- •Music in the Modern World western music of the twentieth century (general survey)
- •Discussion Activities Questions on the Text
- •Discussion Points
- •Additional Assignments
- •Some twentieth-century composers arnold schoenberg (1874-1951)
- •The composer speaks: arnold schoenberg
- •Discussion Activities Questions on the Text
- •Discussion Points
- •Bela bartok (1881-1945)
- •Discussion Activities Questions on the Text
- •Questions about Bartok
- •Discussion Points
- •Paul hindemith: his life and work (1895-1963)
- •The composer speaks: paul hindemith
- •Discussion Activities Questions on the Text
- •Discussion Points
- •Electronic music
- •Discussion Activities Questions on the Text
- •Questions about Stravinsky
- •Additional Assignments
- •Britten's operas
- •The composer speaks: benjamin broten
- •Discussion Activities Questions on the Text
- •Questions about Britten
- •Additional Assignments
- •Menotti. The opera composer
- •The composer speaks: gian carlo menotti
- •Discussion Activities Comprehension Questions and Points for Discussion
- •Additional Assignments
- •Michael tippett: a child of our time
- •30 Questions on the Text
- •Experimental (avant-garde) music
- •Olivier messiaen
- •Discussion Activities Questions on the Text
- •Discussion Points
- •Additional Assignments
- •George ligeti (b. 1923)
- •Karlheinz stockhausen
- •35 Discussion Activities Questions on the Text about Ligeti
- •About Stockhausen and Experimental Composers
- •Questions about Western Music of the 20th Century
- •Points for Discussion and Written Compositions
- •Popular music rock
- •Points about rock
- •Discussion Activities Comprehension Questions and Points for Discussion
- •Additional Assignments
- •Elvis presley - story of a superstar
- •Discussion Activities Comprehension Questions and Points for Discussion
- •The beatles
- •Comprehension Questions and Points for Discussion
- •English and American Musical History english music (general survey)
- •1. Opera.
- •2. Performing groups.
- •3. Festivals.
- •4. Education.
- •Discussion Activities Questions on the Text
- •The golden age in england
- •The english virginal school
- •Virginal music composers. William Byrd (1542-1623)
- •Byrd in his time and ours
- •English madrigalists
- •"The british orpheus"
- •Comprehension Questions and Points for Discussion
- •56 American music (general survey)
- •61 Charles ives, the first truly american composer (1874-1954)
- •Charles ives and american folk music
- •Comprehension Questions and Points for Discussion
- •The relation of jazz to american music
- •Louis armstrong
- •The swing era (duke ellington)
- •Spirituals
- •Comprehension Questions and Points for Discussion
- •The Art of Musical Interpretation the problem of interpretation
- •Discussion Activities Questions on the Text
- •Questions for Discussion
- •Additional Assignments
- •Conducting
- •The art of conducting
- •Questions on the Text
- •Some musical encounters
- •Questions on the Text
- •86 Leonard bernstein
- •Comprehension Questions and Points for Discussion
- •Herbert von karajan
- •Interview with herbert von karajan
- •The art of piano playing: glenn gould
- •Interview with glenn gould
- •Comprehension Questions and Points for Discussion
- •The art of violin playing: eugene ysaye
- •Comprehension Questions and Points for Discussion
- •The world of opera handel in performance
- •Franco zeffirelli: the romantic realist
- •La divina: maria callas
- •Callas remembered
- •Comprehension Questions and Points for Discussion
- •Peter pears: ronald crichton speaks
- •Discussion Activities Comprehension Questions and Points for Discussion
- •Notes Page 5
- •Page 21
- •Page 31
- •Page 32
- •Page 34
- •Page 35
- •Page 37
- •Page 39
- •Page 46
- •Page 47
- •Page 48
- •Page 49
- •Page 52
- •Page 53
- •Page 54
- •Page 57
- •Page 58
- •Page 59
- •Page 60
- •Page 61
- •Page 62
- •Page 63
- •Page 65
- •Page 66
- •Page 111
- •Page 112
- •Sources
- •Contents
Discussion Activities Questions on the Text
1. What are the main periods into which Stravinsky's stylistic evolution may be conveniently divided?
2. How did Stravinsky use Russian folk music in his ballet The Rite of Spring? Why does his musical language sound modern and at the same time archaic?
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3. Find in the text the passages in which Stravinsky's use of rhythm is compared with that of other European composers. What innovations did Stravinsky bring to the traditional rhythmic patterns? In what way did he expand the traditional concept of tonality?
4. Find in the text the passage where Stravinsky's texture is analyzed. In what way does the texture in The Rite reflect one of the basic trends of the late 19th and 20th centuries: the growing importance of texture in the compositional process?
5. What is the topic of Conversations with Stravinsky? What particular subjects are discussed?
6. What was Stravinsky's attitude towards electronic music?
7. What are his views on the role of the performer and contemporary performance practice?
Questions about Stravinsky
1. When and how did Stravinsky's collaboration with Diaghilev begin? When and where was The Firebird produced?
2. In what circumstances was The Rite of Spring conceived by Stravinsky? Who helped him with the libretto? Who choreographed the first version of The Rite?
