| Contents |
Part two. The two determining currents of Postromanticism -- Impression and expression -- Dramaticism and color -- Formalists and harmonists -- Their respective attitudes toward the material of music -- Poematic illusion in impressionism -- Necessity of relating new experience in sonority with content of an intuitive nature -- Painting and poetry as points of reference for these new experiences -- Analogy of sensations -- Baudelaire and Tieck -- Rimbaud and Ghil -- Hugo -- Development of synesthesia in Romanticism -- The misconception regarding decadence in art -- Verlaine -- Mallarme -- Impressionism as an abstract image -- Debussy -- The historical process in European music -- Concept of harmonic unity -- The dynamic character of harmony -- Natural resonance -- Relativity of dissonance -- Tonality as an extension of the consonance-dissonance principle -- The state of flux in tonal feeling -- System of harmony and system of tonality -- Tonality and atonality as relative and interdependent values -- Functional system (tonality) and nonfunctional system (atonality) -- France and Germany -- Two series of tonal and aesthetic intuitions -- Evolution and inspiration -- Important points in the evolution of contemporary music -- National or popular color -- Modal and exotic color -- Chromatic richness and complication of texture -- Perception of a consonant sense in the chords of the seventh and ninth -- Impressionism, a continuation of Romantic harmonism -- The two antagonistic elements in nineteenth-century music: comic opera and symphony -- Antimusical feeling of the Romantic poets -- Decline of chamber music in the first stage of Romanticism -- Its revival in Paris during the middle of the century -- Germanic influx in France during the second stage of Romanticism -- Wagner and Baudelaire -- Berlioz and Tristan -- Harmonic dissociation of the chord -- Pictoral technique -- Impressionism and pointillism -- The French tradition -- The societe nationale -- The schola cantorum -- Claude Debussy -- Childhood and adolescence -- Claude Achille Debussy -- His youth -- Massenet -- Mme. von Meck -- Italy -- Russia -- Tchaikovsky -- Vienna: Tristan -- The Vasniers -- The villa Medici -- The quicksands of impressionism -- Its initial aspects -- The shadow of Franck -- Pelleas et Melisande -- Reforms in the lyric theater since the creation of opera -- French musical-dramatic tradition -- Natural style in operatic song -- The recitative of Debussy -- Guiding motives in Pelleas -- The problem of the lyric drama never solved -- Superposition not fusion -- Undefined melody and formal melody -- The dissolution of form in impressionism -- Pelleas an aggregation of short forms -- The emphasis on characteristic features of declamation -- The harmonic gesture -- Maurice Ravel -- The "Histoires naturelles" and L'Heure espagnole -- The music of Ravel, born of the genius of the language -- Ravel's epigrammatic style -- Laforgue -- Renard -- Formation of Ravel's personality -- Popular and exotic influences -- Value of dissonance in Ravel -- Early works -- Liszt as a model -- Form in Ravel -- Provisional character of the terms used in contemporary criticism -- The artificiality of Ravel -- National antecedents in his music -- Erik Satie -- Emmanuel Chabrier -- His influence on Debussy and Ravel -- The Russians -- Spanish exoticism -- The color of dissonance and its orchestration -- Prosody and dance -- The profile -- Chamber works -- End of a cycle in French music -- The road toward atonality -- Arnold Schonberg -- His first period -- Polyphonic texture -- Harmonic polyphony as unifying agent -- The basso continuo -- The fugue, Mozart, Beethoven -- Modulation and chromaticism -- Polytonality -- Anti-vocal lines -- Formation of the personality of Schonberg -- The "Gurre-lieder" -- Verklarte Nacht -- Aesthetic and sentimental traditionalism in Germany -- Lentzov -- Dehmel -- Jacobsen -- The shadow of Wagner and Mahler -- Pelleas und Melisande -- The Kammersymphonie -- Poems of Stefan George -- Lieder -- The motive in Schonberg and its variation -- Expressionism -- Pictorial expressionism -- Sachlichkeit or transcendent objectivism -- Stylization of the Romantic phrase -- The Gothic tradition -- A turning to the medieval feeling for expression -- The German Renaissance -- Polyphony -- The protestant chorale and its texture -- Johann Sebastian Bach as a symbol -- Romantic music and painting in Germany -- Its provincialism -- The modern period -- Die Brucke -- Munch -- Hodler, Nolde, Barlach, Pechstein, Kokoschka -- Der Blaue Reiter -- Marc, Kandinsky, Klee -- Schonberg, the musical