Chapter 35

Elliot Carter (1908-2012)

American composer who wrote for virtuoso performers using a complex nonserial style characterized by innovations in rhythm and form. He developed metric modulation in which a transition is made from one tempo and meter to another through an intermediary stage that shares aspects of both resulting in a precise proportional change in the value of a durational unit.

Crumb, Black Angels (1970)

A string quartet is electronically amplified to produce surreal dreamlike juxtapositions. The new and unusual effects in Crumb's music always have a musical purpose, and here they help express his reactions to the Vietnam conflict, the social unrest in the U.S., and the horrors of war. Quotes the chant Dies irae and Schubert's Death and the Maiden Quartet.

Samuel Barber (1910-1981)

American composer who remained committed to tonality. Incorporated modernist resources into his tonal music. Renowned for his vocal music. Conducted britten's peter grimes recorded production.

Harry Partch (1901-1974)

He repudiated equal temperament and Western Harmony and counterpoint to seek a wholly new system. His writings speak of a monophonic music ideal harking back to the ancient Greeks. He devised a new scale with forty-three notes to the octave based on just intonation, in which notes relate to each other through pure intervals from the harmonic series.

Berio, Sinfonia (1968-69)

Heavily based on borrowed material; incorporated most of the scherzo movement of Mahler's Second Symphony and super imposed on it an amplified verbal commentary by a large orchestra.

Feldman, Projection I (1950)

Is for solo cello, uses boxes rather than note heads to indicate approximate register, leaving the specific pitches up to the player. Timbre and rhythm are specified, and pattern of sounds and silences will be same no matter what pitches are chosen.

Berio, Sequenza III (1965-66)

Is typical of the series of Sequenzas in emphasizing virtuosity, yet differs from the other in two ways: it is for voice, rather than an instrument, and it is mostly in graphic notation, used to convey vocal sounds from singing to humming, whispering, muttering, laughing, coughing, gasping, and clicking of the tongue.

Morton Subotnick (1933- )

Silver Apples of the Moon (1967) Created with the Buchla synthesizer, this work was the first electronic piece to be commissioned by a record company.

The Theremin & Ondes Martenot

First electronic instruments, the Theremin changed pitch according to the distance between the instruments antenna and the performers hand. The Ondes Martenot, controlled by a wire, ribbon, or keyboard. Both produced only one note at a time, were capable of glissandos along the entire pitch continuum, and projected a haunting, almost voice like sound.

square root form

John Cage. A structure where units are grouped into contrasting sections and within each unit the measures are grouped in the same pattern with contrasting material in each group of measures to make the durational pattern audible. Called this because the number of measures on each unit is the square root of the total in the movement.

Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001)

One of the first to write music for acoustic instruments. An engineer and architect as well as a composer. Saw mathematics as fundamental to both music and architecture so he based his music on mathematical concepts.

Babbitt, Philomel (1964)

One of the most moving early works that combined prerecorded tape with live performers; for solo sopranist with a tape that includes altered recorded fragments of the singer as well as electronic sounds.

Husa, Music for Prague 1968 (1968)

Originally composed for concert band and later arranged for orchestra. Prompted by political concerns, as a response to the occupation of Czechoslovakia (Husa's native country) and overthrow of its liberalizing government by the Soviet Union in August 1968; combines quoted materials with obvious meanings, uses variety of modern resources, including twelve-tone methods, indeterminacy, a focus on texture, and an all-percussion movement.

Xenakis, Metastaseis (1953-4)

This piece gave each string player in the orchestra a unique part to play. It uses straight lines to create curves in the music. Xenakis was a Greek architect and engineer who saw mathematics as fundamental to both architecture and music.

