Musicology: Early 20th Century Music

BA Music Year 2

Felix Kellaway

Felix Kellaway
Assignment Code - HBAMPF052 Assignment due - 1st June 2010 Musicology - Early 20th Century Music Course / Year BA - Music Year 2 Module Tutor/First Marker - Prof. Graham Hearn

This work was produced as part of Musicology in the Classical Music/Jazz Department, Leeds College of Music.

Musicology: Early 20th Century Music

BA Music Year 2

Felix Kellaway

Summarise the achievements of Stravinsky during the period 1913-45

Much of the music composed in the 20th Century is indebted to that of the previous century. There were many significant movements in the 19th Century that laid the path for the future of Western Music. One was the breakdown of tonality, led mainly by Richard Wagner (1813-1883) and Gustav Mahler (1860-1911). The music written by Wagner and Mahler became increasingly chromatic, almost to the point of obscurity. Extreme tonal ambiguity appeared throughout their works, where the listener does not really know what key the music is in, but occasional tonal pillars and recurring motifs keep the music essentially tonal. Technically speaking, their assumption of highly elaborate harmony which was only loosely connected with the idea of diatonic harmony had signicant implications on 20th Century music (Roseberry 1976, 278). This developed into what is now known as the Second Viennese School, comprising Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) and his illustrious pupils Alban Berg (1885-1935) and Anton Webern (1883-1945). They were to break into atonality and a little later into serialism. The breakdown of tonality applied predominantly to composers based in and around Vienna at the end of the 19th Century. Elsewhere in Europe traditions were unaffected by the wave of German Romanticism that spanned the majority of the 19th Century. In France, modernism took on a different form. Composers such as Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) and Claude Debussy (1862-1918) focused on developing orchestration and enhancing texture and colour within music. Debussy can be found to call on earlier styles, such as 18th Century harpsichord and baroque styles in Pour le Piano. Music of this kind came to be known as neo-classic and as well as national and exotic styles (Pagodas & Golliwogs Cake Walk), both took on great significance for 20th Century music. Debussy undermined tonality and blurred the sense of tonic by using unconventional chord progressions, moving chords stepwise diatonically or chromatically and using chromatic, whole tone and pentatonic scales. In Eastern Europe, a rise of nationalism created a new movement of music. Composers such as Bedrich Smetana (1841-1901) and Antonn Dvok (1841-1904) in Bohemia

Musicology: Early 20th Century Music

BA Music Year 2

Felix Kellaway

and Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) in Scandinavia were writing music that reflected the influence of the traditional music of their nations. This movement made composers conscious of the folk music of their country, which generally consisted of different principles and parameters from the traditional art music of the West. Russia arguably provided the most powerful national school of 19th Century composers; the Big 5, which was made up by Mily Balakirev (1837-1910), Csar Cui (1835-1918), Alexander Borodin (1833-1887) , Nikolai Rimsky - Korsakov (1844-1908) and Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881). Igor Stravinsky was a student of Rimsky - Korsakov in his home city of St Petersburg and so it is unsurprising perhaps, that his earlier works were influenced by the nationalistic works of his teacher. The opening tritonal theme of King Katchei in The Firebird, is an interval that lies at the heart of Rimskyan exotic harmony and is a reference point that can be seen as the start of Stravinskys Russian Period. The Firebird is often noted as being Stravinskys breakthrough piece and it marked the beginning of a fruitful partnership with the impresario, Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929). After the success of The Firebird, Diaghilev commissioned Stravinsky to write another work for Ballet Russes; Petrushka. The emergence of Stravinsky as a modernist, with an individual manner unlike any other, can be dated with some precision to his early work on Petrushka (Walsh 1993, 24). Petrushka broke a lot of traditional boundaries and it has been described as Stravinskys process of self - discovery (Taruskin 1996, 662). This transformation takes the form of a technical confidence and new - found modernism, created largely through the adaptation of previous materials. He makes use of popular Russian folk melodies, hurdy - gurdy tunes and Russian dances. The first reference to recognised folk based music is in the opening tableau with a theme in the lower strings based from the Song of Volochnobiki (Fig 1). For the first time ever, Stravinsky uses polytonality with structural significance. By using the octatonic scale that had played such an important part in the music of his predecessors such as Rimsky - Korsakov and Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915), Stravinsky creates a device that defines the limits within which superimposed polytonalities are employed in Petrushka (Vlad 1967, 7). The clashing of major and minor seconds immediately hooks the listeners ear and creates the chilling musical

