MUHL 320 FINAL EXAM STUDY GUIDE

Strauss, Salome end of Scene 4: “Ah! Ich habe deinen Mund gekusst”
Oboe start and do a call, mass of sound in the background,
Debussy, Nuages
Orchestra, similar firebird suite
Ravel, Menuet from Le tombeau de Couperin
Start with an oboe solo, pretty tonal, beauty
Milhaud, La création du monde
Jazz, percussion
Schoenberg, Pierrot lunaire
Clarinet, german singer and piano, atonal.
Berg, Wozzeck (excerpts)

Webern, Symphony, Op. 21, 1st movement

Horn start, a lot effects, dynamics, pizz
Stravinsky, Rite of Spring (excerpts)

Bartok, Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta III mov.

Terms:
Developing variation: a continuous development of a germinal idea like diminution, woven ideas,
change the value of the notes. Motives of variations and combination in order to create something new

Second Viennese School: a group of composers – Alban Berg, Anton Webern & Arnold
Schoenberg – and was important because determined to continue the German classical tradition while
striking to a new directions

Pointillism: Is a technique of painting which small, distinct of color are applied in patterns to form
an imageConstantly changing instrumental timbre, Texture “pointillistic” - only 1-4 successive notes on
any instrument

Symbolism: A representation of ideas or qualities through symbols

Modernism: Refers to a global movement in society and culture that from early decades of the XX c.
sought a new alignment with the experience and values of modern industrial life

Fin-de-siècle: End of the century and refers to the last years of the XIX century and is associated with
the decline after La Belle Epoque at the end of that century.

Neo-classicism: A period where the composers sought to return to aesthetic precepts associated wit the
broadly defined concept of “classicism”, namely order, balance, clarify, economy and emotional restraint. It
was emphasized on rhythm and on contrapuntal texture, an expanded tonal harmony, and a concentration
on absolute music as opposed to Romantic program music.
Expressionism: They wanted to represent inner experience, to explore the hidden wolrd of the psyche,
and to render visible stressful, emotional life of the modern person, Linked with Freud. Ber and
Schoenberg two leading exponents of expressionism in adpting similarly desperate and
revolutionary style

Atonality: A chord succession that is not linked to consonance and dissonance harmony rules,, so that
any combination of tones could serve as a stable chord that did not require resolution.

12-tone method: method of composing with twelve tones that are related only to one another. The basis is
called a two, or series which consists of the twelve pitches-classes arranged in an order chosen by the
composer and producing a particular sequence of intervals.

Neotonality: Is an inclusive term referring to musical compositions of the XX c. in which tonality of the
common practice period like functional harmony is replaced by one or several nontraditional conceptions,
suc as tonal assertation or contrapuntal motion around a central chord

1) Which composers were modernists in which ways?

• Embracing traditions + creating new, innovative works OR Complete break with musical language
of the past

• Which composers were modernists, in which ways?

o How is Debussy’s modernism different from Schoenberg’s modernism?

Debussy works a lot of symbolism in his music and create musical images through motives, harmony and
scales, instrumental timbers. He uses more elements than music to create his speech // Schoenberg works
in 12-tone method 2nd Viennese school and tradition , serialism, Three method to make coherence in atonal
music: developing variation, the integration of harmony and melody, and chromatic saturation and gestures
from tonal music, forging links to tradition and making his music more easy to follow

o How is either Debussy’s or Schoenberg’s modernism different from that of Stravinsky or

Bartok?

Stravinksy, began his musical career as a Russian nationalist and became a cosmopolitan composer. He
created an individual voice by developing several distinctive trademarks, most derived from Russian
traditions: undermining meter through unpredictable accents and rests or through frequent changes of
meter: pervasive ostinatos: layering and juxtaposition of static blocks of sounds; discontinuity and
interrumption; dissonance based on diatonic octatonic and other collections of notes elements of Russian
music became part of a common international modernist practice // Bartok Foun elements also in their own
national music that allowed them to create distinctive voice while continuing the classical tradition. He
synthesize elements of the Hungarian. Romanian. Slovak and Bulgarain peasant music with elements of the
Austro – German and French classical tradition.. He was the first people to be envoled into the
ethnomusicology. Traditional music often has something in common like pitch center, use diatonic or other
scales, and feature melodies built from motives that are repeated and varied, from the classical he retairned
certain contrapuntual and formal procedures, such as fugue and sonata form. From the peasant tradition he
drew rhythmic complexity and irregular meters, common special in Bulgaryan music; modal scales and
mixed modes, and specific types of melodic structure and ornamentation.

 What works of these composers can be compared and contrasted?

