MHL 603  - 12-TONE-3 - FREE TREATMENT OF 12 TONES

(F-11)

 

1. Copland Piano Quartet (1950)

Composed in 1950 – One of first American composers to adopt Schoenberg's "method" - Copland claimed that he had experimented with the method before in "Poet's Song" (1927) and "Piano Variations" (1930) – The latter uses transformations of a short motive, but not a 12-tone row

DeLapp thesis about Copland's motivations (prep 3)

Quartet has 3 movements – based on different but very similar rows – 3rd movement has the key signature of 5 flats – Only first movement assigned

Character of row – HANDOUT – audibly made up of whole tone scales – presented at beginning as melody in strings in canon, then in piano

only 11 notes in phrase – 12th note (A) comes only at the end of the movement

easily recognizable

many possibilities for tonal harmonies  - e.g. by letting two versions of the row proceed in 3rds or 6ths (or sometimes in 4ths)

2nd movement row – HANDOUT

Not same as mvt 1 but very similar –

          Also 11 notes

Begins with intervals (vs ends with intervals), then WT scales separated by 3rd

Rearrangement, not a transformation

Breaks non-repetition rule – A is repeated

PLAY 2nd movement – Listen for row, listen for characteristics in common with Copland's early works

characteristics in common – jazz rhythms, wide range, playful staccato, applied dissonance, alternation of full and solo textures, reminiscences of fiddle playing

Row – Whole tones are extremely audible in middle section

Freedom of row treatment – frequent melodic repetition, no premium on dissonance – Do we hear ourselves in a key here or there?

Has Copland subverted Schoenberg's goal of emancipation of dissonance?

NB – You are not responsible for 2nd movement – It's not on CD

 

2.  Free treatment

12-tone procedures seem very limiting, and many composers complain about these limitations and give up on them – Other composers found them liberating – procedures free them from: the habits of 19th-century music, the harmonic limitations on melody, rules about the use of dissonance

Many of these composers use 12-tone procedures quite freely:

They don’t follow Rufer’s 5 procedures consistently

They allow for triads and cadences

They use the row as a melody

They allow repetition – horizontally and vertically

They use tonal materials – simultaneous with 12-tone or in alternation

You heard many of these features in the Copland Piano Quartet

These freer 12-tone pieces tend to be among the most durable, most performed, and most accepted by audiences

Is this because:

1)  Breaking the “rules” allowed the composers to write better music?

2)  Tonal reminiscences and audible procedures make the music more acceptable to audiences?

 

3.  Alban Berg - Violin Concerto (1935) (The last piece Berg finished)

Everyone’s favorite 12-tone piece! – commissioned by American violinist Louis Krasner

Berg began using 12-tone techniques after Wozzeck - The Violin Concerto is a 12-tone piece, but it retains some of the characteristics of Wozzeck, especially tonal reminiscences and folk elements - It also quotes directly from tonal music (a Bach chorale)

HANDOUT - Row presented by violin at m.15 - (The very first presentation is by basses and violas from m.11)

PLAY beginning - What is unusual about row and its presentation?

Row isn't heard at the beginning of piece

Row is made up of thirds, then whole-tone scale

Presentation by basses and violas is overwhelmingly triadic

In violin presentation the pitch-level is important - i.e. octaves aren't equivalent – we hear it over and over again as consecutive thirds, sometimes ascending, sometimes descending (inversion)

Accompaniment isn't derived from row (at least not as directly as in Schoenberg)

What is the relation of the opening to the row? - Every other note (making open 5ths), but it's also the open strings on the violin

Why the whole-tone scales at the end of the row? - You don't know yet, but it's because these are the first 4 notes of a well-known Bach chorale, "Es ist Genug" (HANDOUT) – Berg uses 4 whole tones repeatedly to end phrases, often with last note displaced by an octave

Thus the row is meaningful in a way that it seldom is for Schoenberg and never is for Webern - This is typical of Berg - This concerto is dedicated to Manon Gropius (daughter of Alma Mahler), whom Berg and his wife often looked after but who died at age 18 from polio - The Bach chorale comes from a cantata which is a meditation on death - Near the end of the first movement we hear a folk tune (HANDOUT – “plum tree song”) which also had a personal meaning for Berg

Besides features of the row and quotations from other pieces, other aspects of this movement are strongly reminiscent of familiar music – orchestration, violin playing styles, dance rhythms

PLAY first movement excerpts- Listen for dance rhythms:  Waltz at 8:45, Ländler at 9:15, Plum tree song at 10:10 - You will also hear passages that sound a great deal like Mahler, whom Berg admired very much

