Concise History of Western Music
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Chapter Index Chapter 1: Music in Ancient Greece and Early Christian Rome Chapter 2: Chant and Secular Song in the Middle Ages, 400Ð1450 Chapter 3: Polyphonic Music from Its Beginnings through the Thirteenth Century Chapter 4: French and Italian Music in the Fourteenth Century Chapter 5: England and Burgundian Lands in the Fifteenth Century: The Beginnings of an International Style Chapter 6: The Age of the Renaissance: Music of the Low Countries Chapter 7: The Age of the Renaissance: New Currents in the Sixteenth Century Chapter 8: Church Music of the Late Renaissance and Reformation Chapter 9: Church Music of the Late Renaissance and Reformation Chapter 10: Opera and Vocal Music in the Late Seventeenth Century Chapter 11: Instrumental Music in the Late Baroque Chapter 12: Music in the Early Eighteenth Century Chapter 13: The Early Classic Period: Opera and Instrumental Music in the Eighteenth Century Chapter 14: The Late Eighteenth Century: Haydn and Mozart Chapter 15: Ludwig van Beethoven Chapter 16: Romanticism and Nineteenth-Century Orchestral Music Chapter 17: Solo, Chamber, and Vocal Music in the Nineteenth Century Chapter 18: Opera, Music Drama, and Church Music in the Nineteenth Century Chapter 19: European Music from the 1870s to World War I Chapter 20: The European Mainstream in the Twentieth Century Chapter 21: Atonality, Serialism, and Recent Developments in Twentieth-Century Europe Chapter 22: The American Twentieth Century
 

Outlines:
  - The German Tradition
  - National Trends
  - New Currents in France
  - Italian Opera
  Quiz
  Listening Guide
Chapter 19: European Music from the 1870s to World War I
New Currents in France
  1. Nationalism in France

    1. The National Society for French Music was founded in 1871 to give performances of works by French composers.
      1. Inspired new works.
      2. Revived music of the past through editions and performances of Rameau, Gluck, and others.

    2. The Schola Cantorum of Paris (1894) introduced broad historical studies of music.

  2. The Cosmopolitan Tradition and César Franck (1822–1890).

    1. He composed in conventional instrumental genres using the cyclical method.

    2. He enriched a basically homophonic texture with counterpoint.

    3. He believed in the social mission of the artist.

  3. The French Tradition

    1. Classic in style and focusing on order and restraint rather than expression.
      1. Subtle patterns of tones, rhythms, and colors rather than emotional displays.
      2. No messages about the cosmos or the state of the composer's soul

    2. Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924) was a founder of the National Society for French Music, and the first president of the Independent Music Society.
      1. Background
        1. He studied with Saint-Saëns.
        2. He held several posts as an organist.
        3. He taught at the Paris Conservatory and became its director.
      2. His style embodies the French tradition.
      3. His works include songs, chamber music, piano pieces, a Requiem, two operas, and incidental music to Maurice Maeterlinck's Pelléas et Mélisande.
      4. Example: NAWM 127, Avant que tu ne t'en ailles (Before you depart) from his song cycle, La bonne chanson
        1. Ambiguous tonality
        2. Seventh and ninth chords that do not resolve
      5. His students included composer Maurice Ravel and teacher Nadia Boulanger.

  4. Claude Debussy (1862–1918)

    1. Influences on his style
      1. The French musical tradition of aristocratic and refined sensibilities, including works by Franck, Saint-Saëns, and Emmanuel Chabrier
      2. He both admired and disliked Wagner's music.
      3. Russian music, especially Musorgsky
      4. Impressionism (see window in CHWM)
        1. An artistic movement exemplified in the paintings of Claude Monet (CHWM, Color plate XII)
        2. Impressionist painters were concerned with atmosphere, color, and light.
      5. Symbolist poetry inspired his Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1894).

    2. NAWM 128, Nuages (Clouds, 1899)
      1. The opening chordal pattern comes from Musorgsky's Shumnyi den', NAWM 125
      2. Debussy replaces the sixths and thirds of Musorgsky's pattern with fifths and thirds.
      3. The harmony portrays a sense of movement without a direction.
      4. Each chord is a sonorous unit rather than part of a cycle of tension and release, although the work has a tonal focus.
      5. Melodic shape determines phrase structures.
      6. The middle of the ABA form is inspired by the pentatonic scale and the texture of Javanese gamelan music, which he heard at the 1889 Paris Exposition.
      7. Although he uses a large orchestra, the strings are frequently muted and brass instruments appear in pianissimo passages.
      8. Coloristic effects in the orchestra include a wide variety of percussion instruments.

    3. Piano music
      1. His impressionistic piano works (1903–1913)
        1. Chord Structure is veiled by pianistic technique.
        2. His principal works in this style were published in three collections: Estampes, Images, Préludes.
      2. Many of his piano works are detached in style rather than impressionistic.
      3. Examples are Suite Bergamasque and the Children's Corner.

    4. Debussy influenced later composers from France and elsewhere.

  5. Erik Satie (1866–1925)

    1. Headed an anti-impressionist movement

    2. His piano music, such as Gymnopédies from the 1880s and 1890s, anticipates Debussy's unresolved chords and quasi-modal harmonies.

    3. His economical textures, severe harmony, and comic spirit influenced other composers, including Milhaud, Honegger, and Poulenc.

  6. Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)

    1. His style adopts some impressionist techniques but with clean melodic contours and functional yet complex harmonies.

    2. Example: NAWM 129, Le Tombeau de Couperin (Memorial of Couperin, 1917), Piano piece arranged for orchestra
      1. Classical simplicity of form with conventional cadences
      2. Orchestral colors, such as harmonics and muted instruments, do not obscure the texture or form.

    3. Ravel was a brilliant colorist who orchestrated his own and others' piano works.

© 2002 W. W. Norton & Company | Credits