Third Trimester for Music I
Required Listening for the 3rd Trimester:
--Clair de lune -- O Fortuna -- Dance of the Knights -- Pierrot Lunaire
--Rite of Spring -- Last movement of Shostakovich's 5th Symphony
Music in the 20th Century:
Transitions from the Romantic Period: Gustav Mahler, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel
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Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
He was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then the Austrian Empire, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic. His family later removed to nearby Iglau (now Jihlava), where Mahler grew up.
As a composer, Mahler acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi era (Mahler was Jewish). After 1945 the music was discovered and championed by a new generation of listeners; Mahler then became a frequently performed and recorded composer, a position he has sustained into the 21st century.
As a composer, Mahler acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi era (Mahler was Jewish). After 1945 the music was discovered and championed by a new generation of listeners; Mahler then became a frequently performed and recorded composer, a position he has sustained into the 21st century.
Claude Debussy (1862 – 1918)
He was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures associated with Impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions.
One of his most popular pieces is "Clair de lune" which comes from a larger work called Suite bergamasque (1890). This is one of his earlier pieces. Its dreamy quality is quite evident:
"Clair de lune" showing the music played This is required listening.
For those with a more technical understanding of music, this is a summary of Debussy's musical style:
Features of Debussy's music, which "established a new concept of tonality in European music":
- Glittering passages and webs of figurations which distract from occasional absence of tonality;
- Frequent use of parallel chords which are "in essence not harmonies at all, but rather 'chordal melodies', enriched unisons"; some writers describe these as non-functional harmonies;
- Bitonality, or at least bitonal chords;
- Use of the whole-tone and pentatonic scale;
- Unprepared modulations, "without any harmonic bridge."
Carl Orff (1895 – 1982)
He was a 20th-century German composer, best known for his cantata Carmina Burana (1937). In addition to his career as a composer, Orff developed an influential approach of music education for children.
His Carmina Burana was hugely popular in Nazi Germany after its premiere in Frankfurt in 1937. It is probably the most famous piece of music composed and premiered in Nazi Germany. It was in fact so popular that Orff received a commission in Frankfurt to compose incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream, which was supposed to replace the banned music by Mendelssohn.
The work was based on thirteenth-century poetry found in a manuscript dubbed the Codex latinus monacensis found in the Benedictine monastery of Benediktbeuern in 1803 and written by the Goliards; this collection is also known as Carmina Burana. While "modern" in some of his compositional techniques, Orff was able to capture the spirit of the medieval period in this trilogy, with infectious rhythms and simple harmonies. Occasionally advanced Chaminade Latin students will translate the texts for class.
Carmina Burana -- Over 10 million hits! This is required listening.
Translation:
"O Fortune, like the moon of ever changing state, hou are always waxing or waning; hatefl life now is brutal, now pampers our feelings with its game; poverty, power, it melts them like ice.
Fate, savage and empty, you are a turning wheel, your position is uncertain, your favor is idle and always likely to disappear; covered in shadows and veiled, you bear upon me too; now my back is naked through the sport of your wickedness."
Orff is also known for "Orff Schulwerk," his pioneering work for the teaching of music to school children.
What is Orff Schulwerk?
Orff Schulwerk is a way to teach and learn music. It is based on things children like to do: sing, chant rhymes, clap, dance, and keep a beat on anything near at hand. These instincts are directed into learning music by hearing and making music first, then reading and writing it later. This is the same way we all learned our language.
At present more than 10,000 teachers in the United States have found the Schulwerk the ideal way to present the magic of music to their students.
Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)
He was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is generally regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century.
His best-known works are the five piano concertos, nine completed piano sonatas and seven symphonies. Besides many other works, Prokofiev also composed family favourites, such as the March from The Love for Three Oranges, the suite Lieutenant Kijé, the ballet Romeo and Juliet – from which "Dance of the Knights" is taken – and Peter and the Wolf.
"Dance of the Knights" from Prokofiev's ballet of Romeo & Juliet Required Listening
Prokofiev also wrote the music for the great Russian film classic, Alexander Nevsky. Completed in 1938, it fortold the struggle between Russia and Germany which was was to happen only two years later. This patriotic film told the true story of the victory of the Russians over the Germans in a medieval battle.
Arnold Schoenberg (1874 -- 1951)
He was an Austrian composer and painter, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School.
