15.nationalmonuments
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NATIONAL MONUMENTSENGLAND, SPAIN, HUNGARY, POLAND, RUSSIA , AMERICA….IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY !MUSC 3229 SPRING 2014 —TEXT PP. 854-888
WORLD EVENTS & COMPOSER DATESLeoš Janáček (Czech; 1854–1928)
Edward Elgar (England; 1857–1934)
Jean Sibelius (Finland; 1865-1957)
Ralph Vaughan Williams (England, 1872–1958)
Alexander Scriabin (Russian, 1872–1915)
Charles Ives (1874-1954)
Manuel de Falla (Spain, 1876–1946)
George Enescu (Poland, 1881–1955)
Béla Bartók (Hungary, 1881–1945)
Zoltán Kodály (Hungary, 1882–1967)
Karol Szymanowski (Poland, 1882–1937)
SIBELIUS
• Jean Sibelius (1865–1957)
• Finnish composer
• Influence: Edward Grieg (1843-1907), Norwegian composer
• Kalevala (Land of Heroes): Finish founding literary epic
• Kullervo, Op. 7 (1891)
SIBELIUS
• Four Legends from the Kalevala, Op. 22 (1893–95) • The Swan of Tuonela
• Plot: Young hero descends to the isle of the dead (Tuonela) to kill the swan that floats on the river separating the dead from the living…
• Seven Symphonies
Böcklin, Isle of the Dead
ENGLAND• Hubert Parry (1848–1918)
• Charles Villiers Stanford (1854–1924)
• Edward Elgar (1857–1934) • Variations on an Original Theme “Enigma
Variations”, Op. 36, 1899 The work features 14 people and a dog. Variation 1 is a loving
portrayal of Elgar’s wife; Variation 2 is a pianist with whom Elgar played chamber music. The music is a satire on his friend’s keyboard dexterity.
Variation 9—Nimrod—is about August Johannes Jaeger, who was an influential friend and confidant of Elgar. Allegedly captures a conversation between them on Beethoven’s slow movements. • The Dream of Gerontius (1900; oratorio)
Nimrod
ELGAR
ENGLAND
• Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) • Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas
Tallis (1910) • A Sea Symphony (1903–09) • A London Symphony (1911–13) • A Pastoral Symphony (1922)
• The musician should “be the servant of the state and build national monuments like the painter, the writer, or the architect”
SPAIN• Manuel de Falla (1876–1946)
• La vida breve (1905) • cante jondo (deep song)
• El Sombrero de Tres Picos (1919) • produced by Diaghilev, London;
sets/costumes by Picasso • zarzuela
• Nights in the Gardens of Spain (1909–16)
Three Cornered Hat final dance (jota)
FOLK AND MODERNIST SYNTHESIS
• Béla Bartók (1881–1945)
• pianist, ethnomusicologist
• Early composition influence of Richard Strauss; career influence of Franz Liszt; • Kossuth (1903)
FOLK AND MODERNIST SYNTHESIS
• Zoltán Kodály (1882–1967)
• Style hongrois
• Hungarian style; music of the Roma (gypsy music)
• Magyar nóta – sung Hungarian-style tunes
• Verbunkos – Hungarian-style instrumental dance music
• GypsyFiddle,2010
BARTOK’S FOLK WAYS
• “Peasant music” and “modern music”
• see text, pp. 864-865
• “A third way”:: abstract conception of folk style.
• 14 Bagatelles for piano, Op. 6 (1908) • Bagatelle Nos. 2, 4 (in anthology) • axis of symmetry [#4]; influence of Debussy (non-
functional 7th, 9th chords [#2]
BARTOK’S FOLK WAYS • Dance Suite (1923)
• Premiere: “My Dance Suite was so badly performed that it could not achieve any significant success,” Bartók wrote. “In spite of its simplicity there are a few difficult places, and our Philharmonic musicians were not sufficiently adult for them. Rehearsal time was, as usual, much too short, so the performance sounded like a sight-reading, and a poor one at that.”
• The five-part suite, in which all the tunes are Bartók’s own inventions rather than actual folk melodies, prominently — but not exclusively — employs Hungarian rhythms (2/4 and 4/4 abound). The five movements, played without pause, are bound together by a lyrical ritornello.
