Music Quarter 1 – Module 1: Music of the 20th Century

LESSON 1: Impressionism
IMPRESSIONISM As the world entered the 20th century, a new era in music was introduced and
impressionism was one of the earliest musical forms that paved way to this modern era. Impressionism
is a French movement in the late 19th and early 20th century. The sentimental melodies and dramatic
emotionalism of the preceding Romantic Period whose themes and melody are easy to recognize and
enjoy, were being replaced in favor of moods and impressions. Features of Impressionism music are as
follows:

• The use of "color", or in musical terms, timbre, which can be achieved through orchestration,
harmonic usage, texture, etc. (Timbre is known as the tone color or tone quality)

• New combinations of extended chords, harmonies, whole tone, chromatic scales, and pentatonic
scales emerged.

• Impressionism was an attempt not to depict reality, but merely to suggest it.

CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862–1918) Claude Debussy was one of the most influential and leading composers
of the 20th century. He was the principal exponent of the impressionist
movement and the inspiration for other impressionist composers. He
reformed the course of musical development by eradicating traditional
rules and conventions into a new language of possibilities in harmony,
rhythm, form, texture, and color. He was born on August 22, 1862 in a small
town called St. Germain-en-Layein in France. Image from
melhoresmusicasclassicas.c m in Sunico, et.al, 2015, p.5. He composed a
total of more or less 227 masterpieces which include orchestral music,
chamber music, piano music, operas, ballets, songs, and other vocal music.
He was known as the “Father of the Modern School of Composition” and
made his impact in the styles of the later 20th century composer like Igor
Stravinsky. Debussy’s mature creative period was exemplified by the following works: • String Quartet •
La Mer (1905)-a highly imaginative and atmospheric symphonic work for orchestra about the sea •
Première Arabesque • Claire de Lune (Moonlight)-The third and most famous movement of Suite
bergamasque. 6 In the field of visual arts, Debussy was influenced by Monet, Pissaro, Manet, Degas, and
Renoir; and from the literary arts, by Mallarme, Verlaine and Rimbaud. Most of his close friends were
painters and poets who significantly influenced his works. On March 25, 1918, he died of cancer at the
height of the First World War in Paris.

The most remarkable composition of Debussy is Claire De Lune. Have you watched the Hollywood movie
hit Twilight Saga? Try to recall its sentimental sound tracks. One of them is Claire De Lune! Would you
like to listen to it once again? Play from the accompanying CD Track 1 (Claire de Lune) or you can access
it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvFH_6DNRCY. While listening to the track, answer the
following guide questions. Use a separate sheet of paper.

• What musical instrument is being played?

MAURICE RAVEL (1875–1937) Joseph Maurice Ravel was born in Ciboure, France to a Basque mother
and a Swiss father. At age 14, he entered the Paris Conservatory where he was
musically nurtured by a prominent French composer, Gabriel Faure. The
compositional style of Ravel is mainly characterized by its distinctively innovative
but not atonal style (music that is written in a way that is not based on any
particular key) of harmonic treatment. His works are defined with intricate and
sometimes Image from rateyourmusic.com in Sunico, et.al, 2015, p.7. modal
melodies and extended chordal components. It demands considerable technical
virtuosity from the performer which is the character, ability, or skill of a virtuoso
—a person who is exemplary in musical technique or execution. Ravel’s works
include the following:

• Pavane for a Dead Princess (1899)

• String Quartet (1903)

• Sonatine for Piano (c.1904)

• Rhapsodie Espagnole

• Bolero Ravel was a perfectionist and every bit a musical craftsman. He strongly adhered to the classical
form, specifically its ternary structure. A strong advocate of Russian music, he also admired the music of
Chopin, Liszt, Schubert, and Mendelssohn. He died in Paris in 1937.

LESSON 2: Expressionism
The term “Expressionism" was originally used in visual and literary arts and was probably first applied to
music in 1918, especially to Schoenberg because like the painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944), he
veered away from "traditional forms of beauty" to convey powerful feelings in his music. Features of
expressionism music are as follows: • a high degree of dissonance (dissonance is the quality of sounds
that seems unstable) • extreme contrasts of dynamics (from pianissimo to fortissimo, very soft to very
loud) • constant changing of textures • "distorted" melodies and harmonies • angular melodies with
wide leaps

ARNOLD SCHOENBERG (1874–1951) Image from blog.dataphilesmusic.com in Sunico, et.al, 2015, p.9.
Arnold Schoenberg was born on September 13, 1874 in a
working-class suburb of Vienna, Austria. He taught himself
music theory but took lessons in counterpoint. His works was
greatly influenced by the German composer Richard Wagner
as evident in his symphonic poem Pelleas et Melisande, Op. 5
(1903), a counterpoint of Debussy’s opera of the same title.

