PART 6: Video Intro

This is the title of a song written by the American composer George Crumb (b.1928), but it could perhaps be seen as a metaphor for an entire generation of composers who have looked for their own voice in music during this century.  The idea of "looking for a voice"-- not necessarily finding one-- is certainly not new.  The 20th century is somewhat like musical history between the 1720s and 1770s-- do you remember that 50 year period in which composers knew that they wanted to overturn the complexity of polyphony but had tremendous difficulty finding anything meaningful to replace it with? As the saying goes, it is much easier to tear down than to build up, and such has been the experience of our own musical time.

Some composers have found a voice, though-- either an individual idiom all their own or a school in common with others. In this lecture we'll look at some styles and trends that have given voice  to 20th century composers.

The song mentioned above was from a cycle called Ancient Voices of Children, written by George Crumb and based on verses by the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca. Crumb carved out a very personal niche for himself by using traditional instruments in non-traditional ways (for instance, having a cellist play a finger cymbal by rubbing the bow on it, or having a pianist play the inside of the piano in diverse ways). As you listen to the excerpt above, note the very non-standard way in which the vocal part is handled: the opening words, "El Niño Busca su voz" are stretched out so far and wide as to be almost surreal. Also, you will hear patches of silence and an assortment of Asian percussion instruments, all of which attempt to reflect Crumb's interest in Asian philosophy and culture.  Ancient Voices of Children uses 30 percussion instruments including vibraphone, marimba, various gongs, maracas, Tibetan prayer stones, Japanese temple bells, and cymbals. Crumb's style is rather personal and has not been imitated often.  His attempts to create new sound worlds, and to invoke Asian culture as filtered through his own view are his own response to finding a voice.

There are other composers who have sat on both sides of the artistic fence, trying one style and then switching to another.  Such has been the case with Frederic Rzewski (b.1938).  He studied at Harvard and Princeton and, during the early 1960s was very much part of the intellectually-based avant-garde. Slightly later, however, he began to experiment with amalgamating styles-- jazz, improv, folk sources, and European Romantic compositional techniques-- all the while infusing them with his strongly held leftist politics. The People United (1975), based on a popular Chilean leftist folk melody which emerged from the resistance movement, has 36 variations. The variation form is made-to-order for someone who is thinking of combining different styles into one work-- and Rzewski uses it to try out every technique and effect he can think of. During the course of the piece the pianist is called upon to play, but also to scream, whistle, and slam the lid of the piano!

POST-MODERNISM: INTRODUCTION

You may remember that during the Romantic era the staple of concerts was "contemporary" music.  Composers always performed their own works, and audiences were always interested to hear the latest and newest. But during the 20th century that situation changed. Between the antics of the various "enfant terribles" of music (such as Cage) and the antiseptic quality of the ultra-rationalists (such as Boulez), audiences in the 20th century became disenchanted with contemporary music. The situation was aggravated by the simultaneous rise of interest in older musics-- Baroque, Classical, and Romantic. Soon our concert system came to resemble that of art museums-- mostly repositories for the art and artists of the past. Orchestras began to lose subscribers-- a situation that most of them have still not recovered from.  Nor has contemporary music succeeded in the commercial recording market: there are hundreds of recordings of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony available, while some living composers have not a single CD to their name.

The alienation of concert audiences has been  a serious concern of some composers, who have tried to recoup the loss by turning to more accessible styles.  Because of this transition in styles the first half of the century is often referred to as modernist, while the second half is sometimes called post-modernist.  There are various styles which can be subsumed under the rubric of post-modernism and we'll take a look at two of them now.

NEO-ROMANTICISM

For some composers post-modernism has represented a return to the expressive, communicative legacy of-- you guessed it, Romanticism.  It seems that the first half of our century composers spent trying to run away from Romanticism-- but in the second half, many of them started running back to it! A movement called Neo-Romanticism attracted composers from all over the world.  In America, George Rochberg (b.1918) was one of the first to construct pieces using quotations evocative of past styles. The technique was dubbed "quotation collage technique." Rochberg has called it "a music of remembering," and he speaks of "regaining contact with the tradition and means of the past." An example of his music is this excerpt from his String Quartet No. 3.

Rochberg actually started out writing in 12-tone style and was quite committed to it. "I was convinced of the historical inevitability of the 12-tone language-- I felt I was living at the very edge of the musical frontier, of history itself," he wrote of his earlier style. But by the 1960s he had changed his mind about the viability as well as the flexibility of the style. "The over-intense manner of serialism and its tendency to inhibit physical pulse and rhythm led me to question a style which made it virtually impossible to express serenity, tranquility, grace, wit, energy. It became necessary to move on."

