MUS010: Intro to Music Literature

Lecture 2022-09-21: Music as organized sound

• Music is creatively organized sound
• Recognizing music: first impression → sound organization → aesthetic / pleasing? → music or not
• Music is sonic order
• Music Notation
  • Descriptive: description of the music, cannot be used for reproduction of the music (e.g. spectrogram)
  • Prescriptive: directions for performers to reproduce the music
• Organizing sound as composition:

graph LR
    A[improvisation]--->|descriptive text| B[composition]
    B--->|prescriptive text| C[performance]

• Canon
  • form in which the same / similar melody is played in different voices
  • any variation is introduced contrapuntally (if 1st voice improvised, then few measures later 2nd imitates him, and 3rd voice follows later, etc)

How is Pachelbel’s canon used in this song

Lecture 2022-09-23: Music in Ancient Greece (600-1200)

Opening Question

The printed music (or score) of Pachelbel’ Canon is an example of: (c) prescriptive notation According to John Backing, music: (d) both and b (is humanly organized sound & cannot exist without structured listening)

Epic & Lyric

1. Epic Sung Poetry (Homer)

   • 1200 BCE Trojan War
   • 800 BCE Iliad and Odyssey about the Trojan War and the Adventures of Odysseus
   • Epic Poetry: large-scale historical narrative, with some extent of objectivity — not relating to self, but doesn’t preclude emotions
   • Recount history through music performance of a text

2. Lyric Sung Poetry (Sappho)

   • circa 600 BCE
   • Sung with lyres
   • Sappho
     • innovates the harp
     • introdues new musical modes/scales
     • explores psyhological and emotional states
     • subjectivity; self-exploration & self-expression
   • The music augments the lyrics by telling the “true story”behind the lyrics (easier to perceive the authentic emotions); the music can clash with the lyrics

Music and Math

• Emotions are being expressed in mingling and clashing frequencies
• Pre-Socratic Harmony: order out of conflicting elements

1. Pythagoras

   • Universe is harmonious
   • Tetractys
   • Intervals occur in ratios
     • 2:1 - octave
     • 3:2 - fifths
     • 4:3 - fourths
     • …

2. Plato

   • Timaeus: God creates the cosmos using the same ratios of a diatonic musical scale

3. Diatonic Scale

   • 5 tones + 2 semitones

Music and Education

1. Plato’s Republic

   Early education

   1. gymnastic (body)
   2. music (soul): “Rhythm and harmony most of all insinuate themselves into the inmost part of the soul. […] [Children] would love the beautiful and the just … before they grasp reasonable speech”

   Higher education

   1. arithmetic
   2. geometry
   3. astronomy
   4. music

Lecture 2022-09-30: Hildegard von Bingen

Modes

• church modes → medieval modes → today
• church modes were renamed (either by mistake or due to mistranslation) in medieval times; same scales but names all shuffled
• different modes trigger different emotional reactions

Hildegard von Bingen

• polymath nun, later named saint (by the last pope)
• Ordo Virtutum

Lecture 2022-10-03: Renaissance Polyphony

• started with two voices in monastic music

Cyclic Masses on Cantus Firmus

• Cantus Firmus: borrowed melody (from other musical works)
• Using cantus firmus in different parts of the Mass Ordinary links them into a unified cycle
  • Kyrie
  • Gloria
  • Credo
  • Sanctus
  • Agnus Dei
• Mensural Notation: early form of time signature
  • a circle or half circle with or without a dot at its center
  • ”Tempus” / Time: circle vs half circle (2 vs 3 beats in a measure)
    • Circle represents 3 beats in a measure because both a circle and the Trinity are considered perfect.
  • ”Prolatio” / Prolation: dot vs no dot (simple vs compound)
    • Again, dot is used to represent 3 subdivisions in a beat because a dot is like a circle.
• Mensural Music: timed music as opposed to plain chant; music with a pulse / beat pattern (strong vs weak)
• Du Fay structured his piece Nuper rosarum flores using the design (ratio between compartments) of a dome’s blueprint.

