Big Ideas Simply Explained - The Classical Music Book

["MODERN 1900\u20131950 249 See also: Pr\u00e9lude \u00e0 l\u2019apr\u00e8s-midi d\u2019un faune 228\u2013231 \u25a0 Ives\u2019s Symphony No. 4 254\u2013255 \u25a0 Parade 256\u2013257 \u25a0 Ionisation 268\u2013269 between the first two melodies\u2014 the opening bassoon melody uses a mode containing only the white notes of the piano, but after around 40 seconds it is juxtaposed against a new melody in a completely unrelated mode (containing mostly black notes). The accompaniment bears little relation to either mode but draws freely upon all the notes. The effect in many ways feels more dissonant than if the piece was completely atonal, because of the clashing of two musical methods. Dancers of the Ballets Russes pose example of this is the opening to Percussive techniques in costume for the first performance of the \u201cAugurs of Spring,\u201d in which a All other features are rendered Le Sacre du printemps at the Th\u00e9\u00e2tre repeated chord is heavily accented the more barbaric by Stravinsky\u2019s des Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es, Paris, in 1913. in what seem to be arbitrary places orchestration. He calls upon huge but are actually determined by a forces\u2014large string, wind, and reworked as to make the finished mathematical pattern imperceptible brass sections are joined by a huge product uniquely his. While some to the listener. battery of percussion instruments. of the folk tunes Stravinsky used His tendency toward extremes is already contained irregularities of Stravinsky\u2019s rhythms often explicit from the opening bassoon phrase length, rhythm, or meter, take the form of ostinatos (short, melody, pitched uncomfortably high he greatly exaggerated these repeating patterns), made the more in its register. Even more striking is irregularities and introduced many compelling by the perpetual driving the \u201cpercussive\u201d manner in which new ones, often fragmenting his pulse often underlying them, he writes for the whole orchestra, melodies into units of unequal usually at too fast a speed to be especially the strings, who are length, mixed up and repeated in called a beat. \u201cGlorification of the often called upon to play \u276f\u276f seemingly unpredictable ways. Chosen One,\u201d for example, is mostly driven by persistent eighth-note [Le Sacre] had the effect of an Irregularity and brutality movement, yet in the wildest explosion that so scattered the The savagery of Stravinsky\u2019s work sections of the \u201cSacrificial Dance,\u201d elements of musical language is most strikingly realized in the continuous 16th-note movement is that they could never again be composer\u2019s use of rhythm, where the \u201cmotor\u201d behind the music. irregularity is also a defining put together as before. feature. The rhythms are frequently Stravinsky also uses dissonance Donald Jay Grout grouped into bars of differing to create a sense of savagery. While lengths, but even when the meter the folk melodies woven through the Music historian looks regular on the page, he often piece are based on recognizable calls for notes to be stressed in scales (or \u201cmodes\u201d), the harmony unpredictable places, to negate any tends to be dissonant\u2014an effect sense of order and expectation. One often achieved by combining two modes (called \u201cbimodality\u201d). This can be heard in the dialogue","250 PRIMITIVISM AND MODERNISM Differences between Romanticism and Modernism Romanticism Modernism Composers built on Composers consciously historical tradition. break with historical tradition. Melodies are proportionally Melodies are fragmented structured. or irregular and sometimes absent. Dissonances are resolved. Dissonances are freely Uses one scale at a time. used. May employ different Rhythm is rational and ordered, following scales simultaneously. regular meter. Rhythm is irregular and unpredictable, with unexpected emphases. Orchestra uses Orchestra uses conventional playing experimental playing techniques. techniques. passages of detached notes using on. Conversely, softer passages own words, culminating in the repeated, short \u201cdown-bows\u201d sometimes call upon mysterious- Sacrifical Dance\u2019s \u201cecstatic, (essentially hitting rather than sounding string harmonics. irregular jerks\u201d of \u201cprimitive stroking the strings); on numerous hysteria,\u201d according to the dance other occasions, they play pizzicato Dramatic premiere critic Andr\u00e9 Levinson. Other (plucking the strings) or col legno The riot that broke out at the spectators, not members of Paris\u2019s (playing using the wood or the premiere in 1913 made the ballet elite, had anticipated the work\u2019s hard tip of the bow)\u2014both of which infamous, but this was not just novelty and had come for it\u2014some, create a more incisive, percussive because of the music\u2014in spite indeed, courtesy of free tickets effect. Apart from this prevalence of its challenging nature\u2014or even handed out by Diaghilev. Hisses of staccato, articulated styles of Vaslav Nijinsky\u2019s revolutionary from the boxes were quickly playing, Stravinsky uses many choreography, although that and loudly condemned by the other unusual techniques, such as certainly shocked, too. At the time, supportive faction; before long, scraping the metal triangle stick Paris\u2019s \u201chigh society\u201d attended the the music was all but drowned across the surface of the tam-tam, ballet expecting stylized elegance. out by those on both sides. Some or the French horns playing with What they got were \u201cknock-kneed spectators claimed that the furore their \u201cbells up\u201d in order to increase and long-braided Lolitas jumping began before the dancers even the volume and impact, and so up and down,\u201d in Stravinsky\u2019s came on stage. The dancer","The last page of Stravinsky\u2019s minimalism of the 1960s\u20131980s MODERN 1900\u20131950 251 handwritten score for Le Sacre shows as much as they permeated film the chaotic nature of the piece, with scores and influenced popular Diaghilev and the some huge intervals between notes. styles. Stravinsky\u2019s particular Ballets Russes style of modernism influenced Lydia Sokolova, for example, later later composers in the trends of Sergei Diaghilev founded his reflected: \u201cAs soon as it was known primitivism, exoticism, and ballet company in Paris in that the conductor was there, the experimental composition. 1909. For two decades until uproar began.\u201d Some accounts his death, the Ballets Russes suggest that blows were even Perhaps because Stravinsky\u2019s performed regularly in Paris, exchanged and that as many as musical style soon evolved in throughout Europe, and in the 40 audience members were a neoclassical direction, the Americas. While the company arrested for violence and disorder. \u201cStravinskian aesthetic\u201d was not prominently featured highly only to influence future neoclassical skilled Russian dancers, and A year later, however, Le Sacre composers but also to reenergize often showcased Russian was performed in Paris without the performing styles of Baroque composers and works, they dancers, and it was the greatest and Classical music in a way that never performed in Russia. success of Stravinsky\u2019s career. This can still be heard today. \u25a0 fact may have contributed to the In stark contrast to the composer\u2019s later tendency to prefer I heard, and I wrote conservative Russian artistic Le Sacre as a concert piece. For what I heard. I was the culture from which he hailed, Diaghilev, however, any publicity vessel through which the progressive Diaghilev was was good publicity; he later responsible for commissioning claimed that Le Sacre\u2019s premiere Le Sacre passed. groundbreaking new work was \u201cexactly what [he] wanted.\u201d Igor Stravinsky from the leading composers of the day. Chief among them Stravinskian legacy was Igor Stravinsky, whose The influence of Le Sacre on commissions are among his subsequent music is hard to most significant pieces. He overstate. This is most strikingly also commissioned works from seen in Stravinsky\u2019s revolutionary Sergei Prokofiev, Erik Satie, use of rhythm, which surpassed and three members of the anything seen before. Stravinskian Parisian group of composers \u201cmotor rhythms\u201d would drive the known as Les Six. Well-known artists often designed sets or costumes for his productions, such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Coco Chanel. Sergei Diaghilev (right) greets Igor Stravinsky at Croydon Airport, London, UK, in 1926. The pair collaborated on four ballets, including Le Sacre du printemps.","252 IUASNPHDAINSEDVGEUORPL,WDOEIUNNRGCIVUNAPGLLEY THE LARK ASCENDING (1914\u20131920), RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS IN CONTEXT T he German domination of and William Byrd, whose artistic English music in the late purity seemed to suggest a way FOCUS 19th century persuaded forward. This, in turn, led Vaughan Folk songs and a national two young English composers\u2014 Williams and Holst to develop an music revival Vaughan Williams and his fellow interest in folk music, which was student Gustav Holst\u2014that English as much to do with social history BEFORE music needed a fresh start, free as music. The realization that 1860 American scholar and from the influences of Beethoven, Britain\u2019s Industrial Revolution had folklorist Francis James Child Wagner, and Brahms. Vaughan publishes his collection of Williams\u2019s work as a church The song of the skylark, a mere English and Scottish Ballads. musician led him to explore the speck in the sky in this work by David unaccompanied choral works of Cox (1783\u20131859), delighted Vaughan 1878 Dvor\u02c7\u00e1k\u2019s first set of the 16th- and early 17th-century Williams. The soaring violin mimics Slavonic Dances, Op. 46, English composers Thomas Tallis the bird\u2019s ascent in the sky. include motifs and rhythms from folk songs and dances. 1908 Bart\u00f3k and Kod\u00e1ly visit remote villages in Hungary to collect Magyar folk songs; Bart\u00f3k writes For Children, which includes 80 folk tunes. AFTER 1926 Percy Grainger arranges his Danish Folksongs Suite for piano and orchestra. 1938\u20131939 Michael Tippett writes his Concerto for Double String Orchestra, which includes some references to British folk music.","MODERN 1900\u20131950 253 See also: Dvor\u02c7\u00e1k\u2019s Symphony No. 9 212\u2013215 \u25a0 The Dream of Gerontius 218\u2013219 \u25a0 Bart\u00f3k\u2019s String Quartet No. 5 270\u2013271 \u25a0 Appalachian Spring 286\u2013287 There is no difference how the bird sings in the sky, its Ralph Vaughan in kind, but only in notes floating heavenward. The Williams music was composed for violin and degree, between Beethoven piano in 1914 then orchestrated Born in 1872, the son of a and the humblest singer before its first performances with country vicar, Ralph Vaughan of a folk song. piano in 1920 and with orchestra Williams was brought up in the following year. The virtuosity Surrey by his mother, who Ralph Vaughan Williams of the solo violin part reaches back was widowed when Ralph to the uncluttered purity of Bach\u2019s was three. After studying at emptied rural areas of much of concertos. In the score, Vaughan Cambridge University and the their population, and their folk Williams quotes from Meredith\u2019s Royal College of Music, he traditions, spurred Vaughan poem describing the lark\u2019s flight: worked in London as a church Williams, Holst, and their fellow \u201cHe rises and begins to round\/He organist and conductor and as composer George Butterworth drops the silver chain of sound\/Of editor of The English Hymnal. into going into the countryside many links without a break\/In to collect English folk songs before chirrup, whistle, slur, and shake.\u201d A period of private study they disappeared. in Paris in 1908 with Maurice In the same way, the violin\u2019s Ravel helped to crystallize The composers were drawn to opening solo soars upward in a Vaughan Williams\u2019s true the naturalness of folk music and single unbroken phrase from its musical voice. Military service to the pastoral landscapes from low register to its very highest, in World War I interrupted a which it came. As their music with the orchestra\u2019s quiet lifetime of composing, but began to reflect these influences, accompanying chord breaking his large output included nine they were denounced as members off to leave the violin singing and symphonies, four operas, of a backward-looking \u201ccowpat trilling alone in the empty sky. much choral music, and a school\u201d of composing, a term Then the soloist and orchestra sequence of small, highly coined by British composer explore two main themes: a lilting individual orchestral works, Elisabeth Lutyens. In fact, they first one and a simple, balladlike including The Lark Ascending. had initiated a quiet revolution in second. Neither of these is a folk After his death in 1958, 20th-century music that influenced song, yet each sounds as if it might his ashes were interred in the Australian composer Percy be, and neither could have been Westminster Abbey, London. Grainger as well as Yorkshire-born written without the influence of Frederick Delius in his orchestral English folk music. \u25a0 Other key works masterwork Brigg Fair (1907). It never seems to occur 1903\u20131909 A Sea Symphony Pastoral inspiration to people that a man 1910 Fantasia on a Theme The essence of this new musical by Thomas Tallis style is distilled in Vaughan might just want to compose 1922 A Pastoral Symphony Williams\u2019s The Lark Ascending\u2014 a piece of music. 1922\u20131951 The Pilgrim\u2019s based on a 19th-century poem by Progress George Meredith, which describes Ralph Vaughan Williams","254 LSYIOTKAUENRADDMUISPASNAONNDANTACKEE SYMPHONY NO. 4 (1916), CHARLES EDWARD IVES IN CONTEXT M any of the manuscripts of music making in his hometown of the American composer Danbury, Connecticut\u2014especially FOCUS Charles Ives consist of a the local band and its rivals from Collage patchwork of cutouts pasted over nearby towns, which, on national new ideas. Ives often raided his holidays, would assemble within BEFORE own compositions for inspiration, earshot of each other. Ives not only 1787 Wolfgang Amadeus reusing parts of them or sticking enjoyed the cacophony of different Mozart simultaneously them into others. As a result, many tunes being played simultaneously employs four separate of his compositions sound like but later set out to reproduce in his orchestras in different time collage\u2014different musical own works exactly what he heard, signatures for Don Giovanni. fragments layered on top of each as in his Holidays symphony. other. Many of these were scraps of 1912 Igor Stravinsky \u201cpastes\u201d music that he heard in his youth\u2014 Literary influences a chord of a dominant seventh hymns of the Pilgrim Fathers, Ives lived a mere 150 miles (240 km) on E-flat over a chord of F-flat gospel tunes, and brass band music. from Concord, Massachusetts\u2014the major in Le Sacre du printemps Ives loved to listen to the amateur epicenter of the Transcendentalist and causes audience outrage. literary movement that included Why tonality as such should Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel AFTER be thrown out for good I can\u2019t Hawthorne, Louisa M. Alcott, 1928 Henry Cowell composes and Henry David Thoreau. Their his Concerto for Piano and see. Why it should always works promoted the belief that true Orchestra, whose three be present I can\u2019t see. It knowledge could not be attained by movements are titled depends, it seems to me \u2026 studying religion or academia but \u201cPolyharmony,\u201d \u201cTone Cluster,\u201d on what one is trying to do. rather came from reflection and and \u201cCounter Rhythm.