HISTORY

Do you remember that during the Baroque period the most important country was Italy? And during the Classicism and Romanticism? Vienna. So, although composers were from different countries, the compositions were very similar.

But there were some composers who got tired of doing always the same and looked for inspiration in the melodies and songs of their own countries of origin. That’s how Nationalism emerged.

Some of these composers were:

M. Mussorsgky (Russia): Pictures at an Exhibition

A. Dvorak (Czech Republic): New World Symphony

E. Grieg (Norway): Peer Gynt

J. Sibelius (Finland): Finland

B. Bartok (Hungary): Mikrokosmos

Z. Kodaly (Hungary): Hàry Jànos

Manuel de Falla (Spain): El amor brujo

I. Albeniz (Spain): Iberia

J. Rodrigo (Spain): Concierto de Aranjuez

H. Villa lobos (Brazil): Bachianas Brasileiras

A. Copland (United States): Appalachian Spring

At the beginning of the 20^th century there was a group of French painters who reflected the “impression” that a place or sound provoked in them. You surely know some of these painters, Monet, Manet or Van Gogh. Can you recognise them?

Click on the links and pay attention to how they draw, without outlines; only colours and sensations.

Musicians, observing those painters, decided to create the same trend but with music. It was called Impressionism and came from one of Monet’s paintings: Impression, soléis levan.

The most important composers were: 

- Claude Debussy (opera Pelléas et Mélisande, orchestra compositions Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, La mer, and for piano Images and Children’s corner)

- Maurice Ravel (compositions for piano Jeuxd’eau, ballet Daphnis et Chloë and the Boléro).

Listen to some of these compositions and explain in your own words what you feel.

Atonality, what do you think this word means? Let’s use Latin to discover its meaning:

A: means NOT     Tonality: refers to tones

So, we discover that musicians did not use tonality in this movement.

With the intention of changing everything that was done before, they stopped using tonalities, dissonance, hops and rhythm were free and audiences didn’t like it because they were not really used to this out of tune and non-sense music.

This movement was called Expressionism and the most important composers were Second Viennese School: 

- Shoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire

- Webern: Concerto for nine instruments

- Berg: Lulú

It also developed in painting and the idea was to show feelings, not just an impression like in the Impressionism. One of the most important paintings was Munch’s The Scream. Do you know it?

Some of the composers got tired of so much freedom, and decided to create a new order in that tonality, with new rules and patterns to compose. That’s how dodecaphonism or twelve-tone system and serialism appeared.

Shall we go back to Latin to understand this word?

Dodeca: means 12      Phonism: refers to sound.

So dodecaphonism means that we use 12 sounds. That’s how they did it; they composed music in which they only used those 12 sounds they had previously chosen. In order to give it variety, they changed that series order; turn it around, in the form of chords, etc.

When they realised that order could also be applied to other elements in the scores the serialism emerged, where dynhamics, chords sequences, etc., were put in order.

Listen to the following score:     

Let’s check the series of 12 sounds in this score: 

All these changes were not well accepted by all the composers. Some of them preferred to go back to tonality rules and forms in Classicism. These composers were included in a trend called Neoclassicism. It took place mainly in France.

Their compositions followed the rules of previous periods but also included popular melodies like the ones in the circus or cabaret, giving music a different colour.

Some composers were E. Satie (Gymnopèdies)  or D. Milhaud. (La Création du Monde)

In the middle of the 20^th century music kept evolving and the main element was freedom.

Composers didn’t follow any rules. This affected not only the scores but also:

• How they were composed: new rules appeared like for example throwing a coin in the air and depending on how it fell, they would write the notes. How curious! Isn’t it?
  
  

• How they were written: some like Kandinsky drew paintings that were scores, with a circle shape, without notes, with drawings that had the meaning each of them wanted to give them, etc.
• How they were performed: one composition was different in each concert, as musicians understand them in different ways and the composer used to write things like: play from the beginning and repeat as many times as desired.
• In the instruments used: new instruments appeared thanks to electricity, computers; but they also modified the ones that already existed and they included everyday objects like frying pans and pots. Singers sometimes shouted, blew and even burped or gargled. What a scene!

All these changes aimed at being original and breaking with all the previous things. Sometimes they also tried to shock the audience.

Some of the most renowned composers were:

- John Cage: 4´33´´, Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano. 

- Ligeti: Lux Aeterna

- Stockhausen: Klavierstücke

One of the most important inventions in this century was the computer. And in music a device called synthesizer.

Do you know what it is?

Thanks to it, sounds were transformed giving place to unknown timbres until then. That’s how the first musical electronic compositions appeared. Such a discovery!

Concerts were not as they used to be in previous periods; now there were musicians with their instruments in the stage and also recorders with tapes previously recorded. How modern!

Varese, Boluez o Cage were some of the composers who used these resources.

In the seventies some musicians were fed up of how others made music so difficult to listen to, it even seemed as if they didn’t want audiences to go to concerts.

So they decided to invent a new type of music that only used a few notes and repeated them again and again, in a constant rhythm with very little variation, resulting in an almost hypnotic music. 

This trend was called minimalism.

The composers who followed it were Philip Glass or Steve Reich.