2. Modernism - extending aspects of the past practice to
extremes and reinterpreting familiar elements in new ways
• search for place beside classics, innovation with emulation
of the past
• changes reflect differences in value of tradition
• proliferation of contrasting trends, “-isms”
• Before in the 19th Century: Romanticism, exoticism
• Now in the 20th century: impressionism, expressionism,
primitivism, neoclassicism, serialism
• use of conventional gestures problematic
• some abandoned tonality
• others attenuated, extended tonality
• Through nationalism music has tremendous diversity
Modernism
4. Gustav Mahler (1860–1911)
leading Austro-German composer of symphonies after Brahms, Bruckner
• born to Jewish parents in Bohemia
• studied at Vienna Conservatory, University of Vienna
• friends with Hugo Wolf, Bruckner
• avid Wagnerian; respected, influenced by Brahms
• primary career as professional opera, orchestral conductor
• orchestral works – 9 symphonies
• Wrote German Lieder (many orchestrated song cycles)
• He used his songs in his symphonies as well
• symphony as world - extended Beethoven’s concept
• styles, rhythms of Austrian folk songs, dances; nostalgia for rural scenes, simpler times
• instrumentation and sound
• large number of performers
• music as art not just of notes but sound itself
• programmatic content
• first four symphonies, detailed programs, later suppressed them
• pictorial details, material from his own songs, extramusical ideas
German Modernism: Mahler and Strauss
5. • Fifth Symphony – Mahler 5,
y’all!
• Trumpet solo in beginning – super
iconic
• Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the
Death of Children, 1901–4),
orchestral song cycle, poems of
Friedrich Rückert
• Nun will die Sonn’ so hell aufgeh’n
• sparce use of instruments
• post-Wagnerian harmony, stark
contrasts
• thin textures, simple melodies,
rhythms; understated, restraint, irony
heightened by emotional mismatch of
text and music
German Modernism: Mahler and Strauss
6. Richard Strauss operas
• turned to opera after establishing himself with symphonic poems
• Strauss successor to Wagner in German opera
• Wagner, Mozart main models
• contrasting styles: character’s personalities, emotions, dramatic situation
• Wagner: use of leitmotivs, association of keys with particular characters
• Worked exclusively with one librettist Hugo von Hoffmansthal
• Salome (1905)
• German libretto: adapted one-act play by Oscar Wilde, decadent version of
biblical story
• subject, actions, emotions stranger than any preceding opera
• harmonically complex, dissonant, influenced later composers
• Conclusion of the opera - high level of dissonance, drama through simple
means
• inspired later composers to abandon tonality
• Der Rosencavalier 1911 – comic opera in 3 acts – final trio
• His music was rhetorical, engaged the audience’s emotions directly
• His last works remain tonal (Four Last Songs 1948), yet radical and
highly individual (especially during Nazi Occupation – he was a
member of the Nazi party out of necessity for his family and
career)
German Modernism: Mahler and Strauss
9. • French musicians sought greater independence from
German music
• revival of sixteenth- through eighteenth-century
French music
• young composers contend with German and French
past
• drawing on the past: national heritage
• French tradition: emotional reserve, understatement
• profound emotions through simple, direct means
• dance music central to tradition
• taste, restraint, elements of beauty valued
• Gregorian chant, French Renaissance, models of modal
music
French Modernism: Debussy and Ravel
10. Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
Modern French Composer
• enormous influence on contemporaries
and later generations
• studied at Paris Conservatoire, age ten
• 1888, pilgrimage to Bayreuth
• friendships with symbolist poets, other
artists
• Debussy’s influence
• seminal force in history of music
• emphasis on sound itself as an element of
music
• major works: Pelléas et Mélisande
(opera); Jeux (ballet); orchestral works;
piano pieces; about 90 songs; string
quartet and other chamber works
French Modernism: Debussy and Ravel
11. Debussy’s musical direction was towards pleasure and beauty
• admiration for Wagner, revulsion against bombast
• French tradition, preference for sensibility, taste, restraint