Schoenberg's approach, both in terms of harmony and development, is among the major landmarks of 20th-century musical thought; at least three generations of composers in the European and American traditions have consciously extended his thinking or, in some cases, passionately reacted against it. During the rise of the Nazi Party in Austria, his music was labeled as degenerate art.
Schoenberg was widely known early in his career for his success in simultaneously extending the traditionally opposed German Romantic styles of Brahms and Wagner. Later, his name would come to personify pioneering innovations in atonality (although Schoenberg himself detested the term "atonality" as inaccurate in describing his intentions) that would become the most polemical feature of 20th-century art music. In the 1920s, Schoenberg developed the twelve-tone technique, a widely influential compositional method of manipulating an ordered series of all twelve notes in the chromatic scale. He also coined the term developing variation, and was the first modern composer to embrace ways of developing motifs without resorting to the dominance of a centralized melodic idea.
Gustav Mahler supported Schoenberg. Mahler adopted him as a protégé and continued to support him even after Schoenberg's style reached a point which Mahler could no longer understand; Mahler worried about who would look after him after his death. Schoenberg, who had initially despised and mocked Mahler's music, was converted by the "thunderbolt" of Mahler's Third Symphony, which he considered a work of genius. Afterward he "spoke of Mahler as a saint."
Schoenberg's atonality is present in Pierrot Lunaire. This highly influential work is a novel cycle of expressionist songs set to a German translation of poems by the Belgian-French poet Albert Giraud. Utilizing the technique of Sprechstimme, or melodramatically spoken recitation, the work pairs a female vocalist with a small ensemble of five musicians. The ensemble, which is now commonly referred to as the Pierrot ensemble, consists of flute (doubling on piccolo), clarinet (doubling on bass clarinet), violin (doubling on viola), violoncello, speaker, and piano.
If you've never listened to really modern music before -- get ready to be shocked! If you can read music, you'll wonder how to play the notes you see in the following YouTube video.
Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire w/ sprechstimme Required Listening (pardon the ad)
John Cage (1912 -- 1992)
He was an American composer, music theorist, writer, and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential American composers of the 20th century.
Cage is perhaps best known for his 1952 composition 4′33″, which is performed in the absence of deliberate sound; musicians who present the work do nothing aside from being present for the duration specified by the title. The content of the composition is not "four minutes and 33 seconds of silence," as is sometimes assumed, but rather the sounds of the environment heard by the audience during performance.[7][8] The work's challenge to assumed definitions about musicianship and musical experience made it a popular and controversial topic both in musicology and the broader aesthetics of art and performance. Cage was also a pioneer of the prepared piano (a piano with its sound altered by objects placed between or on its strings or hammers), for which he wrote numerous dance-related works and a few concert pieces.
You Asked for it! Here's 4' 33" NOT a required piece
"Preparing" a John Cage Piano NOT a required piece
As one commentator to this last video put it, "There is a really thin line between insanity and genius."
Steve Reich (1936 -- present)
Reich belongs to the school of music called "Minimalism." This music features a tremendous amount of repetition and iteration. At first you don't think the music is changing, but little by little it does. Reich says (in his album Drumming):"Performing and listening to a gradual music process resembles pulling back a swing, releasing it, and observing it gradually come to rest . . . turning over an hourglass and watching the sand slowly run through to the bottom . . . placing your feet in the sand by the ocean's edge and wtching, feeling, and listening to the waves as they gradually bury them."
Again Reich notes: "Listening to an extremely gradual musical process opens my ears to it, but it always extends farther than I can hear, and that makes it interesting to listen to yet again."
Here are examples of minimalistic music by Steve Reich:
"Come Out" 13 minutes of re-re-re-looping of that phrase NOT required
Movement I of Drumming This is NOT required
Clapping Music This is NOT required (but cool!) Memorized also.
Music for Pieces of Wood Not Required
Music for Eighteen Musicians Not Required (read YouTube comments)
Igor Stravinsky (1882 - 1971)
He was a Russian, then a Frenchman, and eventually an American composer, pianist, and conductor. He lived in Hollywood and New York when he moved to the USA. He is widely considered to be one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century.
His Rite of Spring was used by Walt Disney for the soundtrack of his groundbreaking animated feature, Fantasia. Eugene Ormandy, the conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, was featured in silhouette. His contribution to music was recognized by President John F. Kennedy who honored Stravinsky at a reception at the White House.
