Chapter 20

Chapter 20
The Search for New Sounds

1890-1945
Thursday, February 7, 13
Impressionism
• one of the earliest attempts to explore new

approaches to music
• term first used in painting to designate style
painters who used accumulation of short
brush strokes instead of continuous line to
produce a suggestion of an object
• color takes precedence over line
Impressionism
• music is based on a blurring of distinct
harmonies, rhythms, forms
• makes greater use of color (timbre) than
any previous style of music
• composers:
- Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
- Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Impressionism
• form: avoids goal-oriented structures
• harmony: use ninth, eleventh and thirteenth
chords; and non-diatonic scales
• voice leading: individual voices often move
independently of one another
• rhythm: tends to be fluid avoiding definite sense
of meter
• timbre: new sounds from piano and orchestra
Impressionism
• Debussy’s music resonates with French
poetry of his day (Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un
faune, 1894)
• Symbolist poets relished the sound of
language for sound’s sake and were not
constrained by syntax or logic
• poets: Baudelaire, Mallarmé,Verlaine,
Rimbaud
Impressionism
• Debussy Prelude à l’Après-midi d’un faune (1894)
- inspired by a Mallarmé poem
- Debussy said the piece conveyed “a general impression of the

poem...” (Bonds p. 520)
- unclear why Debussy called it a “Prelude”
- the flute seems to represent the Faun, his traditional instrument
- traditional minded listeners found this piece “primitive” in the

worst sense of the word (Bonds p. 520)
• lack of clearly defined musical themes
• parallel fifths and parallel dominant seventh chords (which do not function)
Impressionism
• Debussy “Voiles” from Preludes Book I
(1910)
- music moves beyond traditional tonality
- ABA form
- uses whole-tone and pentatonic scales to articulate

the form
- see Bonds p. 521 for scale details
Challenges to Tonality
• number of composers in the early 20th century used
scales beyond major and minor including: whole-tone,
pentatonic, modal, octatonic
• octatonic scale
- used for coloristic effect by Liszt, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsokov
- used in a more structural way by Bartók
• also used quartal harmonies: chords built on interval of

fourth rather than thirds (Alexander Scriabin, Charles
Ives)
- Scriabin’s mystic chord (see Bonds p. 524)
• Bartók Diminished Fifth

- from book 4 or Mikrokosmos
- octatonic scale used to generate the surface of this

piece
- juxtaposes two tetrachords which combine to make

an octatonic scale
Charles Ives
Ives the Revolutionary:
graduation portrait, Yale
University, 1898.
Beneath the conventional clothing
and demeanor lay an
undergraduate seething at the
strictures of musical convention.
• Charles Ives “The Cage”
- uses quartal harmony
- not in a key
• Charles Ives “The Things Our Fathers

Loved”
- patchwork of preexisting American tunes
- like the “stream of consciousness” techniques used by

the modernist writer James Joyce
• Charles Ives The Unanswered Question (1908)
- conflict between traditional and non-traditional harmony
- two groups
• flutes + trumpet (represent a dissonant sound world)
• strings (represent more traditional harmony)
- Ives’ forward to the score is in Bonds p. 525
- Ives was disturbed by music that takes the ear on the

“easy path”
Radical Primitivism
• impetus behind Primitivism was rejection of self-
imposed, arbitrary conventions of Western culture
• primitive was regarded as source of both beauty
and strength, representing stage of civilization
unthreatened by decadence and self-consciousness
• in painting, Primitivism manifested itself in work of
artists known as the fauves - the “wild beasts” -
who used a seemingly crude kind of draftsmanship
coupled with bold, unrealistic colors (Gauguin,
Rousseau)
Radical Primitivism
• musical Primitivism elevated rhythm to
unprecedented importance
• composers associated with Primitivism tended
to abandon or substantially alter concepts
such as voice leading, triadic harmony, major
and minor forms of diatonic scale
• Igor Stravinsky’s ballet Le Sacre du printemps
(The Rite of Spring, 1913)
Radical Primitivism
• Stravinsky The Rite of Spring
- associated with primitivism
- rhythm very important
- avoids functional tonality
- Introduction
• use of modes, pentatonic scales, and octatonic scales and scale fragments
• rhythm complex (meter changes, layering of distinct rhythms)
- Dance of the Adolescents