Lecture 2022-10-10: Opera - Orpheus and Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (1600; Early Baroque)

Academies in Florence, Italy (1600c)

• Neo-Platonism: retrieval of ancient power of music
• Vincenzo Galilei, Dialogue of Ancient and Modern Music: only monodies can reflect the Greek tragedy genre and the power of music (neo-Platonic view of music)

Innovations in Music (1600s)

Basso Continuo: partially improvised accompaniment based on figured bass

• professional solo singers
• Monody: a style of music with a solo vocalist accompanied by basso continuo
  • a.k.a. solo madrigals
• birth of opera

Birth of Opera

• inspired by Neo-platonic thought: Greek tragedy = drama + music
• uninterrupted singing throughout the opera
• components
  • symphony
  • recitative (on figured bass / basso continuo)
  • aria
  • ensembles (duets, trios, etc)
  • chorus
  • dance

Orpheus (Florence 1600-1607)

• considered the oldest opera still performed (the actual oldest is Dafne)
• based on myth of Orphesus
• Early Orpheus operas
  • Giulio Caccini, [Orfeo and] Euridice (1600)
  • Jacopo Peri, Euridice (1600)
  • Claudio Monteverdi, Orfeo (1607)

Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo

• Outline
  • Prologue
  • Act 1: pastoral festivities in Thrace (Arcadian countryside)
  • Act 2: happiness to misery (Euridice dies)
  • Act 3: Underworld; Orpheus challenges Charon
  • Act 4: Orpheus moves the King & Queen of Underworld and saves Euridice, only to lose her again
  • Act 5: Back to Thrace. Ascends to heaven
• Prologue
  • between recitative and aria; fluid rhythm
  • manifesto: personification of music
  • has a style between recitative and aria due to its fluid rhythm
• exceptionally big orchestra for the time

Lecture 2022-10-12: Opera - Orpheus and Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice

Orpheus (cont’d)

• originated from Greek mythology
• protagonist has supernatural power and a magical instrument

Orpheus version differences

• Beginning
  • Monteverdi, L’Orfeo: prologue and act 1 - wedding ceremony, happy atmosphere
  • Gluck, Orfeo ed Euridice: overture
  • Haydn, L’anima del filosofo: overture and act 1 - Euridice gets to marry Orfeo instead of Arideo
• Body
  • Monteverdi
    • Act 2-4
    • death of Euridice
    • goes to Underworld
    • cannot keep the promise to not look back, Euridice dies
  • Gluck
    • Act 1-2
    • Euridice has already died to begin with
    • Cupid helps Orfeo reach Underworld
    • uses his magical lyre to pass the Furies
    • finds Euridice but cannot keep promise, Euridice dies
  • Haydn
    • Act 2-3
    • Euridice is bitten by a snake and dies
    • Genio helps Orfeo reach Underworld
• Ending
  • Monteverdi
    • Act 5
    • laments Euridice
    • avoid women for rest of his life
    • 1607 ver: Bacchantes blames Orfeo for this decision and kills him (Moresca dance)
    • 1609 ver: Apollo invites Orfeo to heaven, from which he can always see Euridice
  • Gluck
    • Act 3
    • laments and tries to commit suicide
    • Cupid stops him and revives Euridice
  • Haydn
    • Act 4
    • Orfeo finds Euridice in Elysian fields, cannot keep promise, Euridice dies
    • laments and drinks the poison given by the Bacchantes and dies

Monteverdi, L’Orfeo (cont’d)

• influenced by Peri and Caccini’s versions
• lots of characters
• pale instrumentation to brighten the harp’s sound
• very melismatic
• high register instruments = Earth scenes
• bass instruments = Hades / Underworld scenes

Gluck, Orfeo ed Euridice

• collaborated with Ranieri de Calzabigi
• his most successful musical achievement
• turning point in opera history
• influences next generation of musician
• first to actually have uninterrupted music (thanks to recitatives)
• fullest instrumentation possible for his time

Haydn, L’anima del filosofo (1791)