Bartok = Mikrokosmos / Stravinsky = Rite of Springs / Schoenberg = Pierre Lunaire OR Piano Suite
Op.25 / Debussy = Nuages
 What specific elements of each composition can be compared and contrasted?
Mikrokosmos Inversion and invertible counterpoint, tonal structure reminiscent of Bach, Shape of the
melody adapts the structure of many Hungarian songs,built short phrases // Rite of Springs Borrowed folk
melodies, while the scenario and music are marked by primitivism, accents of Russian folk
characteristics // Pierre Lunaire expressionist work that incorporates some of these devices combined
with return a reutn to a more traditional use of motives, themes, and long range repetirion, a cycle of 21
songs drawn from a larger poetic cycle by the Belgian Symbolist poet. // Nuages
2) What aspects of Richard Strauss’s music, and which of his compositions, influenced later
Expressionist composers?

3) Second Viennese School: Schoenberg, Berg, Webern

a. How is either atonality or the 12-tone method different from tonality?

12-tone music is serial, (can be analysed as such) atonal non-12-tone is not and may follow conventional
composing techniques - the Rite of Spring for example or any of Sculthorpe's Sun Musics (which I'd regard
as atonal and impressionist). 12-tone (serial) music derives from strictly limited thematic material, it's
pieces, episodes, movements will usually be short (as usual you'll find exceptions). Webern yields the best
examples of these. Atonal music is usually more extended by use of more varied thematic material or
related devices - rhythms, for instance. The nature of 12-tone serial music precludes easily expressing
emotions. Non-serial atonal composers can use developmental devices of conventional diatonic music to
manipulate emotions or impressions. Atonal music can pass through diatonic moments and usually has a
"tonal centre" whether the composer wants it or not. Serial does not

12-tone method it was required to play all the 12 notes with no repetition
b. Be able to list specific differences in the compositional styles of Schoenberg, Berg, and
Webern
Schoenberg:

Berg:

Webern:

4) What are the distinctive characteristics of Stravinsky’s style as exemplified in Le Sacre du

printemps?

5) What are the distinctive characteristics of Bartok’s style as exemplified in Music for Strings,
Percussion and Celesta?
a. Modernist composer: incorporated classical traditions and national folk music
i. Hungarian, Slovak, Romanian and Bulgarian peasant music + Austro-German and
French Classical techniques
b. Ethnomusicologist: collected and published 2000+ folksongs and dance tunes
c. Virtuoso pianist, performed all across Europe
d. Edited works of Bach, Scarlatti, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven
Synthesis of musical styles
o Classical tradition:
o Contrapuntal techniques
o Classical forms: sonata form, fugue
o Peasant music:
o Rhythmic complexity, irregular meters
o Modal scales
o Specific melodic ornamentation
o Both traditions:
o Single pitch center
o Melodies built from repeated motives, varied

Essay (25 points):

In your own words, compare and contrast the different approaches to modernism, as exemplified in the
music of two of the following composers:
Claude Debussy
Arnold Schoenberg
Igor Stravinsky
Béla Bartók
Giving specific examples in reference to the compositions from the course listening, discuss elements in at
least one composition by each composer.

Wagner influence

Overall sound:
 Large orchestra
 More use of brass
 Orchestra = predominant of opera

Melody:
 “Continuous melody” with no stops between numbers in opera
 Use of leimotives - introduced by voices, developed in the orchestra

Harmony:
 Much greater use of chromaticism in small-scale sonorities and long-range harmonic sche,e
 Less reliance on tonal basis, key-based structure
 Delayed resolutioons: “yearning” harmonics passagges
Form:
 Expanded length works – in opera, choral works, mixed genres

Controversies: Music of the future

Wagner’s essay art-work of the Future is name taken by RW supporters

Big question: Should music be “absolute” and traditional OR should be “programmatic” music that has
a definable content that is enhanced by or are expansions words)

Austro-German tradition

Many composers fell under Wagner’s influence …

Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

 Modernist composer: tradition + innovation through individual style

 Reputation built as both conductor and composer
 Strauss wrote tone poem after hearing Wagner’s operas, also influenced by Berlioz an Liszt
o Orchestra colors
o Thematic transformation
o Expanded harmonic language
o Type of programs: literature, personal experience/autobiography
 Tone poems included
o Don Juan
o Don Quixote
o Ein Heldenleben
o Eine Alpensifonie

Strauss Don Quixote, Op 35 (1897)

 Fantastic variations for large orchestra

 Dramatization of Cervantes novel
 Variation form:
o Variation depict the personalities of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza – themes are
transformed
o Asocciated to specific instruments:
 DQ: Cello
 SP: Viola, Bass clarinet, tenor tuba
o Solo instruemnts + variations form = hybrid genre
 Elements of a concerto, including thematic variations

22th November
Claude Debussy (1862 – 1918)

