20th Century Music Styles PDF

Music of the 20th Century EXPRESSIONISM  ACTIVITY #6 Listen to the music by Arnold Schoenberg “Verklarte Nacht” and compare the music by Debussy and Ravel. What significant differences and similarities do Debussy and Ravel’s music with that of Schoenberg? EXPRESSIONISM MUSIC ✔...

Music of the 20th Century EXPRESSIONISM  ACTIVITY #6 Listen to the music by Arnold Schoenberg “Verklarte Nacht” and compare the music by Debussy and Ravel. What significant differences and similarities do Debussy and Ravel’s music with that of Schoenberg? EXPRESSIONISM MUSIC ✔EXPRESSIONISM is a term applied to an artistic style that depicts the expression of individual subjective experience, as opposed to objective reality. ✔ Expressionist artists use their art to convey feelings and emotion rather than physical reality. ✔ These feelings can be derived from nature, society, or aesthetics. ✔EXPRESSIONISM presents atonality and the twelve-tone scale revealing composer’s mind, expressing strong emotions, anxiety, rage, and alienation. ✔ It expresses the meaning of emotional experience rather than physical reality. ✔ One of the proponents of expressionism is Arnold Schoenberg. Features of expressionism music are as follows: ✔ a high degree of dissonance (dissonance is the quality of sounds that seems unstable) ✔ extreme contrasts of dynamics (from pianissimo to fortissimo, very soft to very loud) ✔ constant changing of textures ✔ "distorted" melodies and harmonies ✔ angular melodies with wide leaps. COMPOSERS  ARNOLD SCHOENBERG (1874–1951) ✔ Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer born last September 13, 1874, in a working-class of Suburb of Vienna, Austria. ✔ He was famous as the exponent of the twelve-tone system with twelve tones related only to one another also known as the serial technique. ✔ He was influenced by Richard Wagner, a German composer.  ✔ His contribution to music includes atonality, meaning the absence of key evolved from an emphasis on chromatic harmony in the liberal use of the twelve tones in a chromatic scale. ✔ Apart from it, he also includes serialism and Sprechstimme which is a manner of performing a song with half-sung and half-spoken. ARNOLD SCHOENBERG (1874–1951)  ✔ In 1908, he began to write approximately 213 musical compositions include concerte, orchestral music, piano music, opera, choral music, songs, and other instrumental music. ✔ He died last July 13, 195, in Los Angeles, California, USA where he had settled since ARNOLD SCHOENBERG 1934. (1874–1951)  His works include the following: ✔ Verklarte Nacht ✔ Three Pieces for Piano, op. 1 ✔ Pierrot Lunaire, ✔ Gurreleider ✔ Verklarte Nacht (Transfigured Night, ARNOLD SCHOENBERG 1899) (1874–1951)  IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882–1971) ✔Igor Stravinsky was a Russian born composer and conductor who became both and American and a French citizen, he was born last June 17, 1882, in Oraniaenbaum (now Lomonosov) Russia. ✔ His style of music is neoclassical which uses scale, cords, and tone color in a clear and traditional way with frequent changes in meter signature, offbeat syncopation, and displacing regular accent as he utilize. ✔ He adopted the forms of 18th century music with his contemporary style of writing, very structured, precise, controlled, full IGOR STRAVINSKY of artifice, and theatricality despite (1882–1971) its shocking modernity. ✔ In 1939, he went to USA and venture another style of music to experience his passion and wanted to integrate his knowledge in Russian music. ✔ However, he opted and slowly turned back into his nationalistic style of Russian music and cultivate his neoclassical style in which IGOR STRAVINSKY Stravinsky’s work. (1882–1971) The following are the works of Stravinsky: ✔ Firebird (1910) ✔ Petrushka (1911) ✔ The Rite of Spring (1913) ✔ The wedding (1923) ✔ Agon (1957),  Orchestral music like : ✔ Symphonies of wind instruments (1920) ✔ Concerto for pianos and winds (1924) ✔ Dumbarton Oaks Concerto (1938), Symphony in C (1940) ✔ Symphony in 3 movements (1945) ✔ Ebon concerto (1945); IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882–1971)  Choral music like: ✔ Symphony of Psalms (1930) ✔ Canticum Sacrum (1955) ✔ Threni (1958) ✔ Requiem Canticles (1966) IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882–1971)  Operas like: ✔ The Rake’s Progress (1951) ✔ Opera oratorio Oedipus Rex (1927) ✔ Other dramatic works like the Soldier’s Hale (1918). IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882–1971) PRIMITIVISM PRIMITIVISM