• his only opera seria

Discussion 2022-10-13: Opera

Style	Pitch	Rhythm
rap	speech	song
aria	song	song
recitative	song	speech

• Opera
• Recitative: action-oriented, move the plot forward
• Aria: intensely emotion, does not move plot forward
• Castrato male opera singer
• impresario: producer
• libretist: writer of text of opera

Musical Form

• structure of a piece
• identify a form: notice what is repeated and what changes, esp melodies
• Strophic Form: same melody, different stanzas
• hemiola: same meter but beat division changes — compound duple → simple triple (sometimes alternates between both)
• Baroque Era
• Da Capo Aria
• recitative
• duo/trio: aria with multiple people

Lecture 2022-10-14: Late Baroque: Opera - Vivaldi, Griselda

Antonio Vivaldi, Griselda

• Griselda, a shepherdess was forced to marry the king and abandon the man she actually loved

• Ritornello: a form with that starts with a specific theme to express the general mood of the piece

  • brief return to prior motif(s)
  • RIT (tutti) - SOLO - RIT - SOLO - … - RIT
  • Ritornello is in the tonic key, while solo can be in any key

• Coloratura : melismatic / virtuosic solo opera passage

• Tutti: orchestra intervention

• Concerto

Lecture 2022-10-17: Afro-Baroque music

• scarce musical texts
• Western notation not completley suitable for notating the pitch and rhythm of African-rooted music
• African-American musical “tropes” and features
  • rhythmic complexity (e.g. polyrhythm, polymeter)
  • embodiment: engagement of body and mind
  • spontaneity & improvisation
  • circularity (e.g. blues) as opposed to the linearity of European music
  • collectivism and participation
  • syncopation
• examples of early African-American music
  • Field hollers: rhythmically fluid and unaccompanied song (monodic chant)
  • Work songs
    • call and response (antiphonal: sung alternatingly by two persons)
    • clear pulse to pace repetitive manual work
• Stratigraphy - every song contains a strata of a distant past

Discussion 2022-10-20: Bach & Fugue

Baroque Tonality

• solidified tonality; Maj/min
• theatricality; virtuous
• more dynamics
• new musical forms
• presence of basso continuo

Well-Tempered Clavier

• Bach
• preludes and fugues
• a piece in each of 24 keys (M/m)
• pedagogical and domestic use

Fugue

Lecture 2022-10-24: Giuseppe Tartini (1692 - 1770)

Giuseppe Tartini

• born in Piran, Slovenia
• 1721-1765
  • first violin and concert master @ St. Anthony, Padova
  • ”Maestro of nature”
  • Devil’s Trill Sonata
• prolific composer
• theorist
  • mathematics and physics of sound
  • episode of collective trance
  • music of oral tradition
  • treats harmony as a quantitative science
  • the Tartini tone: auditory illusion that prescribes a third lower note (with a frequency of the difference between the two notes) where two notes are played
  • argues against Absolute Music
• transcribes music of oral tradition
• comment on his style of playing by Burney: “he plays and expresses a parlare that is, in such a manner as to make his instrument speak.”

Goethe

Lecture 2022-10-26: Haydn - Instrumental Music

Haydn

• ”father of symphony"
• "father of string quartet”
• three phases of life
  • 1740: in Vienna as choirboy until voice brekas
  • 1750: early string quartets (Count Morzin)
  • 1761: hired by Prince Esterhazy
    • disconnected from the world, so had to experiment to become original
  • 1791-1809: Prince dies, works as freelance composer between London and Vienna
• works
  • vocal - masses, oratorios (like opera but performed in a concert format, not staged), operas
  • instrumental - sonatas, string quartets, symphonies, concertos, etc
• string quartets
  • early Haydn SQ: light genre
  • late Haydn SQ: serious and difficult genre
  • historical importance
    • bridge Baroque and Romantic eras
    • obbligato scoring (no figured bass)
    • equality of parts (“democracy”)
    • Absolute Music
    • Thematische Arbeit — thematic work
    • dramatic power
    • synthesis of genres (dance, opera, fugue, folk; art music + popular music; serious and fun)
• Op 33, No 2, Eb Major, “The Joke”
  • second movement should be slow (Adagio)
  • throws off dancers by combining peasant / gipsy dance + minuet (aristocratic dance)
  • The final movement (rondo) ends with hesitant pauses (as if the performers don’t know if they are reaching the end), with the last pause “growing anxiously, to be finished off with a soft whisper: more question than answer”