- Leading modern in fin-de-siècle France

- Known for “impressionist” music, but Debussy identified with Symbolist movement (poetry and
theathre):
o Mood evoked through indirect suggestion
o Normal syntax (here, melodic phrasing) is interrupted:
 Poetry: meaning in the text is not straightforward, must be iferred
 Music: common-practice chord progressions are avoided
 Aesthetic: each moment is more important than a directional drive toward
resolution
 Imagery = repeated motives, delicate instrumental trimbres, non-Western scales
(Whole Tone, pentatonic, octatonic)
Debussy’s major works include:
- 2operas
o Pellèas er Mèlisande
o La chute de la maison Usher
- Ballet and incidental music
- + 90 songs
- Orchestral workds
o Prelde à l’apr+es-midi d’un faune
o Nocturnes 1899
o La mer
o Images
Debussy, “Nauges” 1st movement of Noctunrnes (1897 – 1899)
- Noctunes = set of three symphonic poems (motivically related, but not neccesarily performed
together as a cycle)
- Nocturnes presents three images of Nature:
I. Nuages (Vlouds): Debussy called this “a study in gray”
II. Fetes (festivals): the play of lights in the atmosphere
III. Sirènes (mythological Sirens): rhytms of the sea; includes wordless women’s voice
- Inspired by series of paintings by James McNeil Whistler (1834 – 1903)

Nuages as “study gray”

1. Obscured tonality: English horn motive built on the octatonic scale
2. Octatonic scale: alternating WT, ST
1. Such as C-C#-D#-E-F#-G-A-A#
3. Chords used as color, rather than tonal or harmonic function; chord planing
4. Blurred rhythms: English horn motive in 4/4; rest of orchestra in 6/4; downbeat obscured
5. Muted strings (soft dynamics throughout)
6. Constant change, but no directional evolution.
7. Modified A B A’ form:
1. A section, mm. 1-63: Lack of harmonic direction = imagery of slow-moving
clouds.
2. B section, mm. 64-79: influence of gamelan orchestra.
A’ section, mm. 80-102: fragmented = scattering of clouds

25th November

Ravel

 Often grouped with Debussy as “impressionist,” but resented the association

 Ravel’s distinctive style is characterized by:
o Consummate craftsmanship
o Traditional forms
o Diatonic melodies
o Complex harmonies within an essentially tonal

 Neo Classic

 Ravel’s works can be grouped into stylistic categories, including

 Exotic:
o Scherezade (1903), coide and orchestra
o Rapsodie espagnole (1907-1908), originally fro orchesra (unusual for Ravel)
o L’heure espagnole (1907), one-act comic opera
o Hansons madécasses (1926), song cycle, texts of Madagascar
o Boléro (1928), ballet, Ravel’s most popular work

 Jazz influenced works:

o Sonata for violin and piano (1927) 2nd movement “Blues”
o Piano concerto for the left hand

 Neo-classical works: forms form the past with new sounds

o Menuet antique (1895), piano/transcribed for orchestra
o Pavane our une infante défunte (1899), piano/transcribed for orchestra
o Valses noble et sentimentales (1911), piano waltezes after Schubert/transcribed for
orchestra
o Le tombeau de Couperin (18917), 6-movement suite for piano
o La valse (1920) poéme choréographique (ballet); transcribed for piano and 2 pianos

Ravel, Le tombeau de Couperin “Menuet” (1914-1917)

 Homage to Baroque donce suites of Francois COuperin (1631-1708)

o Prelude + dance movements
o Ravel: Forlane, Rigaudon

Form: Minuet + Trio, polytonality,

 Minuet fhythm
 Minuet form
 Melodic style and ornamentatin in style of Couperin
 4-measure phrases (sometimes
 V – I cadences in the minuet section

New:
 Dissonance, including 7th and 9th chords

Le SIx

 Groupe widened between modernist music and usidences’ ability to understand it

SOlutions:
 Music for film, dance, theater
 More accesible concert works
 Music performable by amateurs, in modernist style
 Music to engage social and political issues

French music in the interwar years

Young composers influenced by Erik Satie (1866-1925) seeking to write French music: free of foreign
German) influence:
 Named ‘Le sic’ by a journalist in parallel to RUssian Mighty Handful
 Artificial groping – some collaborations, but each wrote in highly individual styles:
o Artur Honegger
o Darius Milhaud
o Francis Poulen
o Germaine Tailaferre
o Georges Auric
o Lousi Durey

Darius Milhaud (1892-1974)

 Achieved success independent of Les Six

Milhaud, First tableau, La creation du monde. Op, 81a (1923)

 Jazz influence: tours of U.S (including Harlem)

o Orchestration = European orchestra + band
o Ragtime textures (piano and bass drum against notated meter
o Themes used Blues scale
 Neo-classicism: Blues fugue
 Modernism: polytonality

