NATIONAL MONUMENTSENGLAND, SPAIN, HUNGARY, POLAND, RUSSIA , AMERICA….IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY !MUSC 3229 SPRING 2014 —TEXT PP. 854-888

WORLD EVENTS & COMPOSER DATESLeoš Janáček (Czech; 1854–1928)

Edward Elgar (England; 1857–1934)

Jean Sibelius (Finland; 1865-1957)

Ralph Vaughan Williams (England, 1872–1958)

Alexander Scriabin (Russian, 1872–1915)

Charles Ives (1874-1954)

Manuel de Falla (Spain, 1876–1946)

George Enescu (Poland, 1881–1955)

Béla Bartók (Hungary, 1881–1945)

Zoltán Kodály (Hungary, 1882–1967)

Karol Szymanowski (Poland, 1882–1937)

SIBELIUS

• Jean Sibelius (1865–1957)

• Finnish composer

• Influence: Edward Grieg (1843-1907), Norwegian composer

• Kalevala (Land of Heroes): Finish founding literary epic

• Kullervo, Op. 7 (1891)

SIBELIUS

• Four Legends from the Kalevala, Op. 22 (1893–95) • The Swan of Tuonela

• Plot: Young hero descends to the isle of the dead (Tuonela) to kill the swan that floats on the river separating the dead from the living…

• Seven Symphonies

Böcklin, Isle of the Dead

SIBELIUS: VIOLIN CONCERTO (1904)

ENGLAND• Hubert Parry (1848–1918)

• Charles Villiers Stanford (1854–1924)

• Edward Elgar (1857–1934) • Variations on an Original Theme “Enigma

Variations”, Op. 36, 1899 The work features 14 people and a dog. Variation 1 is a loving

portrayal of Elgar’s wife; Variation 2 is a pianist with whom Elgar played chamber music. The music is a satire on his friend’s keyboard dexterity.

Variation 9—Nimrod—is about August Johannes Jaeger, who was an influential friend and confidant of Elgar. Allegedly captures a conversation between them on Beethoven’s slow movements. • The Dream of Gerontius (1900; oratorio)

Nimrod

ELGAR

ENGLAND

• Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) • Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas

Tallis (1910) • A Sea Symphony (1903–09) • A London Symphony (1911–13) • A Pastoral Symphony (1922)

• The musician should “be the servant of the state and build national monuments like the painter, the writer, or the architect”

Crimea

SPAIN• Manuel de Falla (1876–1946)

• La vida breve (1905) • cante jondo (deep song)

• El Sombrero de Tres Picos (1919) • produced by Diaghilev, London;

sets/costumes by Picasso • zarzuela

• Nights in the Gardens of Spain (1909–16)

Three Cornered Hat final dance (jota)

FOLK AND MODERNIST SYNTHESIS

• Béla Bartók (1881–1945)

• pianist, ethnomusicologist

• Early composition influence of Richard Strauss; career influence of Franz Liszt; • Kossuth (1903)

FOLK AND MODERNIST SYNTHESIS

• Zoltán Kodály (1882–1967)

• Style hongrois

• Hungarian style; music of the Roma (gypsy music)

• Magyar nóta – sung Hungarian-style tunes

• Verbunkos – Hungarian-style instrumental dance music

• GypsyFiddle,2010

BARTOK’S FOLK WAYS

• “Peasant music” and “modern music”

• see text, pp. 864-865

• “A third way”:: abstract conception of folk style.

• 14 Bagatelles for piano, Op. 6 (1908) • Bagatelle Nos. 2, 4 (in anthology) • axis of symmetry [#4]; influence of Debussy (non-

functional 7th, 9th chords [#2]

BARTOK’S FOLK WAYS • Dance Suite (1923)

• Premiere: “My Dance Suite was so badly performed that it could not achieve any significant success,” Bartók wrote. “In spite of its simplicity there are a few difficult places, and our Philharmonic musicians were not sufficiently adult for them. Rehearsal time was, as usual, much too short, so the performance sounded like a sight-reading, and a poor one at that.”

• The five-part suite, in which all the tunes are Bartók’s own inventions rather than actual folk melodies, prominently — but not exclusively — employs Hungarian rhythms (2/4 and 4/4 abound). The five movements, played without pause, are bound together by a lyrical ritornello.

• Mmt 1: Arabic/Hungarian; Mmt 2: Hungarian; Mmt 3: Hungarian/Romanian (fiddle); Mmt 4: Night Music

SZYMANOWSKI AND ENESCU POLAND

• Karol Szymanowski (1882–1937)

• Piano Etudes, op. 33 (1916) • First Violin Concerto (1916) • Third Symphony (1914–16) • Krol Roger (1920–24) • Stabat Mater (1925–26)

Szymanowski Etudes, op. 33

SZYMANOWSKI AND ENESCU POLAND• George Enescu (1881–1955)

• Family estate in Ukraine • Oedipe (1936) • Romanian Rhapsodies, Op. 11

Romanian Dances Sergiu Celibidache

Bucharest 'George Enescu' Philharmonic Orchestra,

THE OLDEST MODERNIST: LEOŠ JANÁČEK

• Leoš Janáček (1854–1928)

• modernist & maximalist at a singularly advanced age

• Like Ives, did not seek to generalize composition methods into technique

• categorized as folklorist, but late technique focused on human speech

• wrote prose operas; his own librettos last works intended for popular appeal (as opposed to Schoenberg)

Czech Republic ca.1870

THE OLDEST MODERNIST: LEOŠ JANÁČEK: WORKS

• Jenufa (1895-1903); First heard in Prague 1916; US premiere, 1924; success owing to plot as much as folk-derived music: 3rd act shows the martyrdom of Jenufa marrying the man who slashed her, as well as a “novelty vehicle” for soprano Maria Jeritza, who was born in Brno and became a star in Vienna and at the Met.

