Richard Wagner (1813-1883): German composer, theatre director and essayist

Creator of the so called Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art), unifying different art forms in
his operas. He introduces the Leitmotif, especially in his operacycle Der Ring des
Nibelungen (premiered in 1876 in Bayreuth).
A Leitmotif is a short, recurring musical phrase, which is associated with a particular person,
place, idea or artefact. This YouTube list below contains several Leitmotifs from Der Ring
des Nibelungen
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL66781E476D3C88A1

In his opera Tristan und Isolde (premiered in 1865) Wagner introduced the through-
composed form and the so-called Endless Melody (‘Unendliche Melodie’). Harmonic
suspension is used over the course of the entire work. Chromaticism, countless
modulations, ambiguous harmonies and unreleased cadences create a tension from
beginning to the end.
Wagners Tristan is considered as a turning point in music of the 19th century.
Music Example: Overture to Tristan und Isolde
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QX7dgBqfgw

Tristan chord
Claude Debussy (1862 - Paris, 1918): French composer and essayist (as Monsieur
Croche)

Debussy, who won in 1882 the Prix de Rome, attended in 1888 and 1889 as an
admirer of Wagner two Wagner festivals in Bayreuth.
Later, in 1903, he wrote: ‘Wagner was a beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a
dawn’

Debussy was influenced by among others: Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, Modest
Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky Korsakov, Gabriel Fauré, Erik Satie, Indonesian
gamelan music, and, later in his life, Francois Couperin and Jean-Philippe Rameau

Selected works by Debussy:

- Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune for orchestra 1891-1894
- Nocturnes for orchestra, 1897-1899
- Pelléas et Mélisande (opera), 1893-1902
- La Mer for orchestra, 1903-1905
- Préludes for piano book I &t II, 1909-1913
Impressionism
A 19th century art movement characterised by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush
strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing
qualities, ordinary subject matters, inclusion of movement as crucial element of human
perception.

In short: impressionists attempted to grasp an image from a split second. The paint tube
and portable easel enabled impressionists to work outdoors ‘en plein air’ - a huge
contrast with the traditional studio painters and a step in the direction of photography

The impressionists faced harsh opposition from the French conventional art community

Claude Monet: Impression, soleil levant (sunrise), 1873

Pierre-Auguste Renoir: The swing (1876)

Claude Monet: Painting by the edge of a wood (1885)

Claude Monet: Boulevard de Capucines (1873)
Some quotes from Claude Debussy on impressionism, impressions and nature:

‘Imbeciles call [what I’m trying to write in Images] ‘Impressionism’ , a term employed
with the utmost inaccuracy…’

‘There is nothing more musical than a sunset. He who feels what he sees will find no
more beautiful example of development in all that book which, alas, musicians read
too little - the book of nature.’

‘Collect impressions, don’t be in a hurry to write them down’

‘Impressionistic’ features in the music by Debussy:

- Colorful orchestrations, coloristic changes in textures (from transparent to blurred)

- Ambiguous harmonies, use of different scales (pentatonic scales, whole tone
scales, church modes)
- Flexible tonal centers
- Refined and flexible rhythms
- Celebrating the ‘here and now’ instead of creating tensions of unreleased desire
(as Wagner did in his Tristan)

Features above can be found in among others Debussy’s Symphonic Poem

Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (The afternoon of a faun), 1894
recognised as the first ‘modernist’ composition in general.
(music with full score underneath)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnz4T33Jl7I

Extra
….And listen to the Symphonic poem la Mer (the Sea) from 1905
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUFpcPEcwTo

Rough sea with shipwreck by William Turner, a painter admired by Debussy

 Symbolism in art: Pierre Puvis de Chavannes: young girls on the edge of the sea
Symbolism
An art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. Reaction
He told me: "Last night I had a dream.
against naturalism and realism in favour of spirituality, imagination and dreams.
Your hair was around my neck,
Influential French symbolists in poetry, all admired by Debussy:
it was like a black necklace
- Charles Baudelaire
round my nape and on my chest.
- Stephane Mallarmé
- Paul Verlaine
"I was stroking your hair, and it was my own;
thus the same tresses joined us forever,
Debussy felt more connected to symbolism than to impressionism
with our mouths touching,
Symbolism is omnipresent in Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Mélisande. In the same period he just as two laurels often have only one root.
worked in the same spirit on the song cycle Trois Chansons de Bilitis (1897), based on
symbolistic poems by Pierre Louÿs. "And gradually I sensed,
since our limbs were so entwined,
Audio example: Trois chansons de Bilitis, no. 2: La chevelure that I was becoming you
(English translation on the right page) and you were entering me like my dream."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hkHDU09NFs When he'd finished,

he gently put his hands on my shoulders,
and gazed at me so tenderly
that I lowered my eyes, quivering.
Debussy and exoticism:

