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acroyearIn reply to my FB post about watching the BBC Prom 2010 of Rattle conducting 3 works by Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg from their atonal period (1911-1920), and asking rhetorically again why I love that music, someone replied,
By the late century you had a lot of works that one might not have realized were tone-row (or even serial) based. One of the pieces in Bernstein's West Side Story was a fugue around a tone row. You also had interesting non-musical implications of serial music, with Bernstein in Dybbuk and the 3rd Symphony using tone rows much like Beethoven did in the 9th, to represent being disconnected from the God figure. Around the same time, you have Stravinsky using it the opposite meaning in The Flood and Requiem Canticles, as a representation of God as being something we could not directly connect to (since our ability to "connect" is expressed tonally).
This leads to the modern standards in composition, where the tone row is just a tool in the toolbox, to be used when needed, left alone when not, and probably annoying Boulez and his followers to no end when composers continue to work tonally.
Crazy thing about the Tone Row, is that Schoenberg never thought or intended it to be "entirely counter" to western harmony, but a logical progression, a new constraint to allow for harmony to continue to progress in a way that a composer (and education musicians and conductors) still has control over. By contrast, the works that Rattle presented at the Proms last year are all from 1911 to 1919, before the infamous Waltz, and are free atonal pieces which are MUCH harder to grasp.
I note by your examples a bias, the idea that it has to sound "nice", inherently tonal and acting within the late Romantic tradition (even if tainted with neo-classical oddities), still rooted in triadic chords, in order to be "good". I also note your cut-off point of 1950, after which even Copland was starting to look at serialism in his later works.
In this, we'll have to disagree. There is beauty in a work of art even if it is clashy. One commentator at the Prom described Webern's piece (the Five Orchestral Pieces, 1913) as asking a similar question that Stravinsky asked musically in Le Sacre the very same year: if other works like literature, drama, and painting can be "beautiful" or at least meaningful and worthy of respect and attention while representing or describing violence, why not music?
I also disagree that "it" failed, since there was no "it" that united the 20th century. If by "fail" you mean fail to attract a large mass audience that the Romantic era had before it, I disagree that a mass following is a requirement for success. It is a poor statement of a society that any aspect of its culture is exclusively judged the money it makes.
The 20th Century of music, like everything else (and like the musical century before it) was driven by invention, and the value of an invention is not necessarily the money it makes but whether or not it can spark another idea and another invention. Many aspects did "live" on, be it Schoenberg tone rows, Debussy and Stravinsky's tritone, Stravinsky's polytonality and polyrhythm, Stravinsky's rhythmic motifs, Stravinsky and Bartok's use of vernacular sources, Debussy and Vaughn Williams's return to pre-classical modes, Copland's American syncopation, Debussy and Messiaen's orchestral colors, Boulez's pure serialism, Llutoslowski and Cage's (differing) ideas around "chance" music, Shostokovich's ability to hide a negative meaning deep in the structure of what on the surface is a positive-sounding work, Takemitsu's building of new tonalities (in his post-serial period) around east-asian pentatonic scales overlapping, to Glass's form of minimalism of remaining tonal while still avoiding classic triads.
All of these inventions were inherently successful, as all have inspired other composers to continue to compose and invent for themselves. As much as Shore's Lord of the Rings and Williams's Star Wars are Wagnerian in their motifs, most of what makes it beautiful and dynamic and worthy of our attention (even away from the film) are post-Wagner ideas, like 5/4 rhythms (Holst), syncopated rhythms (Williams uses Copland-esque techniques throughout, though he even uses a rhythm "row" in The Battle of Hoth part 2, mixed in with Stravinsky rhythm motifs).
Your examples also cite another bias: they are *unambiguous*. There's no hiding what's going on or where we are in Appalachian Spring or Lark Ascending.
But that's not really where music went. Music through the 19th century continued on a trend of increasing ambiguity and using that increasing ambiguity, the breaking of the tonal gates, to achieve better expressiveness. Berlioz, Wagner, Debussy, Mahler were breaking down the walls that fenced in music, while Bartok and Sibelius were introducing vernacular styles into the structural expansiveness and freedom that Brahms unwittingly gave us (even as much as he was trying to retain that structure in its pure form - in so holding it in, he let it all out). Schoenberg, like Mahler before, like Stravinsky in parallel, and like Shostakovitch after, revealed that music is and should be seen like the other arts around, as inherently ambiguous, and pure ambiguity on a subject is the ultimate expression.
