach differ?
Ravel differed from Debussy in that his music can be more closely linked to tonal practices and the resolution of dissonance; it has more direction.
What is Neoclassicism?
This is an artistic movement where composers revived, imitated or evoked pre-romantic era styles and genres of music
The Neoclassical movement spans what time frame?
1910-1950s
Each movement of Ravel’s tombeau de Couperin is dedicated to who?
Each movement is dedicated to a different friend of Ravel’s who died in WWI
Ravel’s tombeau is inspired by what genre?
Baroque era French keyboard suites
What modern elements can be found in Ravel’s neoclassical French keyboard suite, tombeau de Couperin?
The use of extended harmonies, harmonic planing, color chords, and the thwarting of traditional harmonies
Birth and death dates: Rachmaninoff
1873-1943
Rachmaninoff’s music is characterized by what?
It’s passionate and melodious quality
Rather than focus on harmonic innovations like his contemporaries, how instead did Rachmaninoff find his own voice?
His innovations come from melodic ideas that sound both fresh and familiar, outdoing conventional elements in new ways
Birth and death dates: Alexander Scriabin
1872-1915
Define the Avante-Garde
This is a class of artists and their compositions that seek new original ideas and paths forward, throwing off and sometimes antagonizing the conventional practices.
True or false: Like modernism, the avante-garde seeks to find new paths while remaining in context with the past
False: the avante-garde is marked by an irreverence for the past
How did futurists take the avante-garde one step further?
Futurists believed that not only were compositional and artistic conventions outdated, but so were the pitches and instruments used themselves, creating machines to replace them
What do the avante-garde and futurist reject and value?
They reject music of the past and value the sounds and listening experience of the moment