In 1889 Debussy heard a complete gamelan orchestra in the Javanese pavilion at the Paris World
Exhibition. In 1900 Debussy again heard a gamelan orchestra at the Paris exhibition
In 1913 he wrote:

There used to be -indeed, despite the troubles that civilization has brought, there still are -some
wonderful peoples who learn music as easily as one learns to breathe. Their school consists of
the eternal rhythm of the sea, the wind in the leaves, and a thousand other tiny noises, which
they listen to with great care, without ever having consulted any of those dubious treatises. Their
traditions are preserved only in ancient songs, sometimes involving dance, to which each
individual adds his own contribution century by century. Thus Javanese music obeys laws of
counterpoint which make Palestrina seem like child’s play. And if one listens to it without being
prejudiced by one’s European ears, one will find a percussive charm that forces one to admit
that our own music is not much more than a barbarous kind of noise more fit for a traveling
circus.

Video: gamelan music at the sultan palace of Yogyakarta

https://worldmusic.net/blogs/guide-to-world-music/indonesia-gamelan-from-palace-to-paddy-field
Influences of Javanese Gamelan
In among others Debussy’s ‘Pagodes’ from his Estampes for solo piano
(1903) one can hear the influences of Javanese gamelan music: in the use
of pentatonic (five tone) scales, ‘interlocking’ textures and different rhythmic
cycles, played simultaneously:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lswHSnJ0Rlw
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) and Claude Debussy (1862-1918):
friends? rivals? both?
Maurice Ravel used exoticism and colourful orchestration in many of his compositions,
as his orchestral song Shéhérazade (1904), based on a poem by Tristan Klingsor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paZ7LXd_wKM
 Les Ballets Russes, conquering Paris with exotic and ‘savage’ Russian stage art

Vaslav Nijinsky Igor Stravinsky

Serge Diaghilev
(1888? - 1950) (1882-1971)
(1872-1929)
Dancer and te most Main composer for Les Ballets Russes
art critic, patron, ballet impresario,
controversial choreographer
founder and leader of The Ballets Russes
of the Ballets Russes
 designs for L:es ballets Russes by Leon Bakst:exoticism and art nouveau
Ballets Russes in Paris,
in their pre WWI-period

Staging operas and ballets by among others:

Mussorgsky (Boris Godunov),
Rimsky-Korsakov (Shéhérazade),
Debussy (Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, Jeux)
Ravel (Daphnis et Chloé)
and…..
Igor Stravinsky
- l’Oiseau de feu (Firebird), 1910
- Petrushka, 1911
- Le Sacre du Printemps (The rite of Spring), 1913

main choreographers:
Michel Fokine (Firebird, Petrushka)
Váslav Nijinsky (Debussy: Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, Jeux,
Stravinsky: Le Sacre du Printemps)

documentary: Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes 1909-1929

‘When art dances with music’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmsR8eR2-MI
The Rite of Spring contains and combines different ‘-isms’

Russian nationalism and symbolism

Music, costumes, sceneries and choreography refer to ancient symbols, rites, melodies, songs and dances from Russian,
Baltic and Ukrainian orally transmitted folk cultures, ‘the collective unconsciousness’.

Primitivism
Use of pentatonic and modal scales, irregular rhythms, heterophony (a simultaneous variation of a single melodic line).
Primitivism is also present in the choreography and the body positions of the dancers

Modernism (containing collage art and cubism)

Collages of melodies, textures, independently operating rhythms and concentrated chords

Stravinsky’s friend Pablo Picasso, innovator in the field of

cubism, in his Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) Picasso, innovator in the field of collage art,
same period
Le Sacre du Printemps
Company: Ballets Russes of Serge Diaghilev
Composer: Igor Stravinsky
Choreographer: Váslav Nijinsky
Stage designs and costumes: Nicholas Roerich
Premier: May 29th 1913, Théatre des Champs-Elysées in Paris
Reception: a scandal

Listen to Le Sacre du Printemps while reading the score:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP42C-4zL3w

Watch the ballet in the reconstruction of Nijinsky’s choreography:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo4sf2wT0wU&list=RDjo4sf2wT0wU&start_radio=1&t=118
Homework and material for your exam

Read in you book the following excerpts

Part Six: page 503 - 516 (general overview of music in the 20th century)

Chapter 23: Classical Modernism,

page 517 - 524 (to Modernism and National Traditions)

Chapter 25: Radical Modernism:

page 566 - 572 (to Neoclassical Period)