\u201d contemplation of the self. Inspired Charles Ives by their ideas, Ives published his 1967\u20131969 Luciano Berio Piano Sonata No. 2, \u201cConcord,\u201d composes his Sinfonia, the in 1919, comprising movements third movement of which is a named for each of the key writers. collage of musical quotations. In the early 1920s\u2014during which time Ives worked alongside fellow experimental composers Henry Cowell and Carl Ruggles to spearhead progressive American","MODERN 1900\u20131950 255 See also: St. Matthew Passion 98\u2013105 \u25a0 Pr\u00e9lude \u00e0 l\u2019apr\u00e8s-midi d\u2019un faune 228\u2013231 \u25a0 Le Sacre de printemps 246\u2013251 \u25a0 A Child of Our Time 284\u2013285 \u25a0 Appalachian Spring 286\u2013287 Henry Cowell, who worked with Ives, was one of the most innovative of the experimental composers, as evidenced by his Mosaic Quartet (1935). music\u2014Ives began working on his second movement, Ives gathered triumph\u2014before moving into a gigantic Fourth Symphony, the a variety of sources to make his quieter passage. The first two apotheosis of his entire output. The famous layers: hymns, and gospel movements premiered in New York influence of the Transcendentalists tunes, brass bands, and popular in 1927 and were the only parts of continued here, as Ives based the songs to represent small-town life; his great symphony that Ives heard second movement (\u201cComedy\u201d) on as well as atonality, polyrhythms, performed in concert. The simple Hawthorne\u2019s short story \u201cThe and grinding dissonances to third movement (the fugue) and the Celestial Railroad\u201d\u2014a reworking of convey Hawthorne\u2019s \u201ciron horse\u201d fourth, a rhythmically challenging John Bunyan\u2019s allegorical work, The locomotive heaving into motion. piece that required an extra Pilgrim\u2019s Progress. \u201cThe Celestial percussion ensemble, did not Railroad\u201d tells of a railway journey The first movement, scored for a premiere until 1965, 11 years from the chaos and mundaneness chamber orchestra, begins boldly\u2014 after the composer\u2019s death. \u25a0 of everyday life. maestoso, played with majesty and Layered complexity Ives\u2019s multilayered composition style was at its best in his Fourth Symphony, in which simultaneous, cacophonous eruptions of sound place the listener alongside the pilgrims as fellow travelers inside that train. Ives also utilized lighter, \u201coffstage\u201d sounds\u2014ethereal flutes, a few strings, harp, a quarter-tone piano, and women\u2019s voices. In the Charles Edward Ives Born in Danbury, Connecticut, in resulted in an outburst of 1874, Ives was schooled by his experimental compositions, father in band music, church mostly written before 1915. hymns, and the music of J.S. Bach. Many of Ives\u2019s pieces, however, After four years of musical studies did not reach a wider audience at Yale, he joined the Mutual Life until later in his life, after hand Insurance Company and remained tremors and diabetes had forced in the insurance business for the him to retire from composition. next 31 years. Ives believed that He died of a stroke in 1954. his insurance work was an important life experience that Other key works contributed to his compositions. 1904\u20131913 Holidays symphony Ives also worked part time 1906 The Unanswered Question as an organist in New York City 1910\u20131914 Three Places in and spent every spare moment New England composing. In 1908, Ives married 1911\u20131915 Concord Sonata Harmony Twichell. Her influence","256 IIWHDRIADIVTNET\u2019TENNEMVAEEANRNOTE PARADE (1917), ERIK SATIE IN CONTEXT A t the end of the 19th An early example of Dadaism in century, a new musical music was the work of Erik Satie. FOCUS nationalism arose in His Trois Gymnop\u00e9dies, the first of Dadaism in music France. Young composers sought which was published in 1888, with to free themselves from European their focus on repetition of rhythm BEFORE traditions and imbue their art with and harmony and use of unresolved 1881 Le Chat Noir cabaret a sense of French, and particularly dissonances, are both hypnotic club opens in Montmartre, Parisian, culture. This led to and static. Partly inspired by in Paris. It becomes a meeting two strands of new music: the medieval French music, they reject place for avant-garde artists, impressionist work of composers musical development in favor of writers, and musicians. such as Debussy and Ravel, which the juxtaposition of ideas. Debussy had parallels in the art of the was so impressed by the pieces 1907 Pablo Picasso paints period, and the music of Dadaist that he orchestrated two of them. Les Demoiselles d\u2019Avignon, in composers, which celebrated which he develops the ideas the absurd and challenged the Surrealism in music behind Cubism, which will definition of what music might be. Satie was influential among young influence Satie. French composers and well known to other artists. When Jean Cocteau AFTER heard his Trois morceaux en forme 1924 Satie\u2019s ballet Rel\u00e2che de poire (Three Pieces in the Shape includes a surrealist film of a Pear), a piano suite for piano sequence by French director duet, in 1903, he commissioned Ren\u00e9 Clair. Satie to compose the music to a ballet that eventually combined the 1930 Jean Cocteau produces talents of Sergei Diaghilev\u2019s Ballet La Voix humaine, a monologue Russes, choreographer L\u00e9onide that Poulenc later turns into Massine, and Pablo Picasso. The an opera. work, Parade, was described in Inspired by his work as a cabaret pianist, Satie incorporated jazz influences into some of his music, including the Ragtime movement from \u201cParade,\u201d later transcribed for solo piano.","MODERN 1900\u20131950 257 See also: Pr\u00e9lude \u00e0 l\u2019apr\u00e8s-midi d\u2019un faune 228\u2013231 \u25a0 Quartet for the End of Time 282\u2013283 \u25a0 4\u00b433\u02dd 302\u2013305 \u25a0 In C 312\u2013313 \u25a0 Einstein on the Beach 321 Noise-making instruments in Parade Ticker tape Pistol Typewriter Erik Satie Satie used a Born in Honfleur, France, in variety of \u201cfound 1866, Satie was a natural sounds\u201d in Parade in rebel. He spent two periods order to add unusual at the Paris Conservatoire, first as a pianist and then percussive as a composer, but left to elements. join the military in 1886. Soon discharged, he moved Foghorn Milk bottle to Montmartre in Paris, where he became a regular patron Airplane propellor of Le Chat Noir club. Guillaume Apollinaire\u2019s program Vexations (c.1893\u20131894), a piano In 1888, Satie published notes as a \u201ckind of surrealism\u201d\u2014 piece that may have been a joke\u2014 Gymnop\u00e9dies, innovative three years before the eponymous the minimalist music consists of piano pieces. Always seen art movement. Evoking the streets a bass theme and accompanying in a gray velvet suit (he had of Paris, the music was scored for chords above it\u2014which was never seven of them), he lacked a \u201cnoise-making\u201d instruments, such published in Satie\u2019s lifetime. Satie\u2019s steady income and so resorted as a typewriter and a foghorn. score bore the inscription: \u201cIn order to writing and playing cabaret to play the theme 840 times in music. By 1912, he began to Influential figure succession, it would be advisable receive more attention from It was after this, in 1917, that Satie to prepare oneself beforehand, and critics, especially for his earlier formed Les Nouveaux Jeunes, in the deepest silence, by serious piano pieces. Commissions a collective of six young French stillness.\u201d Played by a relay team of followed, including two ballets composers. Under the influence six, the first performance took more and the multimedia Sports et of Cocteau, the group became than 18 hours, although it has since divertissements. After his Les Six, whose different styles been performed by a single pianist. death from cirrhosis of the were united in their opposition Some critics saw the piece as pure liver in 1925, a great many to German Romanticism. experimentation; others as a unknown works, including reaction against Wagner. In the Vexations, came to light, found Satie also influenced much later 20th century, it became a key in his chaotic apartment. composers such as John Cage. work for conceptual artists. \u25a0 In 1963, Cage published Satie\u2019s Other key works 1888 Gymnop\u00e9dies 1914 Sports et divertissements 1917 Sonatine bureaucratique 1924 Rel\u00e2che","258 IN CONTEXT ILLYTIIOKF\u2019SUEEBIIJMSEATPAZRTZLEOO\u2026RVTIWSEHEN FOCUS Ragtime and jazz RHAPSODY IN BLUE (1924), influences GEORGE GERSHWIN BEFORE 1895 Ernest Hogan publishes \u201cLa Pas Ma La,\u201d the first ragtime sheet music. 1908 Debussy publishes the ragtime-inspired piano piece Golliwogg\u2019s Cakewalk. AFTER 1927 Maurice Ravel completes his jazz-inspired Violin Sonata No. 2, which includes a second movement called \u201cBlues.\u201d 1971 Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki and American jazz trumpeter Don Cherry perform the scoreless Actions for Free Jazz orchestra. T he start of the 20th century brought new genres and ideas to American music. Many of them came from African Americans, recently freed from enslavement, whose dances contained infectious and lively rhythms that would grow into ragtime piano and marches. African American ideas combined with Caribbean influences to evolve into various forms of jazz. As jazz spread to Europe, classical composers were drawn to it, but the improvisational nature of this new type of music was not a natural match for the carefully notated and rehearsed world of the concert hall. In the United States, George Gershwin managed to bridge the gap and incorporate jazz on an orchestral scale with Rhapsody in Blue. Others followed, including composers who have","See also: Pr\u00e9lude \u00e0 l\u2019apr\u00e8s-midi d\u2019un faune 228\u2013231 \u25a0 Parade 256\u2013257 \u25a0 MODERN 1900\u20131950 259 Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima 310\u2013311 Ragtime and Joplin Gershwin\u2019s best-known large-scale work was used as the title for a film For such a popular music form, about his life, made eight years after ragtime was a surprisingly his death in 1937. Adding to the film\u2019s short-lived phenomenon. sense of realism, some of Gershwin\u2019s Although first adopted by friends starred in it as themselves. musicians unversed in musical notation, it started to spread tried to achieve the seemingly Ragtime piano swept America, widely after 1895, when impossible by melding composed but it was not until John Philip Ernest Hogan published the and improvisational music. Sousa, an American of German, sheet music for his dance song Spanish, and Portuguese descent, \u201cLa Pas Ma La.\u201d Within a few Ragtime reigns brought his syncopated brass-band years, ragtime music had In 1853, the American composer marches across the Atlantic in 1900 become popular across North Louis Moreau Gottschalk recreated that ragtime really had an impact America, in part thanks to African American banjo-playing on European music. Coming at a Scott Joplin, whose Maple techniques with amazing accuracy time when young composers were Leaf Rag, published in 1899, in The Banjo, a popular virtuoso looking for ways to break out of the earned him the title \u201cKing of piano piece. However, it was the traditions of Romanticism, the new Ragtime.\u201d Joplin, born around rise of ragtime, and especially the sound, with its direct and acerbic 1868, wrote a string of popular work of African American Scott style, quickly took off among the ragtime piano pieces, earning Joplin, that brought an energetic French avant-garde. him enough from royalties to new flavor to classical music in buy him the time to write two the early years of the 20th century. Composers such as Erik Satie operas, including Treemonisha and Claude Debussy heard Sousa\u2019s (1911). The newly emerging, The term \u201cragtime\u201d referred to music at the 1900 Paris Exposition more improvisational jazz the music\u2019s ragged rhythm, known and responded by experimenting scene overshadowed ragtime, as \u201csyncopation,\u201d in which a steady with ragtime. While Satie used it which by the time of Joplin\u2019s beat is accentuated by surprising ironically in works such as the song death, in 1917, was essentially weaker off beats. This unfamiliar La Diva de l\u2019Empire, Debussy pitted a part of musical history. style captured the dynamic spirit it against the Liebestod motif from of the New World and, in discarding Wagner\u2019s Tristan und Isolde in Joplin\u2019s 1902 piano piece the long phrasings and flexible his Golliwogg\u2019s Cakewalk, as if to The Entertainer headed a 1970s tempos of the 19th century, ushered announce the passing of the old ragtime revival, led by the pianist in the sense of a more modern, guard. The modernist significance and conductor Joshua Rifkin. mechanized world. of ragtime, with its implicit \u276f\u276f I frequently hear music in the heart of noise. George Gershwin","260 RAGTIME AND JAZZ INFLUENCES rejection of a white European You might lose your pianist and arranger Ferde Grof\u00e9. tradition, was also seized on by spontaneity and, instead The unmistakable opening clarinet Igor Stravinsky, recently settled in glissando was also not Gershwin\u2019s France, in 1919, when he created of composing first-rate own invention but rather that of his dissonant Piano-Rag-Music, Gershwin, end up with Whiteman\u2019s clarinetist. Further which pulls apart and rearranges orchestrations by Grof\u00e9, in 1926 and ragtime like a cubist painting. second-rate Ravel. 