representative of these groups -- The decisive stage in the art of Schonberg -- The technique of the twelve tones -- Schonberg in North America -- Expressionism in the theater -- Modern German theater, the art of complexes -- The literary cabaret -- Erwartung and Die Gluckliche Hand -- Schonberg's ideas on musical and theatrical declamation -- Value of the instrumental factor -- Prosody -- Pierrot Lunaire -- The new feeling of expressionist accompaniment -- Orchestration -- Schoenberg's five orchestral pieces -- Artificial formalism -- Atonal texture -- The twelve-tone technique -- Fundamental series or tone rows -- Atonalism, a creed -- Followers of Schonberg -- Alban Berg -- The Suite Lyrique -- Wozzeck -- Lulu -- Berg's atonal technique reduced to a method -- Anton von Webern -- Ernst Krenek -- Josef Hauer -- Atonal transformation of Bach's contrapuntal texture -- Linear counterpoint or dissonant counterpoint -- Toward polytonality -- Hindemith's youthful compositions -- Traditionalist reaction -- Mathis der Maler -- Cardillac -- Kammermusik -- Gebrauchsmusik -- Return to tonality -- Polytonality and heterophony -- Possible ambiguities in traditional "Writing" -- Its apparently polytonal aspects -- Tonal extension of resonance -- Actual limits of its acceptability -- Elementary tonal superpositions -- Bitonality -- Experimental procedures -- Darius Milhaud -- General principles of the superposition of tonalities -- Milhaud's musical career -- His work -- The subdivisions of the semitone -- Ultrachromaticism in the natural series of resonance -- Renunciation of the tempered system -- Ultrachromaticism in melody and in harmony -- Busoni and thirds of the tone -- Haba and quarter tones -- Sixths and eighths of the tone -- Microtonalism in present day acoustics -- Electromagnetic waves and their utilization in music -- Passing beyond the stage of experimentation -- Igor Stravinsky -- His different periods -- Developments going beyond nationalism, color, atonality, and polytonality -- New affirmations of tonality and form -- Bela Bartok -- Defvelopment of his personality and his work -- Hungarian nationalism and folklore -- The nationalist stage in Bartok's development -- His later works -- Passing beyond the stage of nationalism in Spain -- From Pedrell to Albeniz and to Falla -- Stages in Falla's art -- His transcendent nationalism -- The grip of nationalism and its dangers -- Nationalism in the Americas -- Americanism in music -- Musical beginnings in the United States -- European influences: Paine, Chadwick, Parker, MacDowell -- Loeffler, Carpenter, Hill -- Influence of Negro folk music: Gilbert, Still -- Early interest in Indian music: Farwell, Cadman, Jacobi -- Influence of notable teachers in forming composers of the present day -- Wide range of tendencies and interests typical of the American composer -- Postromanticism and impressionism -- Griffes -- Neoclassicism: Virgil Thomson -- Notable masters of technique: Sessions, Piston, Proter, Rogers -- "Mechanistic" music: Varese -- Experimentalists: Ives Cowell -- Younger independents, and some pupils of Schonberg -- Influence of the American tradition: Thompson, Moore, Hanson, Schuman, Creston -- Exoticism: Bowles, McPhee -- Exponents of jazz: Antheil, Gershwin, Gruenberg -- Copland -- Harris -- Music in South America -- First stage of nationalism: Fabini, Julian Aguirre, H. Allende -- Composers of more universal inspiration: Villa-Lobos, A. Ginastera, G. Uribe, J. C. Paz, J. J. Castro, D. Santa-Cruz, J. Lecuna, Pnce, Rolon, Revueltas, Carlos Chavez. |
| Abstract |
This book traces the sources of contemporary music and seeks to discover how that music parallels the social and artistic genealogy of our time. In order to explore the genealogy of modern music, the author goes back to the prime of the romantic period when the idea of modernism proceeded from Richard Wagner, and continues to the point where the so-called nationalistic schools break what was formerly a homogeneous artistic era. He follows each of these lines of national music and, without losing sight of their interrelation, describes the changes and movements that evolved: postromanticism, the reaction toward form, impressionism and expressionism, analogies in painting and poetry, Debussy and the close of an epoch, the road toward atonality, Schonberg and the twelve-tone technique, polytonality and other experimental procedures, the subdivision of the semitone and the renunciation of the tempered system. This book presents a comporehensive and authoritative picture, seen against correct historical background, the growth of music in our time. |
