Composers Of 19th And 20th
This essay will consist of information about
nine composers and one piece of
work that they are known for dating from 1862
to 1990. The names of these
composers are: Aaron Copeland, Claude Debussy,
Charles Ives, Scott Joplin,
Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, Leonard
Berstein, Igor Stravinsky, and Arnold
Schoenberg. The first composer I
will discuss will be Aaron Copeland (1900 –
1990). Mr. Copeland was born
in Brooklyn, New York USA to Russian American
immigrant parents. His style is
strongly tonal with polychords, polyrhythm,
changing meters and percussive
orchestration. His influences include his teacher
Nadia Boulanger,
Picasso, Stravinsky and Ernest Hemmingway. Some notable history
about Mr.
Copeland is that he created Appalachian Spring for Martha Graham and
he used
American folklore as the subject with many of his works. The piece I
will be
discussing will be Appalachian Spring Section VII Theme and Variations
on
Simple Gifts I (1943-1944). The media of this piece is the orchestra and
the
texture is definitely homophonic. The melody is songlike, lyrical,
and
danceable, with conjunct motion. The harmony is tonal because the tune is
easily
recognizable. This piece is in duple meter with a moderate tempo. The
form is
theme and variations because the theme is recognizable throughout the
entire
piece. One of the programmatic ideas is that this piece is to be
performed as a
ballet. The ballet is a story of a pioneer celebration in
spring around a newly
built farmhouse in the Pennsylvania hills in the
1800’s. The second composer
is Claude Debussy (1862 –1918). My Debussy was
born in St. Germain–en-laye,
Paris France. His style is typically
impressionistic, he used unprecedented tone
color with subtle changes in
timbre. He used frequent instrument solos and the
woodwinds were used in
unusual registers. Mr. Debussy also used catatonic scales
and whole tone
scales. Some of his influences were Richard Wagner, Asian music,
literary and
pictorial ideas and Russian model music. The music of The Prelude
to the
Afternoon Faun (1894) is a piece of work that Mr. Debussy wrote after
reading
the poem by Stephane Mallarme. "This poem evokes the dreams and
erotic
fantasies of a pagan forest creature who is half man, half goat". The
media of
this piece is orchestra with shifting textures. The melody is based
on the E
Major scale, and the harmony is tonal. The meter is very vague
with a moderate
tempo, and the form is definitely ABA with a vagueness of
rhythm and distinct
cadences. Charles Ives is the third composer I will
discuss (1874 – 1954). Mr.
Ives was born in Danburry Connecticut, USA.
His style is eclectic with his
influences being his father who was a
bandmaster, the war, personal experiences,
and Horetio Parker. His music also
has features of American tradition. Mr. Ives
is also known as a
transcendentalist. A transcendentalist is someone that lives
on intuition.
Some notable history about Mr. Debussy is that he made his"living" selling
insurance so he could spend time composing his music. He
also won a Pulitzer
Prize. The representative work I will discuss is Three
Places in New
England Putman’s Camp, Redding, Connecticut (1912). The media is
orchestra,
with the texture having a distorted polyphony. The melody has super
imposed
familiar melodies against a chromatic background. The harmony is tonal
with a
complex rhythm and a fast tempo. The form is a one movement orchestral
work,
most commonly known as ABA form. Three Places in New England is a set
of
three pieces for an orchestra to excite memories of American history
and
landscapes. Putman’s Camp is a child’s impression of a Fourth of July
picnic
with fireworks and carnival rides. The fourth composer I will be
discussing is
Scott Joplin (1868 – 1917). Scott Joplin, the "King of
Ragtime"
music, was born near Linden, Texas on November 24, 1868. He moved
with his
family to Texarkana at the age of about seven. Mr. Joplin’s style of
music is
ragtime yet he was trained in "classical" music and wrote a ballet
and two
operas along with many piano rags. His influences were his parents,
and Julius
Weiss, who became his teacher when he was eleven. His music is
a unique blend of
European classical styles combined with African
American harmony and rhythm.
True-life events and real places inspired
many of Mr. Joplin’s songs. One of
his first compositions was The Great Crush
Collision, which was inspired by a
great locomotive crash near Waco Texas.
The piece I will be discussing in this
essay is Maple Leaf Rag (1899) which
is a classical example of ragtime. The
media for Maple Leaf Rag is the piano
with a homophonic texture. The melody has
conjunct motion with tonal harmony.
The meter is in duple with a steady rhythm
and a moderate march tempo. The
form is standard ragtime form, which is AA BB A
CC DD. Standard ragtime
form has exactly sixteen bars in each section. Maple
Leaf Rag was named
after a saloon in Missouri, where he worked as a pianist. The
success of this
song helped Mr. Joplin to quit his job and move to St. Louis,
where he taught
piano and composed. The only female composer I will be
discussing will be the
great Bessie Smith who is also known as "the empress of
blues" (1894 – 1937).
Mrs. Smith was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee USA.
Some of her influences
include her brothers Clarence and Andrew, and Ma Rainey
who was known as "the
mother of blues". Mrs. Smith recorded as many as 160
songs from 1923 to 1933.
Some notable history concerning Mrs. Smith is that she
was introduced into
the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Rock and
Roll Hall of
Fame in 1989. The piece I will be discussing will be Lost Your Head
Blues
(1926). The media for this song is the cornet, piano and voice with
a
homophonic texture. The melody is structurally shaped with a tonal harmony.
