Baroque Music
The Classical Era
The Romantic Era
The Turn of the Century
Atonality
Fountain
Marcel Duchamp, 1917
The Starry Night
Vincent van Gogh, 1889
The Scream
Edvard Munch, 1893
Composition VII
Wassily Kandinsky, 1913
The
th
20
Century
•Expressionism is the tendency of an artist
to distort reality for an emotional effect.
- Reaction against “beautiful art”
- Influenced by WWI
•Expressionistic music was composed by
the Second Viennese School
Arnold Schoenberg
1874-1951
• Self taught in composition
• 1904-Began teaching
– Students: Alban Berg, Anton Webern
• 1908-Wife left him for lover
– Increased dissonance in compositions
• 1933-Forced into exile by Hitler, moved to
US
Arnold Schoenberg
• Compositional Periods:
- Late Romantic, Expressionism (Atonality),
Serialism
• 1908-Abandoned tonality (Atonality)
• Second Quartet
• “Free” Atonality
- Notes are used without regard for their traditional relationships
- No Key = emancipation of dissonance
• Pierrot Lunnaire
– Setting of 21 poems for voice and chamber ensemble
– Sprechstimme- “Spoken voice”
Arnold Schoenberg
• 12-Tone Technique (Serialism):
– All 12 tones are equal
– Basis of composition: “tone row”
• An ordered arrangement of the
twelve notes of the chromatic scale
– Rules for composition:
• The set is a specific ordering of all
twelve notes of the scale.
• No note is repeated within the set
• The set may be stated in any of its "linear aspects"
Anton Webern
1883-1945
• Denounced by Nazi Party
– Referred to him as “degenerate art”
• Very Patriotic, never left Germany
• Accidentally shot by an American
Soldier during Allied occupation.
• Compositions:
– Drastic influence on post-war avant-garde (more
influential than Berg)
– Style
•
•
•
•
Free Atonality/12-tone technique
Very short in duration
Sparse textures
Carefully chosen timbres (detailed instructions) & effects
Anton Webern
1883-1945
•
•
Klangfarbenmelodie-”Tone color melody” breaking up a musical line or
melody out from one instrument to between several instruments.
Style is called “Pointillism” (when the music is sparse, with many rests)
Alban Berg
1885-1935
•Compositions combine all music
from his lifetime
•Violin Concerto – most popular
- 12-tone technique
- Quotations (Bach)
•Wozzeck – The first avant-garde opera
- Atonal, 12-tone, and Tonal
- No Aria or Recit: “through composed”
- Atonality allows subject matter to be truly
represented
Wozzeck
• Characters:
– Wozzeck – a soldier (“poor folk”)
– Marie – Wozzeck’s mistress
• Synopsis
– Act 1 – Wozzeck is tortured by his commanding officer &
a doctor
– Act 2 – Marie admires earrings her lover has given her.
Wozzeck is unsuccessful in confronting them
– Act 3 – Wozzeck murders Marie. When back at the local
tavern, people notice blood on his hands. Wozzeck tries
to hide the knife in a pond, and wash the “blood” off of his
clothes and drowns. The opera closes on a scene with
Wozeck & Marie’s child.