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 Twentieth Century
  - Ethnic Contexts
  - Igor Stravinsky
  Quiz
  Listening Guide
Chapter 20: The European Mainstream in the Twentieth Century
Igor Stravinsky
  1. Biographical Background

    1. He was born in 1882 in Russia.

    2. He went to Paris in 1911, and moved to Switzerland in 1914, and back to Paris in 1920.

    3. He lived in California from 1940 to 1969, when he moved to New York.

    4. He died in 1971.

  2. Early Works (to 1913) include three ballets commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev for the Ballets Russes

    1. The Firebird is in the tradition of Russian nationalists, especially Rimsky-Korsakov.

    2. Petrushka contains Russian traditional songs and some of the style elements associated with Stravinsky's later works.
      1. Blocks of static harmony against repetitive melodic and rhythmic patterns
      2. Seemingly unconnected musical events succeed each other without transition.
      3. Quotation of folk songs and other music for atmosphere
      4. Juxtaposition of two tonalities results in the notorious Petrusha chord (see etude, p. 504, in CHWM), which can also be explained in terms of the octatonic scale.

    3. Le Sacre du Printemps was the culmination of primitivism.
      1. The story is of a young girl who sacrifices herself by dancing herself to death.
      2. Stravinsky uses folksong quotations and bi-tonality to portray pre-historic Russia.
      3. NAWM 134, Danse des adolescentes (Dance of the Adolescent Girls)
      4. Irregular accents destroy any feeling of meter.
      5. The work was controversial (see vignette in CHWM on the riot at the premiere).

  3. Transitional Period

    1. During the wartime economy of 1913–1923, Stravinsky used smaller instrumental ensembles to accompany stage works, for example, L'Histoire du soldat (The Soldier's Tale, 1918) and Les Noces (The Wedding, 1917–23).

    2. He became fascinated with jazz and incorporated it into his Ragtime and Piano Rag Music.

    3. His Octet for Wind Instruments (1922–23) marks the end of this period.

  4. Stravinsky's neo-Classicism (1923–1951)

    1. Stravinsky's neo-Classic works incorporate balance, objectivity, and absolute music (as opposed to program music), and leaves Russian nationalism behind.

    2. Pulcinella (1920), a ballet for Diaghilev portraying a commedia dell'arte scenario is based on the music of Pergolesi.

    3. In later works he would borrow from Bach, Weber, Tchaikovsky, and Machaut.

    4. His debt to the Classic era is evident in diatonic works with clear tonal centers in Classic forms:
      1. Piano Sonata (1924), Symphony in C (1940), and Symphony in Three Movements (1945).
      2. The first movement of the Symphony in C is in sonata form.

    5. The Rake's Progress (1951) (see etude, p. 508, in CHWM)
      1. It is based on a series of engravings by Hogarth, with a libretto by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman.
      2. The scenes use recitatives, arias, and ensembles.
      3. Recitatives are set to Harpsichord accompaniment.
      4. Melodies are Mozart-like.

    6. The Symphony of Psalms (1930) for chorus and orchestra is one of the great works of the twentieth century.
      1. Stravinsky chose to use Latin from the Vulgate Bible.
      2. Baroque features include ostinato constructions and fugue.
      3. Ostinato patterns in different voices do not usually coincide, resulting in many possible chords within a diatonic framework, dubbed "pandiatonicism" by some.

  5. Works from the 1950s

    1. Gradually adopted some of the techniques from the Schoenberg school

    2. Include In memoriam Dylan Thomas (1954) and Threni (1958) for voices and orchestra

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