Schoenberg’s style in music reformed from time to time. From

revolved to something dissonant and

His works include the following:

• Verklarte Nacht

• Three Pieces for Piano, op. 11

• Pierrot Lunaire

• Violin Concerto

• Skandalkonzert, a concert of the Wiener Konzertverein. Although full of melodic and lyrical interest,
his music was also extremely complex, creating heavy demands on the listener. He experienced
Triskaidekaphobia (fear of number 13). Schoenberg died on July 13, 1951 in Los Angeles, California, USA
where he had settled since 1934.

One of the most significant compositions of Schoenberg is Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11. This musical piece
was the first composition ever to dispense completely with “tonal” (counterpart of atonal) means of
organization. Play from the accompanying CD Track 3 (Three Piano Pieces). Alternatively, you can access
it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrjg3jzP2uI paper: While listening, answer the following guide
questions on a separate sheet of • What genre of movie can this music be used? • What particular
moment in your life does this music remind you of?

IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882–1971) Image from 8notes.com in Sunico, et.al, 2015, p.11. He was born in
Oranienbaum (now Lomonosov), Russia on June 17, 1882. Stravinsky’s
early music reflected the influence of his teacher, the Russian composer
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. But in his first notable composition “The
Firebird Suite (1910)” which was composed for Diaghilev’s Russian
Ballet, his skillful handling of material and rhythmic inventiveness went
beyond anything written by his Russian predecessors. He added a new
ingredient to his nationalistic musical style. The Rite of Spring (1913)
was another outstanding work showcasing his new technique.

Other acclaimed works by Stravinsky includes:

• Ballet Petrouchka (1911), featuring shifting rhythms and polytonality,

• The Nightingale (1914)

• Three Tales for Children (1917)

• Duo Concertant (1932)

• The Rake’s Progress (1951), a full-length opera Stravinsky wrote approximately 127 works, including
concerti, orchestral music, instrumental music, operas, ballets, solo vocal, and choral music. Concerti or
concerto is a musical composition for a solo instrument or instruments accompanied by an orchestra,
especially one conceived on a relatively large scale. He died in New York City on April 6, 1971.
LESSON 3: 20th Century Musical Styles
Technology has been a game-changer in music. It has produced electronic music devices such as cassette
tape recorders, compact discs and their variants, the video compact disc (VCD) and the digital video disc
(DVD), MP3, MP4, digital music players, smart phones, karaoke players, and synthesizers. These devices
are used for creating and recording music to add to or to replace acoustical sounds. ELECTRONIC MUSIC
The ability of electronic machines such as synthesizers, amplifiers, tape recorders, and loudspeakers to
produce different sounds was popularized by 20th century composers like Edgar Varese, Karlheinz
Stockhausen, and Mario Davidovsky. Music that uses the tape recorder is called musique concrete, or
concrete music. The composer records different sounds that are heard in the environment such as the
bustle of traffic, the sound of the wind, the barking of dogs, the strumming of a guitar, or the cry of an
infant. These sounds are arranged by the composer in different ways like playing the tape recorder in its
fastest mode or in reverse. In musique concrete, the composer is able to experiment with different
sounds that cannot be produced by regular musical instruments such as the piano or the violin.

The first electronic devices for performing music were developed at the end of the 19th century, and
shortly afterwards, Italian futurists explored sounds that had not been considered musical.

EDGARD VARÈSE (1883–1965) Born on December 22, 1883, Edgard (also spelled Edgar) Varèse was
considered an “innovative French-born composer.” However, he spent his life and
career mostly in the United States where he pioneered and created new sounds that
bordered between music and noise. Image from blogs.nmz.de in Sunico, et.al, 2015,
p. 27. His musical compositions are characterized by:

• an emphasis on timbre and rhythm; and

• “organized sound” (certain timbres and rhythms can be grouped together in order
to capture a whole new definition of sound). Varèse’s use of new instruments and
electronic resources made him the “Father of Electronic Music” and he was also
dubbed as the “Stratospheric Colossus of Sound.” He died on November 6, 1965.

Varèse’s Poème Électronique is one of the first compositions that was created through the use of
technology. It’s an 8-minute piece written in 1958. Varèse composed the piece with the intention of
creating a liberation between sounds and as a result uses noises not usually considered “musical”
throughout the piece. Play from the accompanying CD Track 5 (Poème Électronique) or access it at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEkjC76oSNk.

KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN (1928– 2007) Image from youtube.com in Sunico, et.al, 2015, p. 28.
Karlheinz Stockhausen is a central figure in the realm of electronic
music. Born in Cologne, Germany, he had the opportunity to work
with Messiaen, Schoenberg, and Webern, the principal innovators at
the time. Together with Pierre Boulez, Stockhausen drew inspiration
from these composers as he developed his style of total serialism.
Stockhausen’s music was initially met with resistance due to its heavily
atonal content with practically no clear melodic or rhythmic sense.
Still, he continued to experiment with musique concrete.
Some of his works include: • Gruppen (1957), a piece for three orchestras that moved music through
time and space;

• Kontakte (1960), a work that pushed the tape machine to its limits; and

• Hymnen (1965), an ambitious two-hour work of 40 juxtaposed songs and anthems from around the
world

• Licht (Light), a seven-part opera (one for each day of the week) for a gigantic ensemble of solo voices,
solo instruments, solo dancers, choirs, orchestras, mimes, and electronics. It has led him to dream of
concert halls in which the sound attacks the listener from every direction. Stockhausen’s works total
around 31.

CHANCE MUSIC Chance music also known as Aleatoric music refers to a style which the piece always
sounds differently at every performance because of the random techniques of production, including the
use of ring modulators or natural elements that become a part of the music. Most of the sounds
emanate from the surroundings, both natural and man-made, such as honking cars, rustling leaves,
blowing wind, dripping water, or a ringing phone. An example of Chance music is John Cage’s Four
Minutes and Thirty-Three Seconds (4’33") where the pianist merely opens the piano lid and keeps silent
for the duration of the piece. The audience hears a variety of noises inside and outside the concert hall
amidst the seeming silence.

JOHN CAGE (1912–1992) John Cage was known as one of the 20th century composers with the
broadest array of sounds in his works. He was born in Los Angeles, California,
USA on September 5, 1912 and became one of the most original composers in
the history of western music. He challenged the very idea of music by
manipulating musical instruments in order to attain new sounds. He Image
from classicalscene.com in Sunico, et.al, 2015, p.30. experimented with what
came to be known as “chance music.”

In one instance, Cage created a “prepared” piano, where screws and pieces of
wood or paper were inserted between the piano strings to produce different
percussive possibilities. He became notable for his work The Four Minutes and
33 Seconds (4’33"), a chance musical work that instructed the pianist to merely
open the piano lid and remain silent for the length of time indicated by the title.

Assessment
I. Multiple Choice. Identify what is being described in the following statements. Encircle the correct
answer.

1. He is one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century.

a. Ravel b. Debussy c. Beethoven d. Schoenberg

2. He changed the course of musical development by dissolving traditional rules and conventions into a
new language of possibilities in harmony, rhythm, form, texture, and color.

a. Ravel b. Debussy c. Beethoven d. Schoenberg

3. He was an Austrian-born American composer and a music theorist.

a. Schoenberg b. Stravinsky c. Debussy d. Bartok

4. His skillful handling of material and rhythmic inventiveness went beyond anything composed by his
Russian predecessors.

a. Schoenberg b. Stravinsky c. Debussy d. Bartok

5. He was acknowledged for establishing the twelve-tone system.

a. Schoenberg b. Stravinsky c. Debussy d. Bartok

6. His works were met with extreme reactions, either strong hostility from the general public or
enthusiastic acclaim from his supporters.

a. Schoenberg b. Stravinsky c. Debussy d. Bartok

7. It is a music that uses the tape recorder.

a. Musique Concrete b. Cassette Disk c. Magnetic Tape d. Cassette Deck

8. He is an “innovative French-born composer.”

a. Edgard Varèse b. Karlheinz Stockhausen c. John Cage d. Mario Davidovsky

9. He is a central figure in the realm of electronic music.

a. Edgard Varèse b. Karlheinz Stockhausen c. John Cage d. Mario Davidovsky

10. His music was initially met with resistance due to its heavy atonal content with no clear melodic or
rhythmic sense.

a. Edgard Varèse b. Karlheinz Stockhausen c. John Cage d. Mario Davidovsky

COMPOSERS’ TABLE ACTIVITY.

Fill out the table below by indicating the name of the artists and their works during the Impressionism
Era and answer the question that follows. Please use a separate sheet of paper for your answers
 PREPARED BY:

THALIA D. DE LOS REYES

MAPEH TEACHER