Presentation Proposal

  PLEASE PROVIDE ME WITH CHOSEN TOPIC BY THE 29TH

You will be creating a narrated video for your final presentation. The subject of your presentation should be a humanities topic of your choice. For example, in Chapter 6 Music you could select a musician or musical group, song, or instrument.

For your proposal, write some details in a few bullet points about the topic you are considering in the provided text box below.

I will accept your topic choice on a first-submission basis.

Look for my feedback in this assignment folder for approval of your proposal.

This assignment meets the following Course Objectives:

• Demonstrate awareness of the scope and variety of works in the arts and
• humanities.
• Articulate how these works express the values of the individual and society within a
• historical and social context.
• Articulate an informed personal response and critically analyze works in the arts and

humanities.

• Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the influence of literature, philosophy, and
• the arts on cultural experiences.
• Demonstrate an awareness of the creative process and why humans create.

Directions

Record a narrated presentation that includes a visual aid such as a PowerPoint or Google Slides. Express in your own words, a topic from any of the chapters we learned in this course. Be as creative as you want. Be sure to include what you learned about humanities.

You should do what you can to deliver a polished, professional presentation, but I’ll be judging for content more than I’ll be scrutinizing your delivery and/or video editing skills. Here are some additional things you’ll want to know about the presentation.

• You’ll need to record your voice and screen as you present your topic.
• The recording should be four (4) to six (6) minutes.
• Music and video inclusions should be no longer than one (1) minute, and they should only be used if absolutely necessary. Unnecessary video inclusions (those that do the talking for you and demonstrate nothing) will be deducted from your time.
• On the last slide, cite your sources using MLA guidelines. Use credible sources. Do not use Wikipedia.
• The recording can be done using Knowmia. Instructions are available from Support.
• If not using Knowmia, recording should be in an .mp4 or .mov format. 
• Be sure to include a link from your Knowmia Library, upload an .mp4 or .mov file to this assignment folder, or provide a link to a streaming video site such as YouTube.com.

The subject of your presentation should be a humanities topic of your choice. For example, in Chapter 5 Music, you could select a musician or musical group, song, or instrument. Provide these details:

• Subject of topic
• Basic information such as title, name, time period, etc.
• What is the history and creative process of your topic?
• How has your topic been influential in the arts and society?
• Why did you select this topic?
• In your own words, provide your personal reaction to this humanities topic.

Submit your file or a link (if your presentation is hosted elsewhere, for example on YouTube) to this assignment folder. Make sure your file or link can be opened and viewed by your instructor.

You will be graded according to the attached rubric.

Chapter 6Music

Learning Objectives

1. 6Define the basic elements of music.

2. 6Differentiate among varieties of musical experience including the fugue, the symphony, and the art song.

3. 6Discuss the emergence and impact of various forms of popular music, including folk, jazz, blues, gospel, rock and roll, and hip-hop.

Figure 6.1

Gerrit van Honthorst, Musical Group on a Balcony, 1622

Why do you think music has played such an important role in cultures throughout history?

Credit: Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program

Figure 6.2

Native American dancers at a powwow on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

These dancers are accompanied by rhythmic drumming. Can you imagine music without rhythm? What do you think of as the basic elements of music?

Credit: Dennis Tarnay, Jr./Alamy

We live in an audio environment that is most of the time unplanned. That is, we hear what happens to be around, whether it is a jet taking off, the squeal of brakes, a hair dryer, music from someone else’s smartphone—or the conversation that someone is having on that phone. Noise has been around forever. Mammoths were probably sending forth bellows at the moment human awareness was first forming. The majority of the world’s population still exists at the mercy of unwanted noise.

Music is the best of it. Created by instruments or human voices, music can be defined as the shaped sound between silences: the better the shape, the richer and more pleasing the sound. Just as visual art offers a wide variety of shapes and forms to provide an enriched visual environment, music has many sounds: Bach, Mozart, Gershwin, Armstrong, Sinatra, Johnny Cash, James Brown, Beyoncé. Limiting ourselves to one kind of music is as detrimental to growth as if we were never to set foot outside our houses and discover the unlimited life experiences waiting out there.

