20th CenturyNew World Encyclopedia

Turn of the centuryWhat was happening at the turn of the 19th century around the world?

Politics, Science and Technology, Art

Turn of the century MusicHow did these events and advances affect music?

Impressionism Pioneered by Claude

Debussy

Encyclopedia Britannica – “static harmony, emphasis on instrumental timbres that creates a shimmering interplay of “colours,” melodies that lack directed motion, surface ornamentation that obscures or substitutes for melody, and an avoidance of traditional musical form.”

Composers – Debussy, Ravel, da Falla, Satie

American MusicRagtime and Blues

are developing in the United States, soon to become a world wide phenomenon.

Tin Pan Alley – A Bird In A Guilded Cage

Military Bands – March Music – Also in Europe

TechnologyWith advances in technology people

could now record music.With the development of the phonograph

and then the record player, people were able to enjoy music at home without having to be musicians themselves.

Radio – first device used for mass communication.More and more people had radios in their

homes and were able to receive news, music, and other entertainment.

ExperimentationExperimentation is the main theme of music in the

20th century. Even more so than in the Romantic period, composers wanted to focus on incorporating new elements into classical, rewriting the rules and sometimes upsetting the public.

Composers began using ordinary objects to create music and incorporated them into symphonies and even solo works. They also experimented with unique tonalities and dissonance.

Another compositional technique used by composers was to combine genres. An example of this would be Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin.

Igor StravinksyRite of Spring - Ballet

and orchestral work depicting the sacrifice of a young girl to the god of Spring during ancient Russia. The clothing from this

time in Russian history is unknown so the costume designers used Native American dress as inspiration. In order to be more socially

sensitive current producers of the ballet use non-defining costume.

Firebird Suite

Igor StravinskyRussian Composer

Lived much of his life outside of Russia, and so was not affected by the artistic oppression of the Communist government. He was able to write using dissonance and experimental techniques, whereas composers in the Soviet Union were not allowed to use much dissonance and were forced to write music that sounded “Russian”.

Shostakovich and Prokofiev

Russian composers in the Soviet Union

“Composers were required to compose music of an essentially positive nature, designed  to inspire feelings of patriotism for Mother Russia. It was acceptable to express the darker side of human existence only if by the end a great victory had been won and all foes vanquished.”

Shostakovich was opposed to the USSR’s restrictions on music and composition. He would often hide dissonance in his music.

Prokofiev was very Romantic in his approach to composition and was a Soviet sympathizer.

Atonal MusicAtonal music is a generalizing term used

to define music that seems to lack a clear tonal center. – does not establish a key. Nearly all music in the western classical

tradition is considered 'tonal': that is, its harmonic structure is primarily triadic and hierarchically organized around a prominent tonal center.

Pierrot Lunaire by Arnold Schoenberg

Wozzeck by Alban Berg – Atonal Opera

Twelve Tone Music

Twelve Tone Row and Matrix

A Survivor From Warsaw – Arnold Schoenberg

Use of DissonanceTone Cluster

Quarter Tones

Polytonality

Charles Ives – Holiday Symphony - Fourth of July

Neoclassicism – The “New” Classical

A throw back to pre-Romantic Period music – but with a 20th century style.

Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis – Vaughan Williams - 1910 Original Tune – Why Fum’th

Thy Fight What about this piece makes

it sound like a 16th century choral piece?

What about it is 20th century?

Neoclassicism is not a form of art exclusive to the 20th century, however its contrast to the other art forms of the day is in higher contrast.

• Other examples of Neoclassical pieces.• Holberg Suite – Grieg

– 1884• Pulcinella – Stravinsky

- 1920

Neoclassical ArtJust kidding!

The search for new sounds.

Composers in the 20th century were trying to find ways of creating new and unique sounds – often with a haunting effect.

They would find non-musical objects to create sounds with (cans, scraps of metal, plant materials) or looked for new ways that instruments to make sounds (different bowing techniques, prepared piano).

John Cage

Musique ConcreteThe experimental

technique of musical composition using recorded sounds as raw material. The principle uses the assemblage of various natural sounds to produce an aural montage. The idea is that music

would be recorded on tape and would not need a performer – much like electronic music today.

Pierre Schaeffer

Minimalism Minimalism was the

response to the convoluted and often complicated nature of the music coming out during the 20th century. Composers looked to try to get rid of usual forms and structures and tried to create music with minute changes, giving the listener the feeling of continuity.

The music tends to focus on harmony and melody is mostly absent.

Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Terry Riley

Odd ParingsChamber ensembles

consisting of odd parings of instruments.

For various reasons composers began writing pieces for unconventional ensembles, such as Bela Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta.

Quartet for the End of Time – Messiaen. This piece was written

while Messiaen was in Stalag, a concentration camp, during WWII.

Aleatory MusicAleatory music is basically that

has a random nature. It gives the performer a greater freedom in how they play the music.

An example of this is John Cage’s Imaginary Landscape No. 4 in which he has 12 radios all tuned to different stations – thus every time this piece is played or recorded it is going to sound different.

Another piece is Stockhausen’s Piano Piece XI which consists of 19 sections which the performer can play in any order.

Nationalism in the 20th Century

During the Romantic Period the nationalist music movement was mainly contained to Europe, however in the 20th century nationalistic music spread to the Americas as more countries began performing classical music.

Parts of Europe where the classical music scene had not been as prominent were gaining importance and also finding their national voice.

We will look at composers from the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Cuba, and Spain

United States of America

Aaron Copland

Charles Ives

William Grant Still

American composers found their voice from the various immigrant cultures, pulling ideas from African American, Native American, Hispanic, and European cultures.

MexicoCarlos Chavez

Sinfonia India – Uses traditional Yaqui instruments.

Manuel M. Ponce

BrazilHeitor

Villa-Lobos“The most

signification Latin American composer to date.”

He is well known for writing many important works for classical guitar.

CubaErnesto

LecuonaCuban music

inspired much of the traditional Spanish music in Europe and vise versa. You can hear the blend of Cuban and Spanish music in Lecuona’s pieces.

SpainJoaquin Rodrigo

Joaquin Turina

Manuel de Falla

Jazz Jazz was a big influence on 20th

century composers. Composers who used jazz elements in their music were Ravel, Milhaud, Stravinsky, Walton, Copland, and most notably Gershwin.

From the book History of Music “ a fresh vitality in rhythm, often

relying on strong syncopations; syncopated melodies above a steady beat; ‘blue notes’ – flattening certain notes of the scale such as the 3rd or 7th; muted brass effects; a keener interest in percussive sounds; and instruments playing in shrill registers.”

An American In Paris

VocabularyAtonal Minimalism

Polytonality Nationalism

Sprechgesang Neoclassicism

Serialism Musique Concrete

Aleatory Tone Cluster

Pointilism Polytonality

Expressionism

Impressionism

Dissonance

12 Tone Series

IGCSE Students – Your homework is to put these words and their definitions on Quizlet. This is due next Tuesday, November 17th. Use this power point and the internet to help define these words.