2nd December
Radical Modernism:
Schoenberg, Webern and Berg

Young composers breaking radically from musical language of the past:

 Challenged audience perceptions and capacity to listen
 Sought to provide a completely no-traditional musical experience.
 Critical of mass culture and ‘easily digestible’ art
 Radical re-working of past musical techniques
 Intent: to compose music of high quality, serious art music
 Music of lasting value: rewarded performers, listeners through multiple hearings and study
Expresionism
 Artist no longer held up beauty as the ideal
 Demanded interpretation, deeper engagement by viewer.
 Kandinsky

Arnold Schoenberg (1874 – 1951)

 Iconic among 20c composers
o Mature music is complex, intellectual, dissonant
o Moved the German classical tradition towed atonality and beyond
o Atonality: music that avoids tonal centers
Schoenberg:
 Early works: tonal music in the late Romantic style
o Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night). 1899
o String Quartet No. 1 in D minor
 Later, developed the 12 tone compositional method: systematic ordering of the twelve notes of the
chromatic scale
 After 1908: composed works that avoided any one pitch as tonal center
o Schoenberg preferred “pantonality” to atonality
o “Emancipation of the dissonance” = no need to resolve to consonance
o Any combination of tones could be stable, not require harmonic resolution

Schoenberg, Pierrot lunaire, No. 8 ‘Nacht’ (night)

 Pierrot sees giant black moths = gloomy world

 Developing variation technique:
o Basic motive = 3 – note figure: rising m3 then descending M3
o Reappears constantly, often overlapping itself =
 See clarinet, cello, piano mm 4-7 at beginning
o Motive recurs, is varied 10 more times
 Inversion, retrograde and canon

 “Passacaglia” (set of variations over 3-note pattern)

 End: original complex of overlapping motives repeats at pitch

o Structure not from harmony, but from compositional technique

Schoember, pierrot lunaire, No. 13 “Enthauptung” (beheading)

Pierrot imagines that he is beheaded by a moonbeam for his crimes.

First 5 mm represent the sword (scimitar) with descending 16ths
 Bass clarinet and viola double on successive WT scales
 Next 10mm, represent the moonlit night, Pierrot running from moonbeams

Twelve-tone method
 Problem: formal/harmonic structures of tonal music not avaible to unify atonal compositions
 Solution: “a method of composing with 12 tones that are related only to one another”

Basic of the Twelve-tone method = a row or series.

 Arrangement of the 12 pitches (pitch classes into a series
 Spelling does not matter
 Row can be presented horizontally (as melody) or vertically
 4 possible version of the row
o Prime Basic order
o Retrograde in verse
o Inversion mirror image
o Retrograde inversion mirror image in reverse

 All 12 pitches are used before another version of the two is introduced
 Octave doublings are discouraged
 All 4 version of the row may be transposed (48 possibilities)
 Transposition of the row = tonal modulation

Schoenberg, “Prelude” from piano suite, Op 25 (1921-1923)

 Movements of a Baroque dance suite:
o Prelude
o Gavotte
o Musette
o Intermezzo
o Minuet/trio
o Gigue
 Formal unity: All movements of the suite use the same 8 row forms
 Limited number of row transpositions = tonal unity of Baroque suite
 Contrapuntal textures evocative of Baroque

Alban Berg (1885 – 1935)

 Began studyng with Schoenberg at age 19
 Adopted Schoenberg’s atonal and 12-tone methods
 Berg’s 12-tone music = more approachable:
o Forms and procedures of tonal music
o Conveyed meaning via expressive gestures
o Tone rows sometimes had tonal implications

12-tone works:
 Lyric suite for string quartet
 Viloin Concerto
 Lulu (opera)
Berg, Wozzeck, opera (1917 – 1922)
 Based on play by George BÜcher, about a real soldier executed for murdering mistress
o Theme: tragedy develops as anti-hero is victim of his environments
o Social commentary We poor people= Wozzeck’s phrase
o Expressionist drama:
 Wozzeck is tormented by anxiety, fear, alienation
 Wozzeck and Marie (mistress) are the only named characters
 Other are symbolic, nameless: Captain, doctor, Drum Major

4th December

Anton Webern (1883 – 1945)

 Began study with Schoenberg in 1904

 ALso studied musicology at the UNiversity of Vienna
o Earned a Ph.D in 1906. Dissertation: 16c Masses of Heinrich Isaac

