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A MINIHISTORY OF MUSIC

3nd Edition


By the faculty of the Music History Department of
The Juilliard School

Edited by L. Michael Griffel, Department Chairperson
Fred Fehleisen, Assistant Editor












Copyright The Juilliard School July 2014
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THE MIDDLE AGES (500-1400)
Text by John J. H. Muller; YouTube links selected by Fred Fehleisen

The Middle Ages (or Medieval period) spans many centuries, from the fall of the Roman
Empire in A.D. 476 to the beginning of the Renaissance, around 1400. The Roman
Catholic Church filled the power vacuum left by the collapse of Rome, and provided
stability in a politically fragmented Europe. Although often viewed as the Dark Ages, the
Medieval period gave rise to the great Gothic cathedrals and also the earliest universities.
As a style period in music history, the Middle Ages is longer than all the others
combined, and a number of momentous developments took place that greatly affected
later music. At the start, there was no form of notation, but over time, a method was
developed that could precisely indicate pitch and rhythm. Music of the early Middle Ages
was anonymous. Gradually, however, actual composers emerged, some of whom had
great renown in their day. As a matter of fact, the whole concept of composition as a
deliberate, artistic act was evolving during this period.
Basic to the study of the music of the Middle Ages are three related components:
liturgy, chant, and modes. Liturgy refers to the organization of the Roman Catholic
services. One of these services is the Mass, a form of public worship. The sections of the
Mass whose texts remain the same throughout the year are the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo,
Sanctus, and Agnus Dei; together these five sections constitute the Ordinary of the Mass.
Also very important is a series of monastic services known as the Offices (or Hours).
Chant is the music used in the celebration of these services, and it represents the first
large repertoire of Western music. Many later developments in music were based on
chant. Often referred to as Gregorian (although the term is a misnomer), the most striking
feature of chant is its monophonic (single-line) texture (Gregorian Chant: Veni Sancti
Spiritus). There is great variety to the thousands of melodies. Some follow a simple
recitation formula, with one note per syllable of text (syllabic), while others are highly
florid, with many notes per syllable (melismatic). Medieval theorists grouped the
melodies into different modes, such as Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, and Mixolydian. These
are similar to our major and minor scales, but with different arrangements of whole and
half steps.
There was also a body of monophonic secular love songs during the Middle Ages.
These songs were cultivated by poet-composers known as troubadours and trouvres,
working in what is now modern-day France.
In the 9th century, we find the earliest clear references to polyphony, a
development that had vast implications for the future of Western music. The early forms
of sacred polyphony are called organum. At first, a chant melody was essentially
mirrored by a new part at a consonant interval, creating parallel movement. Over the next
three centuries, the handling of the added part became much freer, leading to the climax
of organum in the Notre Dame School, during the late 12th and 13th centuries. Leonin
and Perotin, two composers of organum active at the cathedral in Paris, are among the
first identifiable composers of Western music (Perotin, Sederunt principes). In their
organa, several styles of writing were employed, including the creation of an elaborate
new part against the chant melody. Organum also served as a springboard for an
important new genre, the motet (from the French mot, meaning word). The motet
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went through a series of developments during this time (13th-century motet: Amours mi
font souffrir). Initially, texts were added to certain sections of the organum; later, these
sections were detached from their original context and became separate compositions.
The 14th century was marked by a number of calamitous events: the Black
Death, the 100 Years War between England and France, and a serious crisis within the
church. It was an age of greater secularization, and the music reflects this outlook. In
France, the period is known as the Ars Nova, a term referring to new rhythmic practices.
The greatest composer of the time was Guillaume de Machaut. Although he made a
famous setting of the Mass (Messe de Nostre Dame, Agnus Dei), the bulk of his output
consists of polyphonic love songs, collectively known as the formes fixes (Rondeau: Ma
fin est mon commencement). Composers such as Francesco Landini created a similar
body of love songs in Italian. The motet continued to attract composers.