Musicology: Early 20th Century Music

BA Music Year 2

Felix Kellaway

soul of Petrushka. The redefinition and development of polytonality is notable in this work and it created an individual sound for Stravinsky. The most popular is the oft quoted Petrushka chord; two superimposed arpeggios separated by a tritone, a C major in root position and the first inversion of an F# chord. This features at the beginning of the second tableau in a passage for two clarinets (Fig 2). The two chords are not tonally homogenous, but the fact that they are both in common with the octatonic scale makes them modally homogenous, hence serving a structural and harmonic function. The clarinet passage becomes a germ cell for the whole work, with subsequent musical material gravitating towards the tonal poles of C and F#. Shifts of harmonic focus feature throughout, such as in the first tableau; a rising flute motif from A - D pin points D as being the focus. An introduction into a second theme, this time in the cellos (based on the Song of Volochnobiki, see Fig 1), suggests a shift from D to G. The harmonic, textural and thematic juxtapositions are perhaps a sign of Stravinskys divide between the influences of his native Russia and the current surroundings that he found himself working amongst in Paris. What is most notably radical about this music is the extent to which the modernity of the material is formed on an appropriation and re-interpretation of the past (Cross 2003, 81). It should be noted that as well as the internal music innovations , the aesthetic outlook that Petrushka implies is an equally significant and if not more striking aspect of the music. In 1911, the vogue ran from impressionistic haziness to the boisterousness of the post - Wagnerian symphony a la Strauss. Against this background, the unleashing of the crude, spiky and incisive sonorities we find in Petrushka was bound to appear startlingly revolutionary (Vlad 1967, 16). A lot of the formal characteristics from Petrushka were developed and intensified by Stravinsky to inform his next commission from the Diaghilev ballet season. The result became the stand - out most important work for the entire 20th Century, which transformed the face of modern music; The Rite of Spring. The ballets subject is the primitive nature of Russian pagan rite in the honour of spring. In order to emulate this, Stravinsky abandoned centuries of artistic renement and as a result created the out and out breakthrough piece of his career. The Rite is the foundation stone upon which his whole career rests. The music has a frenzied and diabolical energy to it, a raw and

Musicology: Early 20th Century Music

BA Music Year 2

Felix Kellaway

visceral edge is present in the music that had never been heard before and which the western world of music has never really recovered from.

The ballet might be better regarded as a celebration of death in the midst of life (Etter 2001,133). The dance of spring is undermined by a primitive glorication of brutality. It is very similar to the canvases of wild beasts being produced in Paris by The Fauve the reason why Stravinskys neo-primitivism is often described as music of the Fauves (Ewen 1968, 789). Simple diatonic phrases set against discordant texture creates a nerve wracking impact. After the introduction in the Auguries of Spring a polychord is pounded out over and over again with an ostinato accompaniment creating tension between two tonal centres. Similarly to the Petrushka chord, two triads a semitone apart are superimposed on top of one another, an E major (written as an F) and and Emajor chord (Fig 3). By reinforcing this polychord incessantly, traditional harmonic function is made obsolete. However the repeated notes pull towards modality. More importantly than this is the rhythmic service that the chord provides, adding percussive colour to the music and serving as a primitive function of the young girl dancing herself to death. The lyrical folk song melodies juxtaposed to the violent rhythms represents nature clashing with the human world. Percussive rhythms are used to primitive effect starting with a steady beat pounded out for a dance ritual, then morphing into displaced accents and syncopated rhythms. It was the rst time for six centuries that rhythm had been so used on a really large scale (Vlad 1963, 33). The opening solo bassoon passage is derived from a Lithuanian folk tune. Long and high in register, it immediately counteracts what the listener had come to expect from a ballet. Following this is a number of short fragmentary phrases played in the woodwind. These Debussyesque meandering musical cells are suggestive of the germination of Spring and of sap roots rising to the surface. What nobody seems to have done before The Rite of Spring was to take dissonant, irregularly formed musical objects of very brief extent and release their latent energy by firing them off at one another like so many like so many particles in an atomic accelerator (Walsh, Stephen p.44). The cohesive element of the work is again, the octatonic scale and the chords derived from them. The appropriation of folk materials into a distinctively modernist context is