Typical Movement Pattern (string quartets and symphonies in Classical Era)

1. Allegro = Sonata Form
2. Adagio = ABA’ (or theme and variations, sonata form, etc)
3. Allegro = minuet (|: A :|: B :| Trio || A B ||)
4. Allegro = Sonata form or rondo (ABACADA…)

Discussion 2022-10-27: Romantic Era (?)

• romantic: more instruments introduced & used
• score order: woodwind at top, brass, percussion, strings at bottom

Lecture 2022-11-02: Don Giovanni

Don Giovanni

Seria (serious opera) vs Buffa (comic opera)

Seria	Buffa
ancient times	modern times
less realistic	more realistic
castratos and countertenors	”natural” voices
serious	serious & comic
mostly chain recitative-arias	recitative-arias + complex & dynamic ensembles

Commedia dell’arte

• early form of professional theater originating from Italian
• improvised
• popular during the 16th and 17th centuries
• Based on action
• Slapstick comedy
• Stock characters

Catalogue Aria

• type of aria where the performer recounts a list of things (people, places, etc) (i.e. think about catalogue verse)
• e.g. Madamina il catalogo è questo (Mozart)
• popular in latter half of 18th century and early 19th century
• Patter singing: “A comic song in which the humor derives from having the greatest number of words uttered in the shortest possible time” (Oxford Music Online).
• extremely syllabic which enhances realism of the work

Discussion 2022-11-03: Sonata Form

• rounded binary form: A, B, half of A

Sonata Form

Lecture 2022-11-07: Beethoven (Pt 1)

Rise of “Serious music”

• professional performers
• trained listeners
• Cult of the work and its composer
• Formation of the canon
• Aristocratic reaction against “popular” “Classical” music [Tia De Nora, /Beethoven and the Construction of Genius/]
• production rate of symphonies was decreasing while the performances held were increasing

Beethoven Early Style (1780s-1802)

• studied music in Vienna with Albrechtsberger, Haydn, Salieri
• Beethoven had “received the spirit of Mozart from Haydn’s hands” (Waldstein, 1792).
• classical style = canon of 3 (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven)

Beethoven Middle Style: Heroic (1802-1815c)

• heroic and rebellious stage

• hearing loss

• reputation enabled him to be adventurous, achieving a style with new levels of drama and expression

• Heiligenstadt Testament: letter by Beethoven to Carl detailing his emotional struggles and his resolve to overcome the ailment to achieve his “artistic destiny”

  • can’t hide anymore, admits and faces the fact that the hearing loss is a “lasting malady"
  • "only Art it was that withheld [him]” from ending his life

• changed from music-making to music-thinking

• Moonlight Sonata

  • written in 1801, dedicated to Countess G. Guicciardi
  • almost free form (a.k.a. fantasia)
  • simple monodic texture (melody over arpeggios)
  • modal manipulation - shifts from major to minor, similar to B. Strozzi’s melodies
  • left hand gradually changed from arpeggios to responses of right hand melodies
    • increases intensity
    • from monodic to symphonic
    • becomes a dialogue between “man” (left hand/bass) and “woman” (right hand/melody/soprano)

• Beethoven Fifth (1804-1808)

  noumenal : can only be apprehended through intellectual intuition, as opposed to phenomenal (Kantian definition)

  • Hoffman’s review
    • ”One of the most important work of all times” (E.T.A. Hoffmann)
    • only instrumental music, which makes sense because music is the most romantic of the arts
    • The music “induces terror, fright, horror, and pain and awakens that endless longing,” which is a hallmark of Romanticism
  • Sonata form analysis
    • Exposition: [: primary theme (thesis) - transition - secondary theme (antithesis) :]
    • Development: [: modulations - retransition
    • Recapitulation: primary material - secondary material (tonic, resolution, synthesis) - (coda on 2nd repeat) :]
  • primary motif: fate
  • tempo shifts with mood (accelerando + crescendo, deccelerando + decrescendo)