Stravinsky used intentionally brutal polyrhythms and dissonances of The Rite of Spring. If Stravinsky's stated intention was "to send them all to hell," then he may have rated the 1913 premier of The Rite of Spring as a success: it caused a famous classical music riot, and Stravinsky refered to it on several occasions in his autobiography as a "scandal." There were reports of fistfights in the audience and a need for a police presence during the second act. The real extent of the tumult is open to debate. Realizing that there is no such a thing as "bad publicity," Stravinsky may have been exaggeraging a little bit.
Igor Stravinsky and Vaslav Nijinsky collaborated in 1913 on the most shocking, ground breaking music and ballet that the world had ever experienced, and it may still be the most striking ballet ever created. Nijinsky's choreography, performed only eight times in 1913, was nearly lost forever until the Joffrey Ballet, in 1989, with great effort and commitment, reconstructed it and performed it for the first time in over seventy years.
The above link is just part I of three parts. The other two are included here, but they are not required.
Part II of the Rite of Spring Video NOT required listening (but worth it!)
Part III of The Rite of Spring Video NOT required listenint (but also worth it!)
In the third video the Indian maiden dances herself to death so that Spring will return.
Dimitri Shostakovich (1906 -- 1975)
He was a Soviet Russian composer and pianist and a prominent figure of 20th century music.
He got into deep trouble with the regime of Josef Stalin and was twice publically condemned for his music.
In 1936, Shostakovich fell from official favour. The year began with a series of attacks on him in Pravda, in particular an article entitled, "Muddle Instead of Music". Shostakovich was away on a concert tour in Arkhangel when he heard news of the first Pravda article. Two days before the article was published on the evening of 28 January, a friend had advised Shostakovich to attend the Bolshoi Theatre production of Lady Macbeth. When he arrived, he saw that Stalin and the Politburo were there. In letters written to Ivan Sollertinsky, a close friend and advisor, Shostakovich recounted the horror with which he watched as Stalin shuddered every time the brass and percussion played too loudly. Equally horrifying was the way Stalin and his companions laughed at the love-making scene between Sergei and Katerina. Eyewitness accounts testify that Shostakovich was "white as a sheet" when he went to take his bow after the third act.
This "disapproval" was actually quite dangerous for him. 1936 marked the beginning of the Great Terror in which many of the composer's friends and relatives were imprisoned or killed: these included his patron Marshal Tukhachevsky (shot months after his arrest); his brother-in-law Vsevolod Frederiks (a distinguished physicist, who was eventually released but died before he got home); his close friend Nikolai Zhilyayev (a musicologist who had taught Tukhachevsky; shot shortly after his arrest); his mother-in-law, the astronomer Sofiya Mikhailovna Varzar (sent to a camp in Karaganda); his friend, the Marxist writer Galina Serbryakova (20 years in camps); his uncle, Maxim Kostrykin (died); and his colleagues Boris Kornilov and Adrian Piotrovsky (executed).
He again fell out of favor in 1948. In 1948 Shostakovich, along with many other composers, was again denounced for formalism in the Zhdanov decree. Andrei Zhdanov, Chairman of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet, accused Shostakovich and other composers (such as Sergei Prokofiev and Aram Khachaturian) for writing inappropriate and formalist music. This was part of an ongoing anti-formalism campaign intended to root out all Western compositional influence as well as any perceived "non-Russian" output.
Eventually, as the USSR became more reasonable under Brezhnev, Shostakovich did not hesitate to write to him asking that Stalin's reputation not be "rehabilitated." He and several other Russian intellectuals and artists were successful in helping achieve this goal.
Shostakovich's works are broadly tonal and in the Romantic tradition, but with elements of atonality and chromaticism. In some of his later works (e.g., theTwelfth Quartet), he made use of tone rows. His output is dominated by his cycles of symphonies and string quartets, each numbering fifteen. The symphonies are distributed fairly evenly throughout his career, while the quartets are concentrated towards the latter part. Among the most popular are the Fifth andSeventh Symphonies and the Eighth and Fifteenth Quartets.
Movement IV of Shostakovich's 5th Symphony -- Bernstein Conducts REQUIRED!
