An Outline of The History of Western Music Grout ... - The Reel Score

3. also used "pointillism"
a) spare, open texture, with numerous rests in all the parts, making every single note
count
b) music emerges as a succession of tiny points or wisps of sound
4. while his output was small and he received little acclaim during his life time, his work
grew in recognition after WW II and launched important new developments in Italy,
Germany, France, & the United States
D. After 1950
1. Background
a) 1st half of the century witnessed the progressive breadup of the tonal harmonic
system that had prevailed for the preceding 200 years (Bach thru R. Strauss)
b) Schoenberg with his 12 Tone System introduced a new conception of musical
structure
1: with his "emancipation of dissonance" in effect abolished the traditional
distinction between consonance & dissonance
2: Stravinsky arrived in the 1950's with his own accommodation to the 12 Tone
System
c) Darmstadt group - a group of young composers stimulated by Webern - centered
around the "holiday courses for new music" at Darmstadt - started immediately
after the end of the war in 1946
1: inspired experiments by composers in other countries including Eastern Europe
2: but there was no one defined "common practice", no one allegiance to a
consistant body of principles
2. Serialism
a) even before 1950, composers applied the principle of Schoenberg's tone rows to
musical elements or parameters other than pitch - in "total serialism"
1: if twelve tones could be serialized so could duration, texture, intensity, and
timbre
2: the relationships had to be worked out in a way that made sense musically, not
merely mathematically
3: the listener hears only successive, unrepeated, and unpredictable musical
"events"
4: the rigidity of total serialism soon relaxed
b) Pierre Boulez (b.1925) - fused the pointillist style and serial method with sensitive
musical realization of text in his Le Marteau sans maitre
3. Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)
a) his pupils include Boulez, Stockhausen, Luigi Nono (b. 1924), & Ton de Leeuw (b.
1926)
b) experimented with assigning each pitch a duration, dynamic level, and
articulation, to be used each time that pitch occurred
E. Recent Developments
1. New Timbres
a) post Webern music produced a large number of unaccustomed sounds
1: Earlier "new sounds"
i- piano "tone clusters" of Henry Cowell (1897-1965)
ii- "prepared piano" of John Cage (1912-1993)