Pierre Boulez (1925- )

also inspired by Messiaen to apply serialism to both pitch and duration. Sought after a more expressive language, he developed new rows that provided him with enormous flexibility and expressive potential.

indeterminacy

an approach to composition pioneered by John Cage, in which the composer leaves certain aspects of the music unspecified. Should not be confused with chance. (random, different every time)

nonretrogradable rhythms

another Messiaen trademark where rhythms are the same forwards and backwards.

chance music

approach to composing music pioneered by John Cage, in which some of the decisions normally made by the composer are instead determined through random procedures, such as tossing coins. Chance differs from indeterminacy, but shares with it the result that the sounds in the music do not convey an intention and are therefore to be experienced only as pure sound. (random, fixed score)

effects of WWII

brought a relaxation of government control. After the war, the authorities cracked down in a 1948 resolution that condemned the works of Prokofiev and he leading composers as "formalists"

metric modulation

developed by Elliott Carter, which a transition is made from one tempo and meter to another through intermediary stage that shares aspects of both, resulting in a precise proportional change in the value of a durational unit.

added values

duration over meter. Such as the dotted eighth-note amid even eighths or the lone 16th note, which add a small duration value to produce units of irregular length. (Messiaen trademark)

synthesizers

electronic instruments that generate and process a wide variety of sound.

musique concrète

term coined by composers working in Paris in the 1940's for music composed by assembling and manipulating recorded sounds, working "concretely" with sound itself rather than with music notation.

total serialism

the application of the principles of the twelve tone method to musical parameters other than pitch, including duration, intensities, and timbres.

Stockhausen, Kreuzspiel (1951)

(Cross-Play) for piano, oboe, bass clarinet, and percussion; uses a process of rotations where notes are shifted and played for a certain duration Stockhausen sets up these processes of change in pitch, duration, dynamic, and register so that they all cross at precisely the same point in the middle, hence the title.

Pierre Schaeffer, Symphonie pour un homme seul (1950)

(Symphony for one man) was the first major work of musique concrete; Schaeffer collaborated with Pierre Henry to create this.

Messiaen, Quatuor por la fin du temps (1941)

-Messiaen was interned at a prisoner-of-war camp in Silesia, where this work was performed for their fellow prisoners. -The work is set for violin, clarinet, cello, and piano, instruments played by fellow prisoners (he played piano). -The title refers to the Apocalypse, which will bring about the end of time and the beginning of eternity. -The work is religious, even though there is no text. -The rhythms are the same forward and backward, hence suggesting the unchangeable, the divine, and the eternal. -Messiaen avoids movement toward resolution by repeating harmonies to create a sense of stasis or meditation.

the development of the wind ensemble

-wind ensemble is a large ensemble of winds, brass, and percussion. Mostly with one player per part. Dedicated soely to serious music rather than to the mix of marches and other fare typically played by bands. -band music traditionally viewed as a kind of pop music underwent a striking transformation in the post-war era with the creation of a large repertoire of serious works for winds, especially in N. America. Over the previous century, the wind band had grown in popularity to become one of the fixtures of American life.

Earle Brown, December 1952 (1952)

A piece in graphic notation in which nothing is specified; he offers lines and rectangles of various sizes and explains in a note that the score can be placed in any orientation, read in any direction, and performed for any length of time by any number of instruments or other sound-makers.

Barber, Hermit Songs (1952-53)

A song cycle on texts by medieval Irish monks and hermits; these songs are always tonally centered, yet each offers a novel blend of traditional tonality with modern resources.

Boulez, Le marteau sas maître (1953-55)

Boulez's best known piece in which he fused his pointillist style and serial methods with sensitive musical realization of the text; Nine short movements, is a setting if verses from a cycle of surrealist poems by Rene Char, interleaved with instrumental movements that comment on the vocal ones by realizing the same material in different ways. Ensemble is comprised of a lot voice, alto flute, xylorimba, vibraphone, guitar, viola and various soft percussion instruments.

Cage, Music of Changes (1951)

Charts of possible sounds (half were silences), dynamics, durations, and tempos and used the method from the I-Ching (Book of Changes) to select which were to be used, filling in a formal structure based on units of time. The result is a piece in which sounds occur randomly and at random volumes, durations, and speeds.

Varèse, Poème electronique (1957-8)

Combined electronic sounds with recorded ones, from noises to a singer, and represented a pinnacle of his concept of spatial music. Commissioned by the Philips Radio Corporation by the Brussels Exposition in 1958, the eight-minute piece was projected by 425 loud speakers ranged all about the interior space of the pavilion.

