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:
  - Schoenberg and His Followers
  - Recent Developments
  Quiz
  Listening Guide
Chapter 21: Atonality, Serialism, and Recent Developments in Twentieth-Century Europe
Schoenberg and His Followers
  1. Schoenberg (1874–1951)

    1. Biographical background
      1. Born in Vienna
      2. Self-taught musician
      3. Learned by exchanging ideas and performing with friends
      4. His music can be divided into four creative periods.
      5. His middle periods were influential, and his composition students helped to spread his reputation.

    2. Early works (to ca. 1908)
      1. Tonal works in the tradition of late German Romanticism
      2. Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night, 1899) for string sextet is chromatic in the tradition of Wagner's Tristan
      3. Other works show the influence of Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss, and some require large orchestral forces.

    3. Second creative period (ca. 1905–1912)
      1. Schoenberg turned away from post-Romantic giganticism and focused on smaller forms and forces.
      2. These works were more concentrated and complex.
      3. Themes evolved from germinal motives.
      4. Atonality, which Schoenberg called "Emancipation of Dissonance," used dissonant chords without a sense of resolution.
      5. Pierrot lunaire (Moonstruck Pierrot, 1912; NAWM 135)
        1. His best-known pre-war composition.
        2. Setting of twenty-one poetic texts by Belgian, symbolist poet Albert Giraud.
        3. Scored for a woman's voice and a chamber ensemble.
        4. The poet invents gruesome fantasies using a moonbeam to symbolize aspects of himself.
      6. Sprechstimme (speech-voice, or Sprechgesang, speech-song), used in Pierrot lunaire
        1. Voice declaims the text and only approximates the written pitches
        2. Notated by [- sign
      7. Pierrot lunaire is considered expressionist (see etude, p. 519, in CHWM)

    4. Third creative period (1923–36), serial music
      1. Twelve-tone method ("dodecaphonic") developed by Schoenberg by 1923
        1. The basis of each composition is a row or series consisting of all twelve pitches arranged in an order chosen by the composer.
        2. The rows are used as melodies, harmony, or counterpoint.
        3. Rows may be transposed, intervallically inverted, arranged backward (retrograde), or any combination of these techniques.
        4. The composer exhausts all twelve pitches before starting again.
      2. Among Schoenberg's first twelve-tone works were Five Piano Pieces Op. 23 (1923) and Variations for Orchestra (1937), NAWM 136.
      3. NAWM 136, Variations for Orchestra (see etude, p. 520, in CHWM)
        1. The subject uses the row, divided into motives of three to six notes.
        2. The first variation develops the motives of the theme.
        3. The second variation retains the motives' rhythmic and intervallic shapes.
        4. By the sixth variation the theme is transformed and new ideas are added.

    5. Fourth period works (after 1936)
      1. Schoenberg came to America in 1933.
      2. Most of his late works employ serialism.
      3. Some works approach a synthesis of serialism and tonality.

    6. Moses und Aron (1930–32) is a three-act opera on Schoenberg's own libretto, using Sprechstimme.
      1. The main characters are the Old Testament philosopher and mystic, Moses, Aron, a statesman-educator, and the people of Israel (chorus).
      2. Six solo voices sing from the orchestra pit representing the Voice of God.
      3. The entire opera is based on one tone row (CHWM, ex. 21.2).

  2. Alban Berg (1885–1935)

    1. Was a student of Schoenberg

    2. He used tone rows with vestiges of tonality and composed works with more warmth of feeling than those of other twelve-tone composers.

    3. His major works were Lyric Suite for string quartet (1926), a Violin Concerto (1935), and two operas, Wozzeck and Lulu.

    4. Wozzeck (composed 1917–21, first performed 1925)
      1. An atonal expressionist opera with a libretto arranged by Berg from fragments of a drama by Georg Büchner (1813–1837).
      2. The character of Wozzeck is a hapless victim of his environment and commits suicide.
      3. Three acts, with orchestral interludes connecting the changes of scene
      4. Pitch-class sets and leitmotifs unify the work (see CHWM, ex. 21.3)
      5. The first act contains movements in Baroque forms.
      6. The voices use ordinary speech, Sprechstimme, and conventional singing.

  3. Anton Webern (1883–1945)

    1. Represents the cool constructive side of Schoenberg's approach

    2. Webern never used Sprechstimme and composed no operas.

    3. His style
      1. Imitative counterpoint, often canonic, with no tonal implications
      2. Simultaneous duple and triple divisions of the measure
      3. Dynamics notated very precisely
      4. Unusual instrumentation, with special effects such as pizzicato, harmonics, and muting
      5. Economical with extreme concentration, resulting in short compositions
      6. Melodic lines often divided among different instruments (pointillism).

    4. Composed both instrumental and vocal works in chamber style

    5. Symphony Op. 21, NAWM 138, uses serial technique.
      1. The ear perceives a static mosaic of instrumental colors.
      2. The movement uses canon within a tightly organized form consisting of exposition, development, and recapitulation.
      3. Series is transposed, inverted, and divided among instruments.

  4. After Webern

    1. After the end of World War II many composers used twelve-tone composition or a modification of it.
      1. Darmstadt "Holiday courses for new music" inspired continued use of twelve-tone technique.
      2. Composers who went to Darmstadt admired Webern.
      3. Each composer cultivated his own personal language and style.

    2. Serialism
      1. "Total serialism" is the application of twelvetone technique to musical elements other than pitch: duration, intensity, timbre, texture.
      2. The system became less rigid in the 1950s; for example, Pierre Boulez's Le Marteau sans maitre (The Hammer without a Master, 1954; revised 1957) fuses pointillist style, serial method and sensitivity to the text.

    3. Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992)
      1. Born in Avignon, studied in Paris, and became a professor of harmony at the Paris Conservatory in 1942
      2. He experimented with total serialism, for example, Mode de valeurs et d'intensités (from Quatre études du rythme for piano, 1949), inspiring Boulez's Structures (1952), his first attempt at total serialism.
      3. NAWM 139, Méditations sur la mystère de la Sainte Trinité (Meditations on the Mystery of the Holy Trinity) for organ (1969) uses motives that represent theological and mystical ideas, and bird calls, which he had transcribed.
      4. Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time, 1941) for violin, clarinet, cello, and piano was written when the composer was a prisoner in a German prison camp.
      5. Sources of pitch organization include plainchant modes, major-minor tonality, octatonic scales, and pitch-sets.

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