Styles of Music
• Pre-1600 Music :
In Western music, we are first guided by Pythagoras (fl 582-500 BC) and his writings on the physics, scales, modes, and acoustics of music.
Plato (427-347) wrote at length, especially in the Republic and the Timaeus, about the ethical place and force of music. The Greeks had notation, used instruments and singers in their plays and at numerous ceremonial functions, but today their notation is largely lost and indecipherable. Aristotle (384-322) also wrote about music in his Politics, and stressed its importance in the moral education of the young and in the governance of society. (Aristotle was, of course, tutor to Alexander the Great.) Aristoxenus (354-? BC) left the most complete of Greek treatises on music: Harmonic Elements and Elements of Rhythmics. These works define and predict much of the earliest workings of Western music.
• Early Middle Ages : 500 - 1100 AD
In this era we find the earliest forms of plainchant, their widespread use in what would become the codified Mass of the Church, a continuing reliance on vocal music in both spiritual and secular functions, and the incorporation into religious music of that which originated in Byzantine and Jewish societies. As a general rule, instrumental music (except for the organ in certain communities) was banned in the Church.Secular music, in the form of dance, folk melody, and a kind of roving sung journalism, spread widely across Europe. We find the rise of the Goliards, Jongleurs, and Minstrels. Carl Orff's famous 20th Century work, Carmina Burana, is taken from Goliard songs of this time. However, Church music was supreme at all levels. This music was monophonic (one-voiced), had a narrow range rarely greater than a fifth, was built on two Church modes (Authentic and Plagal), and employed little harmony in the modern sense. Rhythms derived from text. The practice of singing organum (parallel fourths and fifths) arose in the 9th century, and would form the basis for later richness in our harmony. Sacred plainsong (popularly known as chant) became compiled and codified, and arose from five vital traditions: the Byzantine, Ambrosian, Gallic, Mozarabic and -- by order of Pope Gregory (540-604) -- what came to be known as Gregorian.
The writers Boethius (480-524), Odo of Cluny (d 942) and, most importantly, Guido d'Arezzo (990-1050) are the leading sources for our knowledge of this period. Guido is the first to enunciate a system for notation and its teaching, and for practical instruction in singing. The Winchester Tropes of 1073 AD is the only complete collection of original manuscripts from this period.
• Late Middle Ages : 1100 - 1400 AD
In this period we now begin to hear music that is almost wholly recognizable to modern ears. Music is written by named composers (with very few exceptions it was previously anonymous), and because of this alone sound begins to assert individual, regional, and proto-national identity. Such composers as Perotin (fl 1170), Leonin (fl 1175) and Machaut (1300-1377) lead the way in the increasing assertion of the composer's imagination. This was also the time of St Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, Dante, Petrarch, Boccacio, and Chaucer, and an increasing reliance on non-liturgical text. In 1200, the peak of what was later termed the Ars Antiqua was scaled; a century later, this compositional style was replaced by the Ars Nova. In this whole period, often described in the architectural term Gothic, we find an increasing interest in the forms and architecture of music, in sheer monumentalism of conception, and the onset of struggles between the imperatives of Church and State.In the Ars Antiqua, we find polyphony -- many-voiced music. In Ars Nova comes the acceptance of duple rhythms, and of thirds and sixths as consonances. Text was now open to poetic and syllabic consideration, canon (precursor to fugue) became a popular organizing principle, and melodies now take on a larger ambit. Modes have expanded to include rhythm itself, and in all of this a greater musical vocabulary is established. Chromaticism first arose in a practice called musica ficta. No less importantly, early string, reed, and brass instruments became widely accepted within and without the Church. Lutes, viols, and harps were especially popular. Alas, tuning systems were numerous, often regional, and clumsy.
Finally, and with greatest promise for the music of our own time, the first printed forms of notation arose. From the 13th to the 16th centuries, this mensural notation was the first pan-Euro system that actually worked. It led to the widespread success of the motet, a vocal form supremely suited to both secular and religious music. The first madrigals also appear in Italy, and would dominate the Renaissance. Numerous treatises of the era have survived, most notably those of Franco of Cologne (fl 1250-1280) and Philippe de Vitry (1291-1361).