The earliest stages of notation were the neumes, signs placed over the text,
indicating the general direction of a chant. Thus, the neumes were a memory aid for
someone who already knew the melody. In the 11th century, neumes were placed on the
newly developed staff, and by the late 13th century, rhythm could be notated as well. The
ability to preserve music in this way was a significant development. Although this
notation cannot be read today without specialized study, our modern-day note shapes and
concept of meter signs are derived from those used in the Middle Ages.
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THE RENAISSANCE (1400-1600)
Text by Martin Verdrager; YouTube links selected by Fred Fehleisen

Within the period of the Renaissance (a French term meaning rebirth), Europe
experienced a shift in understanding its cultural inheritance with the reintroduction of the
writings of Ancient Greek scholars. With the Fall of Constantinople in the 15th century,
Byzantine scholars brought these writings into Western Europe. After reading the ancient
texts and appreciating their content from a non-Christian perspective, European scholars
encouraged greater learning and propelled an intellectual class to think of themselves as
Humanists. Their new understanding of the Ancient Greeks rationalism, observation of
the world, and dependence on history and literature guided them to become a group of
polymath writers and philosophers that we now term Renaissance men.
During the European Renaissance, advances were made in several fields of art.
Artists began to use oils as a medium for their paint, and painters developed techniques of
perspective that gave imagery a much more realistic look. The invention of the printing
press and movable type around 1450 spread humanist and religious teachings to a
previously unimagined number of readers of Latin and vernacular languages.
The Protestant Reformation prompted theological, ideological, and political
positions that challenged the central authority of the Catholic Church. The suggestions of
principle that started with Martin Luther in 1517 spread rapidly, and encouraged other
objectors to move against the rule of Rome. A split arose between Protestant groups
(Lutheran, Calvinist, and English) of the north, and Catholics of the south. Eventually a
reaction by the Catholic hierarchy known as the Counter-Reformation in the late 16th
century provoked major wars of religion in the next century.
Aligned with this background, composers and musicians worked in churches and
courts. They enhanced sacred liturgy with lofty Masses, and they exalted saints,
celebrated feast days of the church year, noted noble births and marriages, and
memorialized the dead with motets. They entertained with secular songs about love, war,
the beauty of the earth, and the deeds of their employers in chansons and madrigals
throughout the 15th and 16th centuries.
The most influential composers of the 15th century were born and trained in
Franco-Flemish lands. Three generations of distinguished composers can be identified:
those of (1) Dufay and Binchois, (2) Busnois and Ockeghem, and (3) Josquin and
Obrecht. Many of the genres and techniques of the late Middle Ages were brought into
the early 15th century: complete settings of the Ordinary of the Mass (Dufay, Missa:
LHomme arm), motets for State ceremonies (Dufay, Nuper rosarum flores), polyphonic
chansons in the formes fixes and with texts on courtly love, derived from the Medieval
trouvres. Because of their prowess as composers and singers, Franco-Flemish composers
were employed at the major cathedrals, courts, and homes of church and secular royalty,
working in Italian, German, Flemish, and French-speaking areas through the middle of
the 16th century.
Among the most important genres of Renaissance music were the Mass Ordinary,
motet (a devotional sacred work) (Victoria, O Magnum mysterium), Italian madrigal,
French chanson, English madrigal, and English lute song. The motet retained importance
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throughout the 16th century and beyond as a mainstay of the Catholic liturgical
repertoire.
By the opening of the 16th century, the Franco-Flemish style of imitative
counterpoint became tantamount to an international European style, and the invention of
a method for printing music around the turn of the 16th century enabled composers such
as Josquin (Missa Pange lingua, Kyrie) to gain a wide reputation. Wherever the Franco
Flemish composers served in Continental Europe, they found indigenous music of
interest. Many, such as Giaches de Wert (Madrigal: Or si rallegri il cielo / Let Heaven
Rejoice), used their skills to help develop local genres into important new repertoires.
The secular Italian madrigal and simplified homophonic French chanson were venerated
internationally. The Italian madrigal had great popularity in England, where large
repertoires of English-versed madrigals and lute songs prevailed later in the era of Queen
Elizabeth I.
In the mid-16th century, Italian composers began to supplant the Franco-Flemish.
