Debussy’s most familiar works:

Debussy’s most familiar works: • La Mer (The Sea) • Clair de lune • Prelude to “The Afternoon of a Faun” • “tone poem” • Deals with the Greek legend of Pan--a Pagan forest creature who is half man/half goat • Plays a flute--now referred to as a “pan flute” • After drinking too much wine, he can’t remember whether or not he actually made love to another forest creature--or if he just dreamed it • The erotic thoughts only make him more sleepy…

Arnold Schöenberg • saw his music as an extension and simplification of the German tradition • by the first decade of the 20th century, Romantic emotionalism had been taken to the ultimate extreme, by portraying extreme emotional states such as hysteria, insanity and nightmares

Expressionism • Schöenberg’s music is like the shocking colors and distorted figures in expressionist paintings • Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”

Expressionism • no sense of traditional harmony, melody, or tonic (home key) • ATONAL -- ranges freely across the dramatic spectrum; the absence of key

Expressionism • Schöenberg’s contribution to music was in the are of aesthetics… • His music is not traditionally “beautiful”…but his mission was to free the listener from that need

A good example is a song cycle called “pierrot lunaire” • Atonal • Uses “sprechstimme”--a kind of speech/song • 21 songs about a marionette who represents an evil presence • The first is called “Moondrunk”

Pierrot lunaire 1. Mondestrunken No. 1: Moondrunk • Der Wein, den man mit Augen trinkt, • The wine that only eyes may drink • Giesst Nachts der Mond in Wogen nieder, • Pours from the moon in waves at nightfall, • Und eine Springflut überschwemmt • And like a springflood overwhelms • Den stillen Horizont. • The still horizon rim.

Pierrot lunaire • Gelüste, schauerlich und süss, • Desires, shivering and sweet, • Durchschwimmen ohne Zahl die Fluten! • Are swimming without number through the flood waters! • Der Wein, den man mit Augen trinkt, • The wine that only eyes may drink • Giesst Nachts der Mond in Wogen nieder. • Pours from the moon in waves at nightfall.

Pierrot lunaire • Der Dichter, den die Andacht treibt, • The poet by his ardor driven, • Berauscht sich an dem heilgen Tranke, • Grown drunken from the Holy drink— • Den Himmel wendet er verzucht • To heaven he rapturously lifts • Das Haupt und taumelnd säugt und schlürft er • His head and, reeling, sips and swallows • Der Wein, den man mit Augen trinkt. • The wine that only eyes may drink.

Expressionism in Art • In works by German artists such as Edvard Munch, extreme emotional states are depicted through disturbing images and bright colors

Expressionism in Art • The paintings of Emil Nolde are somewhat even more disturbing

Expressionism in Art • The paintings of Emil Nolde are somewhat even more disturbing--this one is called “Vampyre”

12-tone (or “serial”) system • new way of organizing pitch -- a 20th century alternative to tonality • equal importance to each of the twelve tones • all pitches are derived from a special ordering of chromatic tones -- a tone row or series • choice of rows is limitless, since there are 479,001,600 possible arrangements of the twelve tones • forward; backward (retrograde); upside down (inversion); backward and upside down (retrograde-inversion) • put Schoenberg and his colleagues/students, Alban Berg and Anton Webern on the cutting edge of Western music, but also left them outside the mainstream

Igor Stravinsky

Debussy’s most familiar works:

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