Many sounds in the natural world are like music: the song of birds, a mountain stream, gently falling rain, wind over the prairie. The desire to imitate pleasing natural sound seems to be intrinsic to our species. Whistling can remind us of bird song (and note how we refer to the sound of birds in musical terms). The soothing sound of a flowing brook has inspired many composers. In Tapiola, an orchestral work by the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, the strings recreate the sound of wind in a forest. In The Birds, the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi has the orchestra imitating the various songs and calls of different species. Composers recognize the affinity between nature and music.

Most ancient cultures shared the belief that music was a vital component of the natural world, a gift from heavenly beings. One theory is that for very early people natural sounds were the voices of the gods, and human song was developed to imitate their voices. In popular idiom, we sometimes hear comments such as “She sings like an angel.”

Whether or not one believes the mythology of musical origins, music appears to be vital to the human spirit. Is it possible to imagine what life would be like without it? Music is one of the endless treasures bestowed upon us by the humanities, and we are fortunate that, as this art form developed over the millennia, it divided into endless varieties.

The purpose of this chapter is to encourage you to explore the wide range of musical sound. Some of it is recognized as part of the world’s artistic heritage. Some of it is still very new and may achieve that distinction one day. (It’s fun to predict what will.)

We will first separate music into its component elements, then describe some of its major, and widely differing, forms, together with some suggested works from the past and present as well as from other cultures that may offer us a more well-rounded musical life. As in any introductory text, the process is necessarily selective. We attempt to open the door of musical recognition a little wider.

The Basic Elements of Music

1. 6.1 What are the basic elements of music?

Credit for the development of formal music goes to the ancient Egyptians and their belief that the god Thoth gave humanity seven basic sounds, perhaps much like the seven-tone scale that would come later. Ancient Chinese philosophy, which believed all nature was ruled by a divine principle of order, saw music as the human connection to that order.

Along with laying the foundations of Western thought, art, and literature, the Greeks also created a profound theory of music. In The Republic, Plato writes about “the music of the spheres,” a concept that has endured for many centuries. He describes the heavens as divided into eight spheres, on each of which a siren sings a note of astounding sweetness. The sirens in Greek mythology were long-haired, beautiful women who lured sailors to their deaths with glorious sounds; but, apparently, the sirens in Plato’s heavens had no such destructive motives. Instead, their song represented the eternal order, or armonia, of the universe. That Greek term, which became the English word 

harmony

, indicates a connection between music and the structure of the universe. Religions of the world have long claimed that through music one achieves union with the divine.

We see that music existed in many guises long, long ago. It became an art form in the West with the development of rules and guidelines.

Tone

The basic element of music is the 

tone

, or note, a sound produced by the human voice or by a musical instrument that maintains the same frequency of vibration regardless of duration. Perhaps the imitation of a natural sound was then shaped to become pure and sweet. Or perhaps that pure and sweet tone just came from someone’s imagination, and people nearby were astounded when they heard it. However it happened, the discovery of tones marked the beginning of the human victory over the unplanned audio environment. True music began when someone experimented with a variety of tones, some higher, some lower.

The Scale

 Listen to the Audio

People in the ancient world who discovered different tones through a natural instinct for song or a way to accompany dances and rituals could not have known that tone was caused by the frequency of sound-wave vibrations: the higher the frequency, the higher the tone, and vice versa. Yet nearly every culture, ancient and contemporary, recognizes the aural phenomenon of the 

octave

, or the space between two tones that sound as if they are the same, although one is higher and one lower.

Different cultures have divided the octave in different ways, although most cultures typically employ between five and seven tones in an octave. After a time, someone must have happened upon a distinct progression of individual tones from low to high, and that was the beginning of Western music as we know it. This orderly progression of frequencies from low to high is the 

scale

, which divides the space of an octave into a certain number of scale steps; a scale step is the recognizable distance (or interval) between two successive notes of the scale. All cultures that developed music used a scale, though they did not necessarily happen upon the same sequence of tones.

Pentatonic, Diatonic, and Chromatic Scales

At first, the dominant scale in both non-Western and Western music consisted of five tones, known as a 

pentatonic scale

. It remains the basis for most traditional Asian music. The Western scale was expanded to six tones by the sixth century ce and was first written down (or notated) by an Italian monk. With the later addition of a seventh tone, the Western, or 

diatonic

, scale was complete. Notes were also given letter designations—ABCDEFG—and each sequence of seven could constitute a scale. Over time, the first note of each scale became the identifying 

key

 in which a given piece of music was composed. This first note—called the tonic—acts as a sort of center of gravity, a home base from which the music departs and to which it eventually returns. The basic scale in Western music can begin on any note, and the notes are often identified generically by the names do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, and ti—a system created by a sixth-century Benedictine monk to help singers remember the progression of tones in Gregorian chants.