The
meter is in 4/4 with a flexible and syncopated rhythm. The form is the
typical
twelve bar blues. The song is heartfelt and very personal. The song
is about a
woman who plans to leave her man because she has "been treated
wrong." The
sixth composer I will be discussing in this essay will be the
great Louis
"Satchmo" Armstrong (1901 – 1971). Louis Daniel Armstrong was
born in the
Storyville District of New Orleans, Louisiana, on August 4,
1901, he always
celebrated his birth as July 4, 1900 because that is what he
was told and that
is what he believed. His real date of birth was not known
until after his death
July 6, 1971. Mr. Armstrong’s style of music was
New Orleans Style Jazz. Some
of his influences include his family, Peter
Davis, and Joe "King" Oliver.
Some notable history pertaining to Mr.
Armstrong is that he came from a
crime-ridden community. He was arrested at
thirteen for firing a gun in the air
at a New Years Celebration, and then was
virtually saved by the system because
he was sent to a reform school where he
met his mentor, Joe Oliver. He served as
Goodwill Ambassador in the
1950’s and 1960’s. Mr. Armstrong was able to
invent extraordinary solo’s that
transformed any melody into a jazz melody. He
revealed new dimensions of the
trumpet, showing that it could be played in a
higher register. The piece I
will discuss will be Hotter Than Hot that was sung
by Louis Armstrong and His
Hot Five. The media is cornet, piano, trombone,
guitar, and voice. The
texture is very varied with the melody being disjunct and
moving around. The
harmony is tonal while it is in quadruple meter with a rapid
tempo. The form
is New Orleans Style Jazz, which is characterized by scat
singing. Scat
singing is a combination of singing, talking and vocalizing a
melodic line
with nonsense syllables. The next composer I will be discussing
will be
Leonard Berstein (1918 – 1990). Mr. Berstein was born in
Lawrence,
Massachusetts USA. His style of music was very versatile. He
wrote musicals,
operas, and ballets and theater pieces, choral works and
three programmatic
symphonies. The piece I will be discussing is Tonight from
the musical West Side
Story. The media of this song is orchestra and
voice and the texture is
homophonic. The melody is syncopated and it has
disjunct motion. The harmony is
tonal with a 2/4 meter and it is fast and
very rhythmic. The form is American
Theater, or commonly known as a
musical. West Side Story was a 1949 version of
Romeo and Juliet written
by Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein and Arthur
Laurents. This musical
was about rival gangs and two young lovers entwined in it
all. "West Side
Story remains true to its Shakespearean model. Things look
good for the young
lovers in the beginning, but when Tony--much like
Romeo--accidentally
kills his lover's brother while trying to break up a rumble,
violence erupts.
The musical received rave reviews for its unflinching portrayal
of gang
life." The eighth composer I will be discussing is Igor Stravinsky
(1828 –
1971). Born in St. Petersburg, Russia. Mr. Stravinsky’s style is
mainly
primitivism. "Stravinsky's forms are additive rather than symphonic,
created
from placing blocks of material together without disguising the
joins". His
influences include Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov who he studied with,
Claude
Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and his father. Mr.Strainsky directed the
Russian
Ballet at the request of Segei Diaghilev in 1909. The piece I
will be discussing
is The Rite of Spring Omens of Spring-Dances of the Youths
and Maidens (1913).
The media for this piece is orchestra with no
textures, very disjointed and
irregular. The harmony is very fragmented and
disjunct. This song is in duple
meter with a pounding rhythm and a fast
tempo. The form is ballet. This ballet
about pagan Russia caused quite a fuss
in the Theatre des Champs-Elysees at its
premiere in 1913. It was definitely
one of the most famous riots in the history
of music. The structure of the
work is interesting. 1. "The Adoration of the
Earth ? Introduction ? The
Adoration of the Earth ?
Harbingers of Spring ? Dances of the Adolescent
Boys and Girls ?
Mock Abduction ? Spring Rounds ? Games of the Rival
Tribes
? Procession of the Tribal Sages ? Adoration of the Earth
?
Song of the Earth 2. The Sacrifice ? Introduction ? The Sacrifice
?
Mysterious Circles of the Adolescents ? Glorification of the
Chosen One ?
Evocation and Ritual of the Ancestors ? The Chosen
One's Dance of Death"
The ninth and final composer I will be discussing is
Arnold Schoenberg
(1874 – 1951) born in Vienna Austria. His style was
definitely full of
expressionism with Brahms and Wagner being his influences. In
1908, Mr.
Schoenberg abandoned the tonal system. Yet he felt himself forced to
move on
from the principles which had underlain all their music, above all
the
principle of tonality. For all of them, as for many other composers,
music had
to be written in a key, though it might frequently move from one
key to another.
The point about using the key system is that some notes
are stronger than
others, the strongest being the tonic (typically indicated
by the title of a
work; e.g. "Symphony in C minor"), the next the dominant
(five notes
above the tonic), and so on. This "tonal system" functions,
both
melodically and harmonically, as a set of tensions and relaxation’s;
the
further a piece is from the tonic, the more a need for resolution is
felt, and
the greater the sense of homecoming when the tonic is reasserted.
As Eric
Salzman writes, they are "large-scale, thematic, wholly 12-tone
structures
in which the technique becomes fluent and pliable, focused in a
way that
parallels the role played by tonality in similar Classical forms."
The piece I
will be discussing is Vulgarity (1912) also known as No.1
Gemeinhet, which is
from an opera, by the name of Pierrot Lunaire. The media
for this piece is
orchestra, voice, and a homophonic texture. The melody is
very disjunct, with a
definite atonal harmony with no meter. This is from an
opera with bizarre ideas.
The song is about an evil clown drilling a hole
in a skull and smoking tobacco
out of it. This is also a form of sprechtimme
which in German means
speech-singing. This is the end of my essay and I must
admit that I learned more
about these composers than I expected.