This document provides information about the music movement of Expressionism during the early 20th century. It discusses two prominent composers of the time, Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky. Schoenberg experimented with atonality and developed the 12-tone technique. Some of his notable works mentioned include Verklarte Nacht and Pierrot Lunaire. Stravinsky also broke from traditional forms with pieces like The Rite of Spring and Petrushka. The document compares their styles and lists some of their major compositions during the Expressionist period.

1. Expressionism

2. Lesson Objectives:
- Identify music movement/styles during 20th
century (Expressionism)
- Listen to the music of Shoenberg and
Stravinsky.
- Compare the music of Shoenberg and
Stravinsky

4. • In the history of music and arts, every period has its own characteristic
style and distinct
• feature which could be in relation to the society from which it originated, as
well as the factor
• or other motivations in composing and/or making music. In the early 20th
century, many
• composers, including Rachmaninoff, Strauss, Puccini, and Elgar,
continued to work in forms
• and in a musical language that derived from the 19th century. However,
modernism in
• music became increasingly prominent and important; among the most
important modernist
• were Scriabin, Debussy, and post-Wagnerian composers such Mahler and
Strauss, who
• experimented with the form, tonality, and orchestration. As well,
Schoenberg was also
• recognized before 1914 as a modernist for his challenges to the uses of
tonality (Botstein,
• 2001).

5. • The term expressionism "was probably first applied to music in
1918, especially to Schoenberg", because like the
painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) he avoided "traditional
forms of beauty" to convey powerful feelings in his
music.[1] Theodor Adorno interprets the expressionist movement
in music as seeking to "eliminate all of traditional music's
conventional elements, everything formulaically rigid". This he
sees as analogous "to the literary ideal of the 'scream' ". As well
Adorno sees expressionist music as seeking "the truthfulness
of subjective feeling without illusions, disguises or euphemisms".
Adorno also describes it as concerned with the unconscious, and
states that "the depiction of fear lies at the centre" of
expressionist music, with dissonance predominating, so that the
"harmonious, affirmative element of art is
banished".[2] Expressionist music would "thus reject the depictive,
sensual qualities that had come to be associated with
impressionist music. It would endeavor instead to realize its own
purely musical nature—in part by disregarding compositional
conventions that placed 'outer' restrictions on the expression of
'inner' visions".

6. Composers of expressionist music

7. Arnold
Shoenberg

8. •Arnold Schoenberg, in full Arnold Franz
Walter Schoenberg, Schoenberg also
spelled Schönberg, (born September 13, 1874,
Vienna, Austria—died July 13, 1951, Los
Angeles, California, U.S.), Austrian-American
composer who created new methods of musical
composition involving atonality,
namely serialism and the 12-tone row. He was
also one of the most-influential teachers of the
20th century; among his most-significant pupils
were Alban Berg and Anton Webern.

9. • 12 tone scale----The chromatic scale (or twelve-tone
scale) is a set of twelve pitches (more
completely, pitch classes) used in tonal music, with
notes separated by the interval of
a semitone. Chromatic instruments, such as
the piano, are made to produce the chromatic scale,
while other instruments capable of continuously
variable pitch, such as the trombone and violin, can
also produce microtones, or notes between those
available on a piano.
• Most music uses subsets of the chromatic scale such
as diatonic scales. While the chromatic scale is
fundamental in western music theory, it is seldom
directly used in its entirety in musical
compositions or improvisation.

11. • Before he was nine years old, Schoenberg had begun
composing little pieces for two violins, which he
played with his teacher or with a cousin. A little later,
when he acquired a viola-playing classmate, he
advanced to the writing of string trios for two violins
and viola. His meeting with Austrian musician and
physician Oskar Adler (later the famed astrologer and
author of The Testament of Astrology) was a decisive
one. Adler encouraged him to learn the cello so that a
group of friends could play string quartets.
Schoenberg promptly began composing quartets,
although he had to wait for the “S” volume of Meyers
Grosses Konversations-Lexikon (an encyclopaedia
that his family was buying on the installment plan) to
find out how to construct the sonata-form first
movement of such works.

12. • A great step forward took place in 1899, when Schoenberg
composed the string sextet Verklärte Nacht (“Transfigured
Night”), a highly romantic piece of program music (unified by a
nonmusical story or image). It was based on a poem of the same
name by Richard Dehmel and was the first piece of program
music written for such an ensemble. Its programmatic nature
and its harmonies outraged conservative program committees.
Consequently, it was not performed until 1903, when it was
violently rejected by the public. Since then it has become one of
Schoenberg’s most-popular compositions, both in its original
form and in Schoenberg’s later versions for string orchestra.