• The Renaissance : 1400 - 1600
It goes without saying that these two centuries saw an explosion of energy, invention, creation and experiment in every field of music. The time of the Medici, Botticelli, Leonardo, Gutenberg, Copernicus, Michelangelo, Martin Luther, Columbus, and Shakespeare was matched in music by the astonishing creativity of such composers as Dufay (1400-1474), Ockeghem (1420-1496), des Prez (1450-1521), Gabrieli (1520-1586), Palestrina (1525-1594), di Lasso (1532-1590), Byrd (1543-1623), and Gesualdo (1560-1613). These musicians comprise a startling galaxy of supernovas, and laid the foundation for everything in the common practice of music itself.
Lutheranism led to congregation chorale singing, and the mass-distribution of musical materials. Dance, folk-song, and popular theatre led to extraordinary innovation in sound, instruments, and the capacities of the human voice. The use of the cantus firmus and of canonic imitation was everywhere, leading to richer and higher textures in multiple forms. Specific techniques such as retrograde, inversion, augmentation, and diminution and more added to this richness. Most audibly, melody itself became the prime organizing criterion. All of this lived in a growing field of polyphony, employed vocally and instrumentally. The lute family was vastly influential, occupying a place in this era as has the piano in our own.
Leading writers on music are too many to name here, but those of Tinctoris (1436-1511), Agricola (1486-1556), Zarlino (1517-1590), and Morley (1557-1602) will suffice.
From the Greek era to the end of the Renaissance saw the steady progress of a Western music ready for the appearance of its first incontestable geniuses: Monteverdi, Purcell, Handel, and J.S. Bach.
• The Rococco : 1730 - 1780
Perhaps the least well known of any of the tonal eras in music, the Rococco is characterized by a sense of completion and of radical experiment.
This era, bridging the Baroque and preparing the Classical, overlaps both periods; however, it has distinct characteristics of its own.
As conclusion to the Baroque, it speaks to the final gasps of the hyper-florid in terms of ornamentation and embellishment, especially in keyboard literature. At the very end of the Baroque sensibility, an extreme had been reached beyond which no rational composer would proceed further. Even the great Bach would not waste time with 37-part fugues, for example; there are natural and logical limits to all this. Rather, at the height and in the best of the Rococco, we may discover the outer limits of counterpoint and its textures; of fugal procedures and their elaboration; and, beyond all, of an extremity of ornament which would create new patterns of dissonance and resolution considered previously unimaginable.
The term itself derives from the field of decorative art, and has been applied analogously to music of the mid-18th century. It expanded to architecture, and largely across the world, with appearances even in China. In Germany, this influence can most famously be seen in the astoundingly ornate court and opera buildings of Mannheim and Stuttgart. These are structures well known to the musicians of the era.
It must be acknowledged that some scholars, notably Wiley Hitchcock, argue that the Rococco in music is at most "a sort of enclave in the Late Baroque rather than its successor." Others see it as a signal and fascinating bridge between two great eras. Such composers as Pergolesi, François Couperin, Daquin, Leclair, and de Croix represent -- in certain music and specific regards -- the peak of this curious movement. However, one composer has come to be identified, at least in some of his keyboard and symphonic literature, with the Rococco at its most tasteful and daring. He was, of course, one of the greatest of the Bach family.
• Karl Philip Emmanuel Bach (1714-1788)
The third son of JS, and the second to survive, KPE (or, often, CPE) Bach became known later in life as the 'Berlin' or 'Hamburg' Bach. He studied with his father at the Thomasschule in Leipzig, and later studied law at the universities of Leipzig and Frankfurt an der Oder. He returned to music and Berlin in 1738, and two years later was appointed as Chamber Musician to Frederick the Great, a musically enlightened monarch seated in Prussia.In March 1768 he became cantor in Hamburg, and soon served as music director to the five major churches of that important regional center, holding those positions until his death.