That you may not like what was being expressed (or at least, what it sounds like) is certainly a personal judgment I can't argue with. I hate most television drama today not because it is bad but because I do not "like" what they are expressing (in an example, I love Dr. Who, but increasingly find Torchwood hard to deal with). But the fact that most people do not like what is being expressed actually suggests that it may be an artistic success rather than a failure.
"Dissonance" was not an experiment; it was inevitable. The experiments and inventions were the techniques of the geniuses of the past century that gave it a place in structure and meaning.
There really are some good (albeit mostly neoclassical) composers in the 20th century - Vaughn-Williams, Thompson, Copeland, Gershwin (that's about one every twenty-five years on average, but none of them worked much after 1950). the fact of the matter is that much 20th century music was "experimental" and like most experiments, it failed. I particularly remember one experimental piece that had breaking glass as the solo "instrument."Needless to say, this got me started...
By the late century you had a lot of works that one might not have realized were tone-row (or even serial) based. One of the pieces in Bernstein's West Side Story was a fugue around a tone row. You also had interesting non-musical implications of serial music, with Bernstein in Dybbuk and the 3rd Symphony using tone rows much like Beethoven did in the 9th, to represent being disconnected from the God figure. Around the same time, you have Stravinsky using it the opposite meaning in The Flood and Requiem Canticles, as a representation of God as being something we could not directly connect to (since our ability to "connect" is expressed tonally).
This leads to the modern standards in composition, where the tone row is just a tool in the toolbox, to be used when needed, left alone when not, and probably annoying Boulez and his followers to no end when composers continue to work tonally.
Crazy thing about the Tone Row, is that Schoenberg never thought or intended it to be "entirely counter" to western harmony, but a logical progression, a new constraint to allow for harmony to continue to progress in a way that a composer (and education musicians and conductors) still has control over. By contrast, the works that Rattle presented at the Proms last year are all from 1911 to 1919, before the infamous Waltz, and are free atonal pieces which are MUCH harder to grasp.
I note by your examples a bias, the idea that it has to sound "nice", inherently tonal and acting within the late Romantic tradition (even if tainted with neo-classical oddities), still rooted in triadic chords, in order to be "good". I also note your cut-off point of 1950, after which even Copland was starting to look at serialism in his later works.
In this, we'll have to disagree. There is beauty in a work of art even if it is clashy. One commentator at the Prom described Webern's piece (the Five Orchestral Pieces, 1913) as asking a similar question that Stravinsky asked musically in Le Sacre the very same year: if other works like literature, drama, and painting can be "beautiful" or at least meaningful and worthy of respect and attention while representing or describing violence, why not music?
I also disagree that "it" failed, since there was no "it" that united the 20th century. If by "fail" you mean fail to attract a large mass audience that the Romantic era had before it, I disagree that a mass following is a requirement for success. It is a poor statement of a society that any aspect of its culture is exclusively judged the money it makes.
The 20th Century of music, like everything else (and like the musical century before it) was driven by invention, and the value of an invention is not necessarily the money it makes but whether or not it can spark another idea and another invention. Many aspects did "live" on, be it Schoenberg tone rows, Debussy and Stravinsky's tritone, Stravinsky's polytonality and polyrhythm, Stravinsky's rhythmic motifs, Stravinsky and Bartok's use of vernacular sources, Debussy and Vaughn Williams's return to pre-classical modes, Copland's American syncopation, Debussy and Messiaen's orchestral colors, Boulez's pure serialism, Llutoslowski and Cage's (differing) ideas around "chance" music, Shostokovich's ability to hide a negative meaning deep in the structure of what on the surface is a positive-sounding work, Takemitsu's building of new tonalities (in his post-serial period) around east-asian pentatonic scales overlapping, to Glass's form of minimalism of remaining tonal while still avoiding classic triads.