• blends regular pulse and irregular accents
• polytonal harmony: Eb7 + FbM are played simultaneously (see Bonds p. 529-530)
Radical Primitivism
• composers who emphasized motoric rhythm
(speed, extreme dynamics, repetitive patterns
and dissonant harmony) including Béla Bartók,
Paul Hindemith, Henry Cowell, Leo Ornsteing,
George Antheil
• Prokofiev Piano Sonata No. 7 in B (1939-42)
- uses motoric rhythm
- creates a kind of rhythmic dissonance by using regular and

irregular metric elements
Nationalism
• musical nationalism was driven by desire to

return to cultural roots through musical
idiom connected to the people
• growing political and cultural aspirations of
ethnic groups throughout Europe and the
Americas
Nationalism
• folk music offered important stylistic alternatives to
traditions of conventional melody and harmony
• Béla Bartók and his colleague Zoltán Kodály found a
different set of melodic possibilities in folk music of
various ethnic groups they collected throughout
central and eastern Europe
• George Gershwin regarded jazz as “an American folk
music”
• composers freely adapted music cultures not their own
Nationalism
• Bartók Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm

- from book 6 of Mikrokosmos
- use of folk elements in modern music
- 4 + 2 + 3 rhythmic pattern derived from Bulgarian folk

music
Nationalism
• Darius Milhaud Saudades do Brasil (1921)

- title: Nostalgia for Brazil
- uses the dance rhythms of Brazilian music
- the harmonies are far more complex that one would

find in folk music
New Timbres
• novelty in timbre through new instruments

or new ways of playing old instruments
• piano: direct contact with the strings rather
than by striking the keys; tone clusters
require adjacent keys be struck (Henry
Cowell)
New Timbres
• Henry Cowell The Banshee (1925)
- use of new timbres
- extended techniques
- two players needed

• one holds down the sustain pedal
• the other plays directly on the strings
- Cowell wrote out detailed instructions on how to

perform the piece
Edgard Varèse
Earlier composers had often
portrayed themselves seated at the
keyboard. For this photographic
portrait from the 1950s,Varèse
gave strategic prominence to the
metronome, immediately
identifying himself as a musician.
New Timbres
• Edgard Varèse’s Ionisation (1931) is first
major composition written entirely for
percussion
- most of the 37 instruments have no definite pitch
• Varèse developed the possibilities of

electronic music with Poème électronique
(1958)

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Chapter 20

The Search for New Sounds

• one of the earliest attempts to explore new

- Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)

- Debussy said the piece conveyed “a general impression of the

- unclear why Debussy called it a “Prelude”

- the flute seems to represent the Faun, his traditional instrument

- traditional minded listeners found this piece “primitive” in the

- uses whole-tone and pentatonic scales to articulate

- see Bonds p. 521 for scale details

- used in a more structural way by Bartók

• also used quartal harmonies: chords built on interval of

• Bartók Diminished Fifth

- octatonic scale used to generate the surface of this

- juxtaposes two tetrachords which combine to make

• Charles Ives “The Things Our Fathers

- like the “stream of consciousness” techniques used by

• strings (represent more traditional harmony)

- Ives’ forward to the score is in Bonds p. 525

- Ives was disturbed by music that takes the ear on the

- rhythm very important

- avoids functional tonality

• rhythm complex (meter changes, layering of distinct rhythms)

- Dance of the Adolescents

- creates a kind of rhythmic dissonance by using regular and

• musical nationalism was driven by desire to

• Bartók Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm

- use of folk elements in modern music

- 4 + 2 + 3 rhythmic pattern derived from Bulgarian folk

• Darius Milhaud Saudades do Brasil (1921)

- uses the dance rhythms of Brazilian music

- the harmonies are far more complex that one would

• novelty in timbre through new instruments

- two players needed

• the other plays directly on the strings

- Cowell wrote out detailed instructions on how to

• Varèse developed the possibilities of

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