Muziek en Literatuur Arne Herman
Introduction
Critical junctions in music history
Modernism: Arnold Schoenberg
Postmodernism: Luciano Berio
Aim: interplay between musical development and broader cultural paradigm
Concert: ‘Symphony of Expectation’
Musical modernism
Artistic climate of the early 20th century:
Turbulent social climate (WWI and WWII)
Collapse of tonality:
All rules are broken (Wagner, Scriabin, …)
Emancipation of the dissonant
what now?
Fanning out in different directions
-isms (impressionism, expressionism, cubism, surrealism, futurism, …)
Arnold Schoenberg
Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)
Decisive step towards atonality
Equivalence of twelve chromatic tones
Evolution, not Revolution
Evolution of his oeuvre
Post-romantic: Verklärte Nacht (1899)
Atonality: Second String Quartet (1908)
Dodecaphony (12-tone-technique): Moses und Aron (1932)
Gurre-lieder (1910)
Cantata for 5 soloists, narrator and orchestra
Story:
Love of King Waldemar for Tove
Queen Helwig kills Tove
Wood Dove has seen it all
Song of the Wood Dove
10th song
Dissonant tonic (Es)
Gurre-lieder (1910)
WHY dissonant tonic?
Trauma-theory
Ineffability of the trauma
No ‘closure’
Collapse of tonality is no random decision
(expressionism)
Erwartung (1909)
Monodrama: opera for 1 singer and orchestra
Psychological exploration of main character (‘a woman’)
Libretto: Marie Pappenheim
Story: a mad woman wanders in the woods
Various stages in her psychological decay
‘stream of (un)consciousness’
Erwartung (1909)
WHY atonality?
Text: loss of emotional control
Expression of the unconscious
Freud, Nietzsche, …
(Bigger picture:
romanticism: irrationalism
modernism: unconsciousness)
Erwartung (1909)
The music:
A-thematic
Stream of unconsciousness
Emancipation of dissonance
Motifs: /014/-motifs
(= pitch class set analysis)
The ending: music ‘evaporates’
‘pantonality’
Saturation of musical space
(cf. Klangfarbenmelodie: Webern)
Luciano Berio
Italian composer Luciano Berio (1925-2003)
Experienced every form of musical modernism
Affinity with radical forms of avant-garde
Post-Webern serialism: radical elaboration of Schoenbergstyle
‘more instinctive than intellectual’
Back to the roots of experience of sound
Musical empiricism
New vocalism
Expressive qualities of voice
< Schoenberg: Sprechgesang
< Varèse: idea of text as sound/noise
Sinfonia (1968)
4/5-movement piece for orchestra and 8 amplified voices
Post-serialism
Post-modernism
Post-structuralism
Idea: meaning is a construction
Musical technique: collage
Quotations of various texts and musical works
Sinfonia (1968)
TEXT
8 soloists sing, whisper, speak and shout
Text: Claude Lévi-Strauss, Samuel Beckett, Mahler, …
Voices provide ‘commentary’: reflection on their own activity of singing
MUSIC
Multiple references
Quotations from: Debussy, Ravel, Mahler, Beethoven, Bach, Stockhausen, …
Framework: Scherzo Mahler 2 (‘Des Antonius von Padua fischpredigt’)
Various layers of meaning
Conclusion
Romanticism:
Looking for story
Stretch means of tonality
Modernism:
Looking for the subconscious
Break open the musical space: atonality or ‘pantonality’
Postmodernism
There is no ‘truth’, only construction of interrelated meanings
Collage and intertextual meanings