Modernist Style: New Musical Horizons

Question 1

How to approach modern music:

Answer 1

• What makes the music strange/unfamiliar?

- What? How? Why?

Question 2

Modern vs. Modernist

Answer 2

Modern means contemporary, Modernist means forward-looking (avant garde).

Question 3

The Modernist era raised basic issues about…

Answer 3

The purpose of art.

Question 4

Purpose of music though the ages:

Answer 4

• Worship (Medieval/Renaissance).
• Intellectual (Baroque).
• Entertainment (Classical).
• Emotional/express own identity (Romantic).

Question 5

What was the context of the 20th Century?

Answer 5

• 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).

Question 6

What are the 3 periods of change?

Answer 6

• Pre-WWI.
• Between the Wars.
• Post-WWII.

Question 7

Pre-WWI Era

Answer 7

• Impressionism.
• Expressionism and atonality.
• American ragtime.

Question 8

Between the Wars Era

Answer 8

• Serialism.
• Reactions against modernist music.
• American Jazz.

Question 9

Post-WWII Era

Answer 9

• Postwar modernism: Rise of the Machines.
• Jazz crossover and Broadway.
• “Popular” music.

Question 10

Response of Modernism

Answer 10

Question assumptions, embrace uncertainty, seek new perspectives.

Question 11

How did art respond to Modernism?

Answer 11

Representational to abstract.

Question 12

How did literature respond to Modernism?

Answer 12

Regular structure to stream-of-consciousness.

Question 13

Modernism led to the creation of new languages to ___ ___.

Answer 13

Create meaning.

Question 14

Expressionism

Answer 14

• Munch, The Scream.

- Extremes, distortion, subjectivity, evocation of mood.

Question 15

Cubism

Answer 15

• Picasso, Seated Nude.

- Multiple perspectives, mathematical approach expressive ends.

Question 16

How was melody experimented with and transformed?

Answer 16

New principles created from manipulation of individual musical elements.

Question 17

What are the three principle changes Pre-WWI?

Answer 17

• Melody.
• Harmony.
• Tonality.

Question 18

Evolution of melody.

Answer 18

• Classical (clear, concise, balanced).
• Romantic (versatile, higher hight and lower lows).
• Impressionism (no tonal structure, no cadences, just hear fragments).
• Neo-classicism.
• Modernism.

Question 19

How was harmony experimented with and transformed?

Answer 19

• Whole tone scale.
• Pentatonic scale (no semitones – all black keys).
• Octatonic scale (alternating whole and half steps).
• Microtonality.

Question 20

What kicked off the exposure to world music?

Answer 20

World’s Fair in 1889.

Question 21

Microtonality

Answer 21

Using steps smaller than half steps.

Question 22

How was tonality experimented with and transformed?

Answer 22

• 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.