History 3: Study Notes

Please organize your notes in the following manner.

Unit 5: Modern Era (started in 1900)

General Terms
List and define all the general terms as they apply to the particular era. (These are the numbers that are given in class,
i.e., 1, 2, 3...)

Impressionism
- A style of painting developed in the late 19th century
- Led by French painters Claude Monet, Edourd Manet, and Edgar Degas
- Conscious reaction (opposite of) to earlier and more formal “learned style”
- Featured new techniques explored the play of light
- New textures, such as visible brush strokes
- Subject matter drawn from everyday life
Expressionism
- Viennese art movement led by painters such as Wassily Kandinsky and Oskar Kokoscha
- Showed human angst, obsessions, and compulsions
- The imagery was usually exaggerated, distorted, and even nightmarish
Symbolism
- Late 19th century literary movement
- Sought to evoke rather than show
- Writers experimented with unorthodox (unusual) grammar and syntax
- Led by Charles Baudelaire and his poem Correspondances; other important figures were: Paul Verlaine,
Stephane Mallarme, and Arthur Rimbaud
E1 Expended Tonality
- The use of extremely chromatic harmony while still keeping allegiance to a tonal center
1 Polytonality
- The continuous use of two or more tonal centers
2 Modal Scales
- Use of scales in which the pattern of whole steps and half steps is different from the usual major and minor
scales (example: Dorian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Phrygian, etc.)
- Common in music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance; rediscovered by 20th century composers
E2 Twelve-tone method
- Atonal music based on an arrangement of all twelve chromatic pitches (tone row)
- Developed by composer Arnold Schoenberg

Composer 1: Claude Debussy

Life
Include the following criteria in your notes, in this (general) order:

1. Year of Birth – Year of death: 1862-1918

2. Birthplace, nationality: Born in St-Germaine en-Laye, France
3. Family background:
- His dad was a china shop owner
 - His mom was a seamstress
4. Education and professional training
- Started piano lessons at age 7
- Entered the Paris Conservatoire
- Aspired to be a concert pianist, but his interest soon turned to composition
- Teachers included Antoine-Francois Marmontel (piano), Emile Durand (harmony), and Ernest Guiraus
(composition)
- Got many awards and gold medals at the Conservatoire
- Awarded the Prix de Rome for the cantata L’enfant prodigue
- Stayed at Villa Medici in Rome, where he explored a range of genres
5. Musical career, include:
Career:
- Enjoyed a varied career as a pianist, collaborative artist, and conductor
- Employed as a piano teacher for family of Nahezhda von Meck, Tchaikovsky’s patron, in 1880, when he as 22
- Music critic for the Revue blanche, artistic journal published in Paris
- Got fame and notoriety with the premiere of Prelude a l’apres midi d’un faune
- His reputation enhanced with the premiere of the opera Pelleas et Melisande
Life:
- Turbulent private life; had many scandalous romantic relationships
- Went to Bayreuth and became interested in Wagner’s music, which he later rejected
- Attended the Paris World Exposition; was shown Asian art and music, including Javanese gamelan ensembles
- Married his first wife, Emma Bardac in 1909; their daughter Claude-Emma (“Chou Chou”) was born in 1905
- Interacted with many well-known contemporary composers in Paris, including Gabriel Faure, Erik Satie, Ernest
Chausson, Maurice Ravel, and Igor Stravinsky
- Died on March 25th 1918, from cancer, just before the end of World War 1
6. Significant associations or connections with people, places, and events

Musical style and contributions

Include the following criteria in your notes, in this (general) order:

1. stages or style periods (where applicable)

- Very original and innovative; influential in both France and internationally
- Like the Symbolist poets, he experimented with unusual approaches to grammar and syntax through formal
structure and phrasing; evoking rather than narrating, and suggesting rather than showing
- Explored Western and non-Western scale systems, including whole-tone, pentatonic, and modal scales
- Innovative approaches to harmony: parallel chord streams; open fifth and octaves reminiscent of the earliest
polyphonic practices (organum); quartal harmony (chords built on fourths)
- Varied use of rhythm (for example, free flowing and rhapsodic, motoric, dance character)
- Programmatic elements (pastoraol, water imagery, sunlight, moonlight)
- Often clever and satirical
- Went back to sonata form in his later works
2. innovations
3. musical influences
4. impact and significance

