AS Coursework Notes - Gluck
20th Century Art Music
AS/A Level Music Lecture Notes
Wagner
Started off, in music, with the Tristan und Isolde : Wagner.
The “Tristan Chord” is a tritone superimposed on a 4th. Significant as is pre-serialism.
Extreme, unending chromatic harmony; Tonally complex, and essentially tonally ambiguous. Many suspensions and delays.
Wagner’s Tristan effectively encouraged the disintegration of tonality.
Schoenberg, Bartok, Stravinsky and Debussy
In art, the revolution of the time was PERSPECTIVE – though this was the 15th Century. Equivalent in music is tonality.
Music example: Schoenberg; 1911 – Piano Pieces. “Sound for Sound’s Sake.”
The use of the 4th in the first of these pieces, makes the tonality ambiguous from the outset.
Very expressive melodies – but not as we know it! Essentially, there is no rhythm. Complex chords are merely for ‘functionality.’
The Schoenberg pieces can be compared in ART: Picasso (1907) and his delve into cubism. The eye is not drawn to particular areas. Picasso plays with shapes or intersecting angles: veers towards abstraction.
Schoenberg’s music is often known as expressionist. “The Scream” is a good comparison in art. The idea is that thoughts and feelings are inside the head.
Pure klangfarbenmelodie – tone and colour is split across the orchestra.
After atonality, Schoenberg’s next big idea was serialism. By no means an immediate change in writing style – he took about 15 years to write his first proper pieces using serialism. One of the first was his Wind Quintet.
Historical Contexts
- 1905: Einstein turns Newton’s theories on their head.
- 1907: Atonality
- 1924: Wind Quintet & Serialism.
Each of the composers here used traditional elements with their own ‘touch.’ There was an excitement of 20th Century discovery in other arts and sciences as well; Sigmund Freuid for example.
Serialism Beyond Schoenberg: Berg and Webern
Music example: Webern – Piano Concerto (op.24). For 9 instruments – Tiny fragments across the orchestra – POINTILLISM. Equivalent in art is Post-Impressionism (using tiny dots to make a picture).
Music example: Berg – Violin Concerto (1935)
Debussy – How to Solve a Problem Called Wagner?
Simple – Debussy took the harmonies and used them without necessarily resolving them. Tried to encapsulate beauty. Debussy frequently used the pentatonic and whole tone scales.
Debussy is very different to the sometimes energetic nature of Berg and Schoenberg – Debussy dealt with colour for its own sake. “There is no theory. You have merely to listen. Pleasure is the law.”
Music example: Debussy - La Cathédrale Engloutie (The Submerged Cathedral) – as radical as Scoenberg, albeit in a different way.
Stravinsky
Stravinsky’s approach is to focus on the rhythm as a driving force.
Horizontally, very simple, peasant style melodies. Vertically and harmonically, very complicated. Block Writing.
BARTOK: Used his own elements of tonality. Fugue imitation: beginning to turn towards neo-classicism