Nationalism 17 March 2004

Norway: Edvard Grieg ( Biographical information Mature works: Norwegian heritage and nationalism –Norwegian folksongs, texts, peasant dance rhythms –Modal features in melody and harmony –Evocative titles Influences: Chopin, local folk music scene Output: short piano pieces, songs, incidental music, chamber music e.g. Lyric Pieces for piano, op. 43 ( )

Hungary: Béla Bartók ( ) Biographical information Musical influences: Liszt, Wagner, Strauss Nationalist and pioneer: new harmonies, folk-song scholar, merging of folk and WAM idioms Musical characteristics: –Motoric rhythms, irregular metres and offbeat accents –Tonal ambiguity, polytonality, dissonance and chromaticism –Pentatonic, whole tone, chromatic, modal, diatonic scales and tone clusters,contrapuntal textures, thematic development E.g. Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936)

Russian Currents Domination of ‘foreign’ music: Italian, German, French trends and immigrant composers 19thC Russian composers, two strains: –Some borrowing Germanic trends (e.g. Tchaikovsky) –Others creating national style Mighty Handful (Mighty Five): Russian nationalists –Alexander Borodin ( ) –Modest Musorgsky ( ) –Mily Balakirev ( ) –Cesar Ciu ( ) –Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov ( ) Drew from Russian folk song, modal and exotic scales to create “Russian” music

Modest Musorgsky ( ) “Greatest” of the Mighty Five, an adamant nationalist Output: piano, choral, orchestral works, song cycles, operas Musorgsky’s songs – important part of his output –He wrote many of his own texts, or translated Germany poetry into Russian: follow accentuation of Russian speech Musical material borrows heavily from Russian folk idioms: –narrow melodic range, repetition of one or two motives, modal quality Musorgsky’s harmony: non-functional chord progressions e.g. “The idle, noisy day is over” from song cycle Sunless (1874)

Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov ( ) Link between 1st generation of Russian composers and those in the 20thC –ushered in 20thC music in Russia Output: Symphonies, chamber music, choruses, songs, symphonic poems and operas (15) Experimented with whole tone scales, octatonic scales, parallel chord progressions E.g. Sheherazade (1888) Rimsky-Korsakov is also important as being teacher of Igor Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky ( ) Biographical sketch, musical influences His output: 3 “periods”: Russian nationalism, neoclassicism, 12 tone serialism - demonstrated many of the main trends of the 20thC Nationalistic pieces: Ballets commissions by Sergei Diagheliv, the founder and director of the Ballets Russes in Paris ( ) Ballets Russes: Vaslav Nijinksy, Sergie Diaghilev, Wassily Kandinksy and Stravinsky, among other composers Stravinsky: three ballets for the Ballet Russes: The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), The Rite of Spring (1913) The Rite of Spring: controversial due to the nature of the music, and the sexual nature of the ballet

Le Sacre du Printemps (1913) Depiction of the celebration of the arrival of spring and the related fertility cults of prehistoric Slavic tribes. Two parts: –Adoration of the Earth – pagan ritual celebrating fertility and the spring - comprised of dances, games and rituals –The Sacrifice of the Chosen Virgin - the second section is far more terrifying, as a virgin is selected for ceremonial sacrifice, who is then danced to death to appease the gods – death brings renewal Musically innovative: unpredictable use of rhythm, extreme dissonances and atonal sound, huge orchestra and the loud volume –Rhythm of this piece is the most outlandish feature –Dissonance of music via polytonality, modality, octatonic scales Met with contempt by the audience

Alexander Skryabin ( ) Another pivotal musician in Russia at the turn of the century Not a nationalistic composer, but he introduced important harmonic developments to Russian compatriots Influenced by chromaticism of Liszt and Wagner, as well as impressionistic music’s ability to evoke moods Developed his own musical vocabulary – chromatic, bordering on atonality Composed 10 piano sonatas which show his development from high Romantic harmonies to his own, atonal (anti-tonal) style e.g. Vers la flame (1914)

Late 19thC and Early 20 th C Trends Post-Romanticism (Mahler, Strauss, Faure) Impressionism (Debussy, Ravel) Neo-Classicism (Ravel) Nationalism (Smetana, Grieg, Bartok, Musorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov) National styles (Scryabin, Rimsky-Korsakov) Musically: –Emancipation of dissonance, pushing boundaries of conventional tonality –Integration of folk and art music styles, use of modal scales, whole tone scales –Experimentation with rhythm, orchestration Composers and the arts were also affected by significant changes in society in the early part of the twentieth century