1942, were to fix Rhapsody in Blue Maurice Ravel firmly in the classical repertoire. Jazz meets classical By the 1920s, ragtime had been to George Gershwin Following the success of his superseded in the United States by concerto, Gershwin traveled to more improvisational and flexible down the offer, but Whiteman Paris to study composition. He styles of jazz, particularly in jazz informed the press that he was hoped to work with composers dance bands. One of the most writing the concerto anyway, and such as Nadia Boulanger and popular bands was led by Paul so Gershwin\u2019s hand was forced. Maurice Ravel, but all potential Whiteman, who relied on carefully tutors refused, concerned that such orchestrated arrangements, Rhapsody in Blue premiered on studies would endanger Gershwin\u2019s using a large ensemble, rather February 12, 1924 and was instantly own style. Returning to New York, than improvisation. He made acclaimed by both classical and he started on his most ambitious continued attempts to introduce jazz audiences, which included stage project, the opera Porgy and the concertgoing public to the new Sousa, now the elder statesman of Bess, which had its premiere on jazz style, which he considered to ragtime, and the Russian composer Broadway, in 1935. Styled as a \u201cfolk be the first truly American music, Sergei Rachmaninoff. The piece opera,\u201d it drew heavily on New York giving performances at New York\u2019s itself was only sketched out by the jazz and African American folk prestigious Aeolian Hall. It was inexperienced Gershwin, who left music such as spirituals and the for one of these events, titled \u201cAn the orchestration to Whiteman\u2019s blues in songs such as It Ain\u2019t Experiment in Modern Music,\u201d that Necessarily So and Summertime. Whiteman commissioned a young, The opera also incorporated many successful songwriter named classical techniques, such as George Gershwin to compose leitmotifs (themes introduced to a piano concerto. When first identify characters) and recitative approached, Gershwin turned (speechlike song), and even elements of the polyrhythms and African American genres that changed the course of classical music The cakewalk Ragtime Jazz Enslaved plantation workers first danced the The music of African American composer Arising from the music of enslaved African cakewalk, strutting in couples to syncopated Scott Joplin\u2014such as the famous Maple Americans in the South, jazz was an rhythms in parody of their white owners. Leaf Rag\u2014and the marches of John Philip improvised form that drew on work songs, The dance won European attention when Sousa brought the ragtime style out of a marches, and dance rhythms. It was performed at the 1889 Paris Exposition. purely black idiom and into the mainstream. popularized in New Orleans in the 1890s.\u00a0","MODERN 1900\u20131950 261 dissonance that Gershwin admired Insistence on a black cast for Porgy George Gershwin so much in the work of the Austrian and Bess\u2014seen here on Broadway in modernist composer Alban Berg. 1942\u2014made Gershwin the subject of Born the second son of Jewish criticism and prevented the opera from immigrants in 1898, Brooklyn- A closer alliance being performed in opera houses. born Gershwin became In Europe, jazz continued to interested in music at the influence classical composers, most This cross-fertilization between age of 10. By the time he was particularly those who skirted the jazz and classical did not always 15, he had a job as a \u201csong middle-European cabaret scene. meet with approval. In 1957, the plugger\u201d in New York\u2019s Tin In Germany, the Austrian composer American composer Gunther Pan Alley, playing the latest Ernst Krenek\u2019s 1927 opera Jonny Schuller, wary of unsatisfying sheet music for prospective Plays, which tells the story of a jazz classical-jazz collaborations (such customers. He published his violinist, was an instant success, as Benny Goodman playing Mozart) first song in 1916, but his big with its then-subversive portrayal and unconvinced by the jazz he break came in 1920 when of jazz as a challenge to European found in composers such as Ravel Broadway star Al Jolson tradition. Similarly, the German and Shostakovich, suggested a new performed the Gershwin song composer Kurt Weill used jazz genre\u2014the \u201cThird Stream.\u201d This Swanee, after which he was elements in The Threepenny Opera\u2014 required performers to be proficient invited to collaborate on a produced in Berlin, in 1928\u2014to in both classical and jazz so that number of Broadway musicals. such effect that The Ballad of Mack composed and improvised music Following the success of the Knife became a jazz standard. could sit side by side. Schuller\u2019s Rhapsody in Blue, Gershwin ideas influenced jazz musicians, focused as much on classical In the 1930s and 1940s, the such as John Lewis, Bill Russo, traditions as jazz, with boundaries between jazz and and Charles Mingus, who would compositions such as the classical works became more fluid. go on to lead the avant-garde \u201cfree opera Porgy and Bess and the Jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman jazz\u201d style of the 1960s, while, in Piano Concerto in F running commissioned Contrasts, a piece the classical tradition, composers alongside shows such as Girl for clarinet, violin, and piano, from such as Hans Werner Henze, in Crazy and Funny Face, which Bela Bart\u00f3k in 1938, while Igor Germany, and Krzysztof Penderecki, he wrote with his lyricist Stravinsky\u2019s 1945 Ebony Concerto in Poland, took up the challenge, brother Ira, and film scores, was written for another jazz including free jazz in their works. \u25a0 including Shall We Dance. He clarinetist, Woody Herman. died in 1937 of a brain tumor. Other key works 1925 Piano Concerto in F 1927 Funny Face 1935 Porgy and Bess 1937 Shall We Dance","262 TAATHMETAHADEBEYEXSDTSGREAOVAFGANZA LES BICHES (1924), FRANCIS POULENC IN CONTEXT F rancis Poulenc\u2019s ballet Les sought to be of their time, drawing Biches premiered with the inspiration from music halls, FOCUS Ballets Russes in Monte fairgrounds, and American jazz. French music after Carlo in 1924. Choreographed by Several went on to write for films. Debussy Bronislava Nijinska, it consisted of eight dances for 16 female and Poulenc\u2019s later work lacked this BEFORE three male dancers. The title playfulness. Following the success 1888 Erik Satie composes was a play on the word biche, of Les Biches, he wrote the song his Gymnop\u00e9dies\u2014three which means \u201cdoe\u201d or \u201cfemale cycle Figure humaine. Composed pieces for piano that feature deer,\u201d but was also 1920s\u2019 slang during the Nazi occupation of dissonant harmonies and for \u201ccoquette.\u201d The ballet has no France, this set to music a defiant repetitive simplicity. narrative: each dance uses simple ode to liberty and other poems by melodies to evoke the spirited the surrealist writer Paul \u00c9luard. \u25a0 1920 Darius Milhaud\u2019s flirtations of youth with light and surrealist ballet Le Boeuf sur whimsical musical language. le toit (The Ox on the Roof) premieres in Paris, inspired Les Six Alice Nikitina and Serge Lifar by jazz and Brazilian tango. practice for the Ballets Russes\u2019 1924 Simplicity and sharp humor were production of Les Biches. The pair also AFTER qualities favored by Poulenc and danced together in Henri Sauguet\u2019s 1932 Georges Auric composes his fellow composers in the group flirtatious La Chatte (\u201cThe Cat,\u201d 1927). the score for Jean Cocteau\u2019s dubbed Les Six\u2014Georges Auric, avant-garde film Le sang d\u2019un Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, po\u00e8te (The Blood of a Poet). Darius Milhaud, and Germaine Tailleferre. Influenced by the avant- 1944 Trois petites liturgies garde compositions of Erik Satie de la pr\u00e9sence divine (\u201cThree and the art and writings of Jean small liturgies of the divine Cocteau, they disdained both the presence\u201d) is composed by Wagnerian emotionalism of the Olivier Messiaen during the 19th century and the musical Nazi occupation of France. impressionism of Debussy. They See also: The Nutcracker 190 \u25a0 Pr\u00e9lude \u00e0 l\u2019apr\u00e8s-midi d\u2019un faune 228\u2013231 \u25a0 Le Sacre du printemps 246\u2013251 \u25a0 Parade 256\u2013257 \u25a0 Appalachian Spring 286\u2013287","MODERN 1900\u20131950 263 IMYYCOOYOUUCMTTOHHEUFFWNUUTLLITRSMHYP,UTIWSRHIIIECTTHOF SINFONIETTA (1926), LEO\u0160 JAN\u00c1C\u02c7 EK IN CONTEXT C zech composer Leo\u0161 My Military Sinfonietta Jan\u00e1c\u02c7ek\u2019s Sinfonietta has with the fanfares will FOCUS an unforgettable, rousing be played at the Sokol rally. Czech nationalism start, with more than two minutes Do you remember the of brass fanfares. This then gives BEFORE way to four further movements\u2014 P\u00edsek fanfares? 1879 Smetana\u2019s cycle of each evoking parts of Jan\u00e1c\u02c7ek\u2019s Leo\u0161 Jan\u00e1c\u02c7ek symphonic poems, M\u00e1 vlast native Brno\u2014that culminate in (My Country), is an expression a final round of fanfares from of musical nationalism, each the orchestra\u2019s expanded brass poem evoking a different section. Originally titled Military Czech place or legend. Sinfonietta, the piece captures the brash sound and atmosphere 1886 Czech and Moravian of a military band, including a folk music inspires Dvor\u02c7\u00e1k\u2019s blazing trombone solo and bold Slavonic Dances for piano duet, solo trumpets. whose popularity helps to launch his international career. Musical salute celebrated \u201cthe contemporary A sinfonietta is an orchestral work, free man, his spiritual beauty AFTER shorter and lighter in tone than a and joy, his strength, courage, and 1938 Jan\u00e1c\u02c7ek\u2019s pupil Pavel symphony. The 71-year-old Jan\u00e1c\u02c7ek determination to fight for victory.\u201d Haas\u2019s opera \u0160arlat\u00e1n (The composed his for a gymnastics Charlatan) premieres in Brno, festival in Prague in the summer Another source of inspiration, influenced by Moravian folk of 1926, two years before his death. however, was Jan\u00e1c\u02c7ek\u2019s passionate music and Gregorian chant. For the patriotic Jan\u00e1c\u02c7ek, his work friendship with a married woman saluted his nation\u2019s rebirth as an 37 years his junior, Kamila 1955 Bohuslav Martinu\u02da \u2019s independent country following St\u00f6sslov\u00e1. The composer reportedly chamber cantata, The centuries of subjugation under the had the idea for the fanfares that Opening of the Wells, is the Habsburg Empire. Dedicated to the open and close the Sinfonietta after first of a cycle of cantatas Czech armed forces, the Sinfonietta sitting with her in a park listening inspired by his native to a military band give a concert. \u25a0 Moravian highlands. See also: The Bartered Bride 206 \u25a0 Dvor\u02c7\u00e1k\u2019s Symphony No. 9 212\u2013215 \u25a0 Bart\u00f3k\u2019s String Quartet No. 5 270\u2013271 \u25a0 Spartacus 309","264 MGNROUATSVIACITASYLINLINGY,LTTEHHICESERNPEITEIESCREOF SYMPHONIE, OP. 21 (1927\u20131928), ANTON VON WEBERN IN CONTEXT S ince Arnold Schoenberg can mean \u201cnote,\u201d \u201ctone,\u201d or \u201csound.\u201d (1874\u20131951) developed his Serialism, on the other hand, FOCUS method of composing works means \u201cnotes deployed in series.\u201d Serialism \u201cwith 12 notes related only to each In that sense, argued Anton von other,\u201d serial music has remained Webern, Schoenberg\u2019s former pupil, BEFORE contentious territory. Although the serialism was deeply rooted in the 1908 Arnold Schoenberg terms \u201cserial\u201d and \u201c12-note\u201d are musical tradition. The overlapping enters new and modernist sometimes used interchangeably, repetitions of a \u201cround\u201d song like harmonic territory in the last they emphasize subtle musical \u201cFr\u00e8re Jacques\u201d or \u201cLondon\u2019s two movements of his String differences. \u201cTwelve-tone music\u201d burning\u201d are serial music\u2014as are Quartet No. 2. is a mistranslation of the word a choral motet by the Renaissance Zw\u00f6lftonmusik: in German, Ton master Palestrina, or a keyboard 1921\u20131923 In his Suite for fugue by Bach. Piano, Op. 25, Schoenberg evolves a complete musical Webern\u2019s method statement from a chosen Twelve-note music first developed sequence of the 12 notes of from the \u201catonal\u201d chromatic idiom the Western chromatic scale. explored by Webern and his contemporaries. Freedom from AFTER traditional tonality had brought 1932 Schoenberg completes exciting new possibilities\u2014and the first two acts of the first- also the risk of musical anarchy, ever fully 12-note opera, Moses with conventional melody or und Aron. harmony now abandoned. Webern\u2019s instinct was to rationalize the 1955 Pierre Boulez\u2019s Le situation. His 12-note method is marteau sans ma\u00eetre (\u201cThe about creating a musical work out hammer without a master\u201d) of a \u201crow\u201d consisting of all 12 notes is the first masterpiece of the \u201cpost-serial\u201d music championed Anton Webern (right) poses with by the new, Webern-influenced his fellow student in Vienna, Alban avant-garde generation. Berg. Webern, Berg, and Schoenberg were the principal composers of the Second Viennese School.","MODERN 1900\u20131950 265 See also: Canticum Canticorum 46\u201351 \u25a0 The Art of Fugue 108\u2013111 \u25a0 Pierrot lunaire 240\u2013245 \u25a0 Gruppen 306\u2013307 of the Western chromatic scale, Greater coherence cannot of the next so that four unbroken, deployed in a chosen and fixed be achieved. \u2026 The entire slowly intertwining musical chains order, which can also be inverted, movement thus represents are formed. The second movement or reversed, or both at once. This presents a fast-moving, tightly material determines the music\u2019s in itself a double canon compressed sequence of variations linear aspect, or melody, and the with retrograde motion. on an initial idea, with each of row\u2019s component notes can also these reversing from its midway be superimposed to create chords, George Benjamin point in a mirror-image of itself. or harmony. These notes can be The 12-note row used by Webern played for any length and in any less than 10 minutes, in a marriage here is itself symmetrical, creating rhythm, as long as they are played of 12-note chromaticism and the a complex and self-referential work. in the right order. \u201cserial\u201d spareness of Renaissance pieces, such as Palestrina\u2019s. It Clear yet complex The short symphony covers just 16 pages of music. Compared to the teeming Schoenberg\u2019s 12-note idiom often Beethoven\u2019s First Symphony, by hyperactivity of Schoenberg\u2019s resembles a modernist take on contrast, is more than 60 pages long. style, the spare, delicate sonorities the Classical musical language of of Webern\u2019s symphony use a similar Beethoven or Haydn. Schoenberg\u2019s Symphonie\u2019s first movement technical method to achieve a other celebrated pupil, Alban Berg, consists of four simultaneous different effect\u2014the distilled liked to deploy serialism as one musical lines, deployed in widely essence of musical sound itself. element in an otherwise more freely spaced points of sound: each line British composer George Benjamin composed work, as in his nostalgic, consists of a 12-note row whose last praised the symphony for its Mahler-influenced Violin Concerto two notes overlap with the first two kaleidoscope-like intricacy: \u201cGone (1935). Webern was a more austere is the mono-directional thrust of composer, drawn to the spiritual Classical and Romantic music; in purity of Renaissance choral its place a world of rotations and music. The two ultra-concentrated reflections, opening myriad paths movements of Webern\u2019s Symphonie, for the listener to trace through Op. 21, written for a small orchestra textures of luminous clarity yet without double bass, together last beguiling ambiguity.