Yet there is much more variety in Western music than seven simple notes. Although some cultures include more than 24 unique tones in any given octave, the Western musical system typically recognizes a 12-note division of the octave, with equal space between each tone. The addition of sharps and flats—or 

half-tones

—to the letters A through G represents these other possible pitches in the Western musical scale. A scale that uses all 12 tones (imagine using all the white and black keys on the piano) is called a 

chromatic

 scale, and the space between each is called a half-step. To the list of musical keys we may thus include C-sharp, B-flat, and so on.

Major and Minor Scales

When we play or sing a seven-note scale that has an interval pattern of two whole steps (W-W), a half-step (H), three more whole steps (W-W-W), and one final half-step (H) to ascend one octave, we are using a major scale. A minor scale is more complicated. The natural minor scale is defined by the interval pattern W-H-W-W-H-W-W. The harmonic minor scale raises the seventh-scale degree (thus creating an interval of a step-and-a-half between the sixth and seventh tone), whereas the melodic minor scale does this when ascending but retains the natural minor interval pattern (W-H-W-W-H-W-W) when descending. Though the verbal definitions are complex, music in minor keys is easily recognized. Many songs of heartbreak and loss are written in minor keys, as is instrumental music that seeks to create a somber mood.

Traditional symphonic music is usually identified in terms of the key and type of scale (major or minor) in which it begins (composers can change either or both within a given work) and the opus number (that is, where it occurs in the composer’s repertoire). Thus one might see this on a program: Beethoven, Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, Op. 125.

 Listen to the Track

Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, IV

Scales in Non-Western Cultures

The music of most non-Western cultures is based on a scale of five tones that do not necessarily correspond to Western sounds. The Western preference for seven tones may have to do with the fact that Western listeners are accustomed to the narrower frequency intervals between the seven tones of the familiar scale. Hearing traditional Asian music for the first time and expecting the familiar scale, they are likely to find the sounds quite strange.

Africa has long been home to several musical traditions without formalized scales at all, many of which display extraordinary rhythmic complexity. Tones were, of course, fundamental as in other cultures, but these could change to suit the emotion of the musician or singer. Traditional African music has always made strong use of the human voice, and, when the voice is the primary way of preserving melody, much variation was and continues to be the rule. The music of Africa made possible the evolution of jazz and blues, two art forms that allow for maximum freedom of expression.

Rhythm

Early music throughout the world was probably monophonic—that is, limited to just the melodic line and sung or played without harmony. But rhythmic accompaniment would have been provided when appropriate, such as at ritual events like a funeral or a rite of passage celebrating the arrival of puberty.

We know rhythm was the underlying factor in early Greek ceremonies because we have written accounts of it. Certain rhythms were held appropriate for inspirational ceremonies because of their uplifting effect on the soul, while other rhythms—certainly those involved in the orgies held annually in honor of Dionysus—were deemed conducive to uncontrolled, licentious behavior.

Formal music might have begun with the discovery of tones, but rhythm by itself might well have preceded tone, scale, and the earliest instruments. It is the most fundamental element of music; our own bodies have their rhythms, as does the universe. Most likely, a rat–a–tat pounding of sticks and stones was an early factor in human development, used to mark occasions of great joy or solemnity. Later, drums accompanied such events (see, for example, Figures 6.1 and 6.2). The early instincts are still with us. We often see very young children rat–a–tatting with blocks or just with their hands, the beat becoming more pronounced and regular as they grow older. Rap and hip-hop today give clear indication that people are just as attracted to the hypnotic effect of steady rhythm as their ancestors were.

Apollonian and Dionysian Rhythms

Moving to a beat—or, as it is better known, dancing—may be even older than singing. Even without specific tones to sing, people must have found pleasure in letting out their feelings at the insistence of loud beats from any number and kinds of sources. Of the two contrasting aspects of human culture and human personality, the Apollonian and the Dionysian, the Apollonian half enjoys order; the Dionysian half exults in unrestrained expressions of feeling. Neither side is sufficient by itself. Civilization advances with Apollonian order, but without Dionysian spontaneity, it can become rigid and uncreative.