(if time) – PLAY "Es ist genug" harmonization – begin around 7:00 of 2nd mvt

Much more than any music by Schoenberg, the Berg concerto refutes any notions of 12-tone music being mechanical or unmusical – The concerto is beautiful and expressive in ways analogous to Bach, Beethoven and Mahler –12-tone techniques give Berg more room for expression, not less – This is because: 1) expression is his goal; 2) he uses the techniques very freely; 3) he makes many connections with familiar sonorities, pieces and musical styles

 

4.  Stravinsky’s “conversion” to serialism

Stravinsky’s motives obscure in adopting 12-tone and serial procedures – Craft anecdote about creative crisis in 1952 after Rake was successful but non-interesting to young composers

Influence of Robert Craft was evidently important – Death of Schoenberg said to be important – Stravinsky studied Webern much more than Schoenberg

Septet (1953) was Stravinsky’s first serial work – but NB it isn’t 12-tone – It uses various smaller and larger sets and treats them serially – i.e. with the techniques that Schoenberg and Webern had developed for 12-tone composition – e.g. canon, inversion, retrograde, etc. – Note that these are not techniques we encountered in earlier Stravinsky works – We covered In Memoriam Dylan Thomas (1954) last week – 5-note row, proliferation of canons

First 12-tone serialism comes in 2 movements of the Canticum Sacrum (1956) – Threni (1958) is first all 12-tone piece

Compare Schoenberg’s motives – Schoenberg was interested in “emancipating dissonance”; he explicitly used the 12-tone method as a substitute for functional harmony – Stravinsky had already pretty much emancipated dissonance using other means (non-diatonic scales, juxtaposed harmonies) but he retained tonality, i.e. key centers and organization by cadences  - Stravinsky was more interested in melodic and contrapuntal possibilities of non-tonal music

12-tone techniques can be seen as an extension of Stravinsky’s “neoclassical” aesthetic that music shouldn’t try to “express” anything – 12-tone music is less likely to carry any suggestions or baggage – It’s “about” forms, timbres, counterpoint, etc.

 

5.  Stravinsky: Agon (1957) –

Ballet for Balanchine at NY City Ballet – They had collaborated previously on Apollo (Paris, 1928) and Orpheus (NY, 1948) – Mixes 12-tone and tonal music – sometimes separate, sometimes overlapping – Basic trajectory is from tonal to serial and back to tonal at the very end

Boulez characterized Agon as a journey through music history from tonality to serialism and back -- Begins in C - Tonality gets more and more problematic – Becomes 12-tone about 2/3-way through - original material C-major emerges again at end

No story line – Balanchine characteristically choreographed abstract ideas, not stories - Music is "about" the dance, particularly about the "contest" of male vs. female dancers (compare Rite!)

 Overall shape:  The more dancers, the more tonal, the fewer dancers, the more 12-tone – Climax is pas de deux: 2 dancers, completely 12-tone – Also brass tends to go with male dancers, woodwind with female (in general)

 PLAY Pas de 4 (p.1) -- Listen for Stravinsky fingerprints:

Insistence on C tonality

Steady 8th note rhythm, shifting signatures

Octatonic scales

Trumpet lick from Rite of Spring

  Coda I (p.40) - HANDOUT - This is first 12-tone movement – But it mixes 12-tone and tonal techniques – some instruments are mostly tonal (violin, trumpet), some are mostly atonal (piano, trombones, flutes)

Only prime form of row is used, no transpositions

          P0 in m.185, 191

          I0 in 190 (flutes)

          R0 in 208

Row is conjunct – mostly half and whole steps – But Stravinsky displaces the octaves, so it sounds disjunct

PLAY beginning – What’s unusual about how row is used? – Stravinsky repeats notes before you’ve heard them all [bracketed notes in cello part] – You’ll find repetition also in m.204

Massive repetition from m. 211 on, pretty much a literal recap in the same scoring  – This is very contrary to Schoenberg’s principle of “developing variation,” but it makes it a lot easier for the listener to hear what’s happening

Row is characteristically shared by pairs of instruments: harp/cello, piano/trombone, flute/flute – this is Klangfarben  technique as in Webern

Other mannerisms borrowed from Webern scoring – harmonics, fluttertongue, use of plucked instruments

PLAY – CD 9 - What is violin doing? – Still playing in C major – Mandolin and trumpet are often (though not always) tonal too

Branle simple, Branle gay, Branle double – (Not assigned but I love the dancing)

Names come from  Renaissance dances – Stravinsky had seen a picture of people dancing a branle simple accompanied by trumpets – but Balanchine choreography doesn't have people dancing a branle

Rows (HANDOUT) not same as coda, but similarly stepwise

Branle simple uses only 1st 7 notes – Branle double uses entire row

Canon is extremely audible

PLAY VHS

How does the dance style compare to Petrushka or Rite?

How does it fit in with abstraction of 12-tone music?

The dance is about music . . . The music is about dance . . .