Art Appreciation / Music / Lesson 3

Lesson 3: The Modern Period

Introduction

During the 20th century there was a vast increase in the variety of music that people had access to. Prior to the
invention of mass market gramophone records (developed in 1892) and radio broadcasting (first commercially done ca.
1919- 20), people mainly listened to music at live Classical music concerts or musical theater shows, which were too
expensive for many lower - income people; on early phonograph players (a technology invented in 1877 which
was not mass-marketed until the mid-1890s); or by individuals performing music or singing songs on an amateur basis
at home, using sheet music, which required the ability to sing, play, and read music. These were skills that
tended to be limited to middle-class and upper-class individuals. With the mass-market availability of gramophone
records and radio broadcasts, listeners could purchase recordings of, or listen on radio to recordings or live broadcasts
of a huge variety of songs and musical pieces from around the globe. This enabled a much wider range of the
population to listen to performances of Classical music symphonies and operas that they would not be able to hear live,
either due to not being able to afford live-concert tickets or because such music was not performed in their region.

The 20th century saw dramatic innovations in musical forms and styles. Composers and songwriters explored
new forms and sounds that challenged the previously accepted rules of music of earlier periods, such as the use of
altered chords and extended chords in 1940s-era Bebopjazz. The development of powerful, loud guitar amplifiers
and sound reinforcement systems in the 1960s and 1970s permitted bands to hold large concerts where even those
with the least expensive tickets could hear the show. Composers and songwriters experimented with new musical
styles, such as genre fusions (e.g. the late 1960s fusion of jazz and rock music to create jazz fusion). As well, composers
and musicians used new electric, electronic, and digital instruments and musical devices. In the 1980s, some styles of
music, such as electronic dance music genres such as house music were created largely with synthesizers and drum
machines. Faster modes of transportation such as jet flight allowed musicians and fans to travel more widely to perform
or hear shows, which increased the spread of musical styles. Recording technology also provided composers with a
new "instrument": recorded sounds, which could be manipulated in endless ways. Further advances in audio
technology gave rise to electronically-produced sounds. Ultimately, many composers agreed that all sounds, even
"noise", can be considered forms of music.

The Modern Period

The defining feature of modern music (and modern art generally) is the breaking-down of all traditional
aesthete conventions, thereby unleashing complete freedom in all aesthetie dimensions, Including melody, rhythm,
and chord progresslon. The convention of major-minor tonallty (alrosdy heavily strained by Wagner and his sucessors)
was completely abandoned by many composers. Even the very notlon of what constitutes "musie" was redefined. The
development of audio recording technology, along with the ability to quickly and cheaply distribute recordings and
scores, was central to the revolution of modern music. The vast catalog of Western art music became much more
accessible, Moreover, non-Western musle was suddenly open to exploration thus exposing Westen composers to
countless exotie musical ideas.

The modern period artists are:

1. Claude Debussy. Achille-Claude Debussy was born on August 22, 1862 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France, the
oldest of five children. While his family had litle money, Debusay showed an early affinity for the plano, and he
began taking lessons at the age of 7. By age 10 or 11, he had entered the Paris Conservatory, where his
 instructors and fellow students recognized his talent but often found his attempts at musical innovation
strange.

Early Works and Composition

In 1884, when he was just 22 years old, Debussy entered his cantata L'Enfant prodigue (The Prodigal Child) in the
Prix de Rome, a competition for composers. He took home the top prize, which allowed him to study for three years
in the Italian capital, though he returned to Paris after two years. While in Rome, he studied the music of
German composer Richard Wagner, specifically his opera Tristan und Isolde. Wagner's influence on Debussy was
profound and lasting, but despite this, Debussy generally shied away from the ostentation of Wagner's opera in his
own works.

Debussy returned to Paris in 1887 and attended the Paris World Exposition two years later. There he heard a
Javanese gamelan-a mustcal ensemble composed of a variety of bells, gongs, metallophones and xylophones, sometimes
accompanied by vocals-and the subsequent years found Debussy incorporating the elements of the gamelan into
his existing style to produce a wholly new kind of sound.

The music written during this period came to represent the composer's early masterpieces-Artettes oubliées
(1888), Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun; completed in 1892 and first
performed in 1894) and the String Quartet (1893) -which were clearly delineated from the works of his coming
mature period.

Debussy's seminal opera, Pelléas et Mellaande, was completed in 1895 and was a sensation when first performed in
1902, though It deeply divided listeners (audience members and eritics either loved It or hated it). The attention gained
with Pelléas, paired with the success of Prélude in 1892, earned Debussy extensive recognition. Over the following 10
years, he was the leading figure in French musie, writing such lasting works as La Mer (The Sea, 1905) and Ibéria (1908),
both for orchestra, and Images (1905) and Children's Comer Sufte (1908) , both for solo piano.