Musicology: Early 20th Century Music

BA Music Year 2

Felix Kellaway

innovative. The Rite of Spring tends to question rather than to synthesise the relationship between the past and present. This is a process it shares with Petrushka but develops it in its own way (Cross 2003, 93). The identification of Russian sources as providing a framework for The Rite of Spring, suggests that the music grew out of a tradition and was not a reaction against it. This gave Stravinsky a template which he could work on, radicalise and modernise. The Rite is hardly retrospective. All of the echoes are a reminder that the ballet was written out of and not against a tradition, and that its stylistic innovations relate to and extend that tradition (Taruskin 1996,937). This opened up a lot of possibilities for Stravinsky. He could take inspiration from virtually anything, any piece of scrap material and then add or subtract notes, play around with them, obscure and distort it, much like a cubist version of the original. In 1919, a commission came from Diaghilev for a respectful arrangement of some 18th Century music. This led Stravinsky to playing around with classical European music, and as Pergolesi was out of copyright, Stravinsky thought he could put it to good use. The inspired result was the ballet Pulcinella. This became a turning point in Stravinskys career as well as for the history of 20th Century music. The development for modernism was stripped of any Germanic atonality and serialism, but thrown back to established musical materials. Back to Bach became a slogan for the neo-classic movement. Despite Stravinsky denying the appropriation of the term neoclassical applied to his work, in 1925 he was quoted as saying Back to J.S Bach, whose universal mind and enormous grasp upon musical arts has never been transcended. Pulcinella was the first composition Stravinsky had written that was inspired entirely bv pre - existing material. He left much of the original material untouched such as the soprano and the bass parts and the original tonal idiom was never really threatened. Onto this classically tonal structure, Stravinsky superimposes modern ornaments and orchestral effects, adding devices such as diatonic dissonance's, extended ostinatos, brilliant orchestration and altered phrase lengths (Cross 2003, 111). A good example of this is in the minuet that was adapted from Pergolesis Opera Buffe, Lo Fratre innamorato (Fig 4). A theme is introduced in the horns and a bassoon which is then restated by strings in a chromatic passage. In bar twenty five the whole theme is then stated again in the trombones accompanied by the strings. The first theme and harmonies are strictly Pergolesis but with Stravinskys orchestration. But it is the

Musicology: Early 20th Century Music

BA Music Year 2

Felix Kellaway

second entrance in bar 25 that we can see how Stravinsky has adapted the original by adding inflections of dissonance such as the major 2nds played in the violas subdominant chords and unresolved harmonic appoggiaturas. The squareness of the rhythm is broken up at the re - entrance of the theme in bar 25 and symmetry of metre is disturbed by the accentuated semi - quavers in the strings. The instrumentation is typically Stravinsky whilst keeping a small orchestra and ripieno, true to the baroque style. Stravinsky created a landmark for the neo-classical period. He established a style of music based on existing material but then adapted it for his own particular purpose. Pulcinella was my discovery of the past, the epiphany through which the whole of my late work became possible. Interestingly, almost a decade on in his career, Stravinskys stylistic approach is still fundamentally the same as in both Pulcinella and The Rite of Spring; taking pre - existing diatonic elements and approaching them in an unforeseen and individual manner. A work lying at the heart of the neo-classical movement is the Symphony of Psalms. There is an emotional plane that pervades the work that is reflected in each of the three movements set to a Psalm of David. The three movements are continuous without a break in between and as in the case of the Symphonies of Wind Instruments, the term symphony refers to the context of the instrumental ensemble as a opposed to the classical means of identifying it as representing a particular form. Characteristically, 19th Century traditions are rejected, instead his plans were to create an organic whole without conforming to the various models adopted by custom, but still retaining the periodic order by which the symphony is distinguished from the suite (Stravinsky 1975, 161). Three periodic episodes are intertwined to create one overall dramatic movement, However, the basic structure of the individual movements can be broken up into; Prelude, Double Fugue and Allegro symphonique. Stravinsky said, `It is not a symphony in which I have included Psalms to be sung. On the contrary, it is the singing of the Psalms that I am symphonising. Consequently he does not treat the text in any special way and musically, the vocals are treated like the Orchestra. In Fig 5 we can see that the woodwind accompanies the vocal line and the rising minor 3rd ostinato motif is restated in later movements; the first subject in the 2nd movements Fugue and also in the thematic design of the final movement.