Rhythm

 in music usually refers to the temporal organization of sounds—how long each tone lasts (its duration), how fast or slow the underlying pulse (or beat) of the music is, and how these beats are grouped into patterns. As in poetry, there is frequently an alternation between stress and unstress. Rhythm acquires its different forms according to the pattern of alternation used. The waltz, a once-popular rhythm in Western music, is created from a stressed beat followed by two unstressed beats. Also described as a “stately” rhythm, it is far more Apollonian than it is Dionysian, and it was thus suitable for the aristocrats of nineteenth-century ballrooms, though it had its Dionysian side in an era when touching someone of the opposite sex in public was otherwise frowned upon. Popular among aristocrats of the eighteenth century, the minuet was also based on Apollonian (that is, rigid and repetitive) rhythms. So are the marches used for funerals and graduations.

Plato approved of stately rhythms, which for him lent gravity to public occasions and affirmed order in the state. He disapproved strongly of rhythms that were there only to excite the emotions. People of today who enjoy letting go on a dance floor to the beat of rock bands or hip-hop evidently find Dionysian liberation a satisfying escape from the Apollonian demands of household duties, jobs, or schoolwork. Rhythm is the mortar that holds a work together, that gives coherence to a collection of sounds. A change in rhythm can be a major event, often very exciting to the listener. It opens up new possibilities, new directions.

When musical tones joined the ancient human passion for rhythm, a new force was born that provided a way for emotions to be expressed, released, and controlled. Once rhythm was discovered, it never left musical art. Even the plainsong, a chant sung by medieval monks and clerics, has a rhythm; it conforms to the natural stresses and inflections of spoken language. In the famous Bolero by the Impressionist composer Maurice Ravel, the underlying rhythm is so pronounced that it structures the entire piece.

Desiring to free themselves from the restraints that traditional rhythms impose, some composers attempt to be totally arrhythmic; that is, they avoid all regular alternations of stress and unstress, seldom repeating a pattern. The listener is kept off guard, presumably on edge, and the piece aspires to create a mood of agitation and emotional instability.

What is the magic that rhythm weaves inside us? We can speculate at great length, of course. Children are conceived in rhythm, born in rhythm; parents clap their hands in rhythm to keep them from crying. The universe itself throbs with rhythms: the rotation of the earth, the alternation of the seasons, incoming and outgoing tides, birth and death. How about order and disorder, Apollo and Dionysus, belief and doubt, joy and sorrow? Anthropologists studying early rituals have suggested that rhythmic effects were used to express the heartbeat of Mother Earth.

Rock percussionist Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead once said, “Rhythm is at the very center of our lives.” If you were to ask a number of people which musical element they could most easily dispense with, rhythm would probably not be the answer.

Melody

The art of music began with differentiated tones played or sung in certain patterns that might or might not have been repeated. One might have flowed into another. These patterns were melodies. Sometimes referred to as a “tune,” 

melody

 is the part we remember of a song or a symphonic movement. If we remember nothing beyond a “babble” of instruments and a great deal of percussion, chances are many of us would ask, “What happened to the melody?”

The discovery of tone made melody possible. Melody can be defined in two ways: one, most familiar to Western ears, as a significant sequence of musical tones that form a unity, like a sentence of prose, and are usually repeated later in the exact order or as a recognizable variation of the original; or two, as found in many non-Western cultures, an arrangement of tones in a flowing sequence that may or may not have a definite end. Much of the “classical” music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was designed, first and foremost, around melody.

Opera-goers, hearing a new work in its premiere performance, may at first find that “there are no melodies in it.” Someone accustomed only to Western symphonic music may wonder why, at first hearing, there is no “beautiful melody” in sitar music from India, or may denounce a rock band for pounding out “just noise.” Not every melody is beautiful in the sense of being played or sung often enough to be remembered.

Romantic Melody

Many are understandably drawn to what may be termed romantic melody, the melodic line that falls soothingly and repeatedly on the ears. Much of its emotional impact has to do with the instruments that play it: often, the violin, the piano, the guitar, and the flute, instruments that produce delicate sounds. Romantic melody tends to be “gentle,” befitting the tender emotions it calls up. It is almost always slow.