Italians such as Festa, Palestrina (Missa Papae Marcelli, Kyrie), Gesualdo, Andrea
Gabrieli, Monteverdi, and Marenzio became the last generation of great composers of the
European Renaissance style. The Italians kept many of the structural elements of the
French composers while incorporating some new techniques and harmonic practices of
the madrigal into Masses and motets.
In the North, the Protestant Reformation brought lasting change to separate
liturgies and musical styles. By replacing Latin with German for some of the service,
Lutherans instituted the use of simple chorale melodies, allowing the congregation to
participate in some musical parts of the service while still retaining the polyphonic Mass
for the choir. In Geneva, Calvinists, rejecting polyphony, made French metrical
translations of psalms to be sung by congregants. In England, some Latin polyphonic
works remained for political reasons, while new works with English texts, called
anthems, were written for special occasions by composers such as Byrd and Tallis.
In the Renaissance, a substantial notated repertoire of purely instrumental works
was created and published, including arrangements of secular vocal works for solo lute or
keyboard, as well as dance and variation pieces. By the end of the Renaissance, small
instrumental ensembles, utilizing various types of instruments, were used as support for
bass parts in madrigals or as an accompaniment to lute songs.
In Venice, as the Renaissance waned, instrumental choirs and large groupings of
vocal choirs were combined in grand polychoral motets with billows of antiphonal sound
used in a new genre called sacred symphonies. Around the same time, Florentine and
Roman humanists, studying the intersection of drama and music in Ancient Greek
culture, crystallized their opinions about performing drama and music together in new
genres that helped to bring some radical changes to the musical art in the 17th and 18th
centuries.
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THE BAROQUE ERA (1600-1750)
Text by Fred Fehleisen; YouTube links selected by Fred Fehleisen

The beginning of the Baroque period was marked by new ideas about the function and
meaning of music that led to new vocal and instrumental practices and styles. It began
with the birth of opera in the 1590s and ended with the late works of Vivaldi, Bach,
Handel, and Rameau. The word baroque was first used by French writers, criticizing
Rameaus operas in the 1730s, and later on by J. J. Rousseau in his critique of Italian
music. By the 1760s, baroque came to be associated with music that was old, foreign,
and unnaturally complex. Indeed, during the lifetimes of the composers mentioned above
there was a general trend towards naturalness and simplicity, spurred on by ideas of the
Enlightenment, especially that music should serve the gallant purpose of pleasing ones
patrons.
In the late 1500s, musicians in northern Italy began to question their own musical
styles after reading about the powers of ancient music in the philosophical works of
Aristotle and Plato. Their studies and musical experiments ultimately led to the creation
of the first two operas, La Dafne (1598) and Le Euridice (1600). The stories of both
works were drawn from classical myths about Apollo, the god of the sun and music, and
Orpheus, his son. In 1607, Claudio Monteverdi composed his own version of the tale of
Orpheus, LOrfeo, favola in musica (a musical fable). LOrfeo is considered the first great
dramatic work in the new style that the Italians called the stile rappresentativo (the
representational style). Its purpose was to convey emotion through persuasive musical
means. Monteverdi referred to this new style as the seconda pratica (the second practice),
a new way to compose music that allowed for very dissonant harmony when the words
required intense emotional expression. Right from the beginning, it was recognized that
this new style stood in contrast with the prima pratica, a term that was synonymous with
the style of traditional Renaissance polyphony. Moreover, it was commonly understood
that both older and newer styles could be used to convey emotion and meaning, albeit in
different ways.
The birth of opera and the second practice resulted in the creation of a large
repertory of Italian operas, secular cantatas, oratorios and sacred vocal concertos. Each of
these genres employed both voices and instruments, and their development happened to
coincide with a golden age in the realm of instrument-making.