Around this same time, In 1905, Debussy's Sulte bergamasque was published. The suite is comprised of
four parts- "Prélude," "Menuet," "Clair de lune" (now regarded as one of the composer's best-known pieces) and
"Passepled."

Claude Debussy spent his remaining years writing as a ceritic, composing and performing his own works
internationally, He died of colon cancer on March 25, 1918 when he was just 55 years old, In Paris.

Today, Debussy is remembered as a musical legend, whose uniquely structured compositions have served as
a base for musicians over the past century, and will undoubtedly continue to Inspire musical creation for decades
to come.

2. Arnold Schoenberg. This Austrian-American composer 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.

Arnold Schoenberg was born on September 13, 1874 in Vienna, Austria. Schoenberg was largely self-taught as a
musician. An amateur cellist, he demonstrated from early age a particular aptitude for composition. He
received rudimentary Instruction in harmony and counterpoint from Oskar Adler and studied composition briefly
with Alexander Zemlinsky, his eventual brother-in-law.

The composer's early works bear the unmistakable stamp of high German Romanticism, perhaps nowhere more
evident than in his first Important composition, Verklarte Nacht, Op. 4 (1899). With works Ilke the Five Orchestral
Pieces (1909) and the epochal Pierrot hunaire (1912). Schoenberg embarked upon one of the most influential
phases of his career. Critics reviled this "atonal" (Schoenberg preferred "pantonal") music, whose structure does not
include traditional tonality. Stilt, the high drama and novel expressive means of Schoenberg's music also inspired a
faithful and active following. Most notable among Schoenberg's disciples were Alban Berg and Anton Webern, both of
whom eventually attained stature equal to that of their famous mentor. These three composers the principal figures of
the so-called Second Viennese School — were the central force in the development of atonal and 12-fone music in the
first half of the twentleth century and beyond.

Schoenberg's Suite for Piano (1921-1923) occupies a place of central importance in the composer's catalog as
his first completely 12-tone composition. Though the 12-tone technique represents only a single, and by no means
predominant, aspect of the composer's style, it remains the single characteristic mostly closely associated with his
music. Schoenberg made repeated, though varied, use of the technique across the spectrum of genres, from chamber
works like the String Quartet No. 4 (1936) and the Fantasy for Violin and Piano (1949) to orchestral works like the Violin
Concerto (1935-1936) and the Pliano Concerto (1942), to choral works like A Survivor from Warsaw (1947).

Schoenberg fled the poisonous political atmosphere of Europe in 1933 and spent the remainder of his life primarily
in the United States, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1941. During this phase of his career, he at times returned to
frank tonality, as in the Theme and Variations for band (1943), reaffirming his connection to the great German musical
heritage that extended back to Bach. For Schoenberg, the dissolution of tonality was a logical and inevitable step in the
evolution of Western music. Despite a steady stream of critical brickbats throughout his entire career, the composer,
whose life inspired one of twentieth century's great novels, Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, persisted in his aims,
insisting that his music was the result of an overwhelming creative impulse. Though debate over the man and his music
rages on, Schoenberg is today acknowledged as one of the most significant figures in music history. The
composer, a well-known triskaidekaphobia, died in Los Angeles, on July 13, 1951

3. Maurice Ravel. Maurice Ravel was born on Joseph-Maurice Ravel on March 7, 1875 in Ciboure, France, to a
Basque mother and a Swiss father. In 1889, at the age of 14, Ravel began taking courses at the Paris
Conservatoire, a prestigious music and dance school located in the captial of France, studying under Gabriel
Fauré.

Major Works

Ravel continued to study at the Conservatoire until his early 20s, during which time he composed some of his most
renowned works, including the Pavane pour une infante défunte (Pavane for a Dead Princess; 1899); the Jeux d'eau
(1901), also known as "Fountains" or "Playing Water," a piece that Ravel dedicated to Fauré; the String Quartet (1903),
which is played in F major and follows four movements; the Sonatine (circa 1904), for the solo piano; the Miroirs
(1905); and the Gaspard de la nuit (1908).Ravel's later works include the Le Tombeau de Couperin, a suite composed
circa 1917 for the solo piano, and the orchestral pieces Rapsodie espagnole and Boléro. Possibly the most famous of his
works, Ravel was commissioned by Sergey Diaghilev to create the ballet Daphnis et Chloé, which he completed in
1912. Eight years later, in 1920, he completed La Valse, a piece with varying credits as a ballet and concert work.

Ravel died in Paris, France, on December 28, 1937. Today, he remains widely regarded as France's most popular
composer. He is remembered for once stating, "The only love affair I have ever had was with music"
(www.biography.com)

4. John Cage, John Cage was born on September 5, 1912 in Los Angeles, Cali- fornia. By 1939 he had begun to
experiment with increasingly unorthodox instruments such as the "prepared piano." He also experimented with
tape recorders, record players and radios. His 1943 percussion ensemble con- cert at the Museum of Modern
Art marked the first step in his emergence as a leader of the American musical avant garde.