13. • In 1901 Schoenberg moved to Berlin, hoping to better his financial
position. He married Mathilde von Zemlinsky, his friend’s sister, and
began working as musical director at the Überbrettl, an intimate artistic
cabaret. He wrote many songs for that group, among
them, Nachtwandler (“Sleepwalker”) for soprano, piccolo, trumpet,
snare drum, and piano (published 1969). Schoenberg found his position at
Überbrettl insufficiently rewarding, both artistically and materially.
German composer Richard Strauss helped him to get a job
as composition teacher at the Stern Conservatory and used his influence to
secure him the Liszt stipend awarded by the Society for German Music.
With the encouragement of Strauss, Schoenberg composed his
only symphonic poem for large orchestra, Pelleas und Melisande (1902–
03), after the drama by Belgian writer Maurice Maeterlinck. Back in
Vienna in 1903, Schoenberg became acquainted with the Austrian
composer Gustav Mahler, who became one of his strongest supporters.

14. • Schoenberg’s next major work was the String Quartet No. 1 in D
Minor, Op. 7 (1904). The composition’s high density of musical
texture and its unusual form (the conventional four movements
of a “classic” string quartet blended into one vast structure
played without interruption for nearly 50 minutes) caused
difficulties in comprehension at the work’s premiere in 1907. He
used a similar form in the more-concise Chamber Symphony in
E Major (1906), a work novel in its choice of instrumental
ensemble. Turning away from the “monster” post-Romantic
orchestra, Schoenberg wrote for a chamberlike group of 15
instruments.

15. • During those years, Schoenberg’s activity as a teacher became
increasingly important. The young Austrian composers Alban
Berg and Anton Webern began studying with him in 1904; both
gained from him the impetus to their notable careers, and
Schoenberg, in turn, benefitted greatly from
the intellectual stimulation of his loyal disciples. He stated at the
beginning of his Harmonielehre (1911; “Theory of Harmony”), “This
book I have learned from my pupils.” His great gifts as teacher
are manifest in that work as well as in his textbooks—Models for
Beginners in Composition (1942), Structural Functions of
Harmony (1954), Preliminary Exercises in Counterpoint (1963),
and Fundamentals of Musical Composition (1967).

16. Shoenberg
compositions
•Verklarte Nacht, Three piece
for piano, Op.II
•Pierrot Lunaire
•Gurreleider
•Verklarte nacht (transfigured
Night, 1899) one of his
earliest successful pieces
which blends the lyricism,
instrumentation and melodic
beauty of brahms with the
chromaticism and
construction of wagner.

17. Three
Piano
Pieces OP.
11, No. 1

18. Igor Stravinsky

19. •Stravinsky was born in Lomonosov, Russia on June
17, 1882. In his early music, he reflected the
influence of his teacher, the Russian composer
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. But in his first notable
composition, "The Firebird Suite (1910)," his skillful
handling of material and rhythmic inventiveness
went beyond anything written by his Russian
predecessors. His musical style added a new flavor
to his nationalistic musical style. The Rite of Spring
(1913) was another superb work showcasing his new
technique.

20. Acclaimed works by Stravinsky includes:
Ballet
Petrouchka
(1911)
The
Nightingale
(1914)
Three Tales for
Children
(1917)
Pulcinella
(1920)
Duo
Concertant
(1932)
The Rake's
Progress
(1951)

21. •Stravinsky wrote approximately 127 works,
including concerti, orchestral music,
instrumental music, operas, ballets, solo
vocal, and choral music. Concerti or
concerto is a musical composition for a solo
instrument or instruments accompanied by
an orchestra, especially one conceived on a
relatively large scale. He died in New York
City on April 6, 1971.

22. Petrouchka

23. Activity
Time

24. •After listening to
the track, create
an artwork
inspired by
petrouchka using
any contemporary
medium of arts.
Use any paper
available for your
artwork

25. Composers table activity. Fill out the table
below by indicating the name of the artists
and their works during the expressionism
era.

26. Artist Works/Composition
Arnold Shoenberg
Igor Stravinsky

27. •After listeneing to the works of
Shoenberg and Stravinsky, write a
short poem using the compositional
styles of the two prominent
composers during the expressionism
era.

28. Learning Task 2
Compare the two era of music Impressionism and
Expressionism using the guide below.

29. Music styles/era Distinct characteristics

30. Word hunt: encircle the words that are related to
expressionist music in the grid below. the words run
horizontally, vertically, and diagonally

31. S U S A D G E V O L
D I S P T E I C L L
E A A I E R V O O L
R I R A O M N N H U
Y L G N E A B C U H
S C H O E N B E R G
A S H M R A N R I U
T N A R K S S T S H
O A H A O R O I N N
N Y A S G M A N I O
A R U S S I A R A R
L Y H C R E M T N A
X S S D F G H I I A
D I S T O R T E D C