During the early years of the Baroque, the violin came into its own: players
discovered that by holding the instrument under the chin (rather than against the chest)
they could play much faster and shift up and down on the fingerboard. At the same time,
string instrument makers in northern Italy (e.g., Amati, Guarneri, Stradivari) created the
greatest string instruments ever made. By the mid-17th century, these makers began to
improve the designs of larger bass instruments, in particular the violoncello and its big
brother, the violone. Before long, Italian string instruments were being played throughout
Europe and the British Isles. Instrumentalists across Europe flocked to Italian cities
(Bologna, Naples, Rome, and Venice) where the first true conservatories had been
established. From them, waves of instrumental virtuosi emerged, many of them leaving
home to take up important musical posts in foreign cities and courts.
One of the foremost of these violin virtuosi was Arcangelo Corelli. Corellis
sonatas and concertos, such as his Christmas Concerto, op. 6 no. 8, were among the most
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widely published and performed instrumental works in the first half of the 18th century,
and they served as models for several generations of composers. Indeed, Corellis
instrumental works were considered of such lasting value that they helped establish what
we now call the classical repertory. Studying his music gave young musicians the tools
needed to compose and improvise quickly so as to meet the constant demands of their
patrons for new music. Among Corellis followers was a Venetian violinist named
Antonio Vivaldi, who assimilated Corellis musical style and took it to the next level. In
the first two decades of the 18th century, he composed and published numerous sets of
sonatas and three-movement concertos (fast-slow-fast) that employed ritornello forms
made up of chains of solo episodes and tutti refrains.
In France, Jean-Baptiste Lully was the most powerful musician during his
lifetime. Born in Florence, Italy (real name: Giovanni Battista Lulli), he went to France
as a young man and networked himself into the musical establishment at the Court of
Louis XIV. The King, bent on becoming the most powerful and respected ruler in all of
Europe and adorning his court with the finest arts, chose Lully to become his royal music
master and oversee his Acadmie Royale de Musique. During his tenure, Lully literally
invented French opera, and he refined French musical style to the point where it became
synonymous with his name and his musical works. A particularly important example is
his opera Atys.
French musical style differed greatly from that of the Italians. While Italian vocal
music tended to be melismatic, French music tended to be far simpler and fundamentally
syllabic. For the French, proper poetic declamation of individual words was primary. And
it was understood by them that both vocal and instrumental music were intimately
connected to the movements and gestures of courtly dance. Through Lullys skill, music
became one of the most lustrous jewels in Louis XIVs crown. And as a result, the desire
to acquire French taste throughout Europe persisted well into the next century.
Performers will regularly encounter French dance music in the works of French, German,
and English composers of the period. The repertory is, in fact, littered with minuets,
gavottes, bourres, sarabandes, gigues, and French overtures. These kinds of pieces
become emblematic of courtly taste and style, as evidenced by Handels celebrated Water
Music.
The story of German music during the late Baroque (1680s to 1740s) centers on
the cultivation of a mixed style that blended French and Italian styles with native
German ones. This is most clearly seen in the musical works of Handel, Telemann, and J.
S. Bach. German, Austrian, and English courts routinely imported French and Italian
musicians to fill key posts, and with them came the latest repertory, styles, and
techniques. While, on the continent, music basically remained a courtly enterprise; in
England the huge economic upswing that began with the Glorious Revolution of 1688
gave rise to a large, affluent musical publican audience that was free to discuss its likes
and dislikes openly in newspapers, taverns, and coffee houses. It was here that the notion
of public opinion was born. For more than forty years, George Frideric Handel was the
leading figure in this London musical marketplace, and he skillfully adapted his art to the
taste of the town whenever audiences gave up their subscriptions to his performances
in favor of those given by others. At first, Handel was the driving force behind Italian
opera in London, composing more than three dozen operas himself. Later on, it would be
through his ongoing seasons of oratorios (public theatrical entertainments) based on
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Biblical texts that his audiences would begin to recognize that Handels works had
edifying qualities that served the betterment of the British nation. And once he began to
perform them for charitable causes, the public embraced his music as their own. This can
be seen most clearly in his oratorio Messiah, a work that has been performed every year
since its premiere in 1742.
