Twentieth Century Music: An Introduction / Edition 4

by Eric Salzman

Overview

Offering complete, accurate coverage in a tightly condensed, simple format, this comprehensive exploration of modern music (to 1998) deals primarily with the music itself and musical ideas. It puts the whole century in a unified concept, helping readers make sense out of the heterogeneity. It explains the overall development of 20th century music in relation to the past and to two big cycles of contemporary music; and encompasses classical and experimental traditions as well as popular elements, media, multi-media, and theater. Twentieth-Century Music and the Past. THE BREAKDOWN OF TRADITIONAL TONALITY. The Sources. The Revolution: Paris and Vienna. THE NEW TONALITIES. Stravinsky and Neo-Classicism. Neo-Classicism and Neo-Tonality in France and Outside of France. National Styles. Musical Theater. ATONALITY AND TWELVE-TONE MUSIC. The Viennese School. The Diffusion of Twelve-Tone Music. THE AVANT GARDE. Before World War II. Technological Culture and Electronic Music. Ultra-Rationality and Serialism. Anti-Rationality and Aleatory. The New Performed Music: The United States. Post-Serialism: The New Performance Practice in Europe. POST-MODERNISM. Beyond Modern Music. Back to Tonality. Pop as Culture. Media and Theater. Music Examples. For courses anyone interested in 20th Century Music, Modern Music, or the History of Music.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780130959416
Publisher:	Pearson
Publication date:	10/28/2001
Series:	Prentice Hall History of Music Series
Edition description:	REV
Pages:	337
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 1.10(d)

Read an Excerpt

Previous editions of this book began with the statement that "Any consideration of the music of the twentieth century must begin with the reminder that a good deal of it has not yet been written." Now, in fact, all of the twentieth century's music has been written. The projection of twentieth-century music as the unfolding of two large cycles (each beginning with a period of revolution and ending with synthesis) and the appearance of "postmodern" styles as the logical outcome of the second cycle—both predicted in the earlier editions—have become facts rather than hypotheses. Twentieth-century music, which conveniently began somewhere around 1900, has, in a very real sense, run its course by the end of the century.

The history of culture can be thought of in many ways: as a succession of events (the way we tend to think about ancient history), as the movement of great historical forces (the way we think about the Renaissance and Reformation), in terms of social, political, and economic realities (our view of the Middle Ages and of the Baroque and Rococo-Classical periods), or in terms of creative personalities (the Romantic view). As this series of books itself can testify, these conceptions need not be mutually exclusive, and none of them need preclude an understanding of cultural history as a history of ideas. Without, I hope, entirely forgetting any of the former, it is the last-named that I have tried to write: the creative development of musical ideas in the last one hundred years understood against and as distinct from the past, in the variety and unity of its own growth, and in its potential for the future.

It is my hope and belief that this book canbring the reader toward the musical experience itself, in its greatest variety and richness of ideas and expression, a richness itself characteristic of twentieth-century musical experience. Toward this end, certain sacrifices have consciously been made. Detailed biographical information will have to be sought elsewhere (except in the cases of the very youngest composers, available in standard reference works). Analytic material has been relegated to an appendix consisting of a few indicative examples—it is always to be assumed that, on every page of this book, the reader is being actually referred to the music itself. No attempt has been made to achieve the illusory goal of completeness, and long lists of also-rans have been avoided. I am well aware that Goldmark and Goldschmidt, Ghedini and Gliere, Weiner and Weinberger, Alfven, Zemlinsky, and a host of greater and lesser lights do not appear and that others, particularly—but not exclusively—composers of only national or local significance, receive brief consideration. I am also conscious of the fact that the work of certain composers—particularly since World War II—inevitably receives a certain emphasis because it lends itself easily to verbal analysis or description, which do not necessarily correspond to artistic values. The deficiencies of this book with respect to American music are, fortunately, compensated for by the inclusion in this series of a volume by H. Wiley Hitchcock devoted to the subject: Music in the United States, itself now also revised and updated. Here, it is my intention to treat the development of American music in terms of the general development of twentieth-century ideas everywhere. In any case, I can only hope that, in a book intended to be devoted to essentials, the essentials are there.

Although the first edition of this book was published in 1967, the bulk of it was written on a boat to Europe in the spring of 1964. This moment had more than symbolic value for me; it marked a change in direction for me as a composer beginning with my Foxes and Hedgehogs, on texts from John Ashbery's "Europe." The culture change—the clash in values from Old World to New—scored out in that piece as the structure of a music drama has come to serve as a metaphor for the vast upheavals and changes of the 1960s through the 1980s.

Change has continued to overtake music and the arts as it has the whole of society; new forces have been set in motion and the outcome is hardly in sight. Of necessity, one's own work and thought has also evolved. The decades that have elapsed since 1967 are difficult to write about, not only because the events set in motion are still in progress, but also because the author himself has played a part in their unfolding.

