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Expressionism
Presented by Sophie Lipayon and Natalia Pascual
What is Expressionism?
An artistic movement depicting subjective, abstract
emotions rather than an objective, pragmatic reality
Evokes emotion, experiences, ideas, and deeper meanings
through radical distortion and exaggeration
Done by intensifying sizes, shapes, colors, sound, etc.
May sought to tell a story or tap into the 'spiritual vigor' of art
Can be an emotional vessel for self-expression, often
drawing from one's ardent and unfeigned feelings, such as
violence, hatred, disgust, anxiety, infatuation, heartbreak, or
horror
Expressionism in different forms of art
use of pure and vibrant movement Play, and Miss Julie texture with organic forms
colors
"No longer shall I paint interiors
with men reading and women
knitting. I will paint living people
who breathe and feel and suffer
and love.” - Edward Munch
Other forms Music
Visual Art:
Characterized by jarring dissonance
Use tonal contrasts and jagged lines
and radical distortion; a far cry from
Color is intense and not bound by
the ethereal melodies of the
the laws of reality, brushwork and
texture are visible and raw, paint is impressionist period that preceded it
applied liberally The expressionist era exerted
An extension of romanticism influence in the music scene from the
early 1900s to 1930
Literature Found its natural outlet in opera
Conveyed their ideas through truths Likely because expressionism is very
and symbolic characters dramaticized and is a highly narrative form of art
Also used in program music / tone poems
Focused on internal drama, such as
its characters' mental states, values
and spiritual lives
Igor Stravinsky
“I haven't understood a bar of music in my life,
but I have felt it.”
Early life
(Lomonosov), Russia
Decided to pursue a law degree, although later
student
He was able to perform and get commissions
Russian impresario.
mostly influenced by the Russian techniques
technique
In 1938, his eldest daughter of four passed due to
after
remarried and moved to Hollywood, USA, wherein he
harmonies
The Rake's Progress is Stravinsky's only full length opera
(1951)
During his conversion to an expressionist style, Stravinsky
Vaslav Nijinsky
commemorated as a historical event, the premier
audience
with a chaotic momentum, the ballet depicts the pagan
death
Using the instruments in ways that mimic the primitive
1951
the libretto written by the famed poet WH Auden,
6:04 - 6:50
15:35
28:05
Two people walk through a bare, cold grove; So, shuddering, I allowed my sex
The moon races along with them, they look into it. To be embraced by a strange man,
The moon races over tall oaks, And, on top of that, I blessed myself for it.
No cloud obscures the light from the sky, Now life has taken its revenge:
Into which the black points of the boughs reach. Now I have met you, oh, you.
A woman’s voice speaks:
She walks with a clumsy gait,
I’m carrying a child, and not yours, She looks up; the moon is racing along.
I walk in sin beside you. Her dark gaze is drowned in light.
I have committed a great offense against myself. A man’s voice speaks:
I no longer believed I could be happy
And yet I had a strong yearning May the child you conceived
For something to fill my life, for the joys of Motherhood Be no burden to your soul;
And for duty; so I committed an effrontery, Just see how brightly the universe is gleaming!
There’s a glow around everything;
You are floating with me on a cold ocean,
But a special warmth flickers
From you into me, from me into you.
It will transfigure the strange man’s child.
You will bear the child for me, as if it were mine;
You have brought the glow into me,
You have made me like a child myself.
"I remember only the grandiose moment when they all started
to sing, as if prearranged, the old prayer they had neglected
for so many years – the forgotten creed!"
Other composers
Sagrada Familia
after his father died. became a private pupil of ethnomusicologist, with the
Schoenberg and helped in the
majority of his works being
Profana (1930)
Musical Styles and
innovations
The 12-Tone Technique
Invented by Schoenberg to replace the old basis of tonality
"Organizes all twelve notes of the chromatic scale into a
series called a tone row" ; the order remains static
Does not have the tonal/diatonic sound as other Western
music, purely atonal/non-conforming to tonal hierarchy
All notes are "relatively equal" in terms of significance
Sound neither major nor minor
key when applied to compositions
6 Types of 12-Tone Rows
Prime Form Inverted Form Retrograde Form