\u201d \u25a0 Anton von Webern of structure: some of his musical statements were only a few Born in 1883, Webern was seconds long. He adopted the raised in Klagenfurt, in the 12-tone method in 1924 and southern Austrian region of used it until the end of his life. In Carinthia. He studied at Vienna 1945, Webern moved to Mittersill, University, graduating with Austria, for his family\u2019s safety but a doctoral thesis on the Dutch was accidentally and fatally shot Renaissance composer Heinrich by a member of the occupying Isaac. Webern studied American army. composition under Schoenberg from 1904\u20131908, becoming a Other key works lifelong friend of the composer. 1908 Passacaglia for orchestra After 1908, Webern\u2019s work 1913 Five Orchestral Pieces began to combine extreme 1927 String Trio, Op. 20 chromatic harmony with 1938\u20131939 Cantata No. 1 unprecedented concentration","266 IWTHHIAETVHOENMELUVYSELIRCOHVEADAFWFAASIR PIANO CONCERTO FOR THE LEFT HAND (1929\u20131930), MAURICE RAVEL IN CONTEXT D uring the 19th century, the traditionalism. Composers such concerto grew in size and as Elgar, Richard Strauss, and FOCUS scope in much the same Rachmaninoff continued to focus Piano concertos for way as the symphony. In fact, on virtuosity in the solo part, which the left hand some examples, such as Ferruccio was balanced by a sumptuous Busoni\u2019s Piano Concerto in C major, orchestration. In contrast, Modernist BEFORE are essentially symphonies with composers such as Debussy, 1840 Charles-Valentin Alkan solo parts that enhance the Stravinsky, and Schoenberg took a composes his Fantasie for the orchestral lines as much as they different approach. In some cases, left hand, the first concert provide dramatic conflict. they took Classical and Baroque piece for one hand. music as their models but used New forms dissonant material to create 1878 Brahms publishes his With the rise of Modernism, the exciting neoclassical works. Bach D minor chaconne for traditions of the concerto and the the left hand alone. form itself were challenged, leading Prokofiev, Bart\u00f3k, and Ravel some composers to new avenues of continued to write concertos that 1902 Hungarian composer expression while others clung to resembled the Romantic form in G\u00e9za Zichy, the world\u2019s first terms of length, orchestration, professional one-handed Great music must come and ethos, with soloists providing pianist, writes the first piano from the heart. Any music dramatic conflict with the orchestra concerto for the left hand. created by technique and in a structure that showed off their brains alone is not worth the virtuosic abilities. However, in AFTER these works, there is a far greater 1931 Prokofiev completes his paper it is written on. focus on orchestral color and piano concerto for the left hand. Maurice Ravel nontraditional accompaniments. Wind and percussion instruments 1940 Benjamin Britten writes often had equal roles to the strings, Diversions for piano left hand and a movement might even omit and orchestra. strings entirely, as in Bartok\u2019s Second Piano Concerto. 2012 Nicholas McCarthy is the first one-handed pianist Restriction and freedom to graduate from the Royal One composition that broke all College of Music. conventions was Ravel\u2019s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, a one-","MODERN 1900\u20131950 267 See also: C.P.E. Bach\u2019s Flute Concerto in A major 120\u2013121 \u25a0 Saint-Sa\u00ebns\u2019 Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor 179 \u25a0 Pictures at an Exhibition 207 \u25a0 Faur\u00e9\u2019s Requiem 210\u2013211 Louis Schwizgebel performs Ravel\u2019s Piano Concerto for Left Hand, accompanied by the New York Youth Symphony led by Joshua Gersen, in a 2013 performance in Carnegie Hall. movement work with a slow-fast- of how to blend instruments in memory of the war, the reason slow structure lasting less than 20 different ranges and at different for the commission. Ravel\u2019s minutes\u2014usually concertos were volumes. In this, Ravel was one concerto also includes rhythms structurally fast-slow-fast. The of the great masters. and harmonies influenced by jazz piece was commissioned by the and blues music. The piano part is Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein, Left-handed sounds rich, spanning the entire keyboard who was shot in the elbow and lost The concerto features a large with athletic leaps, and so complex his right arm during World War I. orchestra that uses low pitches and that some pianists, such as Alfred Wittgenstein\u2019s requirement of a solo darker sounds to give the work Cortot, angered Ravel by playing part for left hand alone was not as an ominous quality\u2014perhaps in with two hands. \u25a0 restricting as it might seem. Ravel realized that with the use of his left-hand thumb for melodic material (instead of the right-hand fifth finger), it was possible to create a fuller, more focused, and less Romantic sound. With clever use of the pedal, the restrictions of using only one hand were rarely apparent. The art of conjuring musical character through orchestration required a thorough understanding of each instrument\u2019s qualities and playing techniques and knowledge Maurice Ravel Born to a Basque mother and a recognized as a great composer. Swiss father in the Basque region During World War I, Ravel was of France in 1875, Maurice Ravel an ambulance driver, which entered the Paris Conservatoire limited his output. Following at the age of 14 to study piano. a successful tour of North He later focused on composition, America in 1928, Ravel received studying with Gabriel Faur\u00e9 and a blow to his head. He was becoming acquainted with left unable to compose, and he Claude Debussy. died of complications following surgery in 1937. Gaining acclaim for early works, such as the Pavane pour Other key works une infante d\u00e9funte (\u201cPavane for a dead princess\u201d), and Sh\u00e9h\u00e9razade, 1899 Pavane pour une Ravel\u2019s subsequent failure to win infante d\u00e9funte the coveted Prix de Rome in 1905 1912 Daphnis et Chlo\u00e9 caused a national scandal. Despite 1928 Bol\u00e9ro this, he was soon internationally","268 ISYNOCFUIUETSNHECFEMUALULSVOIICGNOEWRCITAHN IONISATION (1929\u20131931), EDGARD VAR\u00c8SE IN CONTEXT T he machine age of the Tides of Manaunaun included tone early 20th century was an clusters to be played with the FOCUS exciting time for avant- forearm, and he went one stage The emancipation of noise garde artists and thinkers. Their further in Aeolian Harp (1923), \u201cFuturist\u201d manifestos\u2014most where the performer is required to BEFORE famously, Italian painter and pluck and sweep the strings inside 1909 Marinetti publishes the composer Luigi Russolo\u2019s Art of the piano rather than use the keys. Futurist Manifesto, celebrating Noises (1913)\u2014advocated making a new era of speed, machinery, music out of noises that ranged City noise and violence. from human shouts and screams Edgard Var\u00e8se was the first to explosions and the sounds of composer to create a complete work 1923 Arthur Honegger\u2019s machines in order to give music scored for a percussion ensemble, Pacific 231 imitates the sounds a new dynamism. Although early in Ionisation (1931). He had studied made by steam trains. Futurist events often ended up as at the Paris Conservatoire under riots and there is little record of the the conservative Charles-Marie 1926 American composer music actually produced, their Widor, but after moving to New George Antheil\u2019s Ballet ideas influenced composers such York in 1915, he became fascinated m\u00e9canique premieres in as Honegger, Prokofiev, and Antheil Paris, containing airplane who variously composed music propellors and a siren. depicting machine-made sounds. 1928 L\u00e9on Theremin patents The new piano Our musical alphabet must be the first electronic musical Although the 20th century was full enriched. \u2026 Musicians should instrument, the Theremin. of experiments aiming to turn noise take up this question in deep into music, the most successful AFTER early attempts came as composers earnest with the help of 1952 \u00c9tude, a work created such as Prokofiev and Stravinsky machinery specialists. from a single sound and its started to treat the piano as a manipulation on audio tape. percussive instrument rather than Edgard Var\u00e8se a melodic one. The American composer Henry Cowell was the first to understand the true possibilities of unleashing the \u201cnoise\u201d of the piano. In 1917, his","MODERN 1900\u20131950 269 See also: Ives\u2019s Symphony No. 4 254\u2013255 \u25a0 Parade 256\u2013257 \u25a0 Symphonie pour un homme seul 298\u2013301 \u25a0 4\u00b433\u02dd 302\u2013305 \u25a0 Six Pianos 320 by the sounds of urban landscapes. While the percussion layers create Edgard Var\u00e8se Intrigued by the manifestos of the an industrial sound, Ionisation is Futurists, but wishing to refine the not anarchic noise. The piece has a Born in France in 1883, Var\u00e8se cacophony they advocated, Var\u00e8se strong dramatic rhythm; in a letter studied engineering at the searched for ways in which he to composer Carlos Salzedo, Var\u00e8se insistence of his father before could suggest familiar industrial claimed to have written the piece eventually deciding to study sounds within a tightly controlled for the flamenco dancer Vicente music in Paris. There, he was compositional outlook. Escudero. Still, the piece was so influenced by composers such difficult to play that percussionists as Satie, Debussy, and Busoni. Ionisation requires 13 players of the New York Philharmonic, After being invalided out of and more than 30 instruments, only engaged to record the piece for its the army in 1915, he emigrated three of which can play traditional premiere at Carnegie Hall, New to New York where he earned pitches. Var\u00e8se weaves together York, were dismissed, and Nicholas his living as a conductor. their intricate textures to create a Slonimsky, who conducted the strange soundscape in which snare piece, brought in other performers It was in the 1920s that his drums and claves coexist with a to play on the recording. music first started to attract g\u00fciro (a scraped gourd) and a cu\u00edca, attention, but Var\u00e8se wrote a Brazilian friction drum. The brash The legacy of Var\u00e8se sporadically\u2014producing little sounds of the city are effectively Ionisation may not be widely more than a dozen works evoked through the use of a metal performed, but its influence on as he searched for ways to anvil as well as the hand-cranked future music is undeniable. While create truly electronic music. siren\u2014an instrument used in many John Cage denied being influenced Eventually, in the 1950s, of Var\u00e8se\u2019s works. by it, it is difficult to listen to technology had evolved Cage\u2019s First Construction (in Metal; sufficiently to allow him to Dame Evelyn Glennie, the world\u2019s 1939) without hearing parallels to create Deserts for ensemble most celebrated percussionist, counts Var\u00e8se. The rock guitarist Frank and tape, and in 1958 his Ionisation alongside the works of John Zappa also counted Var\u00e8se as one Po\u00e8me \u00e9lectronique, one of Cage and Steve Reich as the pinnacle of his earliest influences. \u25a0 the first works created by of the entire percussion repertoire. manipulating magnetic tape, was performed at the Brussels Exhibition through 400 speakers in Le Corbusier\u2019s pavilion. Var\u00e8se died in 1965. Other key works 1921 Am\u00e9riques 1923 Octandre 1936 Density 21.5 1958 Po\u00e8me \u00e9lectronique","270 TAAHRNERAATCNIOOGMNEPSCORISTEEARTOESNLMYUSIC. STRING QUARTET NO. 5 (1934), B\u00c9LA VIKTOR J\u00c1NOS BART\u00d3K IN CONTEXT A lthough heavily influenced and collecting thousands of Eastern by German music, B\u00e9la European folk songs. In 1913, he FOCUS Bart\u00f3k\u2019s individual voice also visited North Africa, again Reconciling folk music became increasingly evident after finding themes to incorporate in his and modernism he began to collect music from his music. When his health rendered native Hungary in 1904. There is a him unfit for military service in BEFORE clear evolution of style between the World War I, he again began to 1853 Liszt composes his Piano First Quartet (1909), which included compose. The success of his Sonata in B minor, which had elements of folk music but was fairytale ballet The Wooden Prince a profound influence on Bart\u00f3k. influenced by Richard Strauss and (1917) led to renewed interest in his Debussy, and his Fifth Quartet opera Bluebeard\u2019s Castle (1911). 1895 Hungarian composer (1934), which premiered in 1935. Ern\u00f6 Dohn\u00e1nyi writes his A Transylvanian village receives Piano Quintet, No. 1, Op. 1. Musical journey Bart\u00f3k (fourth from left) during one In 1912, lack of interest in his works of his tours to record folk songs. His 1896 Richard Strauss writes from his publishers led Bart\u00f3k to interest coincided with a growing Also sprach Zarathustra, a devote his time to studying folklore pride in traditional national culture. work Bart\u00f3k studied closely after attending its Budapest premiere in 1902. AFTER 1953\u20131954 Gy\u00f6rgy Ligeti\u2019s String Quartet No. 1 is strongly influenced by Bart\u00f3k\u2019s works. 