Is tonal through the stressing of one note as more important than the others. New sounds are synthesized from old ones by juxtaposing two simple events to create a more complex new event. In the purest form, primitivism combines two familiar or simple ideas together creating new sounds. Primitivism has links to Exoticism through the use of materials from other cultures, to Nationalism through the use of materials indigenous to specific countries, and to Ethnicism through the use of materials from European ethnic groups. NEO-CLASSICISM NEO-CLASSISM Neo-classicism music is different from the two movements. This is light, entertaining, cool, and independent of its emotional content. The composition style used by the composer was the seven-note diatonic scale. NEO-CLASSISM This period combines tonal harmonies applying with slight dissonance which has a three- movement format like shifting time signatures, complex but exciting rhythmic patterns, as well as harmonic dissonance that produce harsh chords. The composers of this time in neo-classicism are: Francis Poulenc, Igor Stravinsky, Paul Hindemith, and Sergei Prokofeiff  COMPOSER SERGEI PROKOFIEFF BELA BARTOK (1891-1953) (1881-1945)  SERGEI PROKOFIEFF (1891-1953) ✔ He was born last 1891 in Ukraine. ✔ He combined the movements of music like Neoclassicism, Nationalism, and Avant- Garde composition. ✔ With his progressive technique, pulsating rhythms, melodic directness, and a resolving dissonance he was uniquely recognized.  ✔ In writing symphonies, chamber music, concerte, and solo instrumental music, he became a productive and prolific composer. ✔ He worked and linked with other composers, combined styles of Haydn and Mozart as classicist and Igor Stravinsky as Neo-Classicist also inspired by Beethoven with two highly regarded violin concerte and two SERGEI PROKOFIEFF string quartets. (1891-1953)  ✔ With his desire to write music for the ballet and opera, he was given a chance to contact with Diaghilev and Stravinsky for Romeo and Juliet for ballet, and War and Peace for opera. ✔ He intendedly wrote a light-hearted orchestral work for children to pacify the continuing government restrictions and disciplinary actions at the time of Avant-Garde composers entitled Peter and the Wolf. SERGEI PROKOFIEFF ✔ He died in Moscow on March 15, 1953. (1891-1953)  BELA BARTOK (1881-1945) ✔ Bela Bartok was born last March 25, 1881, in Nagyszentmiklos, Hungary (Romania). ✔ Began lessons with his mother and made folk songs transcription. ✔ He opened the way to new modal kinds of harmony and irregular meter. ✔ He was a Hungarian composer and pianist, created a distinctive musical style using folk music.  ✔ He excelled in instrumental music writing many works for solo piano pieces, six string quartets and other chamber music, three concertos for piano, one for violin and several compositions for orchestras, the reinterpreted, traditional-musical forms like the rondo, fugue, and sonata. ✔ He utilized changing meters and BELA BARTOK strong syncopations in his music (1881-1945) style.  ✔ The six-string quartet is the greatest achievement of his creative life that lasted for full 30 years for their completion. ✔ He combined difficult and dissonant music with mysterious sounds as description of the composition. BELA BARTOK (1881-1945)  ✔ Meanwhile, Mikrokosmos contains a collection of six books as a legacy in music introducing and familiarizing contemporary harmony and rhythm to the piano students technically and progressively. ✔ In 1940, he left Hungary for the United States. ✔ On September 26, 1945, he died of BELA BARTOK leukemia in New York City Hospital. (1881-1945) AVANT- GARDE ✔ This form of music was considered as the vanguard of experimentation or innovation period. ✔ The existing aesthetic and conventional type of music has been put on to criticize, rejecting the status quo in favor of unique or original elements. ✔ Adopting extreme composition within a certain tradition the so-called “Experimental Music”. COMPOSER  GEORGE GERSHWIN 1898-1937 ✔ He was considered as a phenomenal composer, a cross-over artist, and a FATHER OF AMERICAN JAZZ. ✔ Noteworthy of evidence with his numerous songs, serious compositions remain highly popular in the classical repertoire, and with the mixture of the primitive and sophisticated music which lasted long after his death. ✔ He composed 369 musical works, including orchestral music, chamber music, musical theater, film musicals, operas, and songs. ✔ Among the compositions are the following: Rhapsody in Blue (1924), and American