Although a broader view of music history might dub the first half of the 18th
century The Age of Handel, a much less famous man of that time period by the name
of Johann Sebastian Bach continues to loom large. Born the son of the town music
director of Eisenach and orphaned at the age of ten, Bach received the equivalent of a
high school education, learned how to play the violin and organ, composing such works
as the famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor, and went on to hold a series of posts. After
serving at the courts of Weimar and Cthen for many years, Bach spent the last twenty-
seven years of his life as the director of music of the city of Leipzig. Each week, Bach
performed his music privately and in churches. But he rarely ever performed for a paying
public audience. Even so, he spent his life preoccupied with creating a body of more than
1,000 works that embraced virtually every contemporary genre and style, while at the
same time remaining deeply rooted in the music of the past. The only exception to this
was that Bach never composed an opera. He did, on the other hand, compose a small
number of secular cantatas that amount to operatic scenes which employ styles and
techniques found in operas of the time. Curiously, given the progressive nature of his
music, Bach published only a handful of works, mostly in sets, and all of them intended
as vehicles for teaching styles, genres, and compositional techniques. These include the
Six Partitas for Cembalo, the Italian Concerto and French Overture, the St. Anne Prelude
and Fugue, and the Goldberg Variations. Just as important are the various sets of
instrumental pieces he did not publish. These include the Well-Tempered Clavier, the
unaccompanied works for violin, violoncello, and transverse flute, the sonatas for violin
and cembalo, the Brandenburg Concertos, and the Art of Fugue. Insofar as vocal works
are concerned, Bach composed the Mass in B minor, the St. Matthew Passion, and other
oratorios celebrating the birth, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, and approximately
200 sacred cantatas.
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THE CLASSICAL ERA (1720-1820)
Text by L. Michael Griffel and Aaron Wunsch; YouTube links selected by
Fred Fehleisen

As the late Baroque proceeded, with its complex counterpoint and large-scale designs,
there arose a contrasting style stressing simplicity, ornamentation, refinement, charm, and
a homophonic texture (in which voices move together chord by chord), rather than
counterpoint. This pre-Classical style first appeared in music in France, as practiced by
Franois Couperin and Rameau, but it soon spread to the rest of Europe. Its two most
influential styles were the style galant (gallant style) and the empfindsamer Stil (sensitive
style). The galant was a style of grace, lightness, and decorativeness, as evident in
Couperins harpsichord music, the works of such Italian composers as Giovanni Pergolesi
and Giovanni Sammartini, and in the music of German composer Johann Christian Bach
(the youngest son of J. S. Bach). The empfindsamer Stil stressed emotionality and
sentimentality and was practiced by C. P. E. Bach, the second oldest and most widely
respected son of J. S. Bach.
Also during the pre-Classical period, comic opera took flight. In Italy, the comical
intermezzo eventually grew into opera buffa, still employing recitative and aria; in
France there was opra comique, using French spoken dialogue rather than recitative; the
comic genre in Germany was the Singspiel, and in England it was the ballad opera, both
of which also used spoken dialogue. The orchestral sinfonia or overture eventually
separated from operas, oratorios, and orchestral suites and became a main interest of
composers everywhere, expanding into three-movement and, later, four-movement
symphonies. Great centers of symphonic music included Milan, Mannheim, Vienna,
Paris, and London. Four-part harmony and clear structures, such as binary, ternary, theme
and variations, rondo, andespeciallysonata form, became the standard emphases of
Classical composers, not only in symphonies but also in keyboard sonatas, string
quartets, other instrumental genres, and even vocal compositions.
The Age of Enlightenment, which had started in the mid-17th century as a cultural
movement among philosophers, scientists, and historians, pervaded the art of music in the
second half of the 18th century. It was an age in which people looked to the power of
reason to increase their knowledge and, in music, sought balance, symmetry, clarity, and
comprehensibility, as well as emphasized sounds that would be pleasing to the ear. In
opera, Christoph Willibald Gluck reformed the genre by making the words clearer and
the dramatic flow more convincing and by disallowing singers to take unwarranted
liberties with the music. An admirer of Gluck, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart brought opera
to new heights, balanced perfectly between music and drama, with works such as Le
nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Die Zauberflte. Part of Mozarts genius was to
imbue even his comic operas with a great deal of seriousness and pathos.