KPE Bach was herald of the end of the polyphony so magnificently mastered by his father, and was largely the creator of the new 'Empfindsamkeit' or "intimate expressiveness" style of keyboard writing, the North German counterpart of the French Rococco.
Anyone looking at his music -- and everyone should -- will concentrate particularly on the six Hamburg symphonies of KPE Bach, known to musicologists as WQ182. These six are dedicated to one of the great patrons of the time, Baron Gottfried van Swieten. Indeed, his name is frequently attached to the works themselves, and in time became no less attached to the court music of Vienna and to the lives of Haydn, Mozart, and the young Beethoven. (Filmgoers will remember the Baron's appearance in Amadeus.)
KPE Bach's six symphonies are bold and daring masterworks of the new style, probing widely and experimenting intriguingly -- most especially in the fields of harmony and modulation. They are scored lightly, for strings and basso continuo only, but in their blazing animation offer a thrilling insight into this new style, and into the realms of surprise and alarm which Beethoven would soon make his own.
• The Baroque : 1600 - 1750
The expression 'baroque' was originally meant as an insult, describing an irregular shape of no particular beauty. It was adapted as pejorative to describe a whole class of architecture and design, and to offend a genre of ornamentation and style in the visual arts that quickly found a correspondence in music. But over time, however, The Baroque came to stand for a grandeur, a stylishness, a sense of bravado and improvisation that called upon the best of composers of the era. In this period we find the first opera and oratorio, the development of the early sonata and symphony, a subdivision of musical identity into clearly national courts and commerce, and perhaps most audibly a commitment to embellishment in every style and genre.
The creation of nation-states, the growth of capital and colonization, the stirrings of a merchant class, and improvements in church and theatre architecture financed and provided the arenas for an enormous expansion of musical activity. The Church gradually lost its command of the fact and fashions of music, and in its place came the enduring secular forms we revere today. Discoveries in science and improvements in technology made possible the modern form of instruments in all classes, and the work of Bach, Rameau, and Morley (among many others) gradually led to a universal tuning system which allowed performance in all keys.
As with the Ars Antiqua and Ars Nova three centuries earlier, we see in the Baroque a polarity of opinion between the stile antico (also known as prima prattica) and the stilo moderno (seconda prattica) among composers. The Baroque Revolution came at a price, and conflict between the new and old schools was open and, occasionally, violent. However, it led to the achievement of incomparable composers. Below, we survey the leading among them.
• Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)
A child prodigy, his early works contained a daring dissonance and a commitment to the supremacy of text in story telling, be it in madrigal or motet. It was in 1607 that Monteverdi changed music forever: drawing on the earlier work of the Florentine camerata, he wrote Orfeo, the first real opera. In it, his gift combined drama in story with drama in music. Human emotion suddenly became real and approachable, and stunned his first audiences. This success was followed by such works as 1624's Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, his famous 30-year collection of Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi (Madrigals of love and war, 1638), and his later operas Ulysses (1640) and Poppea (1642). His orchestrations were as brilliant as his voice-settings. Monteverdi employed such string devices as tremolando and pizzicato, such harmonic schemes as 7th chords, and astonishingly dramatic recitative.Recommended Listening:
Orfeo; Madrigals of Love and War; Coronation of Poppea; Aquilino Coppini, 1608• Henry Purcell (1659-1695)
That he lived so briefly is a tragedy; that he left so much is a miracle. Like so many English composers, Purcell began training in choir school, and upon his voice breaking took up instruments and composition. He succeeded Blow as organist at Westminster in 1679, and a year later published his superb Fantasias for strings. In 1689 (or thereabouts) he wrote the first great English opera, the remarkable Dido and Aeneas. Thereafter he wrote a great deal of incidental theatre music, much of it still in repertory and including The Faerie Queene (1692).Recommended Listening:
Dido and Aeneas; the 24 Sonatas; 4 Canzonas for Brass• Carlo Gesualdo (1560-1613)
