Reading Response

Week 2 Music 314

The articles assigned describe different ways in which new approaches in

music (for that particular time) were received by different social classes. In

the first article, I understood that the audience at the 1889 Paris Worlds fair

was amazed by the Gamelan music performed in the Javanese pavilion, it

was perceived as exotic (to Europeans) and composers incorporated some of

those elements into their own compositions. In the second article, I

understood that Richard Strauss and Mahler were innovators in the art music

scene and Strausss Salome was well-received even though it was consider

rather vulgar and blaspheme by certain elite institutions. The last article

shows how negatively 20th century compositions were received when they

started to be performed. In particular, the compositions of the second

Viennese school led by Schoenberg and some of his students.