Webern’s music is extremely concentrated

 Some works = only a few measures longs
o No. 4 of Five Pieces for Orchestra. Op 10 = 6mm
o No. 3 of Three Little Pieces for Cello and Piano, Op. 11 = 20 notes
 Entire mature output takes less than 4 hours to play
 Texture “pointillistic” - only 1-4 successive notes on any instrument
 Webern’s use of 12 – tone techniques:
o Avoided rows with tonal implications
o Frequently used canons in retrograde or inversion
Webern, Symphony, Op. 21 – 1s movement (1928)
 Scored for small chamber orchestra (emulating 18c symphonies)
o Clarinet, Bs Clarinet, Horns, Harp, Strings
 Entire movement = double canon in inversion (Renaissance texture, technique)
 Symmetry: three sections, each based on a successive tetrachord of the series.
 Constantly changing instrumental timbre = pointillism
o Also, known by Schoenberg’s term: Klangfarbenmelodie (tone-color-melody)
 Other Webern traits
o Soft dynamics
o Wide leaps
o Silences
Bela Bartók (1881 – 1945)
 Modernist composer: incorporated classical traditions and national folk music
o Hungarian, Slovak, Romanian and Bulgarina peasant music + Austro – German and
French Classical techniques
 Ethnomusicologist: collected and published 2000+ folksongs and dance tunes
 Virtuoso pianist, performed all across Europe
 Edited works of Bach, Scarlatti, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven

Synthesis of musical styles

 Classical tradition:
o Contrapuntal techniques
o Classical forms: sonata form, fugue
 Peasant music:
o Rhythmic complex
o Modal scales
o Specific melodic ornamentation
 Both traditions:
o Single pitch center
o Melodies built from repeated motives, varied
Mikrokosmos (1923 – 1939): 153 graded pieces for piano solo
 Composed to introduce students to techniques and sounds of modern music
 Synthesis of peasant music and Classical music
o Classical
 After Bach: 2-part invertion
 Fugal writing_ LH and RH are in canon
o Hungarian peasant melody:
 Ascending and descending w/in range of P4
 Short phrases (3mm) defined by a rest-
o Both traditions:
 Chromaticism
 Modal melodies
Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta
Symphonic suite (1926)
Four movements:
I. Andante tranquillo – elaborate fugue
II. Allegro – sonata form
III. Adagio molto – arch form
IV. Allegro molto – rondo finale

 Fugue theme returns in every moment

 Neotonality = tonic/tritone toncal centers
I. A = Eb/D#
II. C = F#
III. F# = C
IV. A = Eb/D#
Igor Stravinsky (1882 – 1971)
 A gentleman of Moscou
 Russian nationalism to 12 – tone serialism
Distinctive trademarks = international modernist idiom:
 Undermining meter_ unpredictable accents, rapid changes of meter
 Frequent ostinatos
 Static blocks of sound – juxtaposed or layered
 Discontinuity ad interruption
 Dissonance based on diatonic, octatonic, other pitch collections
 Anti – lyrical, but colorful use of instruments

6th December

Russian Period (1918)

The Firebird
 Ballet 1st commissions by Diaghilev for Ballet Russes in Paris
 Based on Russion Folktales
 Human characters = diatonic music
 Supernatural creatures = octatonic or chromatic music
Petrushka
 Ballet, 2nd Diaghilev commission for ballet Russes in Paris
 Opening scene: blacks of static harmony in repetitive melodic and rhythmic patterns
 Aural version of cubism: seemingly unrelated music events interrupt each other
 Borrows Russian folk tunes, simulates folk harmony
 “Petrushka chord” derived from octatonic scale

Le sacre du printemps (The rite of Spring) (1911 – 1913)

 Ballet, 3rd Diaghilev commission for Ballets Ruses in Paris
 Set in prehistoric Russia, shows a fertility ritual: an adolescent girl chosen for sacrifice, dances
herself to death
 Primitivism: deliberate representation of the uncultured, elemental, “natural state” of prehistoric
life via:
o Sets
o Scenario
o Choreography
o Music
 Primitivism = in contrast to/utopian alternative to modern urban life
 The audience at the premiere broke into a riot
“Danse sacrale” (Sacrifical Dance of the Chosen one)
 Last dance of the ballet
 Further degradation of meter:
o Rapidly changing meters: 3/16 - 2/16 - 3/16 - 2/8 - 2/16, etc
o Unpredictable alternation of notes with rest
 Dissonant chords, unexpected accents, loud dynamics = atmosphere of violence
 Rhythm and tone color equal in importance to pitch and motive
Influential characteristic of Sacre:
 Rhythm and tone color equal in importance to pitch and motive
o Determine shape, form and progression of the music
 Prominent use of ostinatos
 Changing meters
 Unpredictable rests and attacks
 Juxtaposed blocks of sound
 Discontinuity and layering of motives
 Motives identified with specific timbres

Claude Debussy
• French traits: simplicity, clarity, balance, refinement, emotional restraint.
• Symbolist aesthetic: each moment is more important than progression toward any resolution.
• Musical idiom: repeated motives, evocative timbres, non-Western scales (WT, pentatonic,
octatonic), gamelan sound.