In time Gesualdo, Prince of Venoso and Count of Conza, was a citizen of the Renaissance. But in style and innovation, in boldness and in fearlessness, this was a man of the Baroque. When you listen to his music, pay particular attention to his harmonies, his odd and heart-wrenching chromaticisms, his strong contrasts in dynamics and voice-leading, and heightened registrations and expressiveness in text setting.Recommended Listening:
Any of his Madrigals written for Five Voices• George Frederic Handel (1685-1759)
In the Baroque era, Handel was the only composer whose greatness rivaled that of Bach himself. Similar in genius, their careers took very different turns. Handel's early training and work took place in Germany, leading to his first Italian opera (Almira) in 1705. Its success led to many more of the same, often on Classical texts and themes. It also led to considerable travel and to a growing European reputation. His Resurrection oratorio was produced in 1708, and led to the second major tributary of his career. All the while writing such religious and secular dramas, Handel also excelled in solo and chamber writing, producing hundreds of such works across his career. From 1814 Handel lived in London under the special patronage of King George I, himself formerly Elector of Hanover. In this period Handel contributed his most famous oratorios, numerous suites and sonatas, and in 1742 his immortal Messiah, written in 21 days. Like others of his time, Handel was unrestrained in his borrowing: he took tunes from himself and others, and dressed them in new harmonic and instrumental (or vocal) clothing. The ingenuity with which he did so is breath taking. Handel died full of honors, the beloved master of every genre he touched.Recommended Listening:
Julius Caesar; 12 Concerti Grossi, Op 6; Ode for St Cecilia's Day; Judas Maccabbeus• Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Born the same year as Handel, Bach came to create and to summarize. In his day, Bach's genius was barely recognized. He earned a living as a church organist, a parish teacher, and save for siring 20 children led an almost-reclusive life in comparison. (Handel appears to have been celibate.) There are more than 1000 individual works in the Bach catalogue. Many of them are the Mt Everest of their form: the 6 Suites for Unaccompanied Cello, the Chaconne for Solo Violin, the Art of the Fugue, the Well-Tempered Clavier, the Brandenburg Concerti, the Goldberg Variations, the St. Matthew Passion -- the list is nearly as long as his catalogue. When first approaching Bach, start small and simple. Many are initially put-off by his complexity, but need not be. Bach's utter mastery of fugue and counterpoint is inspiring but not fearsome.Recommended Listening:
Brandenburg Concerto No 5; the Wedding Cantata; the Italian Concerto, especially as performed by Glenn Gould; Concerto in A Minor for 4 Harpsichords; Suite No 1 for Unaccompanied Cello• The Classical Era : 1750 - 1810
The very name of this era has overpowered all of Western art music. 'Classical' has come to mean everything in music from Josquin to Messiaen, and a thousand composers between. In fact, the Classical era in music was relatively brief, had at least in retrospect a specific body of characteristics, and served as spiritual and stylistic home to three of the greatest composers of all time: Haydn, Mozart, and the young Beethoven. The convenient starting date of 1750 belongs, of course, to the death of JS Bach. The equally convenient closing date of 1810 centers around Beethoven and the premiere of his radical Symphony No. 5 in 1808.
It was also a period of fervent intellectual endeavour, political upheaval, and scientific and technological triumph. Personal and court fortune replaced the church as patron of the arts, and a few composers were actually making careers as free-lancers, beholden to no one. Across most of his life, Haydn was very nearly an indentured servant. Beethoven would owefealty to no person.
This was an age of Enlightenment and science and world-shaking invention. Benjamin Franklin began his own experiments with electricity in 1751; Kant lived from 1724-1804, and influenced generations, as did Goethe from 1749-1832. In 1769 Watt patented his steam engine, across his life of 1769 - 1821 Napoleon re-made Europe, and in 1770 New York heard its first performance of Messiah. A year later the First Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica was published, in 1774 oxygen was discovered, and in 1776 came the Declaration of Independence. The steamboat was invented in 1788, and a year later came the first stirrings of the French Revolution. Louis XVI would lose his head in 1793, the Paris Conservatory would be founded in 1795, and in 1799 Beethoven wrote his first symphony. And from 1756 - 1791 Mozart walked the earth.