Franz Joseph Haydn and Mozart were the leading composers of the late 18th
century, both of them active in Vienna but famous in much of Europe. Haydn composed
more than 100 symphonies (Symphonies nos. 79, 81, and 104), more than 65 string
quartets (String Quartet, op. 77 no. 2/1), and more than 50 keyboard sonatas,
demonstrating mastery of the structures and harmonic language of the era, as well as an
ability to communicate humor, religiosity, drama, folksiness, and every imaginable mood
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through music. Mozart also wrote in the various instrumental genres of the time (Gran
Partita, Menuet) but did much of his finest work in the fields of opera and the piano
concerto (Piano Concerto in D minor, K. 466/3).
Mozart died at the age of 35 in 1791, and Ludwig van Beethoven carried on the
traditions of the Classical period during the next decades while also pushing music into a
more extreme, sometimes even shocking, style. A master at handling and developing
musical motives, Beethovens 32 piano sonatas, 16 string quartets, and 9 symphonies
became touchstones for many composers who followed. Beethoven was also influential
in asserting the importance of music and the composer to humankind at large, and his
musical and personal ambitions inspired a new generation of professional composer-
performers.
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THE ROMANTIC ERA (1800-1910)
Text by Anthony Netz; YouTube links selected by Fred Fehleisen

In the aftermath of the French Revolution, the rise and fall of Napoleon, and the inception
of the Industrial Revolution, musical Romanticism emerged in a Europe where freedom,
innovation, individuality, and expressive intensity were highly valued. Beethovens
music composed after 1800charged with harmonic, dynamic, structural, and rhythmic
surprises that challenged Classical normsreflected the spirit of its time. Although
contemporary listeners were perplexed by some of his work (especially the string quartets
composed at the end of his life), Beethovens musical legacy provided a cornerstone for
musical Romanticism in great pieces such as his Symphony no. 3 ("Eroica") and the
monumental Symphony no. 9.
To a greater extent than in earlier periods, the middle classincreasingly
numerous and prosperous thanks to the Industrial Revolutionbecame an important
patron of the musical arts during the Romantic era. A great quantity of intimate music (art
songs, enormous amounts of piano music) was composed for performance by middle-
class amateurs. On the other hand, an immense repertory of monumental music (grand
operas, choral works, and symphonies for vast orchestras) was composed to delight
middle-class audiences in the splendid public concert halls that were erected in most
European cities throughout the 19th century.
During the Romantic era, there was a strong interest in achieving a fusion of
music with other arts. This interest contributed to the popularity of the Liedthe art song
for voice and pianoin which a fusion of music (melody and accompaniment) and
poetry was achieved. Schubert is especially remembered for his many Lieder (some quite
simple; some quite complex) (Erlknig). Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms
continued the tradition and, at the end of the century, Mahler enriched the genre by
composing many songs for voice and orchestra. Seeking to achieve an even more
comprehensive fusion of the arts, Wagner developed a new kind of opera in which vocal
music, the symphony, text, and philosophy were merged to form a comprehensive art.
Romantic music is characterized by an intensity of expression. Italian composers
such as Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi (La Traviata) focused on the expressive
potential of the human voice in operas that placed characters in extreme, emotion-
charged situations. Composers also used unusual chords, dissonances, delayed resolution,
and chromaticism to communicate vividly extreme emotion. In Wagners Tristan und
Isolde, all these techniques are pushed to the maximum in connection with the expression
of the insatiable longing the title characters feel for each other.
Program music was not new in the 19th century, but it became more prevalent and
sophisticated then. Middle-class audiences, lacking a thorough training in abstract
musical forms and procedures, welcomed titles and prose descriptions that related a
musical work to a story or something familiar. Much Romantic piano music bears
atmospheric and descriptive titles (e.g., nocturnes, songs without words, spinning songs)
that make the meaning of the work more specific and more comprehensible. A
sophisticated example of program music is Berliozs Symphonie fantastique. Here, the
composer tells a complex story over the course of the symphony, providing titles and a
paragraph of description for each of its five movements. Later in the century, Liszt and
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Richard Strauss favored the symphonic poem (or tone poem), a new type of single-
movement programmatic symphony that used the orchestra in imaginative ways to
suggest ideas, images, and events in the program.