Maurice Ravel
• Neoclassicism: juxtaposition of new and old
o Minuet form
o Periodicity of phrases
o Minuet rhythms
o Dissonance
o Orchestrational effects
Stravinsky

o Undermining meter: unpredictable accents, rapid changes of meter

o Frequent ostinatos
o Static blocks of sound – juxtaposed or layered
o Discontinuity and interruption
o Dissonance based on diatonic, octatonic, other pitch collections
o Anti-lyrical, but colorful use of instruments
Bartok
• Synthesis of peasant music and Classical music
• Modal melodies
• Non-traditional meters, dance rhythms
• Sonata form, fugue, rondo form
• Neotonality
• Mathematical constructions: palindrome, canon

Neotonality:
is an inclusive term referring to musical compositions of the twentieth century in which the tonality of
the common-practice period (i.e. functional harmony and tonic-dominant relationships) is replaced by one
or several nontraditional tonal conceptions, such as tonal assertion or contrapuntal motion around a central
chord.

The most common means of establishing a tonal centre in neotonality is by "assertion". This may involve
repeating a central pitch or emphasizing it in some other way, for example through instrumentation,
register, rhythmic elongation, or metric accent. No single method of tonal assertion ever became dominant
in the 20th century. Another possibility is to retain some element of common-practice tonality, such as
beginning and ending on the same triad, using tonic or dominant pedal points, or through the use of
contrapuntal motion around some central chord

Strauss: Salomé
Op. 54: Scene 4, Conclusion, Ah! Ich habe deinen Mund gekusst
Musica muy dramatica, en partes suena como a la cantata criolla. And Salome cantando

Score: whole page score very little.

- Traditional aspects: The operatic ideas of music representing emotion, delineating characters, and
dramatizing the situation are as evident here as in the operas of Mozart, weber, and Wagner.
- Like Wagner Strauss builds the musical fabric from leitmotives associated with character and
ideas, and like many of his predecessors, he associates particular keys with certain characters. But
the story is shocking, especially in its treatment of sexuality , and strauss wrote music to match.
- Biblical story.
- The concluding passage begin just after the kiss.
- The beginning, high, and low notes in Salome’s vocal line are all in that diminish seven chord as
well ( C#, E, Fx, A#).
- The plot is shoking, and so is the music. On first hearing, it sound radically new. Yet every new
element in the music is an extension or intensification of a traditional device. In this way, Strauss’s
Opera exemplifies his brand of musical modernism.

Debussy, Nuages:
Nocturnes: N 1, Nuages
Score: 2 flutes, 2 hautbous, 1 corn Anglais, 2 clarinets, 1er, 2dn bassons, 3 basson, 1er 2 nd corn en Fa,
Timbales, harpe, Violins, alto, cellos, contrebasses
( Pagina con Sistema de 13 pentagramas).

First his Three nocturnes were a set of pieces for solo violin and orchestra for Violinist Eugeyene Ysaye,
but soon recast them as a suite of symphonic poems.
Debussi Orchestral pictures evoke scenes that are at the same time ordinary and a bit mysterious. Nuages
( clouds), fete ( festivals). Bringing to life the sirens of ancient Greece with a wordless woman’s chourus
behind the orchestra.

- Nuages is a play of musical images, each characterized by instrumental color, motive, pitch
collection, rhythm, and register.
- In the course of the movement , images are juxtaposed, superimposed, repeated, and altered,
creating a kind of musical experience that seems almost visual, rather than following the older
literacy or rhetorical model of music that presents, develops, and recapitulates themes.
- The opening image, a pattern of alternating fifths and thirds , suggest movement without a strong
sense of direction, an apt musical representation of slowly moving clouds.
- Debussy avoids the sense of harmonic progression in the song and give the gesture an open, empty
sound that seems to suggest broad open spaces.
- This musical idea changes almost everytime it recurs: the winds are replaced by strings .
- This movement can be explained as a modified ABA’ Form or as a rotational form, in which the
music cycles, each beginning with a variant of the opening cloud, figure and ending with the
English – horn motive, followed by a short final rotation than briefly recalls the main ideas.
- Chords are not used to shaped a phrase by tension and release. Instead, each chord is concerived as
a sonorous unit in a phrase whose structure is determined more by melodic shape or color than by
harmonic movement. Oscillating chords, parallel triads and ninth chords, and sustained chords all
serve to create distinctive musical images. However, such a procedure does not necessarily negate
sence of tonal center, which Debussy maintains in Nuages through pedal points and frequent
returns to the primary tone, B.