As with the Baroque and Rococco, so too was the Classical Era first defined in architectural and aesthetic terms. After the Baroque and its successor movements had gone as far as possible, and nearly imploded in consequence, we see in the Classical a cleansing, a simplification, a reordering.
Geopolitics also played a role. In the German-speaking world, and at Vienna in particular, we find an astonishing commitment to the new music of the day. Rivalries existed between major and lesser courts for the rights of premiere, the claim to a famous composer, the vitality of a great orchestra and greater opera house. Patrons actually quarreled over the right to commission new music. (How incredible this sounds in our own conservative and backward-looking times.) After the birth of new music, publishing houses then bid (or bribed) for the right of first publication.
But there was more: in the Baroque and preceding eras, music tended to serve descriptive and narrative functions. With the rise of the Classical, music began to tend toward the abstract, a pleasure in formality, a sense of intrinsic and absolute design and content. Although the great bulk of music was still written for purposes of entertainment at court and community functions, much was written for deeper reasons. A sophisticated, maturing audience was rising and the greatest of the Classical composers found their ear.
We will examine the primacy of key, tonality, the uses of the tri-tone, and the place of Topic in all this music. We shall see an increasingly elaborate musical notation: dynamics, phrase, tempo and character now began to be marked in manuscript and the published scores and part-sets which followed. Not only were these issues of increasing theoretical importance to composers, they also represented an important fact on the ground: with the widespread dissemination of printed music, a composer could now expect performance one thousand miles from home, given by complete strangers unfamiliar with his means and purposes. A higher level of codification was now required, and provided.
We will also examine the rise of Sonata-form, the Sonata itself, Haydn's invention of the string quartet and the symphony, and the changing house of opera -- most particularly in the work of Mozart.
The composers of the Classical era are, of course, extremely well-known to 21st century listeners. Rather than dwell too long on the obvious, let me recommend instead wonderful music that may not yet be in one's grove of chestnuts. Consider, for example, listening to the earliest symphonies of Haydn (Morning, Noon, and Night are good starters), the piano sonata No. 1 of KPE Bach, or the overture to Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice. Listen to the 1st, 2nd, and 4th symphonies of Beethoven after you have listened to any of the last 12 of Haydn. Consider also the later keyboard works of Sammartini (1701-1755), or any of the 75 symphonies by JWA Stamitz (1717-1757). This neglected figure created the Mannheim school and its astounding orchestra, and that ensemble influenced every composer who heard it, including Mozart.
And finally to Mozart himself: I once conducted a concert in which we played the 1st and the 41st symphonies. In this way could we trace the trajectory of this immortal, first to last. Although Mozart considered himself a composer of opera above all, any of his symphonies (except No. 37, which he wrote virtually none of - Michael Haydn actually composed it) is worth study. So too are any of his concerti. If you don't already know them, go today to his concerto for clarinet, and for bassoon. They are miracles of conception, art, and most musical speech.
There are many important books written by and about Classical theory and theorists. Such authors as Quantz, Gluck, KPE Bach, Leopold Mozart and Dr Charles Burney are vital prime sources.
• The Romantic Century : 1810 - 1910
This is surely the era in music in which all of us feel completely at home. And no wonder. Not only are its names immensely familiar, but so too are its primary works. Even so, there remains much to discover and rediscover in this mighty time. If it opens with Beethoven, it closes with Stravinsky and his extraordinary ballets written for Diaghilev, with Mahler and Richard Strauss and their vast tonal canvases, and with Arnold Schoenberg, his Second Viennese School, and a conscious rewriting of the rules of composition.