A Romantic musical style was dominant during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Composers including Brahms and Tchaikovsky were, and still are, called “masters of melody”—that is, they provide lush sequences of tones that are easily recalled and that evoke emotions within the listener. Brahms’s Cradle Song, or “Lullaby,” is known throughout the world and has become almost synonymous with treasured memories of an infant’s earliest days. The main theme in Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy reminds people of the joys of first love. Translated into a popular song called Our Love, it contributed to Tchaikovsky’s reputation as the king of melody.

Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini by Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) offers excellent examples of romantic melody. The main theme is introduced at the beginning—a sprightly and graceful melody written by Niccolò Paganini, an Italian violinist and composer who lived a century earlier. Though Paganini’s work has long been popular with violinists because of its intricate challenges to the instrument, Rachmaninoff’s variations on his theme have become immensely more popular with audiences than the original—especially his Eighteenth Variation, in which, after a dramatic silence, the piano enters and plays a melody that is Paganini’s lively theme turned around and performed at a much slower tempo. When the string section passionately repeats the theme, the listener cannot help experiencing a surge of emotion.

Melodic Variations

Among jazz musicians, melody usually means the theme that begins their performance and on which the remainder of it is based. By the conclusion of the piece, the original theme is usually different from the melody we heard at the outset—very different.

Jazz

is complex, requiring an initial willingness to devote the time needed to explore its many treasures.

An effective way to increase your appreciation for what is often considered non-melody is to become a more attentive listener to jazz. In doing so, you will find variations on a melody performed by different instruments throughout a piece. From jazz, move on to 

chamber music

 (concert music written for a few instruments rather than a symphony orchestra). Once again you will hear clearly defined themes that are then developed through variations into ever more complex patterns of sounds. By extending your definition of melody, you will find yourself enjoying a broader range of musical experience.

Sometimes melody is a sequence of tones that seems to go on indefinitely without repeating itself. During the 1960s, sitar music achieved popularity in the West because of its extended melodic lines and its clearly non-Western, hence “anti-Establishment,” sound. Some modern composers are drawn to non-Western sound in an effort to break away from the traditional. Philip Glass, a contemporary American composer, wrote music early in his career that was insistently repetitive, repeating a single pattern for an extended time. Some have called his work monotonous and endlessly repetitive, while others find it pleasantly hypnotic (

Figure 6.3

). Director Martin Scorsese recruited Glass to write the Asian-sounding score for the film Kundun (1997), the story of the Dalai Lama. Although Glass is Western, the music sounds unfamiliar to most Western ears and therefore is accepted by audiences as Tibetan. Listening to this music is a good way to explore alternative kinds of melody. We should remember that the so-called beauty of melody is a matter of historical period and cultural heritage. Not that all melody is beautiful—or that no melody is beautiful; rather, beauty in music has a lot to do with familiarity and the kind of instruments popular within a given cultural tradition.

Figure 6.3

Satyagraha, an opera by the American composer Philip Glass (1979)

Satyagraha is based in non-Western musical traditions unfamiliar to most of us, including repetitive patterns that lack clear melody. Can you think of other kinds of contemporary music that lack melody? Do you look for a “hummable” melody in the music you like, or are other elements more important?

Credit: Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images/Getty Images

Dissonance and Minimalism

Extreme departures from tradition have characterized modern Western music since the earliest years of the twentieth century, when composers reacted strongly against the romantic conception of melody. The aggressive 

dissonance

 in their music has had much to do with its deliberate lack of appeal to those who wanted music to sound romantic and were unwilling to tolerate anything else. Throughout the twentieth century, composers kept experimenting with nontraditional scales and sounds. Sometimes they invented new kinds of musical notes that were not in any scale anyone knew but had to be half-sung and half-spoken. Composers have even included long stretches of silence in their music.

In recent years, a significant number of composers have reacted against modernism, especially what they consider “noisy jangling and crashing,” a fierce determination to sound like nothing that ever came before. The new music can be called, like the new visual art, postmodern. The most frequently performed works of this genre come from a group of composers frequently called  unfamiliar music, minimalist compositions can reward those willing to take the time to listen, and post-minimalist composers such as John Adams regularly incorporate moving melodies into their work. minimalists, although they themselves reject the term. Their goal is to divest music of modernism’s unnecessary trappings and return to the basic elements, particularly rhythm. Minimalist music, such as that by Philip Glass and Steve Reich, is sometimes dismissed as coldly formal and unemotional, as well as monotonous, by unsympathetic listeners who also find it unmelodic. But, like all

It has been said that music is what emotion sounds like. The emotional life of an individual is exceedingly complex, is it not? To insist that music sound only a certain way is like saying that people can feel only a certain way. We can turn away, just as we don’t have to welcome any stranger we think we don’t want to know. But we also have the freedom to make friends.