• Mmt 1: Arabic/Hungarian; Mmt 2: Hungarian; Mmt 3: Hungarian/Romanian (fiddle); Mmt 4: Night Music
SZYMANOWSKI AND ENESCU POLAND
• Karol Szymanowski (1882–1937)
• Piano Etudes, op. 33 (1916) • First Violin Concerto (1916) • Third Symphony (1914–16) • Krol Roger (1920–24) • Stabat Mater (1925–26)
Szymanowski Etudes, op. 33
SZYMANOWSKI AND ENESCU POLAND• George Enescu (1881–1955)
• Family estate in Ukraine • Oedipe (1936) • Romanian Rhapsodies, Op. 11
Romanian Dances Sergiu Celibidache
Bucharest 'George Enescu' Philharmonic Orchestra,
THE OLDEST MODERNIST: LEOŠ JANÁČEK
• Leoš Janáček (1854–1928)
• modernist & maximalist at a singularly advanced age
• Like Ives, did not seek to generalize composition methods into technique
• categorized as folklorist, but late technique focused on human speech
• wrote prose operas; his own librettos last works intended for popular appeal (as opposed to Schoenberg)
Czech Republic ca.1870
THE OLDEST MODERNIST: LEOŠ JANÁČEK: WORKS
• Jenufa (1895-1903); First heard in Prague 1916; US premiere, 1924; success owing to plot as much as folk-derived music: 3rd act shows the martyrdom of Jenufa marrying the man who slashed her, as well as a “novelty vehicle” for soprano Maria Jeritza, who was born in Brno and became a star in Vienna and at the Met.
• Five additional operas including Cunning Little Vixen (1923), Makropoulos affair (1925), From the House of the Dead (1928).
• Slavonic Liturgy, Glagolská mše (1926)
• Song cycle, Zápisník zmizelého
• Orchestral work, Sinfonietta
SPEECH-TUNELETS
• Influence of folk music and speech patterns and intonation
• “Speech melodies”
• Po zarostlém chodničku (On an Overgrown Path) —“A Blown Away Leaf”- (1901-2) (in anthology)
• instrumental study in unstressed syllables; 2/4 to 5/8….see end of piece
• Piano cycle
SCRIABIN: FROM EXPRESSION TO REVELATION
• Alexander Scriabin (1872–1915)
• Theosophy • Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–91)
sketch for Scriabin’s color organ— synesthesia
SCRIABIN: FROM EXPRESSION TO REVELATION
• The idea of art as world transformation is the essential Wagnerian ideal. Scriabin is the single Russian composer to accept from Wagner the Orphic mission
• Fifth Symphony, Op. 60 Prométhée, le poème de feu (Prometheus, the Poem of Fire, 1908–10) • “mystic chord”:: chord of the plemora :: Prometheus
chord :: octatonic (C/F#) :: 6-34 (0,1,3,5,7,9)
• Vers la flamme Op. 72 (Towards the Flame, 1914)
Mystic chord
MYSTERIUM AND THE ULTIMATE AGGREGATE HARMONIES• Unfinished work: to have brought the Wagnerian concept of
Gesamtkunstwerk to it unsurpassable maximum: the opus ultimum of all time.
• Indended to last 7days/nights…no spectators, only participants…performed 1X only in India…would bring human history to an end
• Communal creation, combination of all artistic media
• Aggregate harmonies: “ultimate” chords each containing all twelve pitches
Prelude, Op 74 No. 1
CHARLES IVES (1874–1954)
!
• Transcendentalism: 1830s-50s, Concord MA
• By trusting your instinct you gain access to God’s wisdom. • Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) • Henry David Thoreau (1817–62)
• “Self-reliance”: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds….”
• Walden (1854) • Luise May Alcott: Little Women (1868)
CHARLES IVES (1874–1954)
Periods of Ives’ life:
(1) youthful normalcy;
(2) creative vigor in music/business;
(3) decline amidst growing fame;
(4) posthumous reception, turning Ives “at the cost of considerable distortion into a modernist giant”
CHARLES IVES (1874–1954)• Born in Danbury, Connecticut
• Church organist
• Studied at Yale with Horatio Parker (1863–1919) • The Celestial Country (1902)
• Fallout from the premiere… • Last pubic performance of Ives for 20 years.
• Ives takes a job at Mutual Insurance Co; starts own firm, 1906.
• Although the very model of a musical maximalist, he cannot really be called a modernist
• His use of dissonance not driven by ideal of evolutionary stylistic progress
• “Substance determines manner”
TERMS OF RECEPTION• 1918: heart attack, last compositions (almost) in 1921.
• 1920: Privately published Second Piano Sonata Concord, Mass., 1840–60 and Essays before a Sonata (which connects Ive’s music to the Trancendentalists) • First public performance 1939, John Kirkpatrick • Lawrence Gilman: “greatest music composed by
an American”—most influential review in the annals of American criticism. Ives as Modernist.
• 1922: Privately published 114 Songs
• Other works published in Cowell’s New Music Quarterly
“MANNER” AND “SUBSTANCE”: THE CONCORD SONATA
• Second Piano Sonata, Concord, Mass., 1840–60 1. Emerson • 2. Hawthorne • 3. The Alcotts • 4. Thoreau
!
• Motive from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony • Other quotations: Protestant gyms, “Jesus,
Lover of My Soul” and “Ye Christian Heralds”
NOSTALGIA
• Three Places in New England (1931; pub. 1935)
• Premiered by Nicolas Slominsky (1894-1995) • II. “Putman’s Camp” —see text, pg. 882, for
Ives’ program note. • “scherzoids”—Ives’ wildly humorous scherzos;
depicting Ive’s idealized, fictionalized boyhood—unModernist; “agrarian myth”
• allusions to popular American tunes