The Romantic Century was prefigured by remarkable adventures in literature and architecture, in politics and science. It was a time in which contradictions were exposed and heightened, in which the individual and personally creative voice took second place to nothing, and from which the values of the French and American revolutions assumed primacy. In this period, there was an astounding rise in the independence of composers and performers, and in the national voices and identities of each. Concerts were promoted, music was widely published, great halls were built, commissions were offered, and music raced to catch up with the boldness of the other arts. Conservatories and orchestras were widely established, texts and treatises were widespread, and music became a profession. In mid-century Germany, the very idea of musicology took root. (Alas, so did the idea of being a music critic. For a quick look at this unhappy phenomenon, see "Bonkers, Edwin. Dancing With Werewolves. Berlin: Plattheit Press, 1997.")
Importantly, it was a time when even the wealthiest man on the planet could not afford a radio -- but by century's end every cultured home had a piano. Increasingly, music was the invention of individuals of stunning genius, and the community property of millions. What a change this was from its cloistered times in church and court.
Although the intimate values of chamber music and its often intellectually probing and deeply satisfying truths remained and flourished, the Romantic Century also established a time of sheer spectacle and power. The massive pageants of Wagner, the elephants of Aida, dazzling ballet in every house, the firewagons of Berlioz, and the near-unbelievable magic of Paganini and Liszt and the virtuosity they inspired -- all of this was but part of the time and its tumultuous energy.
When the size of halls, audiences, and orchestras exploded -- think of the numbers required by Richard Strauss, Mahler, Bruckner -- so too came the need for visible leadership, and thus the rise of the modern conductor. This alone symbolizes how personality-driven music came to be in the Romantic era. Combine all this with a rising middle class and attendant prosperity and one begins to see a kind of inevitability at play.
This century was one in which an almost tidal individualism (forgive the imagery) arose, first in literature and the visual arts, and thereafter in music. Idealists in this era believed in the illimitability of personal expression, original forms, and voice for its own sake. Realists in the same era saw a role for music which had narrative obligations (often derived from literature and poetry and epic), or which painted pictures, or limned character, and was often derived from folk and national sources. These Romantic realists and idealists coexisted reasonably well, and often within the same composer.
In this way, we observe the 'paradox' of such Romantic composers as Brahms, Mendelssohn, and Schubert invoking Classical and earlier structures, and such others as Beethoven, Berlioz, and Liszt proudly - defiantly - breaking new ground. These contradictions made the century only the richer.
Nationalism also played a role in this music. Dvorak and Smetana, Chopin and Grieg and Bizet, and perhaps above all the Mighty Five in Russia moved greatly to assert non-Italian and non-German forms and priorities.
In 1813, a coincidence as odd and useful as the year 1685 had been earlier (think Bach, Handel, Scarlatti) played out. In this unusual year were born both Wagner and Verdi. Although each would come to be identified almost exclusively with opera, in truth each had a vast influence in the sound of all music. These geniuses of drama attracted followers, supporters, and imitators by the legion. Those who wish to find foreshadow of the 20th century will want to study Tristan. In 1864 Wagner saw the way, in the context of tonality and ambiguity, to a period barely understood even 50 years later.
Across this century there are masterpieces of every description, and this essay will not attempt to list them all. Rather, in various specifics, let me hint at a few of the most illustrative immortals, and a few of the rarer swans as well.
The symphony is rightly represented by Beethoven, and any of his nine will do. Carlos Kleiber's video performance of the 7th has never gone out of print, and for the very good reason that it has never been excelled. However, consider as well the wonderful Symphony No. 1 of Bizet, or the astounding String Symphony No. 12 by a 13-year old Mendelssohn, or the unmatched beauty of Alexander Borodin's second symphony. You will marvel at all of them.
Consider also the hybrids of the symphonic tone poem: Liszt's 'Prometheus' is terrific fun, Strauss' 'Death and Transfiguration' is deeply moving, and the inspired American crackpot Anthony Philip Heinrich and his 'Ornithological Combat of Kings, or The Condor of the Andes and the Eagle of the Cordilleras' can't be beat for sheer oddness.
