The complete idiot's guide to classical music (42 page)

Another expressive innovation appeared in his 1912 “Pierrot Lunaire” (Moonstruck Pierrot) with something called “sprechstimme,” a gliding method of vocal performance midway between speech and song, the singer touching a note but not sustaining it. It produces an eerie effect, perfect for the work’s graphic portrayal of creeping madness.

Perhaps Schoenberg realized he had pushed those romantic boundaries as far as they would go. Enter his famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) 12 Tones. Having come to the conclusion that key signatures were outdated, but realizing that some sort of system was necessary to avoid compositional confusion, if not chaos, he came up with the idea of giving each of the 12 notes in a scale (that is C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B) equal importance. There is no tonic, no dominant, no home key, no modulation from one key to another; there are just those 12 notes and their relationships to each other. Since there is no key involved, the music came to be called
atonal
.

 
Music Word
Historically in Western music, the tones within an
octave scale were organized into sequences called keys.
Atonality
simply means that there is no key or predictable relationship between the tones; or, to put it the other way around, atonality indicates a synthesis of all possible keys, and therefore the equal use of all twelve tones.

Instead of melodies, Schoenberg based his new method on what he called a
tone row
, in which the notes are placed in a specific sequence. There’s a catch: Each of the 12 tones must be sounded before any of them can be repeated; but by sounding the notes in the row upside down (inversion), backward (retrograde), or upside down and backward (retrograde inversion), composers could create themes and build recognizable structures within the 12-tone system.

 
Music Word
The
tone row
represents the composer’s particular sequencing of the 12 tones within the octave. All sorts of permutations may follow, but the strict rule says that before any one of those 12 notes is heard again, the other 11 have to have been presented.

Here was a genuine musical revolution. Virtually every composer of note, from Stravinsky to Bernstein, experimented with atonality; some, like Berg and Webern, dedicated their lives to its development and implementation. Somewhat left out in the cold by all these mathematically precise formulas was the audience, who found the music more intellectually stimulating than emotionally satisfying. In Vienna, Schoenberg helped found the Society for Private Performances, thereby excluding the razor-tongued critics and insult-screaming listeners who had made a shamble of so many open concerts.

Fleeing the Nazi takeover, Schoenberg came to the U.S., where he held teaching posts at the University of Southern California and later U.C.L.A. (which forced him into retirement at age 70 with the munificent pension of $38 per month). Like Rossini, Schoenberg was morbidly afraid of the number 13, and during his final illness, he verbalized his fear that, having been born on the 13th of one month (October), he would not live beyond the 13th of another. He was right: Arnold Schoenberg died on July 13, 1951.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
One of his major creations, a Biblical opera, was called
Moses und Aaron
until a friend pointed out that the title had 13 letters. In something of a panic, Schoenberg considered changing the name altogether, but finally hit upon the compromise solution of crossing out the second “a” in Aaron.
Moses und Aron
thus passed muster at an acceptable 12-letter total.

By and large, Schoenberg’s earlier works are still the easiest to take, given their Straussian predilections, so start with the sumptuously scored “Transfigured Night,” either in its original version for string sextet or the composer’s own larger orchestration. Add the Chamber Symphony no. 1, and the “Gurrelieder” (the texts are obscure, but the music is incandescent). Advanced Schonbergians may proceed to his “Variations for Orchestra” and the Piano Concerto, but don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Henry Cowell (1897–1965) was one of the first native-born Californians to hit it big in the world of composition. As a child he studied violin, but left to his own keyboard devices, he began finding his own way around the piano. Since nobody told him he wasn’t supposed to do it, he experimented with plucking or stroking the piano strings, producing the harp-like sounds of “The Fairy Answer” and the otherwordly shriekings of

“The Banshee.” Sometimes he would hit the strings with a darning-egg, or change their timbre by sticking pencils in between them. Then, not satisfied with the keyboard sounds that could be generated by a mere ten fingers, Cowell devised what he called
tone clusters
, whole groups of notes sounded simultaneously by the application of fists and forearms.

 
Music Word
A
tone cluster
is a group of adjacent notes on the keyboard. You can play five notes at the same time (or ten if you use the fingers on both hands), but Cowell extended the possibilities by instructing the player to press down all the notes within an octave with the flat of his hand, or to achieve a cluster of two octaves or more, the entire forearm. A tone cluster is notated on the music page by an indication of its top and bottom notes, with a thick black line connecting them.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
“Why is he so coy about it?” wondered a German critic about Cowell; “with his rear end, he could cover many more notes. . . .”

Now audiences could be shocked by sight as well as sound, and were they ever. Riots ensued, newspapers sent sports writers to cover his recitals (one headline read “Battling Cowell vs. Kid Knabe”), and Cowell became known as the “bad boy” of American music. He persevered, though, taking his startling music around the world, even to the Soviet Union, where a number of his pieces were published, and gradually the hysterics died down. Meanwhile, Cowell himself had veered off onto other paths of exploration, investigating world music, spicing his scores with unusual percussion instruments, and infiltrating folk themes into his work that added a lilting quality quite at odds with his fearsome reputation of old. His
Hymns and Fuguing Tunes
, based on early American forms, are almost as harmonious as Bach’s Chorales.

Today, Cowell’s “bizarre” keyboard effects are part of the creative arsenal of almost every major composer, and worldwide celebrations of his centennial have revived many of his pieces and reconfirmed his acceptance among the front ranks of 20th century musicians.

Start, as Cowell himself did, with the piano pieces. A few of them may still seem pretty wild and wooly, but others exhibit delicious wit (“Advertisement”), gentle restraint (“Aeolian Harp”), and marvelous rhythmic spirit (“Lilt of the Reel”). Only a few of his 20 symphonies are currently available on CD, but latch on to as many of the 16 Hymn and Fuguing Tunes as you can find, and pounce if you see concert listings of his “Celtic Set,” the warmhearted “Ballad for Strings,” the exotic “Persian Set,” or the folksy suite titled “American Melting Pot.”

Who wrote this fiendish Rite of Spring?

What right had he to write this thing, Against our helpless ears to fling

It’s crash, clash, cling clang, bing, bang bing.

He who could write the ‘Rite of Spring’

If I be right, by right should swing!

—from a letter to the Boston Herald, 1924.

Igor Stravinsky towers above most of his 20th century colleagues as did Bach and Beethoven over theirs. His compositions changed the face of music in our time; his harmonic and rhythmic innovations have become part of contemporary musical language; and each of his stylistic shifts prompted a horde of imitators, but Stravinsky continued to dwarf them all.

Being the son of the leading bass of the St. Petersburg Opera, Igor Stravinsky grew up surrounded by music, although he considered it just a hobby at first, and was trundled off to the university as a budding lawyer. Since one of his schoolmates happened to be the son of Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Igor was able to show a few of his fledgling attempts at writing music to the famous composer, and while Rimsky was not exactly overwhelmed (“Don’t quit law school” was the upshot of his advice), he did suggest that the young man take counterpoint lessons from one of his assistants. By 1905, he had progressed to the point where Rimsky agreed to take him on as a private student, and for the next three years, Stravinsky worked closely with his idol, assimilating the older man’s consummate mastery of orchestration and his abiding love for the folk tales and tunes of Mother Russia.