Harmony and the Orchestra

In Asian music, tones are usually played by themselves, that is, without harmony, which is the simultaneous production of tones by voices or instruments. So accustomed are Westerners to hearing simultaneous tones that they tend to take harmony for granted, but like melody, harmony has historical and cultural roots.

During the first millennium, Christian churches incorporated music into the private services of monks and priests as well as public masses. Emphasis was placed on song as a means of communicating with God. Greatly influenced by ancient Hebrew chants, these sung prayers became known as plainsong. They were performed in unison by clerics acting as one voice praising God’s glory and asking for mercy and forgiveness. Harmony created by units of voices singing different tones would have been out of place, a violation of the belief that all people were the same in the eyes of God. Beginning in the twelfth century in Paris, however, composers began experimenting with harmonies, creating new sonic textures that befitted the architectural grandeur of the Notre Dame Cathedral.

During the sixteenth century, as the Renaissance, with its rebirth of classical culture, moved from one European country to another, bringing with it a celebration of life on earth, music—secular music—was eagerly sought. Since the Renaissance emphasized enjoyment during one’s brief stay on earth, music could fill leisure hours with many pleasures. The royal courts all had musicians on hand, and new instruments were invented to explore the richness and sensuality of secular music. In these venues, scarcely an hour of the day went by without the sounds of lute, recorder, or oboe, playing sometimes alone but often in small groups.

Renaissance composers explored the harmonious interweaving of instruments and voices, as if to say that music should be the contribution of a number of individuals, each adding to life’s enjoyment, each with a musical statement to make. The Renaissance also celebrated the uniqueness of each human being. Harmony allowed for a variety of interweaving musical themes, each with its own melody, played or sung by individualized instruments or voices. Eventually the development of harmony would lead to the complexities of the 

Baroque

 style that flourished in Europe during the seventeenth century.

The invention of harmony also made possible the art form known as opera (the plural of opus, a Latin term meaning “work”), a collaboration of many distinct
individuals—composers, orchestras, singers, poets who wrote their words, dancers, and that new species of artist, the scenic designer—with the whole becoming a rich and complex visual tapestry and festival of sound, all working together to give added meaning to the concept of harmony.

The Symphony

 Listen to the Audio

Orchestras grew in size and complexity, and, as they did, composers eagerly explored the range of the new instruments, each distinguishable from the other by the particular 

timbre

 (pronounced “TAM-bur”), or tone color, that they produced. By the eighteenth century, the 

symphony

, a musical form in separate units, or movements, became a concert staple, combining families of instruments such as strings, winds, brass, and percussion. Major aggregations of musicians became known as symphony orchestras; these steadily increased in numbers as Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and, late in the nineteenth century, Mahler wrote works that required more and more instruments. One of Mahler’s major works is titled The Symphony of a Thousand because it involves literally that many musicians and singers. Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture requires, in addition to a massive orchestra, the firing of cannons as the music reaches its climax. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is now performed by an enormous orchestra of at least 150 musicians in addition to a chorus of perhaps 200 voices.

 Listen to the Track

Tchaikovsky: 1812 Overture

In 1989, Leonard Bernstein, an American composer and conductor, was invited to present the Ninth Symphony at the site of the newly fallen Berlin Wall, which had, since the ending of World War II, separated East and West Berlin. On this occasion, more than 200 musicians and singers from the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France participated. The theme of the final movement, a choral setting of the poet Schiller’s “Ode to Joy,” heralded a new dawn of freedom and friendship between the previously separated citizens of Berlin and also gave ringing hope that all oppressed peoples would triumph in their struggle against tyranny.

To open the 1998 winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, conductor Seiji Ozawa led a performance of the “Ode to Joy” using choruses from four locations around the globe joined together by satellite. This time the music represented global unity, as athletes from diverse nations, unable to communicate with each other through words, could find in Beethoven’s music a common bond.