More serious work was also done in the field of concerto, and among the worthy rarities shine Sibelius' 'Swan of Tuonela', nearly a concerto for English horn; Wagner's 'Adagio for clarinet and strings'; Weber's bassoon concerto; Schumann's Concertstück for 4 horns; and, Rimsky-Korsakov's striking trombone concerto.
And so it went across these remarkable 100 years.
And there remained Vienna. Almost uniquely, this city was a focus of innovation and achievement. Perhaps matched only by New York in our times, the capital was for 200 years simultaneously the seat of innovation and judgement, the place where anyone of substance was required to succeed, and usually did. Although there were other important regional capitals of music (consider London, Paris, St Petersburg), only in Vienna did there exist a gravitational pull capable of attracting virtually every talent in the world. And there they met, heard and were influenced by one another's music, argued and competed and learned and taught, and music was much the greater for it.
But even such massive forces eventually fail to sustain themselves, and instead become the seat of their own rebellion. There were good reasons for Schoenberg to do his most critical thinking in Vienna, and for Stravinsky to remain in the French/Russian axis and avoid it altogether. But while the Romantic Century lasted, and Vienna prospered as its emblem and centrepiece, music shone. Its flame endures today.
• The Twentieth Century :
The music of our own time matches in high degree the chaos and uncertainty, the violence and adventure, the collapse of consensus, and the fascination with new technology and new sounds and rancid commercialism which defines our era overall. Add the return to improvisation in the rise of jazz, a recognition of non-European sounds and traditions, and a growing role for women as performers and composers both, and we find a musical century like none other. Honoring Yeats, our center did not hold.
Almost unbelievably, even the idea of repetition for its own sake became somehow acceptable, presumably offering a 'stability' otherwise unfound. "Knock knock," went the knowing joke, "Who's there?" "Knock knock." "Who's there?" "Knock knock." "Who's there?" "Knock knock." "Who's there?" "Knock knock." "Who's there?" "Knock knock." "Who's there?" "Phillip Glass."
At the beginning of the 20th Century, the new science of recorded sound was just coming into being. By its end, most every cultured home on the planet had a radio, television, video, CDs, DVDs, and computers. In 1900, performance was still largely unchained in the popular imagination, the purely regional sounds of orchestras and singers and artists held sway, and the only proof of a given musical event lay in the uneven and choosy memory of people who claimed to have been there. By century's close, recordings had forever altered this landscape. Corrections and edits and retakes, the very idea of perfection and immortality, the creation of jet-driven international standards -- all this had altered profoundly our concept of standards and performance practices and authenticity.
Whether or not our music was any the better for these technologies remains a difficult and (thank-you, Charles Ives) unanswered question.
If Wagner and Mahler and Richard Strauss had taken tonality and gigantism as far as it could go, the 20th Century would see where new systems, and new organizing principles, might lead.
We begin with Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971). His great ballet suites ('Petrouchka', 'Firebird' and -- above all - 'Rite of Spring') changed forever our notions of rhythm and color and energy in music. Although he was first considered as simply a talented successor to his teacher Rimsky-Korsakov in St Petersburg, Stravinsky's role and place in 20th C music became, quite simply, equal to that of Bach or Beethoven in theirs. Given a career-building boost by the legendary Alexander Siloti, who introduced him to Diaghilev, the composer went on to write in virtually every field of musical endeavour. Those wishing to sample his career will read the essay in New Grove 2000; those wanting to examine it more thoroughly will read Stephen Walsh's recent biography, or Richard Taruskin's magnificent 'Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions'. Beyond the most famous recordings (and there are many), one must also recommend listening to Stravinsky as a pianist. The self-expression of his own hand will speak much to his ideas of pulse and drive, as will several surviving films of his own conducting.
And we also begin with Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1950), Stravinsky's alleged rival and certain counter-weight. Schoenberg was the beneficiary of a classical Viennese musical education and recognized, earlier than any other, that the traditional systems of tonality were exhausted. The antique veins of gold had been played out.