3. When was The Rite of Spring first performed in Paris? Who was the conductor? What do you know about the scandal on the first night? Did Debussy and Ravel appreciate the ballet?
4. How many of Stravinsky's ballets and operas were produced during the twenty years of the Russian seasons in Paris?
5. What other composers were engaged in Diaghilev's Ballets Russes? Name the most outstanding ballet dancers and artists who worked with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.
6. What do you know about Stravinsky's visit to the Soviet Union?
Additional Assignments
1. Give the main points of the dialogue between Stravinsky and Craft. Make a written summary.
2. How would you answer the questions which were put to Stravinsky? Build up a similar dialogue around the same points.
3. Discuss the role of ostinato in The Rite of Spring.
4. Write a composition or give a short talk explaining the following phenomenon:
The Rite of Spring is now considered one of the major landmarks in the evolution of 20th-century music. Nonetheless it is a well known fact that its harsh sounds and barbaric rhythms willingly accepted and admired today, caused a riot of indignation among the audience at the first performance in Paris. How would you account
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for this? What is your opinion of changing musical tastes and interests?
Britten's operas
Throughout his career, Britten showed a special feeling for the voice and poured forth in profusion songs, song cycles, part songs, and every kind of choral work and cantata. The choice of words to set - whether English, French, Italian, German, or Latin - was always a matter of serious importance to him, for he realized that syllables, words, phrases, and sentences can serve as a vital point of a musical structure and enjoyed trying to reconcile the meaning that lies behind the literal facade with the musical idea behind the notational facade.
Britten's predilection for vocal music would not necessarily have led him to opera unless he also had a natural feeling for the stage and the dramatic potentialities of music. His interest was quickened by the incidental music he wrote for films in his early years, which led to commissions for incidental music for plays and radio-feature programs as well. His first operatic experiment was a choral opera, Paul Bunyan (1941), with libretto by Auden*; but this was not a success when produced at Columbia University, New York. His real chance came with Peter Crimes (1945), which was commissioned by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation and produced at Sadler's Wells Theater, London, on June 7, 1945. Its impact was decisive. It was an immediate artistic and popular success, not only in England but also abroad, for in the course of the next few years it was produced in nearly twenty countries in different parts of the world.
After this, it was natural that he should continue to exploit the operatic vein. Partly because of personal preference and partly because of operatic conditions in England he decided to write some of his subsequent operas - e.g. The Rape of Lucretia (1946), Albert Herring (1947), and The Turn of the Screw (1954)-for a small chamber-music combination, i.e., a group of solo singers and an instrumental ensemble of about a dozen soloists.
Britten showed great virtuosity in the way he tackled problems of operatic structure. Like Verdi in his last two operas, he moves rapidly and easily between the various degrees of intensity needed for recitative, airs, arioso passages, and concerted ensembles; and his operas tend to be most satisfactory when the musical flow is continuous within the acts, sometimes with the assistance of interludes joining the different scenes. Peter Crimes, The Rape of Lucretia, The Turn of the Screw, and A Midsummer Night's Dream (I960) are specially successful examples of this gift for formal organization. The sixteen scenes into which the two acts of The Turn of the Screw are divided combine the salient features of the variations and the cycle in a particularly brilliant way. A looser and possibly less
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successful musical organization is to be found in Gloriana (1953), in which each of the eight individual scenes is a self-contained tableau.* In his operas as in his other compositions, Britten's style is eclectic, his idiom modal;* and his musical metrics often echo the familiar structure of English prosody. This should make it comparatively easy for the public to appreciate his operas, were it not for the fact that frequently some kind of dichotomy seems to occur. An example of this can be seen in his choice of characters with split or imperfectly integrated personalities. Peter Grimes is a case in point - also the eponymous hero of the comic opera Albert Herring, and Captain Vere and Claggart in Billy Budd (1951). A favorite device is the combination, not necessarily the reconciliation, of two completely different musical streams; and in this connection he frequently uses enharmony.
Psychological problems appeal to him as operatic subjects - the psychopath earns his sympathy and understanding; manifestations of violence and cruelty arouse his deep compassion; the theme of maltreated youth is almost obsessional. In Peter Grimes, the fisherman's sadistic outbursts against the boy apprentice form the mainspring of the tragedy, and the boy's situation is made all the more poignant because the part is mute and his feelings can only be expressed indirectly. There is a similar problem in me children's opera The Little Sweep (1949), where the boy hero is also exploited and maltreated by his master; but on this occasion the ending is a happy one. The dominant scene of The Turn of the Screw is that of innocence betrayed.
In this last opera, the composer has no difficulty in conducting the action on three different levels: a normal level on which the adults live and communicate with each other; an abnormal level on which the adults become aware of the ghosts but fail to establish communication with them; and a supernatural level on which the ghosts communicate with the children in a secret understanding that leads inevitably to corruption. In A Midsummer Nights Dream he shows a similar ability to deal with the three different groups of characters - the fairies, the lovers, and the mechanicals - preserving their musical identity, while subordinating their development to the plan of the opera as a musical whole.
From: The New Book of Modern Composers