Ravel, Le tombeau de Couperin (1914-1917)

• Homage to Baroque dance suites of François Couperin (1631-1708).
• Prelude + dance movements
• Ravel: Forlane, Rigaudon, Minuet
• Each movement dedicated to a friend lost in WWI
• Neo-classicism: composers revived, imitated or invoked styles, genres or forms of pre-Romantic
music (especially 18c)
• Rejection of German Romanticism:
• Intense emotions, irrationality, yearning
• (German) nationalism => associated with war

20c Neoclassicism intended to sound old and new

o Old:
 Minuet rhythm.
 Minuet form (minuet – trio [“musette”] – minuet).
 Melodic style and ornamentation in style of Couperin.
 4-measure phrases (sometimes)
 V-I cadences in the minuet section (functional harmony, sometimes)
o New:
 Dissonance, including 7th and 9th chords.
 Unexpected harmonies; parallel triads.
 Varied timbres and orchestral effects.
 Combination of Minuet and Trio themes in counterpoint (unusual for Classic
minuet).

(starts with an oboe, important participation of woodwinds), linda melodia, acompa;anientos in pizzicatos.

Berg, Wozzeck ( Excerpts)

Score:
- Play set as an opera, adapting the libretto from the original text and reordering some of the scenes.
- three acts with five scenes each.
- In adittion to using leitmotive throght the opera, he composed each scene as a traditional musical
form. These forms help to describe the characters and convey the dramatic situation.
- Atonal music.
- He frequently imitates the styles and textures of tonal music, as in the triadic accompaniment to the
piano Polka; the prominents fourths, triadic shapes, and melodic sequences of Wozzeck’s
imitationfolk song ; and the rocking accompaniment, balanced phrases, and arching lines of the
popular style song Margret sings.
- Berg makes his music both dramatically effective and accessible to a wide range of listeners.
Darius Milhaud: La creation du monde, Op.81a: First Tablau.
Ballet.

Score: Lineas solas sin pentagrama. Muy ligado al Jazz y al blues y la percussion era lo mas destacado, el
percusionista tenia que improviser algo.
Piano, C.cl. Trb. GC, Timb, C.B. Sax ( sistemas de 7 ó 8 pentagramas).

Milhaud heard African American Jazz in Harlem U.S, when he went back to Paris, he proposed a ballet
based on jazz style that would capitalize on the growing French interest in Jazz... The result ws la creation
du monde, written for a Swedish Ballet.

Represents the anti Debussyist aesthetic current in Paris in the years after World War 1. Countering
impressioninsm’s focus on harmony color and exotic subjects by emphasizing counterpoint and drawing on
the everyday sounds of popular music.

Milhaud scored the piece for an ensamble that reflects both classical and Jazz traditions. It has the typicall
winds, brass, strings, and percussion of the European Orchestra. But the strings are soloists, not orchestral
sections, and he includes the sounds of a jazz band, with piano, lots of percussion, and saxophone
substituting for the viola.

The Ballet begins with an overture, followed by five tableaux.

- Brief fuge in three sections, using a theme inspired by the blues scale and by the rhythms of jazz.
The fuge was the quintessential contrapuntal form of the Baroque era, making the blend of jazz and
classical traditions hard to miss.
- Polytonality ( The superimposition of two or more keys at once) and polyrhythm ( The
supersimposition of two or more metric or phrase groupings).
- Imitation of melody of typical groups improvisation in New Orleans- Style jazz of the early 1920s.
- Harmonic motion as standart progression in classical, but also hints the pregression of the twelve
bars blue.
- Third section returned to the tonic and combines elements from the other two sections. It begings
with a varied restatement of the beginning of the second section, with elemnets rearranged.
- Milhoud saw how elemnets from jazz and blues could be use and reinterpreted in a neoclassical
context.
- He was among the first classically trained composers to draw on jazz or blues, and he inspired
many others to follow his example.

Schoember, Pierrot Lunare

Cantante Alemana, Very dark
Score: Ba- Klarinet, Violoncelo, Rezitation, Kavier .
( Es un sistema de 5 pentagramas)

- Schoember achive a maximum variety of color.

- Following the notated rhythm exactly but only approximating the written pitches in gliding tones of
speech. He indicated this effect – an innovative synthesis of melodrama and song with an x through
the stem of each note.
- For his first text, Schoemberg selected poems from a collection by Albert Giraud, translated into a
German by O. Erich Hartleben.
- The extreme situations and vivid images prompted Schoemberg to use an intense and dissonant
musical language in the instruments. ‘
- Used exaggerated graphic images and speech inflections in this work to express the feelings
conveyed in the poetry.
- The poems in the cycle are unrhymed but follow a strict form.
- Atonal, meaning that not single pitch serves as a tonal center.
- He relies on motivic development to give his music coherence and shape., using the method he
called “developing variation”, presentic a basic idea at the outset and then continuously drawing
out new variants of that idea. In the process new motive and gesture may emerge, but each new
idea is derived from what has preceded it, allowing for both unity and variety.
- Three- note motive suffuses the entire piece, in various transformations including inversions and
retrograde, and its omnipresence creates a fitting musical image of Pierrots obsetion with the giant
moths.