Lecture 2022-11-09: Beethoven (Pt 2)

Beethoven Late Style (1815-1827)

• more introspective
• harder to play and comprehend
• practically deaf by 1818, completely isolated himself
• wrote in more intimate genres (piano sonatas, string quartets, piano miniatures)
• emphasis on continuity (blur divisions between phrase, movements (attacca), motifs)
• older style (fugue and imitation)
• Beethoven 9 “Choral”
  • orchestra, choir, vocal soloist (the first)
  • The operatic nature of the accompanying recitative inspired the tumultuous entrance.
  • Ode to Joy movement: rejects themes from the prior 3 movements
    • joyful acceptance
    • develops on the joy theme
  • Romantic; combines innovative and historical styles
  • symbolizes brotherhood and unity (subjectively used in good and bad cases around the world)

What happened to the symphony over time

• opera
  • overture ~ 1740s/50s
  • public ~ 1780s
  • exploded ~ 1800s
  • declined ~ 1824s
  • does music need words to be impactful?
• Beethoven 9 broke the genre — the peak of the symphonic genre
  • Schumann 4 — Neue Zeitschrift für Musik — “Follow Beethoven but not too closely!”
  • Brahms 1 — Neue Bahnen (1853)

Lecture 2022-11-14: Richard Wagner (Pt. 1-2) (1813 - 1883)

Richard Wagner (1813 - 1883)

• German Romantic opera

  • Wagner’s Tannäuser and Lohengrin (1840s)
    • medieval mythology
    • arias, ensembles, choruses, but with more fluid structure compared to traditional opera
  • begins using recurrent motivic ideas
  • emancipation of the orchestra

• Revolution of 1848

  • met the anarchist Michael Bakunin
  • actively engaged and supported the provisional government
  • exiled

• Zurich Essays - expressed his theories and ideas, some were antisemitic

  • Das Jugentum in der Musik (Jewishness in Music)
  • Die Kunst und die Revolution (Art and Revolution)
  • took a stance against commercial music

• Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft (The Artwork of the Future) and Oper and Drama

  Modernism : forward-looking art that breaks tradition

  • Beethoven 9 as prophecy
    • ”Joy!” - “language of the artwork of the future”
    • Beethoven 9 redeems music as a universal art
  • Nordic folk culture

• Critique of aria

• Critique of ensembles

• Emancipation of the orchestra

  • The orchestra leads and has a “voice” of its own
  • larger orchestra

• leitmotif: a melody attached to certain entity (idea/chararcter/concept/object) and its appearance on stage

  • can develop over time in the piece
  • diachronic: links past, present, and future

• Gesamtkunstwerk: total (unified) work of art

  • etymology: gesamt (whole, total) + kunst (art) + werk (work)
  • “A Gesamtkunstwerk makes use of all or many art forms or strives to do so” (Wikipedia).
  • visual art genre

• Ring Cycle; Wort-Ton-Drama; poet-composer-dramatist all-in-one

  • baesd on Niebelungslied, Edda, Völsung Saga

• Bayreuth Festspielhaus opera theater

  • sponsored by Ludwig II of Bavaria
  • new ritual/etiquette: no applause until the end
  • lights off
  • has orchestra pit

• Literary sources

  • Norse mythology
  • Edda (Scandinavia)
  • Völsung Saga (Iceland)
  • Nibelungenlied

Lecture 2022-11-16: See 11-14

• character gives up love to chase power (forge ring out of Rhine gold)
• leimotif / theme develops (e.g. sword theme before the guy was pulling out the sword)

Discussion 2022-11-17: Wagner

research project

• 7min podcast / 15-slide slideshow
• 500-1000w script, incl biblio
• due 12/4
• topic
  • intersect with music literature + classical music
  • topic should be narrow (e.g. how the Force is represented in this SW movie through music)
  • cannot be something already covered in class
• Research should be mostly based on Naxos & Oxford Music Online (Grove) & UC Davis Library (more on UCD Library Music Database page) & JSTOR; music can be anything that fits the topic; RILM can also be used if needed
• needs own analysis; don’t plagiarize
• describe why an analysis is needed / why is topic interesting
• use headings for slide change
• time period doesn’t matter, as long as it is relevant to music literature & analysis
• podcast: don’t include more than one minute of music clips
• slide: for each sample, 30s-1m clips are fine, use hyperlinks not embeds
• standard essay format; argumentative
  • conclusion: why does this topic / analysis matter?

