The Twentieth Century & Beyond: The "Classical" Scene

Twentieth Century & Beyond:  The “Classical Scene”

•      A time of achievements and contrasts

•      Technology altered personal and worldwide communication.

•      Travel was completely revolutionized with airplanes and modern vehicles.

•      Medical science conquered many infections and developed many life-saving surgeries.

•      A time of achievements and contrasts

•      Technology altered personal and worldwide communication.

•      Travel was completely revolutionized with airplanes and modern vehicles.

•      Medical science conquered many infections and developed many life-saving surgeries.

General Characteristics of 20^th Century Music

•      Melody

•      Erratic with wide leaps, irregular rhythms, and unexpected notes

•      Phrase lengths changed constantly.

•      Rhythm

•      Changing meters were common.

•      Unusual meters, such as 5/4 or 7/4 were not atypical.

•      Length

•      Long vs. short

•      Paris was the center of the Modernist movement.

•      Parallels between painting and music were particularly striking.

•      Impressionism in music:

•      Outlines were blurred with harmonic ambiguity, often created by using pentatonic, whole-tone, or chromatic scales.

•      Symbolism in music attempted to convey ideas by suggestion.

•      Claude Debussy (1862–1918)

•      Most famous orchestral work was Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (1894), which was based on a poem by the Symbolist poet, Stéphane Mallarmé.

•      Uses a large orchestra with a variety of tone colors.

•      A movement in painting at the beginning of the 20th century.

•      Artists were attracted to what they saw as the directness, instinctiveness, and exoticism of non-urban cultures.

•      Painters:

•      Paul Gaugin

•      Henri Rousseau

•      Pablo Picasso – Les Demoiselles d’Avignon

Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)

•      The Rite of Spring

•      One of the most revolutionary works of the 20th century

•      Depicts rituals of ancient pagan tribes.

•      Caused a riot at its first performance in Paris in 1913.

•      Finally recognized as a masterpiece.

Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951)

•      Studied the works of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms, and Mahler

•      Believed that tonality had outlived its usefulness

•      Developed a system called atonality

•      No key center could be heard.

•      "Madonna" from Pierrot Lunaire

•      Expressionist because it reveals the darker side of human nature.

•      The soloist does not sing in the normal style.

•      Uses a technique called "speech-song" or Sprechstimme

The American Scene

•      Conservatories of music were established.

•      Music began to be taught as a serious discipline on university campuses.

•      Concert halls were built.

•      Most composers in the early 20th century were concentrated in Boston.

Aaron Copland (1900–1990)

•      Born in Brooklyn to a Jewish immigrant family

•      Fanfare for the Common Man

Two American composers, in addition to Copland, attempted to bridge the gap between "serious" music and its audience.

•      George Gershwin

•      Leonard Bernstein

George Gershwin (1898–1937)

•      Primarily a composer of popular songs and a jazz pianist

•      Wrote works that reach across the cultural divide between popular and classical music

•      Rhapsody in Blue (1924)

•      Successful mixture of the jazz idiom and concert music for solo piano and orchestra

Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990)

•      A great pianist, conductor, and composer

•      As a pianist, he played everything from Mozart to Gershwin.

•      West Side Story is a modernized version of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, set in Manhattan's Upper West Side.