1959 Gy\u00f6rgy Kurt\u00e1g completes his String Quartet, Op. 1, effectively continuing the Hungarian tradition of string quartet writing.","MODERN 1900\u20131950 271 See also: Also sprach Zarathustra 192\u2013194 \u25a0 The Bartered Bride 206 \u25a0 Dvor\u02c7\u00e1k\u2019s Symphony No. 9 212\u2013215 \u25a0 Finlandia 220\u2013221 \u25a0 The Lark Ascending 252\u2013253 From the 1920s, Bart\u00f3k began to The time signatures of the highly B\u00e9la Viktor experiment with incorporating challenging central fast scherzo J\u00e1nos Bart\u00f3k percussive textures into his music, movement, marked Alla bulgarese, vividly exemplified in the pizzicato features rhythms typical of Born in Nagyszentmiklos, (plucked) fourth movement of his Bulgarian folk music, with nine Hungary, in 1881, by the age Fourth Quartet (1928). In the Fifth quavers in each bar, organized in of 11 Bart\u00f3k had made public Quartet (1934), Bart\u00f3k combined uneven groups of 4+2+3. A muted appearances as a pianist and this technical experimentation soft pattern of notes, performed composer. He later studied with the folk music that he had long faster than one can hear, introduces at the Budapest Academy been absorbing. The piece begins the Trio section\u2014again reflecting a of Music. Despite the strong in a simple 4\/4 time signature but popular folk rhythm of 10 quavers German cultural influence of soon includes intricate rhythmic per bar in groups of 3+2+2+3. his time, Bart\u00f3k embraced the mosaics and snatches of folk new Hungarian nationalism melodies, accompanied by plucked The fourth movement is a and took to wearing national sounds and dissonant drones. At variation of the second. Plucked dress. From 1905, he began a the climax of the movement, a wild sounds replace the bowed strings long collaboration with fellow Hungarian dance is conjured out of until an oscillating drone appears Hungarian Zolt\u00e1n Kod\u00e1ly to a melody first heard near the start. in the viola, accompanying an popularize folk songs and ornate version of the theme. After gained a practical knowledge The Fifth Quartet\u2019s skeletal the restrained climax, Bartok adds of string writing from both folk second movement, like its fourth a stormy passage with tremolos and classical musicians. movement, includes \u201cnight music,\u201d and loud unison outbursts. Some comprising eerie dissonances and spectacularly fast and furious Bart\u00f3k had a successful imitated natural sounds; this style, music follows, and then the notes career as a pianist, performing created by Bart\u00f3k, is often used in of the two violins ascend with throughout Europe and in the his slow passages. Hushed chords tranquil phrases from the viola and United States with musicians accompany a desperately sad, cello, creating a heavenly chorale. such as the jazz clarinetist almost breathlessly stuttering Soft, guitarlike slides in the cello Benny Goodman. With the rise comment from the first violin. bring the movement to an end. of fascism, he refused to play After a restrained climax, the in Germany after 1933. In 1940, music dies out with trills and Drama to the last he left Budapest for the United a slide to silence in the cello. Although the finale recalls the first States and died there in 1945. movement, it is well disguised. With maturity comes the Frenzied activity in all instruments, Other key works wish to economize\u2014to be lightning handovers, and strong more simple. Maturity is the dissonances are followed by soft 1911 Bluebeard\u2019s Castle scurrying music that becomes 1931 44 Duos for Two Violins period when one finds louder and more insistent.The 1936 Music for Strings, the just measure. culmination is a massively loud, Percussion, and Celesta B\u00e9la Bart\u00f3k harmonized melody with a 1939 Divertimento resounding ending. The second violin briefly plays the most simple and slow version of the tune with a rolling accompaniment. The first violin then joins in, but in a clashing key. However, this relaxed dissonance is not a conclusion; a crashing interruption brings the work to a chaotic end. \u25a0","272 IIDDDEVEEITTCEEESSSTT IHMAICTKATNIEOYNE.D ROMEO AND JULIET (1936), SERGEI PROKOFIEV IN CONTEXT F ollowing Russia\u2019s October opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk) Revolution of 1917, when the Prokofiev turned his ballet into FOCUS cold reality of Bolshevik rule orchestral suites. Russian emigr\u00e9s replaced the euphoria at the end of tsarism, Russian composers faced Despite the Stalinist purges, BEFORE a choice: whether or not to stay in Prokofiev returned to the Soviet 1920 Stravinsky\u2019s Symphonies their homeland. Much depended on Union in 1936, probably believing of Wind Instruments, based on social status. Sergei Rachmaninov that his fame would protect him. Russian folk music, signals the chose exile, as did the privileged The same year, he wrote his most end of his \u201cRussian phase.\u201d Stravinsky, who was already living popular work, Peter and the Wolf. In in Switzerland. The more lowly born 1940, the first full-scale production 1926 Living in New York, Prokofiev, who was sympathetic to of the ballet Romeo and Juliet took Rachmaninoff writes Three Bolshevism, stayed, but in 1918, place in Leningrad, but only after Russian Songs, a rare tribute frustrated by the post-revolutionary Prokofiev was forced to change the to the music of his homeland. turmoil, Prokofiev accepted an offer orchestration, remove parts, and to conduct in the United States and reinstate the story\u2019s sad ending. \u25a0 AFTER remained there for the next 18 years. 1948 The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Reluctant exile The time is past when the Soviet Union passes a Prokofiev kept ties with the Soviet music was written for resolution accusing Prokofiev, Union and, in 1934, wrote Romeo a handful of aesthetes. Shostakovich, Aram and Juliet. The music follows the Khachaturian, and other drama of the story\u2014soft, humorous, Prokofiev composers of \u201canti-democratic and intense in turn\u2014but Prokofiev\u2019s tendencies,\u201d and rejecting \u201cthe ballet was notable in that he gave principles of classical music.\u201d Shakespeare\u2019s star-crossed lovers a happy ending. After two companies 1959 In Moscow, the full pulled out of staging the production version of Prokofiev\u2019s epic (amid concern over the authorities\u2019 opera War and Peace is staged denunciation of Shostakovich\u2019s for the first time, six years after the composer\u2019s death. See also: Le Sacre du printemps 246\u2013251 \u25a0 Spartacus 309","MODERN 1900\u20131950 273 BPARARILMHINYITETISHVEMEMIACNUVDSIITJCAOLRYIEOTTUYASBINOETDH TABUH-TABUHAN (1936), COLIN MCPHEE IN CONTEXT G amelan is an orchestra Gamelan musicians perform in Bali. that plays the traditional The pitch of gamelan music varies FOCUS music of the Indonesian between instruments, with most Gamelan influences islands of Java and Bali. It is noted orchestras using a five-tone scale rather for its wide use of percussion, such than the seven tones of Western music. BEFORE as drums, gongs, and chimes. The 1882 French composer music was first exposed to a wide Balinese, tabu-tabuhan refers to Louis-Albert Bourgault- Western audience at the 1889 Paris the rhythms and sounds of the Ducoudray writes Rapsodie Exposition, where a gamelan from percussive gamelan instruments, cambodgienne, which includes Java inspired composers such as which McPhee sought to recreate gamelan instruments. Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. using a Western orchestra. In 1941, McPhee and the young Benjamin 1890 Erik Satie\u2019s piano pieces Elusive sounds Britten made a recording of some Trois Gnossiennes echo the The freedom and constant variation gamelan transcriptions for two Javanese gamelan music he of gamelan music made it difficult pianos. Britten would continue to heard at the Paris Exposition to capture. Therefore, in 1928, the draw inspiration from Balinese the previous year. German Odeon and Beka record music, along with other composers, companies sent agents to Bali to including Olivier Messiaen, John AFTER make gamelan recordings. A year Cage, and Philip Glass. \u25a0 1945 John Cage\u2019s Daughters later, Colin McPhee, a Canadian- of the Lonesome Isle is one of born composer and follower of many gamelan-inspired pieces \u201cabsolute music\u201d (music that exists written for \u201cprepared piano\u201d\u2014 for its own sake), heard one of the a piano in which the sound is recordings. He was so mesmerized, modified by placing objects he set off for Bali and spent much on or between the strings. of the 1930s there studying the island\u2019s music. 1951 American composer Lou Harrison writes Suite McPhee\u2019s three-movement for Violin, Piano, and Small symphonic work Tabu-Tabuhan Orchestra, which includes was first performed in 1936. In movements that reproduce the sounds of a gamelan. See also: Parade 256\u2013257 \u25a0 Quartet for the End of Time 282\u2013283 \u25a0 4\u00b433\u02dd 302\u2013305 \u25a0 November Steps 314\u2013315","IRSEAALLMWUASYISC REVOLUTIONARY SYMPHONY NO. 5 IN D MINOR, OP. 47 (1937), DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH","","276 MUSIC IN THE SOVIET ERA IN CONTEXT C omposers in the Soviet A poster dated 1920 urges workers Union worked under severe to \u201cJoin the Communist Party!\u201d and FOCUS restrictions during the reject the aristocracy, bourgeoisie, and Music in the Soviet era 1930s. They, like all artists, were Orthodox Church. Russian composers expected to serve the people, in had little choice but to do the same. BEFORE terms defined by the communist 1923 The Russian Association state, or face punishment. The anniversary of Vladimir Lenin\u2019s of Proletarian Musicians country\u2019s leader, Joseph Stalin, death. But Shostakovich\u2019s situation (RAPM) is founded, decrying liked patriotic songs and pieces changed on January 26, 1936, modernism in music and with simple, appealing tunes and when Stalin went to see his opera claiming that all music should conventional harmonies. Music that Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk at the be understood by workers. did not fit this pattern, especially Bolshoi Theatre. The work had music that was introspective, premiered two years earlier and 1929 A concert performance of complex, or difficult to grasp at first been an immense success at home Shostakovich\u2019s opera The Nose hearing, was dubbed \u201cformalist,\u201d and abroad. Stalin, though, took is attacked by the RAPM. and its composers were forced into exception to it and left before the menial jobs, imprisoned, or worse. final scene. Two days later, an 1935 Ivan Dzerzhinsky writes article in the state newspaper the opera Tikhly Don (Quiet Walking a tightrope Pravda, headed \u201cMuddle instead of Flows the Don), which, with its Dmitri Shostakovich survived these music,\u201d denounced the opera. The patriotic theme and simple strictures until the mid-1930s. The anonymous article condemned the melodies, becomes the model authorities were pleased by works musical style of the piece, in which, of socialist-realist music. such as his Symphony No. 2, it alleged, \u201csinging is replaced by written to commemorate the tenth shrieking,\u201d and objected especially AFTER anniversary of the October 1917 to the lewd \u201cquacks\u201d and \u201choots\u201d 1937 Sergei Prokofiev revolution, and Symphony No. 3, from the brass during the opera\u2019s withdraws his Cantata for subtitled \u201cFirst of May\u201d and sex scene. The work was taken off the 20th Anniversary of the premiered in 1930 on the sixth stage immediately. October Revolution after criticism from the authorities. 1939 Prokofiev composes Zdravitsa (\u201cHail to Stalin\u201d) as part of the celebrations of Stalin\u2019s 60th birthday. 1948 Soviet Central Committee secretary Andrei Zhdanov begins a campaign against \u201cformalist\u201d music in which the form of the work is more important than anything it has to say. 1974 Alfred Schnittke\u2019s Symphony No. 1, embodying his \u201cpolystylism\u201d form of composition, is premiered in Gorky after being turned away from Moscow.","MODERN 1900\u20131950 277 See also: Pictures at an Exhibition 207 \u25a0 Romeo and Juliet 272 \u25a0 Spartacus 309 \u25a0 Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima 310\u2013311 A campaign began against artists movement alone, there are loud Dmitri Shostakovich and writers who were not following onslaughts of brass, a toccata for the party line. Over the next few woodwinds, and a fast virtuoso For the precociously talented years, this would result in the fugue on the strings. Frightened Shostakovich, born in deaths of prominent figures, such that this challenging mix might St. Petersburg in 1906, piano as the poet Osip Mandelstam and offend the authorities, the composer lessons began at the age of the writer Isaac Babel, both critical withdrew the work, which was not three, and attendance at the of Stalin. Shostakovich himself was heard in public until 1961. Petrograd Conservatory came labeled an \u201cenemy of the people,\u201d a decade later. His three early and some of his works, including A conflicted symphony symphonies, written before he the opera The Nose (1928) and the Shostakovich then started from was 33, were well received, ballet The Limpid Stream (1935), scratch on what became his and he returned to the form were banned. Fearing punishment, Symphony No. 5. The work, like after his first two operas were he packed a bag and waited for the its predecessor, features strong denounced by the authorities secret police to knock on his door. contrasts, but it also contains in the 1930s. He also produced engaging melodies. The first main a series of emotionally intense In the end, Shostakovich was theme of the opening movement is string quartets, concertos, and spared a visit from the police and a lyrical, sad tune, initially played much theatre and film music. went on to complete his next major softly on the violins. In the middle In 1960, Shostakovich joined work, Symphony No. 4, in May of the movement, this gives way to the Communist Party (under 1936. This is a far cry from his a grotesque march, which gathers extreme pressure), and around previous two \u201crevolutionary\u201d in pace and volume, sweeping the same time he contracted symphonies\u2014a more abstract up the whole orchestra, with loud polio and had several heart work, deeply influenced by Gustav contributions from the brass and attacks. This did not stop him Mahler, it is over an hour long and a driving beat from the percussion. composing demanding work, requires a huge orchestra. Like The initial, gentle theme returns such as Symphony No. 14 Mahler\u2019s symphonies, it is a work of and the movement ends quietly (1969). When he died in 1975 contrasts, setting tradition, in the with a violin solo overlaid with Shostakovich was widely form of almost banal dance themes ringing chromatic scales from the regarded as Russia\u2019s greatest (including a Viennese waltz and an celesta (a keyboard instrument that contemporary composer. Austrian L\u00e4ndler\u2014a kind of slow sounds like a glockenspiel, used waltz), against more strident, by Mahler in two symphonies). Other key works dissonant music. In the first The gentle ending of the first 1933 Concerto in C minor for If they cut off both hands, movement contrasts strongly with piano, trumpet, and strings I will compose music the second movement, a scherzo 1943 Symphony No. 8 in the form of a waltz.The third 1953 Symphony No. 10 anyway holding the pen movement, marked largo, sees a 1960 String Quartet No. 8 (\u201cTo in my teeth. return to lyrical writing, with long the victims of fascism and war\u201d) melodies on the strings creating Dmitri Shostakovich a melancholy mood, punctuated with woodwind solos. The final movement, on the other hand, contains a brass-led return to loud, often aggressive, marchlike music. The piece rises in volume to fortissimo (very loud) before it ends resolutely in the triumphant major chord of D. \u276f\u276f","278 MUSIC IN THE SOVIET ERA Alfred Schnittke and polystylism In the 1960s, the Russian The new work was a resounding When Germany laid siege to composer Alfred Schnittke success, its triumph at the premiere Leningrad in 1941, Shostakovich (1934\u20131998) developed a new on November 21, 1937, in Leningrad decided to stay, working as a fireman way of writing music. He confirmed by a 40-minute ovation, and finishing his Symphony No. 7, mixed various musical styles with many in the audience moved which he dedicated to the city. in the same piece, such as his to tears. Through the symphony\u2019s Violin Sonata No. 2 (1968) and series of stark contrasts between In the piece, the symphony is Symphony No. 1 (1969\u20131972), gentle, melancholic music and described as \u201ca Soviet artist\u2019s and called it \u201cpolystylism.