MUS- M 402 1st EditionLecture 22Outline of Last LectureI. Historicism II. Brahms vs. Wagner: Historicists with Different Points of View Outline of Current LectureI. ModernismII. Characteristics of Modernist MusicCurrent LectureI. Modernisma. Modernism- the testing of the limits of aesthetic construction. i. Modernism was the further development of ideas that had begun in the nineteenth century:1. An emphasis on language2. This lead to an emphasis on perceiving. 3. Reflexivity and ironyii. Modernism vs. Modernity1. Modernity- the state of being moderna. Allowing human beings to experience the world in a completely different way. b. In Modernism, “the music of a modernist may provide exquisite pleasure unto those of refined taste, who enjoy tone clusters, irregular rhythms, and bizarre timbres, but intolerably shrill and aggressive to those who prefer tonic melodiesmoving to dominant-seventh chords and back again” (excerpts by music critique and analyst Albright).i. “To define musical modernism in terms of dissonance is to ignore the factthat a composer can be original in dimensions other that harmonic novelty.”ii. “Where there is technical aggressiveness, there is modernism.”II. Characteristics of Modernist Musica. Comprehensiveness and depthb. Semantic specificity and densityc. Extensions and destructions of tonalityi. …in short, “make it new”d. A tendency towards maximalism- the technique of making everything huge and aggressively large in music. e. The acknowledgement and acceptance of the fact that not everyone will understand modernist music or enjoy it in the same way.i. Arnold Schoenberg: “If it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not
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