This frustration with the emotional limitations of serial technique was common to Neo-Romantic composers. Other composers of this persuasion include the Russian Alfred Schnittke, the Polish Henryk Gorecki, and the English composer Sir Michael Tippett.

MINIMALISM

Minimalism is a style of writing that makes rather extreme use of repetition-- and as a consequence it moves at a very slow rate of harmonic rhythm.  Harmonic rhythm is a term we haven't used very much, but it refers to the rate at which harmonies change. To give you a clearer idea let's make an analogy. Let's say that you're walking through a beautiful garden planted with row upon row of flowers of all kinds. If you walk quickly you'll go through many varieties of flowers in a short period of time-- that's the equivalent of having a fast harmonic rhythm because you go through alot of distinct harmonies in a short period of time. The Baroque style used a fast harmonic rhythm and as a consequence the average Baroque piece has a rich and varied harmonic basis. Romanticism, while not using a fast harmonic rhythm used a very rich harmonic pallet and this richness of harmonic progression was at the heart of the style. Going back to our garden metaphor-- if you walk v-e-r-y, v-e-r-y  slowly through it you might only pass one or two varieties of flowers. You will definitely have the time to stop and smell the roses (pun intended) and you will be able to observe all the details in the buds, stems, and leaves. Minimalism is like a slow walk through that garden--slowing down the rate of harmonic rhythm allows you to stay in one harmony for a long time and kind of "bask" in it. In that sense it is very different from older musics (Romantic and Baroque in particular).

One of the founders of the minimalist style was the American Steve Reich (b. 1936), who started out by taking small units and repeating them over and over again in order to achieve an effect. These small units could be a few interesting chords, or they could be a few rhythms clapped with the hands-- or even a few words uttered by someone.  Sometimes he repeated the units literally and sometimes he repeated them on two separate tape machines, letting them gently go out of phase with each other. One of Reich's earliest pieces was actually a tape loop of voices that he recorded on the street.  "By using recorded speech as a source of electronic or tape music," he wrote, "speech-melody and meaning are presented as they naturally occur. By not altering its pitch or timbre, one keeps the original emotional power that speech has while intensifying its melody and meaning through repetition and rhythm."

Here's an example of one of Reich's early works called Come Out, which uses one line of speech put through a subtle phase shift. Before you hit the hyperlink and listen to it, just read how Reich described the genesis of this piece-- then you'll be able to understand what he was trying to do.

"Composed in 1966, Come Out was originally part of a benefit presented at Town Hall in New York City for the retrial, with lawyers of their own choosing, of the six boys arrested for murder during the Harlem riots of 1964. The voice is that of Daniel Hamm, now acquitted and then 19, describing a beating he took in Harlem's 28th Precinct Station. The police were about to take the boys out to be "cleaned up" and were only taking those that were visibly bleeding. Since Hamm had no actual open bleeding he proceeded to squeeze open a bruise on his leg so that he would be taken to the hospital. 'I had to like open the bruise up and let some of the bruise blood come out to show them.' Come Out is composed of a single loop recorded on both channels. First the loop is in unison with itself. As it begins to go out of phase a slowly increasing reverberation is heard. This gradually passes into a canon or round for two voices, then four voices and finally eight."

Now go ahead and listen to Come Out.  And after you hear it you can listen to Clapping Music, which is a piece that Reich devised for when his ensemble went on tour across the U.S. and to Europe. He was looking for a piece that was portable and easy to put together no matter what the conditions-- this piece certainly fills the bill because it uses only two sets of clapping hands!

If you ever saw the movie Koyaanisqatsi, (the title comes from the Native American word for 'life out of balance') you may remember that the soundtrack score was by Philip Glass (b. 1937), another minimalist composer. Glass' harmonic vocabulary is somewhat more toned down from Reich's, which explains why his brand of minimalism is often not as interesting to listen to. But he has developed a following and has become quite successful.  He even did an opera called Einstein on the Beach. Here's an excerpt from Koyaanisqatsi (which is available in video form).

The best use of minimalist technique comes from John Adams (b. 1947). Perhaps Adams success is due to the fact that he's the least minimal of all the minimalist composers! By that I mean that his harmonic rhythm is not as slow as Reich or Glass and he does not repeat small units as doggedly as they do.  In other words, there is more variety in his music from moment to moment. Adams has become known for his short orchestral piece, Short Ride in a Fast Machine,  the ending of which is excerpted here.  According to a survey I once read this is the most performed orchestral piece in America.  Considering the conservative nature of orchestral repertoire that is quite a compliment!

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