History Week 01.pdf

PRELUDE

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Modernism in the Arts “The entire history of modern music may be said to be a history of the gradual pull-away from the German musical tradition of the past century.” —Aaron Copland

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KEY POINTS

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Impressionism was a French movement developed by painters who tried to capture their “first impression” of a subject through varied treatments of light and color.

arts, Dadaism, Cubism) and the world of dreams and the inner soul (Surrealism, Expressionism).

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The literary response to Impressionism was Symbolism, in which writings are suggestive of images and ideas rather than literally descriptive.

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The diverse artistic trends of the early twentieth century were a reaction against Romanticism.

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Early-twentieth-century artistic trends explored simplicity and abstraction (interest in non-Western

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Impressionism

Symbolism

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Expressionism was the international counterpart to French Impressionism; in music, composers such as Schoenberg and Webern explored new harmonic systems and the extreme registers of instruments.

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The Neoclassical movement sought to revive balance and objectivity in the arts by returning to formal structures of the past.

ust as European and American societies saw great changes in the era from 1890 to 1940, so did the arts witness a profound upheaval. The earliest harbingers of modernism were French artists and writers, who abandoned the grandiose subjects and expressions of Romanticism. Impressionist artists wished to capture on canvas the freshness of their first impressions and were fascinated with the continuous change in the appearance of their subjects through varied treatment of light and color. Claude Monet’s painting, Impression: Sun Rising, completed in 1867, was rebuffed by the academic salons of Paris (see illustration opposite), and “Impressionism” quickly became a term of derision. However, Monet’s hazy, luminous painting style was embraced by Parisian artists such as Camille Pissarro (1830–1903), Edouard Manet (1832–1883), Edgar Degas (1834–1917), and August Renoir (1841–1919). We will see how composers like Claude Debussy tried to emulate the use of color and iridescence that characterize this new style. A parallel development in poetry was similarly influential to French composers: the Symbolist movement sought to evoke poetic images through suggestion rather than description, through symbol rather than statement. This literary revolt against tradition gained prominence in the works of French writers Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867), Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898), and Paul Verlaine (1844–1896), all of whom were strongly influenced by the American poet Edgar

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The Impressionists took painting out of the studio and into the open air; their subject was light. Claude Monet (1840–1926), Impression: Sun Rising.

Allan Poe (1809–1849). Through their experiments in free verse forms, the Symbolists were able to achieve in language an abstract quality that had once belonged to music alone.

The Reaction against Romanticism Other styles soon arose as early-twentieth-century composers severed their ties with their Romantic pasts. These new attitudes took hold just before the advent of the First World War (1914–1918), when European arts tried to break away from overrefinement and to capture the spontaneity and the freedom from inhibition that was associated with primitive life. Artists were inspired by the abstraction of African sculpture, and painters Paul Gauguin and Henri Rousseau created exotic works of monumental simplicity. Likewise, some composers turned to the vigorous energy of non-Western rhythm, seeking fresh concepts in the musics of Africa, Asia, and eastern Europe. Out of the unspoiled, traditional music in these areas came powerful rhythms of an elemental fury, as reflected in Bartók’s Allegro barbaro (1911) and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring (1913), which we will study. In those years surrounding the First World War, two influential arts movements arose: Futurism, whose manifesto of 1909 declared its alienation from established institutions and its focus on the dynamism of twentieth-century life; and Dadaism, founded in Switzerland after 1918. The Dadaists, principally writers and artists who reacted to the horrors of the war’s bloodbath that had engulfed Europe, rejected the concept of art as something to be reverently admired. To make their point, they produced works of absolute absurdity. They also reacted against the excessive complexity of Western art by trying to recapture the simplicity of a child’s world-

The powerful abstraction of African sculpture strongly influenced European art.

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PART 6 | Impressionism and the Early Twentieth Century

Parisian painter Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) was drawn to the simplicity of Tahitian life and the emotional directness of his native subjects. Nave, Nave Moe (Miraculous Source, 1894).

Surrealism and Cubism

Spanish artist Joan Miró (1893–1983) explores the surrealist world of dreams through the distortion of shapes. Dutch Interior I.

view. Following their example, the French composer Erik Satie led the way toward a simple, “everyday” music, and exerted an important influence—along with the writer Jean Cocteau—on the group called Les Six (The Six; see Chapter 37). The Dada group, with artists such as Hans Arp and Marcel Duchamp, merged into the school of Surrealism, which included Salvador Dali and Joan Miró (see illustration), both of whom explored the world of dreams. Other styles of modern art included Cubism, the Paris-based style of painting embodied in the works of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Juan Gris (see p. 283), which encouraged the painter to construct a visual world in terms of geometric patterns; and Expressionism, which we will see had a significant impact on music of the early twentieth century.

Expressionism Expressionism was the international counterpart to French Impressionism. While the French explored radiant impressions of the outer world, the Germanic temperament preferred digging down to the depths of the psyche. As with Impressionism, the impulse for the Expressionist movement came from painting. Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944), Paul Klee (1879–1940), Oskar Kokoschka (1886–1980; see illustration opposite), and Edvard Munch (1863–1944)—famous for The Scream—influenced the composer Arnold Schoenberg (see p. 306) and his followers just as the Impressionist painters influenced Debussy. Expressionism is reflected not only through the paintings of Kandinsky, Kokoschka, and Munch, but also in the writings of Franz Kaf ka (1883– 1924). Expressionism in music triumphed first in central Europe, especially Germany, and reached its full tide in the dramatic works of the Second Viennese School (a term referring to Arnold Schoenberg and his disciples Alban Berg and Anton Webern).

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The Austrian Expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka (1886–1980) reveals his terror of war in Knight Errant (1915).

The musical language of Expressionism favored hyperexpressive harmonies, extraordinarily wide leaps in the melody, and the use of instruments in their extreme registers. Expressionist music soon reached the boundaries of what was possible within the major-minor system. Inevitably, it had to push beyond.

Neoclassicism One way of rejecting the nineteenth century was to return to earlier eras. Instead of revering Beethoven and Wagner, as the Romantics had done, composers began to emulate the great musicians of the early eighteenth century—Bach, Handel, and Vivaldi—and the detached, objective style that is often associated with their music. Neoclassicism tried to rid music of the story-and-picture meanings favored in the nineteenth century. Neoclassical composers turned away from the symphonic poem and the Romantic attempt to bring music closer to poetry and painting. They preferred absolute to program music, and they focused attention on craftsmanship and balance, a positive affirmation of the Classical virtues of objectivity and control. As in previous movements, Modernism was both a reaction against the past and a distillation of it. It was in part an investigation into why the past needed to change and in part an attempt to make the arts more relevant—more “modern”—while still challenging conventional perceptions. The movement transformed a culture and allowed for endless experimentation. It was to have far-reaching consequences in all fields, including the arts, literature, the sciences, philosophy, and religion. Let us now consider two key composers from the first modern generation in France: the Impressionist composer Claude Debussy and the post-Impressionist/ Neoclassicist Maurice Ravel. Critical Thinking 1. How do the artistic movements of Impressionism and Expressionism differ? Do they share any similarities? 2. How are the major artistic trends of the early twentieth century a reaction against earlier styles? 3. What appealed to artists about non-Western art and music?

Absolute music

Modernism