Musicology: Early 20th Century Music

BA Music Year 2

Felix Kellaway

Much of his musical language that was established in his earlier Russian period can be found in the Symphony of Psalms, such as the developed rhythms after the opening of the first movement; shadowing the incessant rhythmic patterns that are so reminiscent of The Rite of Spring. The work represents a neo-classical preference for the key of C; after being developed and expanded, C major is firmly established as being the central tonality of the piece. However bitonality and polytonality prevent there from being a single tonality, and they feature frequently throughout the work; such as bb 71 - 83 of the 2nd movement and the combination of separate instrumental parts in bb 11 - 13 of the 1st movement, respectively. By adding principles of modern technique, he makes a transition from one - dimensional traditional forms into a multi - dimensional structure. Stravinsky was somewhat of a magpie, a composer who put on one stylistic mask after another. He abandoned his neo-classical style in 1951 after he had written the Rakes Progress. Perhaps feeling that he couldnt surpass the accomplishment that he had made in Rakes Progress, his compositions primarily used serial procedures up until his death in 1971. Many critics have seen Stravinsky as being the harbinger of musical postmodernism (Cross 2003, 134). The origins of the post modern both in music and across the arts, is often traced back to the use of pastiche in Stravinskys neo-classical works. His eleven ballets, of which Petrushka and the Rite of Spring are often the most noted, create a body of work that stand up with Beethoven symphonies, Mozarts operas and Monteverdis madrigals as being a unique set of masterpieces that stand out in the history of western music. Salient in each one of those ballets, is something that had been missing in art music for centuries; the bringing of rhythm to the forefront instead of it being a background function. His musical language was raw, upsetting and cutting which brought the pieces alive. After 1945, it was impossible to ignore what Stravinsky had achieved. He had made an indelible mark upon western music.

Musicology: Early 20th Century Music

BA Music Year 2

Felix Kellaway

Musicology: Early 20th Century Music

BA Music Year 2

Felix Kellaway

Fig 1 Petrushka, first tableau

Fig 2 Petrushka, second tableau

Musicology: Early 20th Century Music

BA Music Year 2

Felix Kellaway

Fig 3 Rite of Spring, Auguries of Spring

Fig 4 Pulcinella, Menuetto

Musicology: Early 20th Century Music

BA Music Year 2

Felix Kellaway

Fig 4 (continued)

Musicology: Early 20th Century Music

BA Music Year 2

Felix Kellaway

Fig 5 - Symphony of Psalms, 1st Movement

Musicology: Early 20th Century Music

BA Music Year 2

Felix Kellaway

Bibliography
Craft, Robert (1972): Stravinsky: Chonicle of a Friendship. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. Cross, J (2003): The Cambridge Companion to Stravinsky. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Etter, Brian K (2001): From Classicism to Modernism. Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot. Ewen, David (1968): The World of Twentieth Century Music. Mackays, Chatham PLC. Kirkby, F.E (1970): An Introduction to Western Music. Collier - Macmillan Ltd, London. Mellers, W (1988): Romanticism & the 20th Century. Barrie & Jenkins Ltd, London.

Roseberry, Eric (1976): Of German Music. Oswald Wolff Ltd, London. Stravinsky, Igor (1975): Autobiography. Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd. (1962): Expositions and Developments. Faber Faber, London (1942): Poetics in Music. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

Taruskin, Richard (1996): Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions: a Biography of the Works Through Mavra. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Vlad, R (1967): Stravinsky. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Walsh, Stephen (1993): The Music Of Stravinsky. Oxford University Press, Oxford.