Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951)

• Consistent musical characteristics
• Melodies containing very wide leaps
• Absence of vigorous, propelling rhythms; obscuring of the rhythmic beat
• Emphasis on constantly changing tone colors (especially in orchestral works)

• 1895-1908: tonal, post-Romantic, chromatic
• Verklärte Nacht ("Transfigured Night," 1899)--string sextet (arr. for string orch 1917)
• Emotionally intense program music--style much like Richard Strauss
• Gurre-Lieder ("Songs of Gurre," 1901, finished 1911)--a huge cantata

• 1909-1914: Pantonal, Expressionistic, ignored the rules of traditional harmony
• Gradually more dissonant, and not well received by the public
• Pierrot Lunaire ("Moonstruck Pierrot," 1912)--his best-known work
• Vocalist-reciter (Sprechstimme) & 5 instruments
• 21 poems arranged in 3 groups of 7

• 1914-1923: experimentation with 12-tone & serial principals; nothing published
• 1923-1933: 12-tone compositions
• Fünf Klavierstücke ("5 Piano Pieces," 1923)--1st 12-tone piece, technique still experimental
• Variations (1928) for orchestra is a textbook on serial techniques

• 1934-1951: return to tonality, attempt to reconcile dodecaphony & key tonality
• Moved to the US, taught in California (was Jewish and had to leave when Hitler came to power)
• Wrote some serial works, some tonal, some combining the two
• Moses und Aron (1930- )--opera for 6 soloists, chorus, & large orchestra
• Acts I & II completed 1932; Act III unwritten at his death
• Entire opera based on a single tone row

• Studied with Schönberg 1904-1910
• Followed Schönberg from post-Romantic chromaticism to atonality & serialism
• An exponent of atonality who never completely gave up Romanticism and tonality
• Used 12-tone & non-12-tone sections in the same work

• Musical characteristics
• Use of scales largely (but not completely) whole-tone
• Combining atonality with traditional forms and suggestions of tonality
• Interest in numbers and carefully planned number sequences

• Operas
• Wozzeck (1917-1922)--the first atonal opera
• Expressionist
• Music is continuous and Leitmotifs are used
• Lulu (1928- orchestration unfinished at his death in 1935)
• Expressionist, using a combination of atonal, serial, and non-12-tone techniques
• A number opera, with autonomous musical pieces within scenes
• Instrumental music
• Violin Concerto (1935)--Serial atonality carefully structured to suggest tonality

• accidentally shot by an American soldier just after WWII
• Studied composition with Schönberg for four years
• Once he embraced 12-tone technique he never left it
• Wrote Der Weg zur neuen Musik ("The Way to the New Music") explaining dodecaphony
• Small body of compositions (31 works with opus numbers & about the same number without)

• A miniaturist--most pieces extremely short
• Used "pointillism"--music constructed of isolated notes and silences
• Very concerned with tone color--used principles of Klangfarbenmelodie
• Once he embraced atonality he never went back to tonality
• Very concerned with working out complicated uses of the row--canons etc.

• Important works
• Five Pieces for Orchestra Op. 10 (1911-1913)
• Symphony Op. 21 (1928) (Ex. 223)--chamber orchestra of 9 soloists

• Les Six : minor international impact but solid working musicians and some were important teachers
• Louis Durey--turned communist
• Georges Auric--theater & ballet music
• Germaine Tailleferre--the only woman
• Arthur Honegger--mostly stage & dramatic works
• Le roi David ("King David," 1921)--best known work, for narrator, chorus & orchestra
• Pacific 231 (1923) for orchestra; depicts a railroad train
• >40 film & radio scores (1923-1951)

• Francis Poulenc
• ±150 French songs and good religious choral music
• Dialogues des carmélites ("Dialogues of the Carmelites," 1953-1956)--opera
• Darius Milhaud--Important teacher in America

• Performer, composer, theorist, teacher, and author; his books are as important as his music
• He was a very practical craftsman; his ideas are anchored in reality, not theory
• Virtuoso violinist & violist, extremely competent on a number of other instruments

• Until 1923 mostly chamber music in different styles, as if experimenting
• 1923-1933 he wrote in a neo-baroque style
• From 1927 until Nazi prejudice drove him out, taught at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik
• Wrote music for instruments that lacked repertoire
• Led to his book The Craft of Musical Composition
• 1927-1963 he seems to have settled firmly into Neo-Classicism
• 1941-1953 taught at Yale

• Elementary Training for Musicians (1946) has fiendishly hard exercises
• Musical philosophy
• A composer's job is to communicate with the performer and with the audience
• A composer must be a performing musician with ensemble experience
• Key tonality is unavoidable and there is a hierarchy of dissonances leading to consonance
• The principles of order in music reflect the principles of order in the universe

• Major works
• Mathis der Maler Symphony ("Mathis the Painter," 1934); programatic and tonal
• Mathis der Maler Opera (1935)--his best known work
• Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes of Carl Maria von Weber (1943)

• A highly competent craftsman whose music was very individualistic
• Versatile composer familiar with all 20th century compositional techniques
• His writings about music and the process of composition are valuable
• Born and lived in Russia until 1910
• Lived in Paris 1910-1914; in Switzerland during WWI; returned to Paris in 1920
• Moved to America 1939; naturalized 1945; lived in California

• Rhythm extremely important in all his works
• Based his rhythms on multiples of a constant minimum value
• Ostinato patterns and syncopation are important
• Never abandoned key tonality, though wrote some atonal pieces & some 12-tone
• Used modality, bitonality, polytonality
• Master of orchestration (studied with Rimsky-Korsakov)