Minimalism in Music
Minimal music is a style of music associated with the work of American composers La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass. It originated in the New York Downtown scene of the 1960s and was initially viewed as a form of experimental music called the New York Hypnotic School. .Prominent features of the style include consonant harmony, steady pulse (if not immobile drones), stasis or gradual transformation, and often reiteration of musical phrases or smaller units such as figures, motifs, and cells. It may include features such as additive process and phase shifting which leads to what has been termed phase music. Minimal compositions that rely heavily on process techniques that follow strict rules are usually described using the term process music.Starting in the early 1960s as a scruffy underground scene in San Francisco alternative spaces and New York lofts, minimalism spread to become the most popular experimental music style of the late 20th century. The movement originally involved dozens of composers, although only five (Young, Riley, Reich, Glass, and later John Adams) emerged to become publicly associated with American minimal music.
George Gershwin -- 1898-1937
Most important point: Gershwin was the first to fuse classical music with jazz.
Born of Russian & Lithuanian heritage, Gershwin first learned his musical "chops" by frequenting, as a chile, the Yiddish Theatres of the Jewish population living on the Lower East Side of NYC.
At 10, he heard a friend play violin, and he realized he could do music too. He started learning piano on the instrument that had been gotten for his brother Ira. He took lessons from the piano soloist who played with a local orchestra, the Beethoven Symphony Orchestra. He learned well, because he quit school at 15 and started to write songs in various locations in "Tin Pan Alley," the area of NYC where all the song writers and music sellers hung out (28th Street).
He was good enough to "cut" piano rolls. How piano rolls are "cut." (not required)
He eventually won a Pulitzer Prize for his hit musical, Girl Crazy. Watch the whole movie by clicking this! (not required)
He wrote Rhapsody in Blue and then went to Paris to learn a more classical style of composition. He tried to take lessons from both Ravel and Schoenberg. Both of them said the same thing: Why be a second-rate Ravel or Schoenberg when you are already a first-rate Gershwin. Ravel, when he heard about the money Gershwin was making, said, "I should be taking lessons from you!" After he wrote American In Paris, he returned home to write an opera, Porgy and Bess. Because of the depression, it didn't make much money, so he headed to Hollywood to write for the movies -- because the movies WERE making money (much cheaper to attend a movie than go to the opera!!)
While he was in Hollywood, he started acting a bit crazy, and all his friends thought he was becoming mentally ill. Unfortunately, his craziness was a result of a brain tumor that was diagnosed too late. They operated, but he died a young man of only 39 years. (like Mozart and Chopin!)
There are TWO required Gershwin songs. One of them is Rhapsody in Blue (the word "blue" in the title refers to the blues), and the other is the most famous piece from Porgy & Bess, the hit song "Summertime" (a song covered by singers as diverse as Janis Joplin and Renee Fleming.)
One interesting note about Porgy and Bess is that Gershwin would not permit any cast of singers to perform it. He stipulated that they must be black.
Here are the links. Remember, BOTH are required:
Click to Play "Summertime" from the opera Porgy and Bess
In case you can't get enough of Gershwin -- American in Paris (not required)
In case you can't get enough of Gershwin -- American in Paris (not required)
Review of Notes for the 3rd Trimester
Texture -- all of them! Homophonic, polyphonic, monophonicMelodic Style -- Everything from white sound/white noise, through atonal melodies, to tonal melodies, to total silence.
Instrumentation -- Electricity was the new influence on 20th century instrumentation. The electric guitar and keyboard synthesizers were the first instruments to be amplified.
Characteristics
-- Total Musical Freedom
-- Avant Garde which literally means "on the cutting edge"
-- Explosion of musicology with composers writing books explaining their music
-- Formalized music education: degrees in performance, composition,
education, recording, etc.
-- America finally features equally with Europe in the classical music world
-- Both traditional forms are used, but also no fixed forms at all
-- Electronic music: pre-recorded either totally or partially and played along
with traditional performers.
-- Chance music: involving animals, dice, writing notes where there are
marks on the paper, random splatterings on musical staffs, anything
experimental
-- Neo-Classical: a return to the classical style of composing
-- Impressionism: following the movement of impressionistic art -- vague
& free rhythms
-- Serialism: the "tone row" technique of Schoenberg
-- Minimalism: complete control over the music, very gradual changes in a
piece of music
-- Expressionism: extreme, intense and immediate emotion
-- Use of electricity: advent of electric guitar, bass, and keyboards
(synthesizers: Bob Moog)
