Three Important Musicians from the Early 20th Century by Jessica
Created | Updated Oct 4, 2002
The music of the twentieth century headed in a new direction from the nineteenth century. Music became atonal and rhythmically varied. Composers used new and different combinations of instruments and techniques. During the first half of the century, there were many composers who were experimenting with changing the norm for music. Of these musicians, some are remembered while others have slipped into obscurity either because their music was too experimental or the prevailing government in their country disapproved of their work. Three musicians stand out as being the most important in the first half of the century. Of these three, Scott Joplin, Anton Webern and Igor Stravinsky, it is Stravinsky that is the most importance. Each of these composers did something new and influenced not only musicians in their own genre and time, but further within the century and other genres. It is Stravinsky, though, who was in the public eye and paved the way for future musicians.
Scott Joplin, a black American, influenced music in America and abroad. He used a syncopation of rhythm that had not been heard before. Joplin crossed the border between the races and popular music. Ragtime introduced African rhythms to popular music. The popularity of ragtime helped jazz to become a popular form of music. His piece Maple Leaf Rag, written in 1899, had sold nearly a half-million copies by 1909 even though it was a difficult piano piece. Joplin not only wrote music for the popular genre. He composed marches and waltzes, including Bethena, composed 1906, which had syncopated rhythms. Joplin tried to combine ragtime and opera. The opera Treemonisha is the story of a young black woman who has been educated. She conquers superstitions and becomes the leader of the people. Joplin used ragtime to give a happy ending. Claude Debussy heard Joplin’s ragtime at the Paris Exposition of 1904. He was inspired to write Gallwag’s Cakewalk, which uses ragtime rhythms. Igor Stravinsky was inspired to write Ragtime for Eleven Instruments after Joplin’s death in 1917.
Anton Webern, a Viennese student of Arnold Schoenberg and colleague of Alban Berg, helped develop atonal music. Webern had to fight against tonality. Most of his compositions were written before Schoenberg’s twelve-tone system and are very short because of this struggle. Instead of having vertical themes, Webern made his musical themes linear, making them transparent. His first composition, Passacaglia, was written in 1908 after four years of studying with Schoenberg. This piece was a set of variations on a theme. As he became independent, his music became more atonal and shorter. Instead of a melody, Webern would focus on the succession of intervals. He rarely repeated an idea. Due to the atonal nature of Webern’s pieces, there is no framework that he could use to base his compositions. He turned to tone colors to create atonal music. He introduced the extensive use of mutes in brass instruments, flutter tongue in woodwinds and tremolo near the bridge of stings. He is the creator of klangfarbenmelodie, a style meaning color tone melody. Different tone colors were assigned to pitches. Webern became interested about the different types of sounds that could be made on an instrument. He used soft dynamics and the music became even more transparent. His Op. 10, Five Pieces for Orchestra, composed 1913, was considered groundbreaking and scandalous. This piece is an example of Webern’s difficultly with creating long atonal pieces. The second movement of Op. 10, Lebhaft und Zart Bewegt is thirty-seven seconds long. The longest movement of Op. 10 was only thirty-two bars long. Darius Milhaud used flutter tongue in Le Creation du Monde, created from 1919-23, one of Webern’s innovations. Webern’s innovations allowed for the creation of the 1942 Toccata for Percussion by Carlos Chavez, which is a piece that only uses percussion instruments.
Igor Stravinsky was a Russian composer who became the center of the music revolution in the twentieth century. His music did not contain any completely new ideas, but was rather a combination of several ideas that were already in music. Serge Diaghilev from the Ballet Russe in Paris commissioned Stravinsky’s first work, Firebird in 1910. Stravinsky started to push the instrument ranges to their extremes. It was not until Petrouchka, written between 1910-11, he started overlapping different meters and tonalities. He contrasted the larger orchestra parts with parts with one or two instruments at a time. In May 1913, Stravinsky and the Ballet Russe premiere The Rite of Spring, which was not well received in Paris. The people in the audience were either strongly for or against the piece. Stravinsky pushed the ranges of instruments. The piece is complicated on every possible level. The Danse Sacrale in the second part is a complete breakdown of all musical conventions and is the downfall of rhythm. Stravinsky found inspiration not only from contemporary composers, but also from eastern European folk dances, where he derived many of his rhythms. After The Rite of Spring, Stravinsky was breaking ground. His pieces were each unique. And he never tried to imitate The Rite of Spring. He composed within every genre of music possible. Stravinsky inspired composers in all genres. John Williams, Alexander Mosolov, Manuel De Falla, Heitor Villa-Lobos were all influenced by Stravinsky.
Due to this influence that Stravinsky had across all genres of music, he is the most important musician from the first half of the twentieth century. Stravinsky did not originate all of the concepts he used in his compositions. However, he was the most recognized composer from his time and received the most attention from the public and not just the musicians. His music contained influences from other composers, which then were heard by a larger audience. Since his music had such a huge impact, the concepts that he used in his music dominated music trends. His influence has lasted from the beginning of the century to the end.
The twentieth century say innovations everywhere. By 1913, music could no longer be written in the romantic style of the nineteenth century. Music had become much more complex and atonal. Many composers from both America and Europe helped to influence the music. The three most important composers, Joplin, Webern and Stravinsky, show this. Each of these composers contributed and influenced composers of the time and those of later generations. While each one made an important contribution, the most important one was Stravinsky because he was the one who allowed for many changes. His ideas were not new, but made it into the public eye better than any other composer of the time.
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