Musical harmony, especially in the glorious complexities of the great symphony orchestras, has become a model of human society at its most ideal. It requires every musician to pull together for one common purpose. No one sound can be any more important than another, yet each one has its moment of prominence. If one tone is flat, the entire enterprise suffers.

Silence

Silence is the unpublicized ingredient that makes music possible in the same way that the empty space around a sculpture makes the sculpture possible, or the judicious use of wall space can make or break an art exhibit. Just imagine 25 original van Goghs crammed together: “Where is The Starry Night? Oh, there it is. I almost missed it. Funny, but somehow it’s just not as exciting as I thought it would be.” Fast-forwarding a video destroys all dramatic value. The acceleration erases the pauses, which are as significant as the words themselves. After all, if characters talked nonstop, how could a dramatic situation develop? In music the spaces—or silences—between notes can be equally important.

To deepen an appreciation of music, we need to hear and enjoy silence. Silence has been an integral part of many works. The pauses in the second movement, the “Funeral March,” of Beethoven’s Third Symphony are as famous as the themes that precede and follow them. They make possible the dramatic effect when the main theme of the movement returns for the last time. There is silence, then part of the theme, then more silence, then more of the theme. The effect reminds the listener of someone trying valiantly to hold back tears.

Think of the last time you were in the presence of someone struggling for self-control while obviously overcome by a powerful surge of emotion. Weren’t the silences full of meaning? Great composers handle silences in the same way that great artists since Leonardo da Vinci have known how to handle shadows. Great stage actors owe something of their greatness to the mastery they have achieved over the words that they do not speak and to the silences before and after the words they do speak.

A famous solo theme for French horn occurs soon after the opening of the fourth movement of Brahms’s First Symphony. The moment is heralded by a tympani roll, which is followed by the introduction of the French horn theme. Some conductors, recognizing the musical benefits of silence, make the orchestra pause briefly before the theme is heard. This silence dramatically intensifies the significance of what follows. The French horn enters like an actor making an appearance for which the audience has been eagerly waiting. In some interpretations, however, there is almost no pause at all, perhaps losing an opportunity for creating a thrilling moment.

The composer John Cage (1912–1992) is famous for having incorporated silence into his work and making it as important as the actual notes he wrote down for musicians to play. One of his compositions, 4’33”, named for the 4 and a half minutes it takes to perform it, asks the artist to sit at the piano for that length of time. Cage insisted that the “notes are silent,” but that they are there all the same; in effect, he encouraged his audiences to hear all sounds as potentially musical, and all of life as potentially art. One of his longer pieces for the piano combines both played and silent notes, and in yet another, the pianist performs a series of complex chords and difficult runs up and down the keyboard, and then sits perfectly still for about 15 minutes. Audiences, according to one critic, seem “almost afraid to cough.” A strong influence on Cage’s work was Zen Buddhism, an extremely austere and disciplined form of Buddhism, demanding long hours of meditation in absolute silence.

What ultimately distinguishes one musician from another is not only the ability to play the notes as written but the musical intuition that manifests itself. One way in which the critical ear can detect the presence of this intuition, or this “feeling for the music,” is to listen to how the performer manipulates the silences that surround the tones. Three world-class pianists might record Beethoven’s Pathétique Sonata, and though each plays exactly the same notes, the interpretation by each will have subtle touches unique to that musician. In almost every instance, the telling factor is the handling of silence. Here a pause is elongated; there, foreshortened. As with the space surrounding a sculpture, silence in music helps to define, to single out, to create individuality.

The most evident gift from great music is its sound. But the very absence of sound is just as important. Remember: Music is the shaped sound between silences.

Varieties of Musical Experience

1. 6.2 How do we differentiate among varieties of musical experience, including the fugue, the symphony, and the art song?

There are so many styles, so many musical forms that singling out a few is difficult indeed. Within those parameters, however, certain kinds of musical experience—musical genres of the past and present—illustrate what music has to offer. Let’s look at two such forms.

A Bach Fugue

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) was born in a Germany that did not regard music as an art form, but considered it either as court entertainment, composed and performed for upper-class amusement by hirelings paid to do a job, or as a subordinate adjunct to religious services. The music with which Bach is associated, which indeed he came to epitomize, grew out of religion but went beyond religion in its impact and influence on the future of music as an art. It became the very epitome of the Baroque, a highly complex style not only of music but of art and architecture as well. Historians of the humanities usually date the Baroque period from the middle of the seventeenth century to 1750, which happens to be the very year in which the composer died.

