Unit 3 Flashcards
1
Q
Salome
A
-using Wagnerian tonality in a very ironic way; her being in love with a dead head and having a beautiful melody
2
Q
Strauss’s Legacy
A
- increasingly conservative composition; Late Strauss Capriccio, 1942)
- became President of the Nazi Reichmusickkamer in 1993
- wrote official music for the Nazi Party (Olympic Hymn)
- Rosenkavalier is a shift towards the more conservative
3
Q
Was Strauss a Nazi?
A
- yes; accepted patronage and wanted to “clean up” German music
- no; not an anti-Semite, protected Jews close to him, and never espoused ideology
4
Q
Modernism
A
- move towards abstraction
- music: move away from tonality
- painting; move away from clear figuration
- in France: impressionism
- move away from chordal functions
5
Q
Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
A
- started studying at the Paris Conservatory ate age 10
- moved in “bohemian” circles
- did not teach, perform, conduct, etc.
- another shift in the way composers earned their living; composers do nothing but composing; not a critic or writer
- he hated being called an impressionist; preferred symbolist (Afternoon of a Faun is a symbolist poem)
6
Q
Debussy’s Style
A
- Ambivalence toward Wagner; he loved his harmony; use of Tristan Chord in Prelude to Faun
- inspired by Liszt (octatonicism), Mussorgsky, Asian musics
- pleasure in the moment, not necessarily goal-directed, more static
7
Q
“Nuages” from Nocturnes
A
- Debussy
- “clouds”
- the impression of clouds; static harmony, alternative sales, “impression” of chords
- influence of Mussorgsky “tonal collections without tonal direction”
- repetition
- English horn melody in octatonic scale including the harmony to fill in missing notes
- pentatonic flute melody
- still program music
8
Q
Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)
A
- born to Jewish family, converted to Lutheranism (maybe just so he could work in Berlin and Vienna), started out as a romantic, imperative of originality
- also a painted
- emigrated to America in 1933 and converted back to Judaism
- he was considered by the Nazi regime the “decadent Jewish atonal style”
9
Q
Modernism: Innovation
A
- impressionism (not Freud, French, surface level) vs. expressionism (Freud, German, trying to express your inner subconscious; often distorted)
- 1899: Freud’s “Interpretation of Dreams” book; he theorized the “subconscious or unconscious;” beneath your conscious mind lay a seething reservoir of wants, needs, and awful thoughts that you can’t conscious reckon with
- the unconscious, expressing inner turmoil
- abstraction/innovation/search for new sounds/history progresses toward utopia/the past is prologue/centrality of the European canon/truth is absolute
10
Q
Abandoning Tonality with Schoenberg
A
- “emancipation of dissonance;” dissonance no longer has to resolve; extension of Wagner
- preferred the term “pantonality”
- no pitch hierarchy
- minimize repetition because it emphasizes a sense of home
11
Q
Pierrot Lunaire
A
- Schoenberg
- text is a German translation of Albert Giraud
- Pierrot (character from Commedia dell’Arte; iconic sad clown
- reciter plus five musicians playing nine instruments
- 21 songs, no ensemble repeated
- Sprechtstimme; the notation is different; an X for pitches or a slash through the stem, and this means that it’s somewhere between speech and singing; you hit the note, but you don’t stay on it
12
Q
Set Theory
A
- pitch-classes vs. pitch
- defined by interval content
- arrange sets in the most compact way, count half steps from lowest note
- this actually came around in the 1970’s
13
Q
Serialism
A
- solved the originality problem of free atonality
- method of composing with twelve tones which are related only with one another
14
Q
Serial Technique
A
- all 12 pitches arranged in a row
- perform procedures on that row: inversion, retrograde, and retrograde inversion
- Schoenberg created this while he was composing
15
Q
Schoenberg and the Canon
A
- counterpoint
- BACH
- Baroque Forms: Minuet and Trio
16
Q
Schoenberg as Teacher/Theorist
A
- two major pupils: Alban Berg and Anton Webern or “Second Viennese School;” pure atonality and then first wave of serialism
- initially influential, but philosophy and ethnicity proved problematic after 1933
- fled to America, taught at UCLA
17
Q
Alban Berg (1885-1935)
A
- tend to sound more tonal than Schoenberg
- born to a wealthy family in Vienna
- studied with Schoenberg 1904-1911, but they had a difficult relationship because of Schoenberg’s ego, he wants his students to worship him