John Cage (1912-1992)

Created sounds, approaches and ideas that had been excluded from music. Composed serial music, worked in the experimentalist tradition through the 40's then turned to ever more reconceptions of music that made him the leading composer and philosopher.

Subotnick, Silver Apples of the Moon (1967)

Created with the Buchla synthesizer, this work was the first electronic piece to be commissioned by a record company. Designed to fill two sides of an LP

Britten, Peter Grimes (1944-45)

Established Britten's reputation and became the first English opera since Purcell to enter the international repertory, centers on a fisherman who is disliked by the other residents of his village, pursued by mobs, and ultimately driven to suicide.

Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)

Most important French composer born in the twentieth century. Studied organ and composition at the Paris Conservatoire, was organist at St. Trinite in Paris from 1931 on and became professor of harmony at the conservatoire in 41. A devout catholic and composed many pieces on religious subjects.

Penderecki, Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima (1960)

One of Penderecki's best-known pieces based on texture and process; for fifty-two string instruments. Score gives few definite pulses or note values, measures time by seconds instead. Each instruments has a unique part to play and each section of the music focuses on creating a different sound.

Messiaen, Mode de valeurs et d'intensités (1949)

The third of Messiaen's Four Rhythmic Studies for piano; He created a "mode" comprised of 36 pitches each assigned a specific duration, dynamic level, and articulation to be used every time that pitch occurred. The piece itself is not serially arranged, but it did inspire Boulez and Stockhausen to write the first European works of total serialism.

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)

Wrote film music that allowed him to communicate in the simplest means. He was influenced by humanitarian concerns and ideals of public service, manifest his interest in writing music for children and amateurs, his allegorical pleas for tolerance and his pacifism

Morton Feldman (1926-1987)

closely associated with the New York abstract expressionist painters who inspired him to trust instinct, reject compositional systems and traditional forms of expression and compose in a manner analogous to their flat abstract images.

the university as patron

colleges and universities in North America became patrons of music, training young performers and music educators, and supporting composers, new music ensembles,mind ensembles, and jazz programs.

Cage, Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano (1946-48)

consists of sixteen "sonatas" - relatively brief movements, most in binary form without thematic returns—and four interludes. The pianist prepares the piano in advance, following detailed instructions concerning what objects to place between the strings and where to put them. Each movement explores a different set of timbres and figurations.

Milton Babbitt (1916-2011)

focused on combinatorial rows and derived rows related to trichords and organized duration through number rows. In the early 60's he began to use "all-partition arrays" of interrelated rows using all possible ways of segmenting the row into groups various lengths. Around the same time he developed a "time point" approach to duration in which each measure of notes are assigned to begin at particular points on this time grid using number rows.

George Crumb (1929- )

has been most imaginative in coaxing new sounds out of ordinary instruments and objects. He obtained special effects also from conventional instruments.

Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007)

inspired by Messiaen to write first European works of total serialism. He combined serialism with other methods while creating a body of work as diverse as the of Cage. He was one of the pioneers of electronic music.

Luciano Berio (1925-2003)

new virtuosity was well represented by his works. In a sign that he is treating the voice like an instrument and the text like a repertoire of timbres, he often places vowels and syllables in graded sequences based on their phonetic qualities, such as how high or far forward the tongue lies in the mouth when pronouncing them.

New Music Course at Darmstadt

periodical New music, Cowell publishes scores by Ives, Schoenberg, and other modernist and ultramodernist composers. music promoted by Cowell and by his contemporaries, New Musical Resources, explored new textures and procedures, such as giving each voice a different subdivision of the meter.

scales of limited transposition

scales featuring intervals smaller than a semitone. May involve building new instruments or reconfiguring traditional ones in an effort to seek new sounds.

Karel Husa (1921- )

wrote music for wind ensemble Husa was born in Prague and came to the United States after Communists assumed power in his native country. Music for Prague 1968 was inspired by the Soviet Union's overthrow of Czechoslovakia's liberal government.

Krzysztof Penderecki (1933- )

wrote the best-known pieces based on texture and process Threnody: to the Victims of Hiroshima. The score gives few definite pulses or note values and instead measures time by seconds.