Genres and Titles

List some genres of work composed, and some of the titles of compositions

Orchestral works:
- Symphonic poem—Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune
- Suites—La mer; Images; Nocturnes
Solo piano works:
 - Suite Bergamasque; Pour le piano; Estampes; Images; Preludes (2 books); Etudes; Children’s Corner; many
character pieces
Vocal works:
- French art songs, including Beau Soir, Mandoline
- Song cycle: Chansons de Bilitis

Opera: Pelleas et Melisande

Ballet: Jeux

Chamber music:
- String quartet, sonatas for violin and piano, cello and piano

Work 1: Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune

Genre Definition
State and define the genre as pertaining to the work. (These are given in class in CAPITAL LETTERS).

A: Symphonic poem
- One of the most popular forms of orchestral program music
- Single movement work, usually in free form, with literary or pictorial connections
- Invented by Franz Liszt

Related Terms
List and define all the terms related to this particular work.

W1.1 Impressionism in music

- Reflects French artistic movement
- Uses expanded harmonic vocabulary: whole tone, modal, pentatonic scales; parallel chords
- Suggests images instead of directly showing
- Uses innovative orchestral colors, including individual treatment of instruments and use of muted strings
- Difficult to understand (obscuring of) metric pulse
W1.2 Antique cymbals
- Small brass disks (finger cymbals)
- Makes a gentle ringing sound when struck together
W1.3 Glissando
- Came from French glisser, meaning “to slide”
- On the harp, a swift strumming movement of all the strings with a wide sweeping hand movement; makes
beautiful shimmering effects
W1.4 Symbolism
- French literary movement of the late 19th century
- Symbolist writers include: Paul Verlaine and Stephane Mallarme
- Authors seek to suggest subject matter instead of showing it specifically
- Stresses the beauty of the word itself

Background Information
Include the following criteria in your summary, in this (general) order:

1. Composer: Claude Debussy

2. Genre: Symphonic poem (tone poem)
3. Date (of composition): 1894
 4. Performing forces (who performs it? What instruments, if any? How is it performed?): Strings, violins, violas,
cellos, double basses, harps, woodwinds, flutes, oboes, English horn, clarinets, brass, French horns, percussion,
antique cymbals
5. Text (if applicable), including source, author, language, and general meaning
6. Structure (including the number of movements, if applicable): Loose ternary structure (ABA)
7. Historical context and circumstances of composition: Composed in 1894
8. Plot summary (if applicable): It describes a faun (myth creature) of the forest who is half man and half goat. He
gets visited by 3 lovely nymphs, or was this just a dream? The hazy. Dreamy quality of the poem is captured in
Debussy’s sensuous music

Musical Description: Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune

Include the following criteria in your summary, in this (general) order:

1. Context within the whole work (what part of the work does it come from?): Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune
2. Form: Loose ternary structure (ABA)
3. Key structures (including main modulations and tonal centers): Starts and ends with 4 sharps
4. Meter: 9/8
5. Tempo: Tres modere (moderate)
6. Musical character, mood, atmosphere”
Section A:
- Despite the key signature ( 4 sharps), the tonality is deliberately ambiguous (has more than 1 meaning)
- The opening melody, played by the flute, descends chromatically from C sharp to G, outlining a tritone (made of
3 whole tones)
- Mysterious atmosphere shows the opening of Mallarme’s poem: nymphs in their “gossamer embodiment,
floating in the air”
- Innovative orchestration, featuring harp glissandi; muted horns, and muted strings
Section B:
- 2 new themes are introduced by the woodwinds
- Contrast is made by more active, animated rhythm
- Exotic atmosphere evoked by clarinets tracing quick whole-tone scales
- Strings usually move in parallel motion; gentle, floating sound made
- Modulations (including D flat major) and pressing syncopations build to an effective climax
Return of Section A:
- Modified version of the opening theme using longer note values (augmentation)
- Solo flute now outlines a perfect fourth; clarifies (makes clear) the E major tonality
- Antique cymbals are gently struck in the final section (though I can’t hear them…)
7. Extra-musical connections
8. Instrumentation (if different on each movement)

Basically, the more you can add about the music, the better – all the points on the study guide are already “key points”.
Try to pick out key words and highlight them in your own study notes.