Wagner

Lecture 2022-11-21: Debussy

• Symphonic Poem: instrumental piece inspired by a poetical or philosophical text
  • program music without depicting the text (!= four seasons)

Debussy

• Timeline

  • 1880: met Marie-Blanche Vasnier (already married), employed as an accompanist for vocal class, 8 year long affair with her; literary circles
    • participated in intellectual Parisian circles; influenced by symbolism
    • Mallarme’s literary Tuesday salons
  • 1888: experiences Wagner’s Ring
  • 1889: Paris World Fair, Paris Universal Exposition, experiences Javanese music and other Easter music styles, “primitive art”
    • inspired him to use pentatonic and whole-tonic scales

• Influences on Debussy

  • Symbolism (e.g. “The Death of Orpheus” by Jean Delville)
    • symbolist songs by Debussy
      • Cinq poemes de Baudelaire (1887-9) - based on Baudelaire’s poems
      • Ariettes oubliees (“forgotten little arias”) (1888) - based on Verlaine’s poems
      • Fetes galantes (1892) - also based on Verlaine’s poems
      • Trois chansons de Bilitis (1897) - text by Pierre Louys
  • Impressionism (e.g. “Impression, Sunrise” by Monet)
  • Primitivism: values the simple and unsophisticated (e.g. “Spirit of the Dead Watching” by Gauguin)
  • American Transcendentalists
    • Ralph Waldo Emerson: the symbol already exists in nature, the role of the poet is to reveal it, not to explain it

• Correspondances

  Synesthesia : mixing of sensory correspondences (e.g. being able to hear color)

  • Baudelaire, “Correspondances” : symbolism based on synesthetic analogies
  • analogy replaces logic

• Wagnerism

  • Debussy travels to Bayreuth in 1888 - mystic journey
  • Wagner was considered a prophet of symbolism by French poets

• Mallarme’s Faun (poem)

  • L’après-midi d’un faune (also Debussy’s eponymous symphonic poem)
  • faun’s encounter with nymphs after waking up
  • dualities
    • body vs mind
    • human vs beast
    • dream vs reality
  • duality of the Faun
    • chromatic and diatonic
    • major and minor
    • tritone (dissonance) and triad (consonance)
  • large-scale form = circular
  • myth as symbol
    • opposing flute against strings
  • whole-tone scale = 6 whole tones
  • pentatonic scale = 5 tones
  • no half-tones (cannot resolve due to lack of leading tone)
  • chromatic scale: everything is in half step; equally as disorienting as whole-tone scales

• Ballet Russes

  • oriental, exotic subjects (i.e. Scheherazade)
  • Nijinsky - dance & choreographer, with a primitivistic dancing style
  • 1912: first scandal - dances in the role of the faun in Debussy’s symphonic poem (L’après-midi d’un faune)
  • Debussy describes Nijinsky as “a perverse genius, a young savage”

• music excerpt

  • varying tone color similar to impressionistic paintings with many paint colors
  • meter changes rapidly to create disorientation
  • in later sections, flute and oboe: answer + response
  • diatonic rest before chromatic passage, whole-tone scales

Lecture 2022-11-28: Mahler and Berio (Symphony from Maximalism to Post-Modernism)

Maximalism

• Sonorous (larger orchestration)
• Temporal (longer duration of pieces)
• Philosophical: Weltanschauungsmusik (music as a philosophy of the world or world view)
• Predecessors: Beethoven 9, Wagner
• Apex: Mahler (e.g. Mahler 2, 5 instead of 4 movements, lasting 1h40m)