• Five additional operas including Cunning Little Vixen (1923), Makropoulos affair (1925), From the House of the Dead (1928).

• Slavonic Liturgy, Glagolská mše (1926)

• Song cycle, Zápisník zmizelého

• Orchestral work, Sinfonietta

SPEECH-TUNELETS

• Influence of folk music and speech patterns and intonation

• “Speech melodies”

• Po zarostlém chodničku (On an Overgrown Path) —“A Blown Away Leaf”- (1901-2) (in anthology)

• instrumental study in unstressed syllables; 2/4 to 5/8….see end of piece

• Piano cycle

SPEECH-TUNELETS• Sinfonietta (1926)

• 5 movements

SCRIABIN: FROM EXPRESSION TO REVELATION

• Alexander Scriabin (1872–1915)

• Theosophy • Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–91)

sketch for Scriabin’s color organ— synesthesia

SCRIABIN: FROM EXPRESSION TO REVELATION

• The idea of art as world transformation is the essential Wagnerian ideal. Scriabin is the single Russian composer to accept from Wagner the Orphic mission

• Fifth Symphony, Op. 60 Prométhée, le poème de feu (Prometheus, the Poem of Fire, 1908–10) • “mystic chord”:: chord of the plemora :: Prometheus

chord :: octatonic (C/F#) :: 6-34 (0,1,3,5,7,9)

• Vers la flamme Op. 72 (Towards the Flame, 1914)

Mystic chord

MYSTERIUM AND THE ULTIMATE AGGREGATE HARMONIES• Unfinished work: to have brought the Wagnerian concept of

Gesamtkunstwerk to it unsurpassable maximum: the opus ultimum of all time.

• Indended to last 7days/nights…no spectators, only participants…performed 1X only in India…would bring human history to an end

• Communal creation, combination of all artistic media

• Aggregate harmonies: “ultimate” chords each containing all twelve pitches

Prelude, Op 74 No. 1

CHARLES IVES (1874–1954)

!

• Transcendentalism: 1830s-50s, Concord MA

• By trusting your instinct you gain access to God’s wisdom. • Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) • Henry David Thoreau (1817–62)

• “Self-reliance”: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds….”

• Walden (1854) • Luise May Alcott: Little Women (1868)

CHARLES IVES (1874–1954)

Periods of Ives’ life:

(1) youthful normalcy;

(2) creative vigor in music/business;

(3) decline amidst growing fame;

(4) posthumous reception, turning Ives “at the cost of considerable distortion into a modernist giant”

CHARLES IVES (1874–1954)• Born in Danbury, Connecticut

• Church organist

• Studied at Yale with Horatio Parker (1863–1919) • The Celestial Country (1902)

• Fallout from the premiere… • Last pubic performance of Ives for 20 years.

• Ives takes a job at Mutual Insurance Co; starts own firm, 1906.

• Although the very model of a musical maximalist, he cannot really be called a modernist

• His use of dissonance not driven by ideal of evolutionary stylistic progress

• “Substance determines manner”

TERMS OF RECEPTION• 1918: heart attack, last compositions (almost) in 1921.

• 1920: Privately published Second Piano Sonata Concord, Mass., 1840–60 and Essays before a Sonata (which connects Ive’s music to the Trancendentalists) • First public performance 1939, John Kirkpatrick • Lawrence Gilman: “greatest music composed by

an American”—most influential review in the annals of American criticism. Ives as Modernist.

• 1922: Privately published 114 Songs

• Other works published in Cowell’s New Music Quarterly

“MANNER” AND “SUBSTANCE”: THE CONCORD SONATA

• Second Piano Sonata, Concord, Mass., 1840–60 1. Emerson • 2. Hawthorne • 3. The Alcotts • 4. Thoreau

!

• Motive from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony • Other quotations: Protestant gyms, “Jesus,

Lover of My Soul” and “Ye Christian Heralds”

NOSTALGIA

• Three Places in New England (1931; pub. 1935)

• Premiered by Nicolas Slominsky (1894-1995) • II. “Putman’s Camp” —see text, pg. 882, for

Ives’ program note. • “scherzoids”—Ives’ wildly humorous scherzos;

depicting Ive’s idealized, fictionalized boyhood—unModernist; “agrarian myth”

• allusions to popular American tunes

UNIVERSE SYMPHONY

Universe  Symphony  (“Universe  in  Tones”),  1911-­‐15—     Note  in  1932  (Ives  =  58)  for  someone  to  complete  it—       Two  versions  of  Universe  Symphony:    Larry  Austin  &  Jonny  Reinhard…connection  to  Scriabin  Mysterium;  aggregate,  4s+5s  (=  Rite);  +  microtones;