MrS. MARLIZA C.

LEVITA
Presenter
Recall

20th Century Music

A search for the meaning of music

Copyright © 2005 - Frankel Consulting Services, Inc.

 Characteristics of 20th Century
Music

•Break every existing rule

•Challenge the ear
•Challenge the mind
•Respect the past - look toward the future
•If it doesn’t work - copy the past
Famous People from the
20th Century
 Mahatma Gandhi  Ernest Hemingway
 Adolph Hitler  Pablo Picasso
 Neil Armstrong
 Fidel Castro
 Vladimir Lenin
 Nikita Kruschev
 Joseph Stalin
 Mother Theresa  Mikhail Gorbachev
 Franklin D. Roosevelt  Ronald Reagan
 Winston Churchill  Theodore Roosevelt
 Martin Luther King Jr.  Walt Disney
 John F. Kennedy  Elvis Presley
 Nelson Mandela  The Beatles
 Frank Lloyd Wright  Charles Dickens
 Margaret Thatcher  Marilyn Monroe
Famous Composers of the 20th Century

 Igor Stravinsky  Aaron Copland

 Claude Debussy  Leonard Bernstein
 Arnold Schoenberg  Bela Bartok
 Dmitri Shostakovich  Alban Berg
 Philip Glass  Milton Babbitt
 Steve Reich  Sergei Rachmaninov
 John Cage  George Crumb
 Karlheinz Stockhausen  Charles Ives
 Vincent Persechetti  Edgard Varese
A Survivor from Warsaw – Arnold Schoenberg
Expressionism
Expressionism

Germany
France
The Scream -
Munch
Sunflowers -
Van Gogh
Expressionism

 Goals of Expressionism
 Capture “being alive”
 Express emotional experience… not
physical reality
 Expressionism also in dance, architecture,
and movies
Expressionism

Musical Example:

Pierrot Lunaire (Moonstruck

Pierre)
– Arnold Schoenberg
-Literally means speech voice
A cross between speaking and singing

-Fear, takot, unreasonable, confused and rebellion.

Expressionism

Notable Composer:

Arnold Schoenberg
1874 - 1951

Students:
Alban Berg
Anton Webern
Arnold Schoenberg

- born Vienna, Austria on September 13, 1874

- was a self thought musician.
- influenced by Richard Wagner
- developed the twelve-tone scale
- His music is extremely complex, creating heavy
demands on the listener.
-213 musical compositions
Arnold Schoenberg

Other Compositions:
- Five Pieces for Orchestra
- Gurreleider (Songs of Gurre)
- Verklarte Nacht (Transfigured Night, 1899)
Expressionism

 Musical Characteristics:
 German movement.
 Moved away from French impressionism.
Expressionism

 Musical Characteristics:
 Atonal (no key center, music that has no
tonality)
 Sprechstimme (half-sung, half-spoken)
 Dissonance (represents inner turmoil)
 Used twelve-tone scale
 Served as medium for expressing strong
emotions, such as anxiety, rage, and
alienation
 Twelve-tone scale

Twelve-tone technique—also known as dodecaphony, twelve-

tone serialism, and (in British usage) twelve-note composition—is a
method of musical composition devised by Austrian composer Arnold
Schoenberg (1874–1951) and associated with the "Second Viennese
School" composers, who were the primary users of the technique in the
first decades of its existence. Twelve-tone music is based
on series (sometimes called a row) that contains all twelve pitch classes in
a particular order.
Twelve-tone scale
Twelve-tone scale
Twelve-tone scale
What do you think is
the purpose of the
expressionist music
during those times?
How would
you describe
expressionist
music?
 Fill the blanks with correct answer from the box below.

Atonal “Gurreleider” Arnold Schoenberg

Sprechstimme “Pierrot Lunaire” Igor Stravinsky
France Germany

1. __________ is the music that has no tonality.

2. __________ is the manner of performing a song in a half-sung
and half-spoken.
3. __________ is also called Moonstruck Pierre
4. __________ is the origin of expressionism movement
5. __________ is an Austrian composer and was the primary
exponent of expressionism.
Use your creativity to make your fav. song an
expressionist music.

Answer What To Know, LM page 25.

Impressionism vs Expressionism

Music of the 20th Century

Impressionism Expressionism

-Non Traditional
-Tonal-organization -Atonal-
ofall tones and harmony absence of
harmonies -“New Sounds” functional
-Non-emotional harmony
-“Color” -Dissonant
-Inner emotions