The first version of this book marked off a distinct period; we can, with certain neatness, refer to it as the period of Modern Music. There were loose ends, of course, and even certain ideas that were clearly prophetic of what was to come. Approaching the second, third, and now fourth editions, I had two obvious choices; leave the book as it was or rewrite it completely, reflecting the state of the art and the currency of my own thought. However, I have chosen a third course. The earlier parts of the book have been left essentially intact, except for minor revisions—corrections, emendations, a few rephrasings and clarifications, an occasional re-evaluation—and relegation to an appendix of the specimen analyses. But the final section of the book has been rewritten and greatly enlarged to constitute an entire new section on postmodernism. My aim has been not only to make the book "up-to-date" but also to establish a firmer conceptual framework for the whole post-war period. Inevitably, certain differences of approach in this final section will become apparent. There is a much greater emphasis on social and technological change as a background for understanding artistic events. And there is a greater emphasis on the interactions between the arts that reflects not only the evolution of my own ideas and the closeness of the events (musical synthesis takes greater time and distance), but also the nature of the period itself.

One or two additional points must be noted here. Providing dates for works is not always as simple as it might appear. Dates given in reference works, programs, chronologies, biographies, or scores often differ and may (even when accurate) refer to the date of completion, copyright, publication, or first performance. My attempt has been to give, as closely as possible, the actual dates of composition.

Mark N. Grant (for the fourth edition) and Suzanne La Plante (for the third) were my invaluable assistants on these two editions and should be credited with much of the bibliographical references; Mr. Grant is also largely responsible for the new section on Percy Grainger and his stimulating comments helped inspire some of the other new matter in this current version. J. Graeme Fullerton also worked on these bibliographies.

It is not possible to acknowledge more than a very few of the many intellectual and spiritual debts incurred in writing a book like this. Among those which cannot be omitted, I would like to include H. Wiley Hitchcock, the understanding and skillful editor of this series and the author of the volume on American music without which any grasp of the twentieth century is necessarily incomplete; my principal teachers, Roger Sessions and Milton Babbitt; Edgard Varese, who never taught but was, in the true sense, always a teacher; Ross Parmenter, former Music editor of The New York Times, who was almost entirely responsible for my writing career in music; Michael Sahl, my long-term collaborator on six music-theater works, several recordings, and a handbook of American harmony called Making Changes; Paul Wittke, my collaborator at G. Schirmer; Anna Rubin of the American Music Center and the staffs at the Center and the Research Division of the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center; and finally, that extraordinary younger generation of performers and creators—in music and the other performing arts—who have made possible the beginnings of a new, vital cultural life.

ERIC SALZMAN

Table of Contents

I. INTRODUCTION.

1. Twentieth-Century Music and the Past.

II. THE BREAKDOWN OF TRADITIONAL TONALITY.

2. The Sources.

3. The Revolution: Paris.

4. The Revolution: Vienna.

III. THE NEW TONALITIES.

5. Stravinsky and Neo-Classicism.

6. Neo-Classicism and Neo-Tonality in France.

7. The Diffusion of Neo-Classicism and Neo-Tonality.

8. National Styles.

9. Opera and Musical Theater.

IV. ATONALITY AND TWELVE-TONE MUSIC.

10. The Viennese School.

11. The Diffusion of Twelve-Tone Music.

V. THE AVANT-GARDE.

12. Introduction: Before World War II.

13. Technological Culture and Electronic Music.

14. Ultra-Rationality and Serialism.

15. Anti-Rationality and Aleatory.

16. The New Performed Music: The United States.

17. Post-Serialism: The New Performance Practice in Europe.

VI. POST-MODERNISM.

18. Beyond Modern Music.

19. Back to Tonality.

20. Pop as Culture.

21. Media and Theater.

Appendix: Music Examples.

Index.

Preface

Previous editions of this book began with the statement that "Any consideration of the music of the twentieth century must begin with the reminder that a good deal of it has not yet been written." Now, in fact, all of the twentieth century's music has been written. The projection of twentieth-century music as the unfolding of two large cycles (each beginning with a period of revolution and ending with synthesis) and the appearance of "postmodern" styles as the logical outcome of the second cycle—both predicted in the earlier editions—have become facts rather than hypotheses. Twentieth-century music, which conveniently began somewhere around 1900, has, in a very real sense, run its course by the end of the century.

The history of culture can be thought of in many ways: as a succession of events (the way we tend to think about ancient history), as the movement of great historical forces (the way we think about the Renaissance and Reformation), in terms of social, political, and economic realities (our view of the Middle Ages and of the Baroque and Rococo-Classical periods), or in terms of creative personalities (the Romantic view). As this series of books itself can testify, these conceptions need not be mutually exclusive, and none of them need preclude an understanding of cultural history as a history of ideas. Without, I hope, entirely forgetting any of the former, it is the last-named that I have tried to write: the creative development of musical ideas in the last one hundred years understood against and as distinct from the past, in the variety and unity of its own growth, and in its potential for the future.

