Page 228 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

226 INTRODUCTION

French composer Arnold Schoenberg’s English composer Ralph George Gershwin writes
Claude Debussy’s Pierrot lunaire Vaughan Williams Rhapsody in Blue for solo
10-minute symphonic demonstrates his composes The Lark piano and jazz band,
poem Prélude à concept of serialism— Ascending, inspired by featuring large contrasts
l’après-midi d’un faune using all 12 notes of the the English landscape in musical texture
premieres in Paris. chromatic scale. and folk music. and structure.

1894 1912 1914 1924

1906 1913 1917 1927

The Wreckers, an opera The premiere of French pianist Erik Charles Ives’s
by British composer Igor Stravinsky’s Satie’s ballet Parade Symphony No. 4, which
and suffragette avant-garde ballet debuts, incorporating incorporates hymns,
Ethel Smyth, Le Sacre du printemps “noise-making” gospel tunes, and band
premieres in Germany is greeted by a riot instruments such music, is performed for
to great success. in Paris. as a typewriter. the first time.

s the 19th century drew to pieces that harked back to After World War I, a group of
a close, composers began medieval and ancient music and young French composers known
A to realize that they were at the same time made reference as Les Six (Francis Poulenc, Darius
facing a crisis point. Wagner had to popular Parisian café music. Milhaud, Arthur Honegger, Georges
undermined tonality, the system of Auric, Louis Durey, and Germaine
major and minor keys that had been French developments Tailleferre) picked up on the
the cornerstone of Western music, Satie’s lightness of touch was simplicity and wit of Satie’s music.
and introduced a style that some also noticeable in the music of his Poulenc, in particular, cultivated
found overemotional and lacking in contemporary, Claude Debussy. an urbane style, unashamedly
clarity. The new generation reacted Yet Debussy chose a different classical in its tonality, setting
against Wagner’s music in various way of creating a new musical the style for neoclassicism, which
ways, attempting to find a new language. Rather than reacting was especially strong in France.
musical language that better against the lack of clarity that
expressed modern times. came with a weakened tonality, Twelve-tone serialism
As a result, the first half of the he embraced it, using exotic Meanwhile, in turn-of-the-century
new century was characterized harmonies as an impressionist Vienna, Arnold Schoenberg
by various “-isms”: impressionism, artist uses different shades of struggled to come to terms with
expressionism, atonalism, serialism, color. Although he disliked the the implications of the breakdown
neoclassicism, and more. There term, he was a pioneer of musical of tonality. After some early works
was one composer, however, who impressionism, which was further in the Late Romantic style, he
defied such classification, Erik refined by Maurice Ravel, and stretched tonality to its limits
Satie. He adopted a dry and witty influenced the strikingly colorful and beyond, creating a violently
style, with peculiarly static piano compositions of Olivier Messiaen. expressionistic style that was

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