Humanities Music Final

saw the rise of the middle class audience

entire 19th century (1800-1899), beginning overlapped with end of classical period (1750-1825)

1. music= greatest of the arts b/c it could express the unexpressable

2. romantic artist= lonely hero

3. absence, memory, nostalgia

4. glorification of nature (beauty&fear) + the supernatural

5. close connection btw. music and literature

6. fascination with the exotic & bizarre

7. preoccupation with melody

-supreme romantic instrument b/c artist= lonely hero

-Franz Liszt & Cara Schumann (performing career, composer, mother of 7)

-inspired 21st century attitudes towards music

a. split btw. serious music and other music

b. concept of subjective, individual musical expression

c.each listener percieves a musical work differently

a new genre invited during the 9th century

instrumental, not vocal

music that asks the listener to make mental references to non musical topics, thus inviting the listener into the creative experience

enlarged paying audiences

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;;the melody that unifies the program

“idee fixe”= the protagonist’s beloved

coined by Berlioz’s program symphony of 1830 (symphonie fantastique)

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after it’s presentation in the first movement, its rhythm and timbre are transformed for each successive movement

dominated italian 19th century opera which played the role that tv and movies do today

His opera’s came to stand for the 19th century struggle for italian political unification and his name was assicoated with that of Victor Emmanuel, eventually the king of italy

his music style was attractive to the middle class

dominated by Richard Wagner

NOT middle class entertainment

according to him- opera should emulate ancient greek drama by combining poetry, music, dance and visual arts into a gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art)

should be morally and spiritually uplifting

Wagner’s and Verdi’s musical styles were very different

-sometimes called the first piece of modern music

-new, non germanic approach to composition from Paris (btw of german defeat in french-prussian war= french hostile to germans in late 19th century)

-focused upon qualities of sound rather than upon key-driven forms

a french late 19th century literary movement represented by Stephani Mallarme’s poem, The Afternoon of a Faun (1876), explored the art of ambiguity

had rhythmic and harmonic ambiguity, voluptuous timbre’s, and use of silence seemed to translate Sybolist poetic ambiguity into musical sound

-focus upon rhythm and beat

-strong conflict btw popular and serious or classical music (as a reaction against wagner’s music)

-technological developments that profoundly influenced musical composition

-eclecticism and multiculturalism

-from about 1970, commercialization of music

reflects the early 20th century Parisian vogue for “primitive” tribal art and makes rhythm central by using mixed meters, irregular rhythmic patterns, and ostinatos (brief rhythmic patterns used over and over)

-also includes folk-like melodies and highly dissonant harmonies

-choreography=modernist, discarding the positions, techniques and costumes of classical ballet

associated with jazz

slightly lower pitches

-first in tape recording and then in computer techniques have allowed adventuresome 20th-21st century composers to expand the 19th century interest in timbre to include any and all sounds, and to bypass the live performer, giving the composer nearly total control of sound

-also lead to new concepts of musical performance and new relationships among composer, work, performer and audience

american composer who experimented with the inclusion of change into musical composition

famous piece 4 33 (1952), he specified only that it contain three sections, all else he left to chance

brings together musical elements from diverse musical styles that can include those of western classical music, popular music, and non western music

it is related to the multiculturalism of the late 20th and 21st century. “multiculturalism” derives from the educational theory of the 1980’s

since about 1970, the commercialization of music has required catering to a mass market

in much popular music, this has led to a general “smoothing” of the sound

-in the intellectual tradition, it has resulted in a decline in innovation and a renewed use of tonality, as in Adam’s Tromba lontana

schumann

1.      Music as the greatest of the arts (Schopenhauer, 1818)

2.      Artist-pianist as lonely hero, performing in the salon

schumann

4.      Glorification of nature and of the supernatural

Schubert

song (Lied) for voice and piano,  poem by Goethe

berlioz

1.      The program

2.      Central role of melody: Berlioz’s idée fixe and its transformations throughout the symphony

3.      Timbre and orchestration

4.      Musical structure of movement 4: sonata form!

verdi

a.       Focus on the voice (bel canto = “beautiful singing”)

b.      Emphasis on melody, with homophonic texture (orchestra subservient to voice)

c.       Strophic construction

debussy

A.    Genre: tone poem (program music)

B.     Mallarmé’s Symbolist poem: ambiguity and subtlety

C.     Debussy’s music

1.      Represents a late-19th-century artistic revolution in Paris against German music

2.      New approach to composition: qualities of sound rather than key-driven forms

3.      Musical techniques

a.       Ambiguity of rhythm

b.      No real sense of key

c.       Central importance of timbre

                                                                                            i.      Juxtaposed blocks of sound

                                                                                          ii.      Spare textures + use of silence

                                                                                        iii.      New orchestration

4.      Nijinsky’s choreography for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes

stravinsky

a.       Primitivism

b.      Modernism

i.        Dance: rejection of classical ballet techniques, positions, and costumes

ii.      Music:

a.       Rhythm: irregular patterns + ostinatos

b.      Pitch: strong dissonances + complex harmonies

c.       Melodies: folk-like, repetitive, with limited pitch ranges

d.     Timbre: focus on “new” sonorities of winds and percussion + juxtaposed blocks of sound

copland

a.       Combination of the familiar (traditional cowboy song melodies) with a modernist style

gillespie/parker

1.       Reaction against big-band jazz

2.       Smaller bands again, virtuosic solo improvisation

cage

a.   For “prepared” piano

b.   Exotic timbres + repetitive patterns suggest Javanese gamelan music

abing

a.  Instruments: erhu (2-string fiddle) and yangqin (hammered dulcimer)

b.  Heard through the filter of late-20th-century technology/sound preferences (our recording: 1997)

adams

i.         Minimalist, feel-good music: consonant, soft atmosphere “heals” all dissonances

machover

                                                                                                                         i.       For electronic cello and computer-generated sound

                                                                                                                       ii.       Source: J. S. Bach, cello suites (18th century)

b.       Rock, jazz, pop, folk elements: Bernstein, Mass (1971)

c.       Non-Western musical styles

wagner

1.      Vastly enlarged orchestral role; the singer is not the principal focus, but only one part of a larger musical fabric (“endless melody”)

2.      Continuous music (no aria/recitative distinction)

3.      Each Leitmotiv (musical idea) stands for an element in the story

4.      Harmonic richness: inspiration for 20th-century composers

billie holiday

1.       Influence of Dixieland jazz (New Orleans, 1920s): small ensemble, simultaneous improvisation

2.       From blues: 12-bar blues form (chorus = 1 statement of the pattern)

E.      Swing or big-band jazz (1930s and 1940s, for large ensembles; composed and written down)