in Paris (1928), Porgy and Bess (1934). ✔ He was fascinated with classical music influenced by Ravel, Stravinsky, Berg, and Schoenberg as well as the group of contemporary that shapes the character of his major works like half jazz and half classical known as “Les Six”. ✔ He died last July 11, 1937, in Hollywood, California, USA. GEORGE GERSHWIN  LEONARD BERNSTEIN (1918-1990) ✔ This notable composer was born in Massachusetts, USA, he commended himself as a charismatic conductor, pianist, composer, and lecturer to his many followers. ✔ On November 14, 1943, he was requested to be a substitute for the ailing Bruno Walter in conducting the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in a concert.  ✔ Bernstein’s compositions for the stage are the key that made people acknowledged him. ✔ Among these is the musical West Side Story (1957), an American version of Romeo and Juliet, which displays a tuneful, off-beat, and highly atonal approach to the songs. ✔ Other outputs include another Broadway hit Candide (1956) and the much-celebrated Mass (1971). LEONARD BERNSTEIN (1918-1990)  ✔ His musical compositions total around 90. ✔ He composed the music for the film “On the Waterfront (1954)”. ✔ He was fondly remembered for his television series “Young People’s Concerts” (1958–1973) that demonstrated the sounds of the various orchestral instruments and explained basic music principles to young audiences, as well as his Harvardian Lectures. LEONARD BERNSTEIN ✔ He died on October 14, 1990, in New York (1918-1990) City, USA.  PHILLIP GLASS (1937) ✔ He is one of the Avant-Garde composers who also explored the areas of ballet, opera, theatre, film, and even television jingles. ✔ His style of music was criticized as uneventful and shallow because of its application to new sound yet effective and compelling style. ✔ His distinctive style involves cell-like phrases emanating from bright electronic sounds from the keyboard that progressed very slowly from one pattern to the next in a very repetitious ✔ He was born in New York, USA of Jewish parents, and learned violin and flute at the age of 15. ✔ He was inspired by a renowned Indian satirist Ravi Shankar and assisted the recording soundtrack for Conrad Rooks film Chappaqua. ✔ He formed Philip Glass Ensemble and produced works such as Music in Similar Motion (1969), Music in Changing Paris (1970), which combined rock-type grooves with perpetual patterns played at extreme volumes. PHILLIP GLASS (1937) ✔ He collaborated with theater conceptualist Robert Wilson to produce the four-hour opera Einstein on the Beach (1976), an instant sell-out at the New York Metropolitan Opera House. ✔ He completed the trilogy with the operas Satyagraha (1980) and Akhnaten (1984), based on the lives of Mahatma Gandhi, Leo Tolstoy, Martin Luther King, and an Egyptian Pharoah. ✔ His musical compositions total around 170. PHILLIP GLASS (1937) Activity #7: Looking for Differences Direction: Make a table presenting the differences of each musical movements. Impressionism Expressionism Primitivism Neo-Classicism Avant-Garde Part 2: Avant-Garde Composers Composer’s Musical/ Number of Contribution to Popular Musical Name Composition’s Compositions Music/ Earned Compositions Style Title as (List 2) Musician SHORT QUIZ Directions: ❑ Fill in the missing blanks to complete the sentence. ❑ The music of the 20th century unlocks the difficulty and opens the doors of making composition of several composers. 1. The music of the 20th century comprises musical movement with distinctive styles. These are the _____________, _______________, __________, _____________, and _______________. 2. Most of the impressionist works concentrate on nature and its ,______________,________________,________________. 3. Joseph Maurice Ravel has several works which deal with water in its flowing or stormy ___________ as well as human______________. 4. These two major proponents of Impressionism namely_____________________ and ______________________work sound quite similar in terms of their harmonic. 5. Romeo and Juliet (ballet) and War and Peace (opera) are the works of ____________. 6. Francis Poulenc was one of the members of the Les Six group, among the others are_______________and _____________.  ORAL RECITATION 1. If ever you become a composer? What musical style would you choose? How’s your music impact other people? Would it make other people cry, happy, joy and sorrow? 2. As a student, are you becoming the “music” that you want to be? Is this your own music? Or your trying to become others composition?