Impressionism and the Second Viennese School — Three Revolutions of the Early 20th Century

1890–1913 — The Great Explosion in the History of Music

From the late-19th-century world of the previous article on Nationalism and Italian Opera, at the fin de siècle music underwent a major turn. In the 23 years from 1890 to 1913, there were three decisive revolutions:

• 1894 — Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun — the establishment of French Impressionism
• 1908 — Schoenberg’s Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11 — the establishment of atonal music
• 29 May 1913 — Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring premiered in Paris (Ballets Russes) — a great event in the history of music

These share the common thread of the dissolution of “tonality.” The system of major and minor keys, which had lasted 500 years, began to collapse.

The “Fin de siècle” — The Atmosphere of the Age

Around 1890, Europe had a distinctly fin-de-siècle atmosphere:

• Symbolist literature (Mallarmé, Verlaine, Rimbaud) — France
• Expressionist painting (Munch’s The Scream, 1893) — Norway/Germany
• Art Nouveau (decorative arts) — Paris, Vienna, Brussels
• Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900 — the birth of psychoanalysis
• The Vienna Secession (Klimt, Schiele) — Austria

“The established order of the 19th century” was on the verge of collapse; there was a hunger for a new mode of expression. Music was part of this same current.

French Impressionism — Debussy and Ravel

The previous series [Lineage of the Piano] 08 covers this in detail from a piano-music perspective. In the present series, we focus on works beyond piano.

Claude Debussy (1862–1918)

Orchestral Works

• Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (1894) — from Mallarmé’s poem; the starting point of Impressionist music
• Three Nocturnes (1899) — “Nuages,” “Fêtes,” “Sirènes”
• La mer (1905) — a symphonic poem in three movements; Hokusai’s Great Wave off Kanagawa on the cover
• Ibéria (1905–1908), Printemps
• Jeux (1912–1913) — a ballet commissioned by Diaghilev

Opera

• Pelléas et Mélisande (1902) — his only completed opera, on Maeterlinck’s Symbolist play; Wagnerian chromatic harmony fused with French delicacy

Chamber Music and Vocal Works

• String Quartet in G minor, Op. 10 (1893) — his only quartet
• Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp, Cello Sonata, Violin Sonata (1915–1917) — the three late sonatas
• Many songs — Verlaine, Baudelaire, Mallarmé

Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)

Orchestra and Ballet

• Daphnis et Chloé (1912) — a ballet, commissioned by Diaghilev; Ravel’s greatest work
• La Valse (1919–1920) — “Vienna’s dissolving waltz”; a post-war worldview
• Boléro (1928) — the most famous Ravel in the world
• Ma mère l’Oye — a fairy-tale ballet (see the previous series 08)

Opera

• L’heure espagnole (1911) — a one-act comedy
• L’enfant et les sortilèges (1925) — libretto by Colette; furniture and animals come to life

Arrangements

• Mussorgsky, Pictures at an Exhibition orchestration (1922) — more famous than the original

The Legacy of Impressionism

• Messiaen, Dutilleux — 20th-century French music
• Takemitsu Tōru (Japan) — “the Japanese Impressionist”
• Jazz — ninth chords, whole-tone scales
• Film music — the direct ancestor of contemporary “colouristic” music

The Second Viennese School — Atonality and Twelve-Tone Technique

In 1900s Vienna, Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils Alban Berg and Anton Webern formed a trio:

The Birth of Atonality (1908)

They deliberately abandoned the “tonality” that had lasted 500 years — the system of major and minor keys. Schoenberg’s Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11 (1908) was the first atonal work.

The Invention of the Twelve-Tone Technique (1923)

After atonality, Schoenberg went on to invent the twelve-tone technique in 1923:

• The twelve chromatic pitches are arranged as a row (series)
• Each pitch cannot be repeated until the row has cycled
• The row is transformed by prime, retrograde, inversion, and retrograde-inversion
• A new order for atonal music — an organizing principle to replace tonality

“The mathematization of music” — running parallel to the structuralism of the 20th century that we followed in the [Lineage of Mathematics] series.

Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951)

A Viennese Jewish composer. He was self-taught in music (corresponding to Ramanujan in the [Lineage of Mathematics] series).