• Influences
• Russian composers, Rimsky-Korsakov and Musorgsky
• medieval music, parallel organum
• music from Asia, Javanese gamelan, Chinese and Japanese melody
• impressionism and symbolism
• detached observation; evoke mood, feeling, atmosphere, scene
• common-practice harmony avoided, attenuated
• contrasts of scale type, exotic scales (whole-tone, octatonic, pentatonic)
• promoted modernism focused on French values of decoration, beauty,
pleasure
• piano music - evocative titles: visual images, evoke distinctive styles
• 24 Preludes (1909–10, 1911–13), character pieces, picturesque titles at end
• Suite bergamasque (ca. 1890)
• No. 3, Claire de Lune
French Modernism: Debussy and Ravel
12. Debussy’s orchestral music
• large orchestra, great variety of tone colors, textures
• Prélude à “L’après-midi d’un faune” (Prelude to “The
Afternoon of a Faun,” 1891–94)
• Based on symbolist poem by Mallarmé
• mood through suggestion, connotation, indirection
• songs and stage music
• song settings of Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, François Villon
• French art songs (mélodies) are staples in the repertoire, next to
Fauré’s songs
• Pelleás et Mélisande (1893–1902), only completed opera
• response to Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde
• Based on a symbolist play by Maurice Maeterlinck
• fluent recitative, flow of French language
French Modernism: Debussy and Ravel
13. Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)
Modern French Composer
• often grouped with Debussy as impressionist
• superb assimilator, variety of influences
• traditional forms, diatonic melodies, complex
harmonies, tonal language
• influences: Russian and Asian music, contemporary
French literature
• impressionist works have strong musical imagery and
colorful harmonies
• interest in Classic forms, genres, such as sonatas, piano
trios, and string quartets
• songs: French art songs based on symbolist poets,
Greek songs, Jewish Kaddish in Aramaic, songs in
Mandarin, Hebrew, and other languages
• popular traditions outside of France
• Bolero (1928), Spanish idioms
French Modernism: Debussy and Ravel
15. Both Vaughan Williams and Holst sought a distinctive
English voice
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
• more national style than Holst
• Inspirations
• folk song, English hymnody, earlier English composers: Thomas
Tallis, Henry Purcell
• studied with Ravel
• strongly influenced by Debussy, Bach, Handel
• wrote art and utilitarian music
• links to amateur music-making, kept from esoteric style
• national style
• incorporation, imitation of British folk tunes
• assimilation of sixteenth-century English modal harmony
• Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis (1910), based on Tallis
hymn in Phrygian mode
Gustav Holst (1874–1934)
• works for orchestra, band, chorus
• The Planets (1914–16), orchestral suite
British Modernism: Vaughan Williams and Holst
16. Serge Rachmaninoff (1873–1943)
• studied at the Moscow Conservatory
• 1917, left Russia after Russian Revolution
and emigrated to United States
• works for piano
• twenty-four preludes (1892–1910)
• Études-Tableaux (1911, 1916–17)
• four piano concertos (Rach 2 & Rach 3
famous)
• combines influences of western composers:
Mendelssohn, Chopin and Russian Orthodox
liturgical music and Tchaikovsky
• Rachmaninoff’s style
• renowned for passionate, melodious
idiom
• focused on elements of Romantic
tradition
Russian Modernism: Rachmaninoff
17. Jean Sibelius (1865–1957)
Finland’s leading composer
• Finland culturally dominated by Sweden
• Sibelius became Finnish patriot, sought
to create national style
• themes for vocals works, symphonic
poems from Finnish epic, Kalevala
• series of symphonic poems including
Finlandia, established as leading national
composer
• from 1897, supported by Finnish government
as national artist
Scandinavian Modernism: Sibelius
18. Avant-garde: art that seeks to overthrow
accepted aesthetics
• movement began before World War I
• focus on what is happening in the
present
• shared attitudes: unrelenting
opposition to status quo
• Erik Satie (1866–1925)
• French nationalist, radical break from
tradition
• Gnossiemes for piano
• all ostentatiously plain, unemotional
• all use same slow tempo,
accompanimental pattern, melodic
rhythm, similar modal harmonies,
unresolved chords
Avant-Garde: Satie
