Modernist Style: New Musical Horizons Flashcards
How to approach modern music:
- What makes the music strange/unfamiliar?
- What? How? Why?
Modern vs. Modernist
Modern means contemporary, Modernist means forward-looking (avant garde).
The Modernist era raised basic issues about…
The purpose of art.
Purpose of music though the ages:
- Worship (Medieval/Renaissance).
- Intellectual (Baroque).
- Entertainment (Classical).
- Emotional/express own identity (Romantic).
What was the context of the 20th Century?
- Rapid progress in technology and politics (industrialization and the nation-state).
- An era of enormous uncertainty (physics, biology, psychology).
- Growing pains (social unrest, World Wars).
What are the 3 periods of change?
- Pre-WWI.
- Between the Wars.
- Post-WWII.
Pre-WWI Era
- Impressionism.
- Expressionism and atonality.
- American ragtime.
Between the Wars Era
- Serialism.
- Reactions against modernist music.
- American Jazz.
Post-WWII Era
- Postwar modernism: Rise of the Machines.
- Jazz crossover and Broadway.
- “Popular” music.
Response of Modernism
Question assumptions, embrace uncertainty, seek new perspectives.
How did art respond to Modernism?
Representational to abstract.
How did literature respond to Modernism?
Regular structure to stream-of-consciousness.
Modernism led to the creation of new languages to ___ ___.
Create meaning.
Expressionism
- Munch, The Scream.
- Extremes, distortion, subjectivity, evocation of mood.
Cubism
- Picasso, Seated Nude.
- Multiple perspectives, mathematical approach expressive ends.
How was melody experimented with and transformed?
New principles created from manipulation of individual musical elements.
What are the three principle changes Pre-WWI?
- Melody.
- Harmony.
- Tonality.
Evolution of melody.
- Classical (clear, concise, balanced).
- Romantic (versatile, higher hight and lower lows).
- Impressionism (no tonal structure, no cadences, just hear fragments).
- Neo-classicism.
- Modernism.
How was harmony experimented with and transformed?
- Whole tone scale.
- Pentatonic scale (no semitones – all black keys).
- Octatonic scale (alternating whole and half steps).
- Microtonality.
What kicked off the exposure to world music?
World’s Fair in 1889.
Microtonality
Using steps smaller than half steps.
How was tonality experimented with and transformed?
- Romanics looked at tonal lines first. Added to this instability.
- New harmonic language and scales of 20th Century added.
- Atonality. All 12 pitches are equal.
- Symmetry of chromatic scale means no central pitch is logical end.