Life

• 13 September 1874 — Born in Vienna
• c. 1900 — Recognised by Mahler
• 1908 — Turns to atonality (Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11; The Book of the Hanging Gardens, Op. 15)
• 1912 — Pierrot lunaire, Op. 21 — the invention of Sprechstimme (spoken singing)
• 1923 — Invents the twelve-tone technique (Suite, Op. 25)
• 1933 — Flees the Nazis and emigrates to the US (the same fate as Gödel in the [Lineage of Mathematics] series)
• 1936–1951 — Professor at UCLA (Los Angeles)
• 13 July 1951 — Dies in Los Angeles at 76

Main Works

• Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4 (1899) — string sextet (later orchestrated); a late-Romantic masterpiece
• Gurrelieder (1911) — a huge cantata; Mahlerian
• Pierrot lunaire, Op. 21 (1912) — 21 pieces, Sprechstimme
• Variations for Orchestra, Op. 31 (1928)
• Opera Moses und Aron (1932, unfinished)

Sprechstimme

Invented in Pierrot lunaire: a mode of delivery between speech and song. Pitches are notated, but rather than being sung the notes are spoken, quitting the pitch quickly. A new vocal technique of the 20th century.

Alban Berg (1885–1935)

Schoenberg’s pupil, more expressionistic and Romantic. At 50 he died young of septicemia after a bee sting.

Main Works

• Wozzeck (1922) — an opera on Büchner’s play; a masterpiece of atonal opera
• Lyrische Suite (1926) — string quartet; twelve-tone + a secret cipher
• Violin Concerto “To the Memory of an Angel” (1935) — in memory of the young Manon Gropius (daughter of Alma Mahler); a posthumous work
• Opera Lulu (1929–1935, unfinished) — three acts on the life of a courtesan

“Expressionist Opera”

Wozzeck is the tragedy of a poor soldier who stabs his wife. A blend of atonality and twelve-tone; fierce feeling. A masterpiece of 20th-century opera.

Anton Webern (1883–1945)

Schoenberg’s pupil, the most rigorous twelve-tone composer. He wrote mainly short pieces (many lasting only a few minutes).

Life

• 3 December 1883 — Born in Vienna
• 1904–1908 — Studies with Schoenberg
• 1920s — Takes twelve-tone technique to an extreme
• 1938 — Under Nazi occupation his works are banned as “degenerate art”
• 15 September 1945 — Killed by a US soldier by mistake in occupied Austria at 61

Main Works

• Six Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6 (1909)
• Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 10 (1913) — extremely short
• Six Bagatelles for String Quartet, Op. 9 (1913)
• Symphony, Op. 21 (1928) — symmetrical form
• Variations for Orchestra, Op. 30 (1940) — his last orchestral work

“Pointillisme”

Webern’s music is extremely sparse and fragmentary. Each single note comes briefly from a different instrument. The musical equivalent of a pointillist painting. A decisive influence on postwar avant-garde composers (Boulez, Stockhausen).

The Ballets Russes — 29 May 1913

In 1909, Sergei Diaghilev (1872–1929) founded the Ballets Russes. Based in Paris, it gathered Russian dancers, choreographers, composers, and designers:

• Choreographers: Fokine, Nijinsky, Massine, Balanchine
• Dancers: Nijinsky, Pavlova, Karsavina
• Composers: Stravinsky, Ravel, Debussy, Satie, Prokofiev
• Designers: Picasso, Matisse, Cocteau, Goncharova

The Ballets Russes as “the total art of the 20th century.”

29 May 1913 — The Premiere of The Rite of Spring

At the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, Igor Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps — choreography by Nijinsky.

From the opening bars the audience erupted in tumult:

• Primitive rhythms, dissonance, changing metres
• Nijinsky’s “ugly” choreography (feet turned inward, anti-classical)
• Aristocrats in the front rows and young people in the galleries argued, and came to blows
• The police were called in

“The greatest scandal in the history of music.” But the following year, performed in concert, it was hailed as a masterpiece. A symbolic moment of the dawn of 20th-century music.

Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)

Born in Oranienbaum (now Lomonosov), Russia. A pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov (of the Five, in the previous article). Long-lived at 89, with three compositional periods:

Russian Period (1909–1919)

• The Firebird (1910) — his debut for the Ballets Russes
• Petrushka (1911) — a ballet, at a Paris fair
• The Rite of Spring (1913) — a ballet; the riot

Neoclassical Period (1920–1954)

• Pulcinella (1920) — a ballet on themes attributed to Pergolesi
• Symphony of Psalms (1930)
• Opera The Rake’s Progress (1951) — libretto by Auden; Mozartian

Twelve-Tone Period (1954–1968)

• Late in life he turned to Schoenbergian twelve-tone technique
• Agon (1957); Requiem Canticles (1965–1966)

“The greatest chameleon composer of the 20th century” — he never stopped changing style.

Exile

• 1917 Russian Revolution — Switzerland → France
• 1939 Second World War — the US (lectures at Harvard: Poetics of Music)
• 1945 US citizenship
• 6 April 1971 — Dies in New York; buried in Venice (next to Diaghilev of the Ballets Russes)

Other Composers of the Early 20th Century

Béla Bartók (1881–1945)

Hungary, an ethnomusicologist and composer. Collecting folk music (recording and analysing Eastern European and Asian songs on the phonograph) → its transformation into art music:

• The Miraculous Mandarin (1919) — a ballet, extremely violent
• Concerto for Orchestra (1943) — during his US exile
• Six String Quartets (1908–1939) — the summit of 20th-century chamber music
• Mikrokosmos (1926–1939) — a piano method, a staple of modern piano pedagogy
• Three piano concertos

Zoltán Kodály (1882–1967)

Hungary; collected folk music with Bartók. World-famous for the Kodály Method in music education:

• Háry János Suite (1926)
• Dances of Galánta (1933)

Leoš Janáček (1854–1928)

Czech, “the musicalization of speech.” A late-blooming genius:

• Opera Jenůfa (1904)
• Sinfonietta (1926)
• The Diary of One Who Disappeared; The Cunning Little Vixen

Charles Ives (1874–1954)

Connecticut, USA, an insurance man and composer. Avant-garde, with a music entirely his own:

• The Unanswered Question (1908)
• Concord Sonata — for piano

“Schoenberg vs. Stravinsky”

The 20th-century musical world split into two camps:

The Schoenberg Camp (Germany, Austria)

• Atonality and twelve-tone technique
• The mathematical organization of music
• Base: Vienna → the US (in exile)

The Stravinsky Camp (Russia, France, US)

• Rhythm, neoclassicism, a variety of styles
• Exploration of the “surface” of music
• Base: Paris → the US

Analogous to the French “Boulez vs. Milhaud” opposition. Contemporary music integrates both camps.

The “Difficulty” of 20th-Century Music

Atonality and twelve-tone technique were extremely difficult for general audiences:

• No sense of “resolution” from tonality
• Melodies hard to remember
• Continuous dissonance

Even today, atonal and twelve-tone music are not widely popular. They survive, in fragments, in film music, video-game music, and contemporary art music (for effects of “fear” or “tension”).

Modern Impact

Impressionism

• Jazz harmony, film music, contemporary Japanese music (Takemitsu, Sakamoto Ryūichi)
• Established in harmony textbooks
• Debussy’s Clair de lune is one of the most-performed piano works in the world

The Second Viennese School

• Postwar avant-garde (Boulez, Stockhausen, Ligeti)
• Serial music
• The path to electronic music

The Ballets Russes

• The Rite of Spring is a standard 20th-century orchestral repertoire piece
• The direct ancestor of contemporary ballet
• The Diaghilev model of “total art”

From This Article to the Next

We have traced the three great revolutions of the early 20th century. The next article moves into the music of the 20th century (1920–2000). The Soviet Union’s Shostakovich (1906–1975) and Prokofiev (1891–1953), the US’s Gershwin (1898–1937), Copland (1900–1990), and Ives (1874–1954), the postwar avant-garde Boulez (1925–2016), Stockhausen (1928–2007), Ligeti (1923–2006), Takemitsu (1930–1996), minimal music (Reich, Glass), and Corigliano and Adams — through totalitarianism, the Cold War, electronic music, minimalism, and postmodernism, we follow the diverse developments of 20th-century music.