In their pursuit of innovation and expressive intensity, many Romantic composers
became obsessed with timbrethe actual sound of the music. The great piano virtuoso
Liszt had a fanatic following in part because he transformed the piano into a reduced
orchestra, obtaining from the instrument a dazzling spectrum of new sounds. Berlioz,
Wagner, Mahler, and others required vast orchestras that included all the newest
instruments, as well as conventional instruments with all the latest improvements.
Sometimes, even this was not enough: Wagner himself designed new instruments to
produce precisely the tone color he required!
As the 19th century progressed, a tide of nationalism resulted in the unification of
both Germany and Italy and provoked a series of revolutions in smaller countries that
were occupied by larger ones. Given the Romantic confidence in the extreme expressive
power of music, one is not surprised that many composers expressed their fervent
patriotism in their music: Chopin, living in Paris, expressed devotion to his native Poland
in piano mazurkas and polonaises based on Polish dance types; Dvok and Smetana
wrote operas in Czech and included folklike melodies in their music (Dvok, Slavonic
Dance no. 1); and the Russian composer Musorgsky deliberately cultivated a somewhat
rough style that avoided the musical structures, procedures, and polish of mainstream
Western music.
Over the course of the Romantic century, there were many composers, such as
Berlioz, Liszt (Au bord dune source), Wagner, and Richard Strauss, who were famous
for being progressive. Other, more conservative composers (e.g., Mendelssohn, Chopin
(Polonaise in A-flat), Schumann, and Tchaikovsky) avoided the excessive extremes of
Romanticism. Especially perceived as a reactionary by Romantic progressives, Brahms
made important contributions to most of the major genres of the 19th century, but he
avoided descriptive programs, as well as conspicuous virtuosity in his piano works, and
required only a somewhat amplified classical orchestra (Symphony no. 2). Nevertheless,
his economical, fiercely concentrated music is absolutely Romantic in its emotional
intensity, advanced harmony, and rich exploration of color.
The Romantic style survived through the first decade of the 20th century. After
1900, however, composers like Mahler and Richard Strauss pushed the elements of
Romanticism to ever greater extremes: Mahlers Symphony no. 8 is a titanic fusion of
oratorio and symphony that was first presented by more than 1,000 performers; Strausss
operas Salome and Elektra pushed the limits of tonality even further than Wagner had.
But some musicians began to feel that the style had been exhausted or needed to evolve;
consequently, several younger composers began to explore new options.
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THE 20th AND 21st CENTURIES
Text by Joel Sachs; YouTube links selected by Fred Fehleisen

By the arrival of the twentieth century, classical music had won over an
overwhelmingly conservative public, and many living composers, such as Sergei
Rachmaninoff, enjoyed successful careers, writing music in a style that did not challenge
accepted standards. As in all the arts, however, a smaller group felt that the traditional
language no longer yielded fresh ideas. Among the earliest of them were Claude Debussy
(Prlude l'aprs-midi d'un faune) and Erik Satie, who preferred following their instincts
to obeying the old rules of composition. The second generation was led by Igor
Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg, whose striking originality emerged around 1910. In
ballet scores such as Le Sacre du printemps, Stravinsky showed how traditional idioms of
Russia could invigorate the musical world; using his so-called emancipated dissonance,
Schoenberg revitalized concepts of harmony and melody that had seemed frozen in time,
applying his new language in works such as Pierrot lunaire. The huge difference between
his music and Stravinskys vividly illustrates how the younger generations in all the arts
were forging highly individual styles that required listeners, viewers, and readers to open
their minds to unprecedented adventures. These new rebels, whose styles ranged from art
with powerful intellectual underpinnings to raw experiments, provoked both admiration
and intense hostility based on a fear that art, like society, was going through possibly
fatal changes.