In 1944, Cage turned to Zen Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies and concluded that all the activities that make
up music must be seen as part of a single natural process. He came to regardall kinds of sounds as potentially musical,
and he encouraged audiences to take note of all sonic phenomena, rather than only those elements selected by a
composer. To this end he cultivated the principle of indeterminism in his music. He used a number of devices to ensure
randomness and thus eliminate any element of personal taste on the part of the performer: unspecified
instruments and numbers of performers, freedom of duration of sounds and entire pieces, inexact notation, and
sequences of events determined by random means such as by consultation with the Chinese Yijing (1 Ching). In his later
works he extended these freedoms over other media, so that a performance of HPSCHD (completed 1969) might include
a light show, slide projections, and costumed performers, as well as the 7 harpsichord soloists and 51 tape machines for
which it was scored.

Among Cage's best-known works are 4'33 "(Four Minutes and Thirty- three Seconds, 1952), a piece in which the
performer or performers remain utterly silent onstage for that amount of time (although the amount of time is left to
the determination of the performer); Imaginary Landscape No. 4 (1951), for 12 randomly tuned radios, 24 performers,
and a conductor; the Sonatas and Interludes (1946-48) for prepared piano; Fontana Mix (1958), a piece based on
a series of programmed transparent cards that, when superimposed, give a graph for the random selection of
electronic sounds; Cheap Imitation (1969), an "impression" of the music of Erik Satie; and Roaratorio (1979), an
electronic composition utilizing thousands of words found in James Joyce's novel Finnegans Wake.

Cage published several books, including Silence: Lectures and Writings (1961) and M: Writings '67 -72 (1973). His
influence extended to such established composers as Earle Brown, Lejaren Hiller, Morton Feldman, and Christian Wolff .
More broadly, his work was recognized as significant in the development of traditions ranging from minimalist and
electronic music to performance art.

5. Phillip Glass Through his operas, his symphonies, his compositions for his own ensemble, and his wide-ranging
collaboration with artists ranging from Twyla Tharp to Allen Ginsberg, Woody Allen to David Bowle, Philp Glass
has had an extraordinary and unprecedented impact upon the musical and intellectual life of his times.
The operas- "Einstein on the Beach," "Satyagraha," "Akhnaten," and "The Voyage," among many others-
play throughout the world's leading houses, and rarely to an empty seat. Glass has written music for
experimental theater and for Academy Award-winning motion pictures such as "The Hours" and Martin
Sconsese's "Kundun," while "Koyaanisqatsi," his initial filmic landscape with Godfruy Reggio and the Philip Glass
Ensemble, may be the most radical and influential mating of sound and vision since "Fantasia." His associations,
personal and professional, with leading rock, pop and world music artists date back to the 1960s, Including the
beginning of his collaborative relationship with artist Robert Wilson. Indeed, Glass is the first composer to win a
wide, multi -generational audience in the opera house, the concert hall, the dance world, in film and in popular
music - simultaneously (philglass.com).
He was born in 1937 and grew up in Baltimore. He studied at the University of Chicago, the
Juilliard School and in Aspen with Darius Milhaud. Finding himself dissatisfied with much of what then passed
for modern music, he moved to Europe, where he studied with the legendary pedagogue Nadia
Boulanger (who also taught Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson and Quincy Jones) and worked closely with sitar
virtuoso and composer Ravi Shankar. He returned to New York in 1967 and formed the Philip GlaNs Ensemble -
seven musicians playing keyboards and a variety of woodwinds, amplified and fed through a mixer.
The new musical style that Glass was evolving was eventually dubbed "minimalism." Glass himself never
liked the term and preferred to speak of himself as a composer of "music with repetitive structures." Much of
his early work was based on the extended reiteration of brief, elegant melodic fragments that wove in
and out of an aural tapestry. Or, to put it another way, It immersed a listener in a sort of sonic weather
that twists, turns, surrounds and develops.
There has been nothing "minimalist" about his output. In the past 25 years, Glass has composed more
than twenty operas, large and small; ten symphonies (with others already on the way); two piano concertos
and concertos for violin, piano, timpani, and saxophone quartet and orchestra; soundtrack to films ranging
from new scores for the stylized classics of Jean Cocteau to Errol Morris's documentary about former
defense secretary Robert McNamara, string quartets; a growing body of work for solo piano and organ,
He has collaborated with Paul Simon, Linda Ronstadt, Yo-Yo Ma, and Doris Lessing, among many others. He
presents lectures, workshops, and solo keyboard performances around the world, and continues to appear
regularly with the Philip Glass Ensemble.