Instead of these dead methods, Schoenberg came to insist, we must explore and imagine wholly new procedures, and thus give re-birth to music. He came to create 'serial' (or dodecaphonic, or 12-tone, or tone-row) procedures, organizing musical sounds in new and arbitrary ways. Schoenberg's own Op 25, his Piano Suite, offers a clear path into this music. No less worthy is Schoenberg's romantic 'Transfigured Night', a masterpiece which may help open the ear to his later and extraordinary 'Pierrot Lunaire' and 'Gurre-Lieder'.
Arnold Schoenberg remains, for many, a hard sell and this remains a terrible problem. In a way, he left a larger school and many more disciples than ever Stravinsky could have hoped. (If Schoenberg envied Stravinsky's public acclaim, Stravinsky envied Schoenberg's private followers.) Although purely serial procedures dead-ended in academe and music written for a dwindling-vortex of few and fewer listeners, its brilliance of analysis also freed our music in vital ways that are only now being fully measured. So too stands the work of Schoenberg's extraordinary pupils in the Second Viennese School (as it came to be called), the great Alban Berg (1885-1935) and Anton Webern (1885-1945). Berg's voice may be heard at its finest in his Violin Concerto, and in his opera 'Wozzeck'. Webern's Symphony for Small Orchestra, and String Quartet Op 28, are among his most admirable achievements.
Across the century we also find brilliant work of significantly regional or national genesis. Ravel and Debussy, Elgar and Vaughan Williams, Bartok and Janacek, De Falla and Ginastera, Lutaslawski and Penderecki, Berio and Dallapicolla, Boulez and his circle, Prokofiev and Shostakovich are all composers of such burning voice and excellence that their music bounded well beyond any borders. In our country, recognition must be given to Charles Ives (born the same year as Schoenberg), Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter, and the three Georges: Crumb, Rochberg, and Gershwin-if-only-he-had-Lived.
Let me mention two others: Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) and Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992). (I do so knowing that, even now, you will be urging, "But what about...?" Agreed. The list could be enormous, but this essay has a word limit. Sorry.)
Britten was an amazing prodigy who matured to give us music of inspired beauty and depth and pain. Among Britten's dozen masterworks must rank his 'Peter Grimes', perhaps the greatest tonal opera of the 20th Century. Listen to its 'Four Sea Interludes' as a suite, and then move into the harrowing revelation and self-denial of the opera as a whole, and you will discover why so many people are so moved by this music.
Messiaen was a very different composer, exploring in both a public and private language the message of the Catholic Church he so adored and transcended. Add to that language the call of birds, the radiance of the organ, a personal gift of synesthesia (in his case, the interchangeability of sight and sound), a meticulous rhetoric in rhythm, and one is inevitably led to his symphonic masterwork, the ten-movement 'Turangalila'. Start with Messiaen's 'Banquet Celeste' for solo organ, move to his 'Chronochromie' and then be ready for the astonishing tour de force of 'Turangalila'. Being performed by the San Francisco Symphony in April of 2002, this "invisible opera" will acquaint you with much that is most rich and alluring in the music of his genius, and our time.
In Messiaen (and a hundred worthy others) we also find the steady advance of fascinating and artificial sounds. From the experiments of Theremin and Martenot in the post-World War I era, to the musique concrète of post-World War II France, and on to early work at the Columbia and Bell and RCA labs and the breakthroughs of Robert Moog and IRCAM at Paris and CCRMA at Stanford, much of the story of our music has to do with these often stunning and curious new instruments and effects.
But, for us, there is even more to the sound of the 20th century. It has to do with proximity.
Part of the reward of being a member of our audience is that these discoveries are offered, regularly and afresh, at almost every concert. We hear them in real time, often led or spoken of by their own composers, and played by people who know their music intimately and now.
It is our honor to be present at first hearing, and privilege to tell our children that we moved beyond music-as-mausoleum. We helped give birth to the music of our own time and selves.