The terrifying destructiveness of World War I (1914-1918) drove the postwar
public to seek security in the familiarto be entertained, not challenged. Most arts in
Europe turned much more conservative; neo-classicism or a deliberate frivolousness
displaced innovation. New music in general faced a difficult battle with resistant
performers and audiences. Popular music, especially American, continued to captivate
the public, thanks especially to new mediaradio and recording, then sound movies.
Jazz became the rage.
Nevertheless, forward thinking was far from dead. Assimilating his knowledge of
peasant music with his deep love for the classical tradition, Bla Bartk produced works
such as the String Quartet no. 4, completely fresh music that eventually found a home in
the central repertory. Schoenberg, eager to enhance the unity and comprehensibility of his
music, devised a generally applicable means of solidifying compositional coherence,
which he called the Method of Composing with Twelve Tones Related Only One to
Another. His two most gifted pupils, Anton Webern (Concerto for Nine Instruments, op.
24) and Alban Berg (Violin Concerto), continued to stretch the minds of listeners. In the
United States, radical innovators such as Charles Ives (The Concord Sonata), Henry
Cowell (The Banshee), and French-born Edgard Varse (Ionisation) were showing that
Americans also had some great maps to the future path of music. They, however, had to
fight the European prejudice that the only authentically American music was jazz, and
that only composers like George Gershwin and Aaron Copland were worth any attention.
The onset of the worldwide economic depression and the rise of ruthless
dictatorships put European modernism to an end. As almost the entire continent and the
Soviet Union fell under the dictators control, expressions of original thoughts became
mortally dangerous. By the time the Second World War ended in 1945, tens of millions
13
of people had been killed as combatants, civilian casualties, and victims of political or
racial persecution and mass extermination. Europes cultural life was a wreck. The lucky
ones emigrated, bringing leadership in the arts to the Western Hemisphere, and
particularly to the United States.
In peacetime the fragmentation of musical idioms resumed. The extremes were
represented by descendants of the Schoenberg-Webern lineage, such as Milton Babbitt
(Phonemena), Elliott Carter, Pierre Boulez (Drive 1), and the proponents of music
embracing all sounds and employing chance procedures, led by John Cage (Concerto for
Prepared Piano). Extended techniques of performance brought new worlds of sound
from traditional instruments. Minimalists Steve Reich (Music for 18 Musicians), Philip
Glass, and Terry Riley developed personal styles from the fusion of Western and non-
Western resources. A new lyricism was made famous by George Crumb (Vox Balaenae
/ Voice of the Whale); other composers found inspiration in the conservative tradition. In
the late 1960s, signs emerged of a broader postmodernism, a catch-all term describing
a wide spectrum of composers, architects, visual artists, and choreographers who refused
to cling to any single ideology and drew upon all imaginable sources, from high art to
low art. Meanwhile, as musical life in Europe gradually was restored, more and more
countries began producing wonderful composers, to the point that the old domination of
Germany, France, and Austria has been challenged especially by Britain, the Netherlands,
Scandinavia, and modernist Italy. After the death of Stalin, the Soviet Unions talent was
also unleashed, not only in Russia (Schnittke, Symphony no. 4), but in many other
republics, especially in Central Asia. Perhaps one of the most remarkable general changes
has been the enormous increase in women who are making careers as composers.
This doctrine of open-ended freedom is a striking feature of todays music, which
increasingly draws upon the disparate cultures of the world. Cultural fusion has been
reinforced by the emergence of strong composers in Canada, Latin America, Asia (Akira
Nishimura, String Quartet no. 2), and very gradually in Africa; and by innovations in
popular music and electronics.
Improved communications, transportation, and technology all have contributed to
todays music world. When one can email to anywhere a new composition, impeccably
notated with a modern music-writing program, even composers from some of the worlds
poorest countries have gained access to top performers. Being able to create a convincing
version of a full orchestra on a sampler has strong positive and negative implications.
Whether or not todays globalized musical world is good, bad, or indifferent remains to
be seen. As to the much-debated question of whether classical music is dying, one can
only observe that new music draws heavily upon a young audience. The challenge for the
future will be to reassemble the notions on classical music and its presentation so that a
healthy, living art form can flourish.

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