\u201d louder, faster passages, often in creative response to justified Shostakovich had achieved march-time, Shostakovich had also criticism\u201d. By putting his name something similar, but in managed the delicate balancing act to these words, the composer was the works of Schnittke the of preserving his own lyrical voice saying that he had bowed to the contrasts between musical while toeing the party line. will of the party. For men like styles are often more violent Stalin, whose rule depended on and surprising. His Concerto The communist authorities, submission and fear, the fact Grosso No. 1 (1977), for although at first suspicious of the that Shostakovich had accepted example, combines baroque work\u2019s rapturous reception, took the criticism in this way was a victory. form, an atonal lament, brash, closing movement at face a tango, and pieces of the value, as an optimistic conclusion Hidden clues composer\u2019s own film scores, using the direct musical language Although Shostakovich seemed to dramatic and even shocking of which they approved. One Soviet to have caved in to the authorities, effect. Schnittke continued to reviewer described the symphony\u2019s for some listeners the symphony compose polystylistic music ending as creating \u201can enormous carried hints of a more subversive into the 1980s, including the optimistic lift.\u201d Party members had message. It was as though the String Quartet No. 3 (1983). been encouraged to react in this lyrical music represented freedom He also wrote pieces that are way by an article that appeared in and self-expression, while the less obviously polystylistic, a Moscow newspaper a few days aggressive outbursts and awkward such as Symphony No. 8 before the concert. The article was dances parodied their ruthless (1994), though even this work signed by Shostakovich, but it was obliteration by the triumphant contains elements taken from probably written by a journalist communist state. Liszt, Wagner, and Russian working for the Communist Party. Orthodox chant. Schnittke\u2019s music was treated with suspicion in the Soviet Union, which he left in 1990 to settle in the German city of Hamburg.","Ambiguous meanings in Symphony No. 5 MODERN 1900\u20131950 279 Movement Overt meaning Possible meaning Not since the time First A folk tune setting, Use of minor tonality of Berlioz has a symphonic glorifying the Slavic undermines the glorification. people and their struggle Jaunty rhythms in the first composer created against oppression. theme give way to less such a stir. assertive rhythms in the second theme, creating an Nicolas Slonimsky overall sense of ambiguity. The Musical Quarterly (1942) Second An ironic spoof on the traditional form, wittily A waltz, suggesting a presenting the waltz as trite, meaning would become clear, and pleasant and romantic hackneyed, and sometimes audiences would see the work\u2019s time for relaxation brash. It is a satire that creates martial references and triumphal and enjoyment. an unsettling atmosphere. conclusion as ironic gestures. Third A lament, reflecting on Not so much a lament as a Hidden clues those who suffered and piece of nostalgia. References Shostakovich\u2019s acceptance by the lost their lives in the to the Russian Orthodox authorities lasted only a while. Any battle for liberation from Requiem hint at a yearning lapses into music that seemed to tsarist rule. for religion rather than Soviet be discordant or introspective were communism. leapt on by Communist Party critics. The composer\u2019s Symphony Fourth A bombastic caricature of No. 8, written in 1943, was attacked the military march. A more by Soviet officials as \u201cnot a musical A celebratory march, reflective section underlines work at all, repulsive and ultra- with a pensive and the minor tonality of the home individualist,\u201d and Shostakovich, peaceful middle key but returns to a militaristic, denounced again, was forced to section, leading to a triumphalist finale aggressively resign from the Soviet Composers\u2019 triumphant ending. asserting the key of D major. Union, although he continued to write symphonies. Shostakovich\u2019s Symphony No. 5, on the face of it, is a positive endorsement of the Soviet regime, but subtleties After Stalin\u2019s death in 1953, the in the music suggest a very different interpretation. party line softened, but restrictions on artistic creativity continued It is likely that Shostakovich also passes, the vandal\u2019s paint flakes until the fall of communism in the left a particular clue to the deeper away, and the original image is 1980s. Until then, Soviet composers meaning of the work hidden in the revealed again as a masterpiece. were unable to express themselves score. The quiet passage in the with complete freedom, especially final movement of the symphony The symphony\u2019s original in high-profile works, such as operas contains a musical quotation from a audience had no way of knowing and symphonies. As a result, many song the composer wrote to words of the presence of this quotation, produced ambiguous works or by the Russian poet Alexander because at the time of the premiere poured their most personal music Pushkin. The song, called \u201cRebirth,\u201d the song had not been performed. into private forms, such as string describes someone who overpaints But many believe that Shostakovich quartets, which were less likely to a picture by a great artist; as time meant to send a message to the attract the authorities\u2019 attention. \u25a0 future, when the symphony\u2019s real","280 NMAAYWTMUATRUEASRLICF, ALILSIKLE BACHIANAS BRASILEIRAS (1930\u20131945), HEITOR VILLA-LOBOS IN CONTEXT B razilian classical composer traditions of Brazil with elements Heitor Villa-Lobos had two of Western classical music. In the FOCUS lifelong influences. As a late 19th century, Latin American Classical music in Central child, he became fascinated by the composers had begun to explore and South America work of J.S. Bach after his aunt similar ideas. Composers such gave him Bach\u2019s collection of 48 as Alberto Nepomuceno used BEFORE preludes and fugues, The Well- Brazilian folk melodies in works 1869 Bras\u00edlio Itiber\u00ea composes Tempered Clavier. He was also with conventional classical forms. A Sertaneja, a rhapsody for captivated by the traditional music piano, and one of the first of his own country and traveled Integrated styles Brazilian classical works. widely, collecting folk music in With Bachianas brasileiras, a northern and northeastern Brazil collection of nine suites of varying 1890 Alberto Nepomuceno and playing alongside musicians lengths written for different writes his String Quartet No. 3 in his native Rio de Janeiro. combinations of musicians, Villa- \u201cBrasileiro,\u201d which includes Increasingly, Villa-Lobos sought Lobos took this idea much further, Brazilian folk melodies. ways of combining the rich musical integrating folk and classical elements very closely. He did AFTER A truly creative musician this by applying the contrapuntal 1932\u20131933 Argentinian is capable of producing, techniques of J.S. Bach to composer Astor Piazzolla from his own imagination, Brazilian musical forms, in a bold writes his first tango. combination of apparently alien melodies that are traditions that fit together perfectly. 1939 Silvestre Revueltas more authentic than composes orchestral music Like Bach\u2019s suites, each of the with Mexican rhythms for the folklore itself. nine pieces that form Bachianas film La Noche de los Mayas. Heitor Villa-Lobos brasileiras has several dance movements. Villa-Lobos gave most 1946 Suite de danzas criollas, of the movements two titles, one Op. 15 by Argentinian drawn from Baroque music (such composer Alberto Ginastera as Toccata or Fugue) and one a uses folk melodies in a series corresponding Brazilian name of dances for piano. (such as Desafio or Conversa). In addition to drawing on popular Brazilian forms like the Modinha, a type of sentimental love song, the","MODERN 1900\u20131950 281 See also: St. Matthew Passion 98\u2013105 \u25a0 The Art of Fugue 108\u2013111 \u25a0 Bart\u00f3k\u2019s String Quartet No. 5 270\u2013271 American soprano Lucy Shelton performs Bachianas brasileiras No. 5, which is scored for soprano and cellos, at the Symphony Space in New York City, in 2010. composer also introduces elements of program music, using the instruments of the orchestra to portray scenes such as a small steam train traveling through the Brazilian landscape in Bachianas brasileiras No. 2. Structure and influences on the cello and soulful solos for America. This movement spawned The suites of Bachianas brasileiras the saxophone and trombone. The a range of approaches, from the are very varied in instrumentation. influence of Bach spans not only music of composers such as Some are for full orchestra, No. 1 is his suites but also his Musical the Mexican Silvestre Revueltas, for an orchestra of cellos, and No. 6 Offering, a collection of canons with its rhythmic drive and vivid is for just two instruments, flute and fugues, and the Two-part orchestration, to the works of and bassoon. The most famous of Inventions, short keyboard pieces. Argentinian composer Astor the suites is No. 5, for eight cellos Piazzolla, where classical elements and a soprano soloist whose part Bachianas brasileiras was part are applied and adapted to the combines wordless vocalization of a wider movement among Latin tango. Villa-Lobos led the way with lines from Brazilian poetry. American composers, combining in showing how a blend of South Further Brazilian elements in classical orchestration and forms American and classical elements Bachianas brasileiras include music with certain elements, rhythms, could work and popularized heard by Villa-Lobos on his travels and themes drawn from the old its results all over the world. \u25a0 and a street urchin\u2019s song from Rio, native music of Central and South together with guitarlike pizzicatos Heitor Villa-Lobos Heitor Villa-Lobos was born in for use in music education, as Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1887. well as the Bachianas brasileiras. Resisting family pressure to After 1945, he traveled widely become a doctor and preferring again, building a vast body of the company of musicians, he work\u2014more than 1,500 pieces, left home to travel through Brazil, including 12 symphonies and supporting himself by playing 17 string quartets. Long after the cello and guitar. his death in 1959, at the age of 72, he has remained Brazil\u2019s Between 1923 and 1930, he best-known composer. spent most of his time in Paris, where he absorbed European Other key works music and composed prolifically, completing his series Ch\u00f4ros, 1919\u20131920 Carnaval das crian\u00e7as a collection of instrumental 1920\u20131929 Ch\u00f4ros and choral pieces in 1929. After 1953 Harp Concerto in A minor returning to Brazil the following 1959 Yerma year, he produced patriotic pieces","282 NCTATOEOTVMWEEPNRIRTTWEHIOHASNESUNACISNHLIDOIRSNATPENTED QUARTET FOR THE END OF TIME (1940), OLIVIER MESSIAEN IN CONTEXT E arly in his career, Olivier \u201cmodes of limited transposition,\u201d Messiaen espoused a such as the whole-tone scale, which FOCUS musical style that embraced can only be transposed up a tone Spiritual music in the sensuality in music, forming a before the same sequence of notes 20th century group called La Jeune France recurs. Messiaen had studied at the (Young France) with several other Paris Conservatoire with a series of BEFORE young composers, in opposition to brilliant teachers who inspired him 1938 Devout Catholic Francis the neoclassicism of Stravinsky to explore Greek and Hindu modes, Poulenc\u2019s Four Penitential and others who looked back to while also instilling in him sound Motets marks the composer\u2019s 18th-century works for inspiration. principles of harmony, counterpoint, return to sacred music. While Messiaen\u2019s music was and composition, and encouraging imbued with references to his his gift for improvisation. AFTER Roman Catholic faith, his style was 1962 Benjamin Britten\u2019s avant-garde. He experimented both Apocalyptic inspiration War Requiem combines the with rhythm and what he termed Within a year of the outbreak of antiwar poems of Wilfred World War II, Messiaen was taken Owen with the traditional My faith is the grand drama as a prisoner of war and held at a form of the Requiem Mass. of my life. I\u2019m a believer, so I camp in Silesia (now in Poland). sing words of God \u2026 I give Among his fellow inmates, he found 1971 British composer Sir three professional musicians, a John Tavener writes Celtic bird songs to those who clarinetist, violinist, and cellist, Requiem, an early example dwell in cities \u2026 and whose talents he could combine of his many religious works paint colors for those with his own piano keyboard skills. embodying a sense of who see none. Embracing this rare instrumental timelessness. Olivier Messiaen combination, Messiaen wrote his Quartet for the End of Time, which 1981 Polish composer Henryk premiered in the camp itself. G\u00f3recki writes Totus Tuus to celebrate Pope John Paul II\u2019s The composer\u2019s deep Christian third official visit to his beliefs are clearly indicated in his native Poland. extensive Preface to the score, which includes quotations from the Book of Revelation. Its title was a homage to the Angel of the Apocalypse, who raises his","MODERN 1900\u20131950 283 See also: Pr\u00e9lude \u00e0 l\u2019apr\u00e8s-midi d\u2019un faune 228\u2013231 \u25a0 A Child of Our Time 284\u2013285 \u25a0 Gruppen 306\u2013307 \u25a0 Apocalypse 322 \u25a0 In Seven Days 328 hand toward Heaven saying, \u201cThere slow and expressive cello melody, Olivier Messiaen shall be no more time,\u201d in reference accompanied by throbbing to the suffering of the period in harmonies on the piano. In the Born in Avignon, France, in which Messiaen was writing. sixth movement, the quartet play 1908, Messiaen was a highly in unison to emulate the \u201cseven musical child and studied Reflective and evocative trumpets\u201d of the Apocalypse, at the Paris Conservatoire In the first movement of the piece, negotiating complex dance from the age of 11, publishing two birds, accompanied by a rhythms, dynamic contrasts, and his eight Pr\u00e9ludes while still plaintive piano and whistling fluctuating tempos. A quiet melody a student. He was also a cello, set the bucolic scene. A loud follows and others interrupt until a deeply committed Roman interruption heralds the second loud unison, accompanied by Catholic from childhood movement with a fast and frenzied cascades of piano notes, leads to a onward and combined his unison in the strings, while a brutal, triumphant conclusion. The two passions as organist of distant, slow melody, suspended violinist plays the last notes that La Trinit\u00e9 in Paris from 1931. by soft raindrops in the piano, slowly rise to a hushed, lonely end. establishes the pattern of the At this time, the composer reflective and unhurried mood that Within its eight movements, wrote a number of religious characterizes the work. Cascades the Quartet contains most of the organ pieces and also works of notes end the movement. elements that characterize for his wife, the violinist and Messiaen\u2019s distinctive style and composer Claire Delbos, whom In the third movement, the would later influence his pupils, he married in 1932. clarinettist plays a sad pastorale, including Pierre Boulez and juxtaposed with very long notes Karlheinz Stockhausen. \u25a0 In 1941, following his World moving from silence to ear-piercing War II imprisonment in Silesia, volume. Birdsong\u2014something that Guards patrol a German POW camp Messiaen was appointed fascinated Messiaen and absorbed in World War II. Messiaen composed professor of harmony at the his later years\u2014reappears, adding Quartet for the End of Time while Paris Conservatoire. During a surreal note. After a short trio a prisoner at Camp Stalag VIII-A, the 1950s and 1960s, he interlude comes the spiritual center premiering the work to 5,000 fellow pursued his interest in of the piece\u2014the fifth movement\u2019s prisoners outside in freezing weather. birdsong with a number of works imitating their sounds. Internationally acclaimed, he died in Paris in 1992. Other key works 1932 Th\u00e8me et variations 1946\u20131948 Turangal\u00eela- symphonie 1951 Livre d\u2019orgue 1959 Catalogue d\u2019oiseaux","284 IOMRDUESRT OCURTEAOTFECHAOS A CHILD OF OUR TIME (1939\u20131941), MICHAEL TIPPETT IN CONTEXT I n the 18th century, frequent A Child of Our Time is performed by performances of Handel\u2019s the English National Opera in January FOCUS oratorios in Britain established 2005. Timothy Robinson, seated, sings English choral tradition a nationwide tradition of amateur the tenor solo from the second part: in the late 20th century choirs and choral societies. These \u201cMy dreams are all shattered.