Gustav Mahler (1860 - 1911)

• Bohemia-born (Austrian Empire)
• Jewish heritage (victim of antisemitism)
• Worked as conductor (Royal Opera Budapest, Vienna Court Opera)
• 1907 - fired despite renown
• 1908 - conductor of New York Philharmonic
• Mahler in context: Fin-de-siècle (end-of-century) Vienna
  • 1867 - dual monarchy
  • independent satellite states
  • Freudian ideas: childhood, subconscious, medicalization of Romanticism
  • Klimt: two-dimensional/flat, shimmering/glimmering surfaces, symbolism
• As modernist
  • transcends tradition (creating art of the future)
  • Guido Adler on Mahler 2: “harmonies previously not to be found in the literature… Mahler oversteps the boundaries previously accepted in our time for the purely beautiful”
  • Mahler: “I will not live to see the victory of my cause!”
  • Mahler 2 references Beethoven and transcends it
  • sonorous dimensions: used anvils, cowbells, and other noises, which were ridiculed in 1905
• Program Music
  • 1st mvmt “Funeral Rite” : Tone Poem based on poem of Adam Mickiewicz of doomed love and suicide
    • Mahler: questions why we live, gives answer in last movement (source: his letter)
  • 3rd mvmt: “St. Anthony of Padua’s sermon to the Fishes” (German folk poems and songs)
  • 5th mvmt: “Primordial light” from Wunderhorn: children’s faith in salvation
    • based on “Resurrection,” poem by Klopstock, sung by soloists and chorus
• As post-modernist
  • a collage of styles
  • mixing high-brow (sonata form, imitative passages, etc) with low-brow styles (fold, commercial style like waltz, children’s songs, etc)
  • lack of unity in the work as a whole
  • mixing genres (symphony, opera, cantata, etc)
  • mixing comic & serious
  • mixing program & absolute music

Luciano Berio, Sinfonia (1968)

• Mahler’s scherzo from 2nd movement was reflected in Sinfonia’s third movement
• collage of music by different composers
  • Mahler (throughout)
  • Debussy
  • Monteverdi
  • Stravinsky
  • other compositions by himself
  • Bethoven
  • Stockhausen
  • etc

Lecture 2022-11-30: John Cage

John Cage

• son of inventor
• 1912 (LA) - 1992 (NYC)
• 1934 - studied with Schoenberg in LA
• earliest compositions were based on schematic organization of the 12 tones
• rejects serialism
• 1938 (Seattle): organizes a percussion orchestra for dance music
  • friends & cooperates with dancer/choreographer Merce Cunningham
• Prepared Piano: piano that was altered by inserting objects between strings
  • semi- or completely indeterminate pitch
• late 1930s - started to invent and use nontraditional instruments
  • 1939-41 - First, second, third Construction (in Metal)
  • with rhythmic patterns inspired by Eastern Javanese music
• 1952 - Water Music: pianist must pour water from pots, blow whistles under water, use radio & pack of cards, and do other things
  • precursor to Happenings (1960s)
• Aleatory Music: composition or performance based on chance or indeterminacy
  • artistic self-renunciation
• 1940s: began studying Eastern philosophies and Zen Buddhism
• Music of Changes: piano work in four volumes; pitches, duration, and timbres determined by tossing coins
• Imaginary Landscape No. 4: used 12 radios and 24 performers
  • used radio as source of unpredictable sounds
  • coin tosses determined tuning, dynamics, duration, tempo, etc
• 4’33”: “There’s no such thing as silence”
  • pianist sit in silence for 4 minutes and 33 seconds
  • audience listens to the atmospheric sounds
  • Lydia Goehr (philosopher): still a traditional piece since people came to the concert due to John Cage’s specifications, and they listened the the ambient sounds as if listening to Beethoven 9
• William Mix (1952)
  • 600 tapes of different sounds (regardless if musical or not)
  • used I Ching
• post-modernist (see earlier notes on Mahler as a post-modernist for what postmodernism is like)