• Ballets (for Diaghilev and the Ballet Russe in Paris)
• L'oiseau de feu ("The Firebird," 1910)--established his reputation
• Petrushka (1911)--bitonality keyed to the characters
• Le sacre du printemps ("The Rite of Spring," 1913)
• Dissonant, with savage, pulsating rhythms (primitivism)
• Rhythm is the predominating feature

• Other stage works
• L'histoire du soldat ("The Soldier's Tale," 1918)--small stage work on a Russian fable
• The Rake's Progress (1949?)--neo-Classical morality opera
• Choral and choral-orchestral works
• Les noces ("The Wedding," 1917)--stylized Russian peasant wedding
• 4 vocal soloists, chorus à 4, 4 pianos, large percussion ensemble
• Symphony of Psalms (1930)--for the Boston Symphony 50th Anniversary
• Chorus & orchestra (with no violins or violas)

• Miscellaneous
• Octet (1923)--8 winds
• In memoriam Dylan Thomas (1954)--elegy for Boston University
• "Do not go gentle …" for tenor & string quartet, framed by dirges for 4 trombones
• Elegy for J. F. K. (1964)--Baritone solo with 3 clarinets

• Excellent composer (like her sister); fine organist & organ teacher
• Renowned as a teacher at the American Conservatory in France--a strict taskmaster
• "The most influential woman in the history of music pedagogy"
• Didn't just teach composition, taught musicianship
• Taught Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Walter Piston, Roy Harris, Elliott Carter, Philip Glass, Jon Polifrone

• The first generation of native composers comparable to those working in Europe matured
• A number of them finished their education by studying in Europe, many with Boulanger
• Europeans who emigrated to America before & during WWII were teaching here
• Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, Schoenberg, Bartók, Stravinsky, Milhaud, Hindemith

• Nationalist in the sense of wanting to write music that was clearly American
• Used folk song ("Simple Gifts"), ragtime, blues, & jazz elements
• Promoted concerts of new music by American composers
• ‘Americana’

• Mostly tonal with clear tonal centers, although he wrote a few serial works
• Sometimes on 2 tonal levels--major & minor or tonic & dominant
• Often simple chords with unusual spacings
• Syncopations, polyrhythms, other rhythmic intricacies at times

• Important writings
• What to Listen for in Music (1939)--good but outdated
• Our New Music (1941);
• The New Music, 1900-1968 (1968)
• Music and Imagination (1952) from Harvard lectures

• Ballets--These are what made his reputation
• Billy the Kid (1938) for Agnes de Mille
• Rodeo (1942) for Agnes de Mille
• Appalachian Spring (1944) for Martha Graham--1945 Pulitzer Prize
• Original ballet scored for 13-piece chamber orchestra
• Orchestral Suite expanded for full orchestra

• Latin American-influenced music
• El Salón Mexico (1936) for orchestra (with Mexican folk material)
• Danón cubana (1942, 1944)
• Latin American Sketches (1972) for orchestra

• Film scores
• Of Mice and Men (1939)
• Our Town (1940)
• The Red Pony (1948)
• Orchestral music
• Lincoln Portrait (1942) for André Kostelanetz
• Fanfare for the Common Man (1942) for the Cincinnati Symphony
• Later included in the finale of Symphony No. 3 (1946)
• Clarinet Concerto (1948) for Benny Goodman

George Gershwin (1898-1937)

• A Tin Pan Alley popular songwriter (with his brother Ira) & musical comedy writer
• Of Thee I Sing (1931) was first musical comedy to win the Pulitzer Prize
• In Gershwin, jazz elements are valid and not imitative, because he knew and played jazz

• Was ambitious to compose "serious" music as well
• Rhapsody in Blue (1924), orch. by Ferde Grofé, 1st performed by Paul Whiteman's jazz band
• Concerto in F (1925) for piano & orchestra, for the New York Philharmonic
• An American in Paris (1928), for the New York Philharmonic
• Later used for the movie musical starring Gene Kelly
• Porgy and Bess (1935), a "folk opera" without folk music

• Would have been known as a composer, but her work in collecting and editing American folk music became much better known
• Married Charles Seeger, who was in charge of collecting American folk songs as a WPA project during the depression
• Mother of folk singers Michael, Peggy, and Barbara Seeger; Pete Seeger is a cousin in another branch of the family

• Virgil Thompson (1896-1989)
• Four Saints in Three Acts (1928)--opera in a series of unconnected tableaux
• Important books
• The State of Music (1939)
• The Musical Scene (1945)

• Roy Harris (1898-1979)
• 14 symphonies, choral music, some band music
• Tonal music, some of it including folk material
• William Grant Still (1895-1978)
• His work reflected his African-American Heritage
• Darker America (1924), symphonic poem
• From the Black Belt (1926), suite
• Afro-American Symphony (1930)

• Roger Sessions (b. 1896)--Dense counterpoint and dissonant harmonies
• Walter Piston (1894-1976)--Known primarily for his harmony textbooks
• Howard Hanson (1896-1981)
• Neo-Romantic, known primarily as Dean of the Eastman School of Music
• Symphony No. 2, Romantic

• Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
• The Age of Gold --Ballet
• Adagio for Strings
• Gian-Carlo Menotti (b. 1911)
• Founder of the Spoletto Festivals first in Italy and later in South Carolina
• The Medium and The Telephone (1940s)--1-act operas often paired in performance
• Amahl and the Night Visitors (c. 1954)--1st TV opera, for NBC

• Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959)
• Brazilian, guitarist & cellist & not a pianist, and his music shows it
• Bachianas Brasileiras (1932-1944)--9 suites on Brazilian folk and popular forms
• Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983)
• Argentinian, mixing nationalism, Neo-Classicism, Expressionism, & serialism

• Carlos Chávez (1899-1978)
• Mexican who used native Indian elements & folk instruments to express his nationalism