\u201d fueled the production of choral BEFORE works by British and foreign had continued to be a central 1928 Constant Lambert\u2019s The composers, who often premiered activity. During the 20th century, Rio Grande premieres in a BBC their works at choral festivals. composers began to use the choral radio broadcast. tradition to write oratorios or For many British composers, cantatas for soloists, choir, and 1931 William Walton\u2019s cantata the production of choral music\u2014 large orchestra to comment on Belshazzar\u2019s Feast launches at for the church or the concert hall\u2014 Leeds Festival. 1950 Herbert Howell\u2019s Hymnus Paradisi is sung at Gloucester Cathedral as part of the UK\u2019s Three Choirs Festival. AFTER 1962 The premiere of Britten\u2019s War Requiem marks the consecration of Coventry Cathedral, in the UK. 1984 Tippett\u2019s oratorio The Mask of Time premieres in Boston, Massachusetts. 2008 James MacMillan\u2019s St. John Passion receives its first performance at London\u2019s Barbican Center.","MODERN 1900\u20131950 285 See also: St. Matthew Passion 98\u2013105 \u25a0 Dvor\u02c7\u00e1k\u2019s Symphony No. 9 212\u2013215 \u25a0 The Dream of Gerontius 218\u2013219 \u25a0 Peter Grimes 288\u2013293 \u25a0 Einstein on the Beach 321 social and political events. Michael Men were ashamed and oppression could drive a Tippett\u2019s secular oratorio, A Child of what was done. marginalized person to commit of Our Time, was inspired by the There was bitterness an unthinkable act. three-part format of Handel\u2019s Messiah, as well as the structure and horror. Protesting inhumanity of J.S. Bach\u2019s Passions. However, A Child of Our Time Tippett began composing A Child instead of using chorales, as Bach of Our Time in 1939, in the days had, Tippett\u2019s work contains Narrator, bass solo after Britain declared war on American spiritual songs, which Germany. He intended his work to Tippett decided to include after killing of a German diplomat by be a protest against the disunity in hearing the style in a radio Herschel Grynszpan\u2014a teenage Europe and the fascist atrocities of broadcast. He believed that these Polish Jew\u2014in November 1938. the Nazi regime. Tippett wrote spirituals, with their origins as The act triggered Kristallnacht both the music and libretto. The slave songs, had a universal (the \u201cNight of Broken Glass\u201d), an work uses choral techniques, such appeal that traditional hymns officially sanctioned Nazi pogrom as counterpoint, arias, and triadic did not. For example, 19th-century against German Jews in which harmonies, and utilizes a bass songs such as \u201cGo Down, Moses\u201d Jewish property was destroyed and singer as the narrator vocalizing were appropriated for the oppressed some 200 Jews died. Tippett saw recitatives. While the oratorio has Jews of the early 20th century. Grynszpan, who had acted in two major moods, anger and grief, response to the deportation of his it ends on a note of hope, with the Wartime context parents by Nazi authorities, as a spiritual \u201cDeep River\u201d: \u201cO don\u2019t Tippett was heavily influenced by perfect example of how tyranny you want to go to that gospel feast. his left-wing, pacifist beliefs. He That promised land, that land was sentenced to three months in where all is peace.\u201d prison in 1943 for non-compliance with rules for conscientious Concern with contemporary objectors. Tippett\u2019s feelings about events is also shown by Benjamin World War II and its causes were Britten\u2019s War Requiem, which expressed through A Child of Our added antiwar poems by Wilfred Time, which tells the story of the Owen to the standard text of the Requiem Mass. \u25a0 Michael Tippett Michael Tippett was born in went on to produce a sequence London in 1905. He studied at of operas, beginning with The the Royal College of Music from Midsummer Marriage (1955). In 1923 until 1928 and subsequently 1966, he received a knighthood. took lessons from the counterpoint expert R.O. Morris. He then In Tippett\u2019s later years, his worked as a schoolteacher, first reputation grew internationally, making his mark as a composer leading to US premieres for with his Concerto for Double The Mask of Time (Boston, 1984) String Orchestra (1939); he and New Year (Houston, 1989). followed this with the oratorio Tippett died in London in 1998, A Child of Our Time, which after suffering a stroke. premiered in 1944. Other key works Perceived as an individual voice in English music, concerned 1955 The Midsummer Marriage with a variety of social, political, 1970 The Knot Garden and philosophical issues, Tippett 1991\u20131992 The Rose Lake","286 IITTANTHHNSVEADETOMLRWIEUYTANSSTDIWATCSKROIYEOSROSNLSUGYDOIOHNKUATNNOIDTS\u2026 APPALACHIAN SPRING (1944), AARON COPLAND IN CONTEXT I n August 1944, the dancer and 90 minutes long and scored for only choreographer Martha Graham 10 to 12 instruments, but Copland FOCUS first heard the music that used 13. Graham had also chosen Contemporary American Aaron Copland had created for her the title Appalachian Spring, which nationalism ballet Appalachian Spring, about a came from a verse of \u201cThe Dance\u201d young couple ready to embark on by the American poet Hart Crane. BEFORE married life in a Pennsylvanian 1911\u20131915 Inspired by local farmhouse in the early 1800s. She Clarity and simplicity transcendentalism, Ives was pleased with what she heard Copland\u2019s music had been heavily composes his Concord Sonata. and praised its power to lead the influenced by his time as a student listener into a singular world. in France in the early 1920s, when 1928 Virgil Thomson\u2019s Four Graham commissioned the work he had been surrounded by people Saints in Three Acts celebrates determined that it would be \u201ca who represented all that was new American diversity. legend of American living\u201d and in the arts. In Paris, several young \u201cthe inner frame that holds together composers were newly reworking 1939 Roy Harris conveys the a people.\u201d She had also stipulated Classical styles and exploring immensity of the American that the music should be about genres such as Modernism and rural landscape in his Impressionism, eschewing the old Symphony No. 3. So long as the human spirit German Romanticism of Brahms thrives on this planet, music and Wagner. Copland himself was AFTER particularly influenced by Igor 1947 Samuel Barber sets his in some living form will Stravinsky, who was just entering Knoxville: Summer of 1915 to accompany and sustain it and his neoclassical phase. Stravinsky\u2019s James Agee\u2019s memoir of his Octet (1923) impressed Copland childhood in rural Tennessee. give it expressive meaning. with its clean lines, crystal-clear Aaron Copland textures, and concise structure. 1989 Elliott Carter\u2019s Three Occasions for Orchestra From this time, Copland\u2019s music celebrates the vigor and became more open and its form energy of America. and instrumentation more tightly controlled. The hardships of 1999 John Harbison composes World War I compeled him, like The Great Gatsby based on Stravinsky, to write for smaller F. Scott Fitzgerald\u2019s novel. orchestras. With Appalachian Spring, he said, he was forced","MODERN 1900\u20131950 287 See also: Pr\u00e9lude \u00e0 l\u2019apr\u00e8s-midi d\u2019un faune 228\u2013231 \u25a0 Le Sacre du printemps 246\u2013251 \u25a0 Les Biches 262 \u25a0 Romeo and Juliet 272 Martha Graham performs as the warmth flooding the entire score, Aaron Copland young bride in Appalachian Spring at from the opening sense of dawn a New York theatre. The music, which breaking over a Shaker farmstead. The son of Russian immigrant Copland also reshaped as an orchestral The music perfectly captures the parents, Copland was born in suite, won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1945. tenderness of young love, the gaiety Brooklyn, New York, in 1900. and buoyant dances of the ensuing Studying in Paris with the to say what he had to say \u201cin the wedding, and the most magical composer Nadia Boulanger, simplest possible terms.\u201d What moment of all\u2014the ending of the he came under the influence Graham had requested was ballet, when the newlyweds, alone of Prokofiev, Stravinsky, and perfectly captured in his skeletal for the first time, realize the sheer Poulenc. In collaboration musical language that created a immensity of what they have with Roger Sessions, he rich sense of space hitherto done. They are pioneers, about to ran the Copland-Sessions unknown in American music. start their life together in a new concert series (1928\u20131931) to country. Although they are safe encourage young American Emotional inspiration in their home, they must tame and composers. His own music Copland found his theme for the cultivate the unconquered land brought him worldwide fame work in the first line of a Shaker stretching out before them. in the 1940s, although his later hymn: \u201cTis the gift to be simple.\u201d serialist works were less The Shakers were an American These mixed feelings of well received. Protestant sect known for their comfort, awe, fear, optimism, plain way of living. The clarity of vulnerability, and courage were Copland taught at the texture suffuses the ballet, its transformed by Copland into pure, new Berkshire Music Center deeply moving music. \u25a0 in Massachusetts from 1940, and in 1951 he became the first American composer to be appointed as Harvard\u2019s Norton Professor of Poetry (poetry in its broadest sense). Around this time, he was falsely accused of communist activities. In 1960, he moved to Rock Hill, New York, where he lived until his death in 1990. Other key works 1930 Piano Variations 1942 Fanfare for the Common Man 1967 Inscape","DRIVINGCOMPOSING IS LIKE DOWN A FOGGY ROAD BPEETNEJRAMGRINIMBERSIT(T19E4N5),","","290 20TH-CENTURY BRITISH OPERA IN CONTEXT A fter Purcell\u2019s death in 1695 The beach at Aldeburgh, the coastal and on through the 18th village that inspired Peter Grimes. The FOCUS and 19th centuries, British opera was staged live here in 2013 to 20th-century British opera music was dominated by European mark the centenary of Britten\u2019s birth. composers, such as Handel, Johann BEFORE Christian Bach, and Mendelssohn. successors to Purcell. Elgar would 1689 First performance It was not until the publication of never finish The Spanish Lady, of Henry Purcell\u2019s opera Edward Elgar\u2019s Enigma Variations, his only attempt at opera, while Dido and Aeneas. in 1899, that a British composer Vaughan Williams labored for began almost single-handedly to years on his first opera, Hugh the 1871\u20131896 Librettist W.S. revitalize the country\u2019s music. Drover, working folk songs and Gilbert and composer Arthur idioms into the music in the hope Sullivan together produce 14 At this time, British opera was of creating a truly British work. comic operas, including HMS in an especially perilous state. When the opera opened in 1924, Pinafore and The Mikado. The comic operas of Gilbert and it met with little initial success. Sullivan were popular, as was 1902 Edward German\u2019s opera Edward German\u2019s operetta Merrie The young Benjamin Britten Merrie England, a tale of England, but there were no serious disliked the English pastoral school amorous rivalries at the court and wrote of Vaughan Williams, of Elizabeth I, opens at the Music \u2026 has the beauty of \u201cI am afraid I don\u2019t like his music, Savoy Theatre in London. loneliness of pain: of strength however much I try.\u201d Britten had and freedom. The beauty of hoped to pursue postgraduate 1922 Following the success studies with the Austrian of his orchestral suite disappointment and never composer Alban Berg, a student The Planets, Gustav Holst satisfied love. of Arnold Schoenberg, whose composes his one-act opera Lyric Suite he admired, but was The Perfect Fool. Benjamin Britten dissuaded by his parents. AFTER In 1930, the year Britten began 1955 Michael Tippett\u2019s first his studies at the Royal College of opera, The Midsummer Music in London, the Vic-Wells Marriage, is performed at company was formed in a bid to Covent Garden. champion British theatre, opera, and ballet. In 1934, the Old Vic 1966 The one-act opera Theatre became the center for Purgatory, by Hugo Weisgall, spoken drama and Sadler\u2019s Wells premieres at England\u2019s Cheltenham Festival. 1968 The Aldeburgh Festival includes the first performance of Harrison Birtwistle\u2019s opera Punch and Judy. 1984 Where The Wild Things Are, by Oliver Knussen to a libretto by Maurice Sendak, receives its first performance at London\u2019s National Theatre.","MODERN 1900\u20131950 291 See also: Dido and Aeneas 72\u201377 \u25a0 Tosca 194\u2013197 \u25a0 Peer Gynt 208\u2013209 \u25a0 The Wreckers 232\u2013239 \u25a0 A Child of Our Time 284\u2013285 I wanted to express of Peter Grimes as the subject for Benjamin Britten my awareness of the opera, but he also determined to perpetual struggle of men return to his native Suffolk. Born in Lowestoft, England, in and women whose livelihood 1913, Britten played the piano depends on the sea. In spite of the danger and and composed from an early Benjamin Britten difficulties of crossing the Atlantic age, studying with the in wartime, he and Peter Pears composer and violinist Frank the headquarters for opera and traveled to England on a cargo Bridge in his teens. In 1930, he ballet (the Covent Garden Opera vessel, the Axel Johnson. During won a scholarship to London\u2019s Company, later the Royal Opera, the 19-day sea journey, they worked Royal College of Music. was not founded until 1946). together on the libretto for the new Britten felt passionately that his project, surrounded by what Peter From 1939 to 1942, Britten country should have a permanent Pears described as \u201ccallous, foul- and the tenor Peter Pears lived national opera company and mouthed, witless recruits for in America. On their return believed the Sadler\u2019s Wells Opera company.