It is my hope and belief that thisbook can bring the reader toward the musical experience itself, in its greatest variety and richness of ideas and expression, a richness itself characteristic of twentieth-century musical experience. Toward this end, certain sacrifices have consciously been made. Detailed biographical information will have to be sought elsewhere (except in the cases of the very youngest composers, available in standard reference works). Analytic material has been relegated to an appendix consisting of a few indicative examples—it is always to be assumed that, on every page of this book, the reader is being actually referred to the music itself. No attempt has been made to achieve the illusory goal of completeness, and long lists of also-rans have been avoided. I am well aware that Goldmark and Goldschmidt, Ghedini and Gliere, Weiner and Weinberger, Alfven, Zemlinsky, and a host of greater and lesser lights do not appear and that others, particularly—but not exclusively—composers of only national or local significance, receive brief consideration. I am also conscious of the fact that the work of certain composers—particularly since World War II—inevitably receives a certain emphasis because it lends itself easily to verbal analysis or description, which do not necessarily correspond to artistic values. The deficiencies of this book with respect to American music are, fortunately, compensated for by the inclusion in this series of a volume by H. Wiley Hitchcock devoted to the subject: Music in the United States, itself now also revised and updated. Here, it is my intention to treat the development of American music in terms of the general development of twentieth-century ideas everywhere. In any case, I can only hope that, in a book intended to be devoted to essentials, the essentials are there.

Although the first edition of this book was published in 1967, the bulk of it was written on a boat to Europe in the spring of 1964. This moment had more than symbolic value for me; it marked a change in direction for me as a composer beginning with my Foxes and Hedgehogs, on texts from John Ashbery's "Europe." The culture change—the clash in values from Old World to New—scored out in that piece as the structure of a music drama has come to serve as a metaphor for the vast upheavals and changes of the 1960s through the 1980s.

Change has continued to overtake music and the arts as it has the whole of society; new forces have been set in motion and the outcome is hardly in sight. Of necessity, one's own work and thought has also evolved. The decades that have elapsed since 1967 are difficult to write about, not only because the events set in motion are still in progress, but also because the author himself has played a part in their unfolding.

The first version of this book marked off a distinct period; we can, with certain neatness, refer to it as the period of Modern Music. There were loose ends, of course, and even certain ideas that were clearly prophetic of what was to come. Approaching the second, third, and now fourth editions, I had two obvious choices; leave the book as it was or rewrite it completely, reflecting the state of the art and the currency of my own thought. However, I have chosen a third course. The earlier parts of the book have been left essentially intact, except for minor revisions—corrections, emendations, a few rephrasings and clarifications, an occasional re-evaluation—and relegation to an appendix of the specimen analyses. But the final section of the book has been rewritten and greatly enlarged to constitute an entire new section on postmodernism. My aim has been not only to make the book "up-to-date" but also to establish a firmer conceptual framework for the whole post-war period. Inevitably, certain differences of approach in this final section will become apparent. There is a much greater emphasis on social and technological change as a background for understanding artistic events. And there is a greater emphasis on the interactions between the arts that reflects not only the evolution of my own ideas and the closeness of the events (musical synthesis takes greater time and distance), but also the nature of the period itself.

One or two additional points must be noted here. Providing dates for works is not always as simple as it might appear. Dates given in reference works, programs, chronologies, biographies, or scores often differ and may (even when accurate) refer to the date of completion, copyright, publication, or first performance. My attempt has been to give, as closely as possible, the actual dates of composition.

Mark N. Grant (for the fourth edition) and Suzanne La Plante (for the third) were my invaluable assistants on these two editions and should be credited with much of the bibliographical references; Mr. Grant is also largely responsible for the new section on Percy Grainger and his stimulating comments helped inspire some of the other new matter in this current version. J. Graeme Fullerton also worked on these bibliographies.

It is not possible to acknowledge more than a very few of the many intellectual and spiritual debts incurred in writing a book like this. Among those which cannot be omitted, I would like to include H. Wiley Hitchcock, the understanding and skillful editor of this series and the author of the volume on American music without which any grasp of the twentieth century is necessarily incomplete; my principal teachers, Roger Sessions and Milton Babbitt; Edgard Varese, who never taught but was, in the true sense, always a teacher; Ross Parmenter, former Music editor of The New York Times, who was almost entirely responsible for my writing career in music; Michael Sahl, my long-term collaborator on six music-theater works, several recordings, and a handbook of American harmony called Making Changes; Paul Wittke, my collaborator at G. Schirmer; Anna Rubin of the American Music Center and the staffs at the Center and the Research Division of the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center; and finally, that extraordinary younger generation of performers and creators—in music and the other performing arts—who have made possible the beginnings of a new, vital cultural life.

ERIC SALZMAN