All of these inventions were inherently successful, as all have inspired other composers to continue to compose and invent for themselves. As much as Shore's Lord of the Rings and Williams's Star Wars are Wagnerian in their motifs, most of what makes it beautiful and dynamic and worthy of our attention (even away from the film) are post-Wagner ideas, like 5/4 rhythms (Holst), syncopated rhythms (Williams uses Copland-esque techniques throughout, though he even uses a rhythm "row" in The Battle of Hoth part 2, mixed in with Stravinsky rhythm motifs).
Your examples also cite another bias: they are *unambiguous*. There's no hiding what's going on or where we are in Appalachian Spring or Lark Ascending.
But that's not really where music went. Music through the 19th century continued on a trend of increasing ambiguity and using that increasing ambiguity, the breaking of the tonal gates, to achieve better expressiveness. Berlioz, Wagner, Debussy, Mahler were breaking down the walls that fenced in music, while Bartok and Sibelius were introducing vernacular styles into the structural expansiveness and freedom that Brahms unwittingly gave us (even as much as he was trying to retain that structure in its pure form - in so holding it in, he let it all out). Schoenberg, like Mahler before, like Stravinsky in parallel, and like Shostakovitch after, revealed that music is and should be seen like the other arts around, as inherently ambiguous, and pure ambiguity on a subject is the ultimate expression.
That you may not like what was being expressed (or at least, what it sounds like) is certainly a personal judgment I can't argue with. I hate most television drama today not because it is bad but because I do not "like" what they are expressing (in an example, I love Dr. Who, but increasingly find Torchwood hard to deal with). But the fact that most people do not like what is being expressed actually suggests that it may be an artistic success rather than a failure.
"Dissonance" was not an experiment; it was inevitable. The experiments and inventions were the techniques of the geniuses of the past century that gave it a place in structure and meaning.
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no subject
Date: 2011-02-04 11:17 am (UTC)I'm more the traditional Classical through early Romantic. My favorite though is the small section in Classical where Sturm and Drang ruled. I'm quite certain that the afficionados of that timeframe were equally confused and disturbed over that break from the traditional. Yet it laid the foundations for the Romantic Era.
Dissonance does not negate musical worth. I played a piece in college (damned if I can remember the name) where we (as percussionists) shoved over a shelf of dishes and glasses. I've played pieces where an 'instrument' was a vacuum cleaner tube that was swung about over our heads.
I've never studied the 20th century composers. It wasn't for lack of musical worth but rather something I've just not done. That doesn't mean there aren't some fabulous ones. 1981 I believe - Armies of the Omnipresent Otserf. Written by someone in one of the Kansas colleges. Gary Gackstatter - my symphony director from Winfield - wrote a recessional that is part of a march that is recognized as the Kansas state march.
btw - Brahms - not a fan. Love Shostakovich though. Some of the absolute most fun I've had was playing his pieces.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-04 01:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-04 02:54 pm (UTC)That's why I love reading your entries. You have a wealth of knowledge in an era of music in which I'm just not that familiar.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-04 09:44 pm (UTC)Bernstein and Henze in particular took the brunt of this reaction when they continued their tonal practices, and Bernstein's lecture series, particularly the final is as much a defense of his own tonality as it was of Stravinsky who was the core subject of the lecture.
In the 80s, after the continued failure of that music to reach a larger audience, and an incoming generation of music students (and music professors) who simply confessed that they just liked tonal music and to hell with it all (true post-modernism at its finest), there grew an odd silence about the 20th century. Tonal supporters couldn't express their preferences for concern of being chastised (and perhaps lose their chance for tenure) by serialist-loving department heads, but then the department heads couldn't get their tonal supporters to actually encourage an interest in the serialist works.
thus an impasse, and thus for 2 whole generations of college students, the 20th century simply ceased to exist as a topic of discussion unless specifically taking a class on 20th century music history. "appreciation" of the 20th century (learning to recognize the basic techniques of the period much like learning to recognize major/minor, sonata form, etc in the classical era) simply didn't happen.
An entire century of music, music that should be recognized for what it is and for the influences it has on more familiar music (like film scores) simply ceased to exist to anybody not already committed to becoming a composer or conductor. People knew the names, perhaps liked the music they heard, but never had a chance to get any context on it, to figure out *why* they might have liked it (some of us actually care about that question).
no subject
Date: 2011-02-04 10:44 pm (UTC)