\u201d Such a setting for the to London, Pears joined the Company, which later became beginnings of Britten\u2019s first serious Sadler\u2019s Wells Opera Company, English National Opera, was a opera was apt; the sea would form a whose theatre premiered Peter good first step. haunting backdrop in Peter Grimes. Grimes, in 1945. The success of the opera excited interest Back home in Suffolk, Britten in every new work by Britten. worked further on the libretto with the writer Montagu Slater. Britten and Pears formed Britten, a deeply sensitive man, the English Opera Group in wanted to explore the character 1947 and in 1948 launched the of Crabbe\u2019s murderous outcast. Aldeburgh Festival. In 1962, Britten felt himself to be an outsider Britten\u2019s War Requiem was in society and not only because of premiered in the newly rebuilt his pacifism. He had first met Peter Coventry Cathedral. Britten Pears in 1937, andthe two suffered \u276f\u276f was made a life peer in 1976, a few months before he died Inspiration for Grimes The soprano Joan Cross plays of heart failure. He was the During World War II, Britten and his the schoolmistress, Peter Pears is first composer or musician to partner, the tenor Peter Pears\u2014a Peter Grimes (center), and Leonard be made a member of Britain\u2019s fellow pacifist\u2014spent three years Thompson is the apprentice in the House of Lords. in America. While there, Britten original 1945 production of the opera. read George Crabbe\u2019s poem The Other key works Borough, published in 1810, in which Crabbe devotes a whole 1946 The Young Person\u2019s section to the villain Peter Grimes, Guide to the Orchestra a murderous outcast, who is hunted 1951 Billy Budd down by his community. The long 1961 War Requiem poem depicts the people of the Suffolk town of Aldeburgh, on England\u2019s east coast, and describes the local flat landscape, the marshy terrain, the stony beaches, and the suck and surge of the waves. It moved Britten so deeply that not only did he decide to use the story","292 20TH-CENTURY BRITISH OPERA The main characters in Peter Grimes Foes Friends Mrs. Sedley (mezzo soprano) Ellen Orford (soprano) Town gossip A schoolteacher who sees the good in Grimes and wants to Auntie (contralto) Landlady of the pub marry him. Swallow (bass) Peter Grimes Captain Balstrode Lawyer The antihero, he is violent, (baritone) Retired sea captain solitary, and an outsider. Bob Boles (tenor) Ned Keene A fisherman and a Methodist (baritone) Apothecary The Townspeople (chorus) because of their love for one fisherman, Peter Grimes has just but the relationship is halting. another\u2014homosexuality being been cleared of the death of an In the prologue\u2019s duet \u201cThe truth \u2026 illegal in Britain until 1967. apprentice but is warned not to the pity \u2026 and the truth,\u201d Ellen seek a replacement. Faced with the sings in the bright E major chord Ovations for a masterpiece townspeople\u2019s hostility, Grimes while Grimes begins in F minor. The first performance of Britten\u2019s yearns in vain for love and simple Gradually, Grimes gives way to Peter Grimes took place at the domesticity with his friend Ellen Ellen, and the pair are in unison, Sadler\u2019s Wells Theatre on June 7, Orford, a widowed schoolmistress, but it does not last. 1945. The composer and conductor Imogen Holst, who was later a He wished for one to In defiance of local opinion, codirector of the Aldeburgh trouble and control; Grimes procures a new apprentice, Festival, recalled the thrill of the he wanted some obedient and his fate is sealed. When Ellen occasion: \u201cNo one in the audience boy to stand and bear the spots a bruise and accuses him of will ever forget the excitement of blow of his outrageous hand. mistreating the boy, local people that evening,\u201d she wrote. When see Grimes strike her then leave. the tragedy had reached its quiet Peter Grimes Forming a lynch mob, they advance end and the opera was over, she on Grimes\u2019s clifftop hut to a drum sensed that the audience knew beat suggesting impending doom they had been listening to a but find nothing amiss as Grimes masterpiece: \u201cThey stood up is away fishing. His apprentice, and shouted and shouted.\u201d however, has fallen down the cliff to his death. His jersey is later The popularity of the opera lay found washed ashore, and the mob partly in its psychological drama advances on the hut once more. and depth of characterizaton. A Doomed, Grimes rows out to sea complex, lonely, and tormented and sinks his boat. The opera ends","MODERN 1900\u20131950 293 the next morning when, to the Interludes (\u201cDawn,\u201d \u201cSunday mournful sound of a foghorn, Morning,\u201d \u201cMoonlight,\u201d and reports emerge of a sinking \u201cStorm\u201d), which are often performed vessel too far out to be rescued. on their own. They serve to set the scene, evoke the emotions of the Building tension characters, and foreshadow the The music of Peter Grimes has building drama, from gentle violins astonishing tensile strength, and flutes depicting a coastal dawn what Peter Pears called \u201cThe bare to an upsurge in the brass denoting minimum of notes to convey the an approaching storm. maximum effect.\u201d Such economy of style, already apparent in Britten went on to write other Britten\u2019s early works, such as operas, including Billy Budd (1951) A Boy was Born (1933) and Les based on Herman Melville\u2019s novella Illuminations (1939), was skeletal Billy Budd, Sailor, and Death in compared to the English pastoral Venice (1973), from the novel by school of composition. In Peter Thomas Mann. In addition to Grimes, the music expresses the carving a place for modern British drama at all times. In the quartet opera in the international repertoire, \u201cHi! Give us a hand!\u201d in the first Britten actively promoted music and scene of Act One, for example, all fellow composers. He also upheld four characters sing at the same the traditional elements of opera, time, mimicking an argument, such as a good story, evocative while the mix of song, speech, and atmosphere, and a large and laughter in the chorus\u2019s \u201cAssign stirring chorus. Essentially, he your prettiness to me\u201d in Act Three reclaimed the concept of opera conveys the natural simplicity of the as entertainment in an age when villagers. Conversely, at the end of minimalism ruled. \u25a0 the opera, the canon of the chorus evokes the menace of the crowd. Britten is memorialized in a window by John Piper in Aldeburgh Orchestral interludes are also Parish Church. The Burning Fiery employed to great effect between Furnace, depicted here, evokes acts, especially in the Four Sea Britten\u2019s three \u201cchurch parables.\u201d Music festivals music, founded by its citizens in 1877. In Italy, it was the Aldeburgh Festival, launched by centenary in 1913 of Verdi\u2019s Britten and his friends in 1948, birth that prompted the first gained international status within operas at the Arena di Verona, a few decades. It became the where the city\u2019s annual festival latest in a growing number of is held in summer. international music festivals, including the Bayreuth Festival As in Europe, classical music founded by Richard Wagner in festivals in the US flourished 1876 to stage his own operas, in the 1870s, though the Handel and Salzburg\u2019s festival of Mozart\u2019s and Haydn Society in Boston held its first triennial festival The English Opera Group as early as 1858. In the 20th carry props into the Jubilee Hall century, the composer Henry for Britten\u2019s Let\u2019s Make An Opera Kimball Hadley staged concerts during Aldeburgh\u2019s 1949 festival. in 1934 that evolved into the celebrated Tanglewood Festival.","CONTEM","PORARY","296 INTRODUCTION Pierre Schaeffer In France, Iannis Polish composer and Pierre Henry Xenakis composes Krzysztof Penderecki\u2019s create Symphonie Threnody for the Victims Pithoprakta, a pour un homme piece inspired by of Hiroshima explores seul from mathematical and sonorism with a 52-piece engineering principles. recorded sounds. string orchestra. 1950 1956\u20131957 1960 1956 1958 1964 In the Soviet Union, Three orchestras Terry Riley writes Aram Khachaturian\u2019s simultaneously In C\u2014one of the ballet Spartacus, about bring Karlheinz first minimalist Stockhausen\u2019s Gruppen the first-century slave to life at its premiere compositions, with revolt against Rome, wins in Cologne, Germany. no set number of the Lenin Prize. performers or duration. I n the wake of World War II, Messiaen, their teacher at the elements of his compositions by classical music became Paris Conservatoire, Pierre Boulez tossing coins and sorting yarrow increasingly experimental, and Karlheinz Stockhausen sticks or giving ambiguous graphic as composers searched for more became the leading lights of instructions to performers. One adventurous ways to rework the serialism, while Iannis Xenakis of his works (4\u00b433\u02dd) specified four language of music. Turning their used it as a starting point for a minutes and 33 seconds of silence, back on the past, they looked to music that was based on a in which only the ambient sounds new sources of inspiration, such combination of mathematical of the auditorium could be heard. as mathematics and physics, and and acoustic theories. Composers overturned former concepts of also found rich inspiration in Ideas spread structure. They even questioned technology, which provided access After the death of Joseph Stalin fundamental aspects of music, to a whole new sound world. In in 1953, news of these fresh such as what constituted a musical Paris, Pierre Henry and Pierre developments began to reach instrument, the necessity of a Schaeffer pioneered a technique composers behind the Iron Curtain, \u201cperformer,\u201d and what music known as musique concr\u00e8te, using where the Soviet-dominated itself can be. sounds recorded onto magnetic regimes had censored music tape as their building blocks. that it considered degenerate or In Europe, the postwar subversive. Gy\u00f6rgy Ligeti, born generation pushed the serial At the same time, a young in communist Romania, made method of composition pioneered American composer, John Cage, his way to the West via Hungary by Arnold Schoenberg in the 1920s explored music determined by in 1956 and developed an further by applying the technique chance, or aleatory music, and idiosyncratic style after coming to volume and duration as well examined the musical potential across the music of Stockhausen as pitch. Encouraged by Olivier of silence. He determined key","CONTEMPORARY 297 Luciano Berio With minimal words Witold Lutos\u0142awki\u2019s The American uses collage and and no intervals, 25-minute Fourth composer Eric quotation to compose Philip Glass\u2019s Symphony is Whitacre adapts his a kaleidoscope of performed as one instrumental work musical texture Einstein on the Beach October to a choral subverts the traditional continuous movement setting in Alleluia. in Sinfonia. of two sections. narrative of opera. 1968 1976 1993 2011 1967 1969 1977 2000 Toru Takemitsu Eight Songs for a Mad Canadian composer Jennifer Higdon juxtaposes Eastern King by Peter Maxwell Raymond Murray composes and and Western musical Schafer\u2019s biblically premieres blue Davies, based on the inspired Apocalypsis traditions in the words of King George III, features multiple choirs, cathedral, a work orchestral work presents a new type of conductors, and orchestras. that epitomizes a November Steps. return to lyricism. \u201cmusic theatre.\u201d and his contemporaries, eventually against it. In place of complexity, who composed for Western and finding inspiration in chaos theory some young composers advocated Japanese instruments, and the and fractal mathematics. simplicity, or minimalism. Pioneered cross-cultural music of Kaija by Terry Riley and given fresh Saariaho. Classical composers As restrictions on the arts lifted impetus by Philip Glass and Steve also absorbed ideas from popular in Poland, Krzysztof Penderecki Reich, the style was characterized culture, incorporating elements and others leapt at the chance to by repetition and the most basic of pop and rock music as well as create a new musical language, of harmonies, partly inspired by jazz into their work, while also composing pieces for conventional the hypnotic qualities of some embracing the possibilities of instruments in \u201cblocks\u201d of sound African and Asian music. A new technology. British composer reminiscent of electronic music number of composers encouraged Thomas Ad\u00e8s\u2019s In Seven Days, or, like Witold Lutos\u0142awski, they improvisation by the performers. for example, is a multimedia introduced elements of chance In Riley\u2019s In C, the order, duration, work, while American composer into their work. This eclectic and tempo of the composition are Eric Whitacre has explored the approach to musical composition, determined by the musicians. possibility of \u201cvirtual\u201d ensembles, incorporating elements of different assembled via the Internet. styles, was also a feature of the Cross-cultural trends music of Luciano Berio, who In the late 1960s, as political, It is too early to say which embraced musical collage. social, and technological horizons direction classical music will take widened, the fusion and cross- in the 21st century, or what the The birth of minimalism fertilization of musical cultures next musical movement will be. But Much of this new music perplexed became increasingly evident, history suggests that composers and alienated listeners, and in as in the work of Toru Takemitsu, will continue to find many new 1960s America, there was a reaction means of musical expression. \u25a0","298 IN CONTEXT OSVOOFUCNNAABDTUUISLRAETRHYE FOCUS Electronic music and SYMPHONIE POUR UN HOMME SEUL musique concr\u00e8te (1949\u22121950), PIERRE SCHAEFFER\/ PIERRE HENRY BEFORE 1939 The first example of electroacoustic music, John Cage\u2019s Imaginary Landscape No. 1, uses variable-speed turntables, frequency recordings, muted piano, and cymbal. 1948 Made entirely from recordings of steam trains, Pierre Schaeffer\u2019s \u00c9tude aux chemins de fer is broadcast alongside his other early studies in sound. AFTER 1952\u20131953 Olivier Messiaen composes his only electronic work, Timbres-dur\u00e9es, although he later withdraws it. 1954 Edgard Var\u00e8se\u2019s D\u00e9serts, which alternates sections of musique concr\u00e8te with others scored for an orchestra of wind and percussion, is broadcast from Paris on December 2. 1956 In Gesang der J\u00fcnglinge, Stockhausen mixes sounds derived from the voice of a treble choirboy with manipulated electronically generated tones. 1958 Edgard Var\u00e8se writes Po\u00e8me \u00e9lectronique for the futuristic Philips Pavilion, a building designed by Le Corbusier, at the World\u2019s Fair in Brussels."]