Anton Webern
Symphony, op. 21
Score: kl. blk, 1-2 Horn, Harfe, Geige 1-2, Bratache, Violoncello. ( Sistema de 10 pentagramas)
(Violines altos .Muchos efectos en las cuerdas , suena como todo descuadrado), dinamicas bien marcadas.

- Scored for a small orchestra in emulation of 18 centuries symphonies.

- Only two movements, first base in a Sonata Form an the second theme with seven variations.
- Link 12 tone language to the conventional forms and tonality of the classical tradition.
- Rather than present any of the canonic voices in a single instrument, he makes the change of
instrumental timbre itself part of the melody, an effect Shoemberg called Klangfarbenmelodie
( tone- color- melody).
- He believe the music’s coherene would be clear if a performer makes each note as expressive as an
entire phrase of a Romantic Symphony.

Description by Alexander Carpenter [-] The Symphony, Op. 21, was the first large-scale orchestral work
Webern had written since the Five Pieces, Op. 10, 15 years earlier. The work marks the beginning of a
period of extreme compression in Webern's music. Dedicated to his daughter Christine, the Symphony is a
work of severe economy and restrained expression. Its symmetrical structure and pointillistic texture are
quintessential hallmarks of Webern's mature compositional style.
Scored for clarinet, bass clarinet, two horns, harp, first and second violins, viola, and cello, the Symphony
is widely regarded as a masterpiece in miniature: Webern's teacher and mentor Arnold Schoenberg was
astounded and moved by the work's concision. Like most of Webern's 12-tone works, the Symphony is
based on a single series dominated by semitones. The work consists of two short movements. The first is in
two parts -- statement and development -- and begins with a double canon in four parts; the second
movement is a theme with seven variations and a coda, and also includes the use of canon. The Symphony
is perhaps most remarkable for its use of symmetry, which in some quarters has stirred accusations against
Webern of a certain excessive pedantry. That symmetry takes several forms, from the work's palindromic
series to the canonic variations that work in both directions from the exact center of the piece outwards.
The astute listener can spend a lifetime hearing an intricate web of such structural correlations within the
Symphony, which is a sort of super palindrome.

Stravinksky
The rite of Springs : excerpts1 Dance sacrale

The rite of Springs : excerpts 3

Prestar atencion a los acentos. Mucho ritmo, suena prehistorico.
Score: Dance des adolescent Girls)
C ing, fag 1-2, Cor (1,2 3 ,4,5,6,7,8) V. 1-2 . Viola, cello, Cb. ( Sistemas entre 8 y 12 pentagramas).
At sompe point includes percussion.
- Imaginning a pagan ritual in prehistoric Russia in wich a adolescent girl is chosen to dance herself
to death as a sacrifice to the god of Spring.
- The strings using double stops and downbows on every chord, reitarete a sonority that includes all
seven notes of an Ab harmonic minor scale.
- The dissonance is intense but there is no expectation of resolution; the chord is simple a musical
object.
- Because each chord in the first two measure is played in exactly the same manner there is not clear
indication of the meter.
- An unusual pattern of accents, reinforced by eight horns, destroys any feelings of metrical
regularity. The effect of the unpredictable accents is to reduce meter to mere pulsation on every 8
note, strongly conveying the idea of primitivism by emphasizing pulse, the most elemental aspect of
rhythm.
- Ostinatos in English horn,
- Combination of contrast with continuity.
- Using specia instrumental effects, he includes the unusal timbres of instruments like the low alto
flute, the high clarinet in D and Eb, and the trumpet I D, and devices such as mutes abd flutter-
tonguing. Frequent staccatos and detached playing prodce a dry sound, quite far from the lush
orchestrasl sounds of most romantics composers.
- DAnse sacrale, Stravinsky uses two tecniques to undermine meter and reduce rhythm to pulsation:
constant changes of meter, as at the beginning, and repeating chords intersoersed with rests in
unpredictable ways.

Bartock, Music for strings, Percussion and Celesta

Score: solo cuerda y percussion
- Neotonal piece, rather than based on traditional harmony.
- In each movment the mote a tritone away from the tonal center serves as opposite pole.
- Another symmetrical aspect of the music is the layout of the orchestra itself : the strings are
divided into two halves ( violins 1- 2 viola 1, cello1 bajo 1 on the left, curving from to back , with
the others on the right in a mirror arrangement)., and the piano, harp, celesta and percussion are in
the middle
- Elements of folk music.
- This piece is differenciatted from the symphony by its movements structure and prominent
percussion and keyboard parts.