- had an illegitimate child with a woman named Marie (which he puts into Wozzeck)
- because Schoenberg expected him to promote his music, he didn’t have as much time to dedicate to his own
- he thought Webern was the favorite student because he pushed things forward while Berg focused backwards a little bit
18
Q
Wozzeck
A
- Berg
- based on Woyzeck, unfinished play by Georg Buchner
- misfortunes of a poor soldier who commits murder
- political implications
- kind of around the same time as Salome
- Berg goes into the army and composes it over seven years, completing it in 1922
- if he didn’t start it before the army, you would think it was about all of his experiences
- lower class characters have names and upper class characters have titles
- opens with Wozzeck shaving the captain, and the captain completely bashing him for being poor and dumb
- Act I: Baroque suite; Act II: Five movement symphony; Act III: Theme and Variations
- formal design corresponds to the plot going on
19
Q
Anton Webern (1883-1945)
A
- contemporary student with Berg
- definitely into absolute music
- music should express only that which something else cannot
- economy of expression; say what you have to say, and then stop talking, which is why his music sounds sparse
- Babbit and Boulez are influenced by him with serialism, advanced 12-tone procedures; more interested in the sound of the row
20
Q
Symphony, op. 21
A
- 12-tone, elements of sonata form
- exposition: two canons, one lyrics, and one more energetic
- development: palindrome
- recap: same rows, same order as exposition, different rhythms, registers
21
Q
Igor Starvinsky (1882-1971)
A
- born near St. Petersburg
- trained by Rimsky-Korsakov (where he got the tradition of The Mighty Five)
- very steeped in nationalism and Russian folk music
- Russian, neoclassical, and serialist
22
Q
The Ballet Russes
A
- Paris still a cultural capitol, still interested in exoticism
- impresario Sergei Diaghilev; decided he was going to found a ballet company that brought together the most modern artists to put on ballets in Paris; brought in modern dancers/composers/costumers/visual artists
- he made the Ballet Russe, Russian Ballet
- Nijinsky was the top ballet dancer, and he was in a relationship with Diaghilev, but Diaghilev was kind of possessive
- he was nationalist, trying to get Russian music out there; Paris loved it for exotic flavor
23
Q
Stravinsky and the Ballet Russes
A
- first ballet was “Firebird” in 1910
- then Petrouchka
- both based on Russian subjects, lots of octatonicism, and Russian folk music
24
Q
The Rite of Spring
A
- his third ballet for Diaghilev
- scenes from Pagan Russia rather than a complete story; primitivism
- all-star line-up: Stravinsky, choreographed by Nijinsky, sets and costumes by Roerich
- strange costumes, hair styles, make-up
- it has been said that there was a riot
25
Q
Danse des Adolescentes
A
- similarity to the Mighty Five
- blocks of music
- Russian folk melodies
- sometimes called the Augers or Spring chord (Fb major chord with Eb dominant 7th, bi-tonality)
26
Q
Danse Sacrale
A
-constantly shifting meter, moveable downbeat
27
Q
Bela Bartok (1881-1945)
A
- born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire; against Austrian rule
- fascinated with “peasant” (folk) music
- famous concert pianist
- served on the League of Nations
- worked with Kodaly
- focused on Eastern European music
- stopped collecting, started studying/cataloguing around 1920 by rhythms, modes, characteristics
- became a full-time professor of ethnomusicology in 1934; one of the first to focus on folk music with ethnomusicology
- he was against Romanticism, wanted to break from that tradition
28
Q
Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta
A
- atonal fugue subject of Movement I appears in all four movements
- Movement III (“Night Music”); folk-like elements; A section: drones, trills, ornamentation; C section: orchestration, 5/4 time signature (paidushko)
- he was into symmetry, so a lot of material were palindromes; the whole piece is almost palindromic
29
Q
Art Music in America
A
- 19th century sees a rise in symphony orchestras, some American symphonists
- 1892: Antonin Dvorak recommends American composers use folk music
30
Q
Charles Ives (1874-1954)
A
- father was a bandmaster church musician
- exposed to lots of American popular son
- studied at Yale
- insurance salesman
- trained, but didn’t have a professional life as a composer
