Chapter 19 Prelude: Music and Modernism Music before World War I
Key Terms Pentatonic scale Whole-tone scale Octatonic scale Quarter-tone scale “The emancipation of dissonance” Atonality
Music before World War I Music had always been more abstract No equivalent to representation in painting or word meanings (reference) in poetry But it did have a traditional “internal logic” – ways of using tune, motive, harmony, tonality, tone color, & rhythm Music of Bach, Beethoven, & Brahms was based on this “logic” – common-practice era Avant-garde music moved away from this norm Worked out new principles based on new uses of melody, harmony, & tonality
Experiment and Transformation: Melody (1) Wagner’s vocal lines not very tuneful Mahler used distortion in folk-like tunes Long, intricate melodies of his late works use large leaps as they surge, swoop, & yearn Schoenberg melodies more complex yet An exaggerated version of late Mahler
Experiment and Transformation: Melody (2) Debussy used shadowy motives Suggestion of melody without clear tunes Stravinsky borrowed Russian folk songs Whittled them down into brief fragments
New Horizons, New Scales (1) Influence of 1889 Paris world’s fair African masks influenced Picasso Debussy heard Balinese gamelan music Awareness of other scales began to grow New scales affected harmony & tonality Fresh new sounds available Ended the stranglehold of diatonic scales
New Horizons, New Scales (2) Debussy used whole-tone & pentatonic scales Stravinsky used octatonic scales Ives used the quarter-tone scale
“The Emancipation of Dissonance” Harmony arose to support melody But melodies now more complex & vague Harmony naturally became more dissonant Dissonances were meant to resolve But resolutions were delayed longer & longer Degrees of consonance, dissonance emerged Harsh dissonances could resolve to mild ones Schoenberg announced “the emancipation of the dissonance” – dissonances could be used for their unique sound without need to resolve
Tonality and Atonality (1) Tonality arose to anchor melody, harmony But melody grew more complex, fragmented And harmony grew more dissonant, chromatic As a result, tonality grew weak & indistinct
Tonality and Atonality (2) Some composers began to write atonal music Music without any tonal center As with consonance & dissonance, degrees of tonality & atonality emerged Wagner’s chromaticism once seemed atonal, and while he moved music closer to atonality, now we can hear its tonal references
Conclusion Melody, harmony, tonality Joint emancipation of all three The “holy trinity” of music All are closely related & work together Joint emancipation of all three Central style characteristic of the first phase of 20th century avant-garde music