The Baroque period was characterized by architectural grandeur and an elaborate use of color and ornamentation. Civic buildings, such as those that still line the Ringstrasse, the main street of Vienna, were adorned with gilt, statuary, and other forms of embellishment, none of which was intended to be purely functional. The term baroque was taken from French and Portuguese words that meant “imperfect pearl” and applied to the new style, which was far from classical simplicity. Architecture made abundant use of curved rather than straight lines, and Baroque music is exceptionally intricate.

Catholicism found in Baroque architectural splendor one means of bringing people back to the fold. The German monk Martin Luther (1483–1546) had rebelled against Catholicism for what he considered its moral corruption. With other reformers, he had started a revolutionary movement known as the Protestant Reformation, which aimed to divest religion of its Catholic sensuality. In contrast to the stark, wooden churches of the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Baroque houses of worship, especially in Italy and Poland, reintroduced the marble, brilliant colors, and statues of the Renaissance churches, perhaps in an effort to encourage defectors to return to a reinvented religion with an appeal to both the spirit and the senses. These churches, dating from the seventeenth century, are adorned with flying angels suspended from brightly painted ceilings and smiling gold cherubs resting near the tops of marble columns. They were for their time the epitome of opulence, offering both dramatic and aesthetic appeal without apology.

Despite the many reforms instituted by Luther and his followers, Lutheranism remained closer to Catholicism than would be true of the multiple Protestant sects that were to develop. While Lutherans generally shunned the impetus toward elaborate visual ornamentation of the churches, they felt differently about the ornamentation of their music. Music became especially important in the Lutheran service, for which Bach composed many of his works. As the era progressed, both religious and secular composers sought to outdo one another in the intricacy of their compositions. They made strong use of 

counterpoint

, playing one melodic line against another, with two or more melodic lines being given equal value and independence.

Harmony, of course, had been standard in music since the early Renaissance, but Bach’s counterpoint carried complexity a step further. Nonetheless, even though he had achieved considerable recognition for his music during his lifetime, after his death his church still considered him as primarily a great organist rather than a composer. When they first began to hear his compositions, congregations may have been slightly confused, if not overwhelmed, by what they heard.

When Bach (

Figure 6.4

) was first hired to play the organ, he was welcome to compose little pieces to accompany the service, which fed his insatiable appetite for experimenting with organ sound. Seeking to expand his musical horizons, Bach took a leave of absence and went in 1705 to study with the famous Danish-German organist and composer Dieterich Buxtehude, returning with new works of such intricacy and virtuosity that the church choir often could not sing them. By this time, however, word of the new music began to spread. Eventually he became musical director and choir director at St. Thomas’s Church in Leipzig, where he remained for most of his productive life, scarcely traveling more than a few miles from the city.

Figure 6.4

Johann Sebastian Bach, 1746

Bach, at first considered simply a church organist, eventually revolutionized the art of music. Listen to the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. What does it make you feel?

Credit: Georgios Kollidas/Fotolia

His reputation expanded and blossomed, then began to fade as he grew older, even though the complexity of his work deepened. In some quarters, he began to be called old-fashioned. He had almost single-handedly brought Baroque music to its pinnacle and then was accused of not being modern enough. By mid-century Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) was learning his craft and soon would give birth to 104 symphonies, earning him the reputation he still enjoys as father of that musical genre. Haydn returned to the relative simplicity of classicism, and his tremendous influence helped to make Baroque complexity obsolete. In Bach’s declining years, younger composers were already experimenting with the style that Haydn would make famous.

Through the new works, German music was attaining stature as an art form, and thus the great repertoire of Bach—the cantatas, the oratorios, and the magnificent displays of counterpoint known as 

fugues

 —were considered dated even before they were ever really discovered. Bach’s music would have to wait a full century before it would take its place among acknowledged masterworks.

Confined both geographically and professionally, Bach found liberation in exploring the possibilities of musical language. The Baroque style required not only long, highly fluid melodies and countermelodies but also 

improvisation

—a spontaneous variation or set of variations on a given theme. Through improvisation, Bach could take wings and soar into the endless skies of inner space.

Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor

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Music in the time of both Bach and Haydn was not expected to express a composer’s innermost emotions; and indeed Bach’s music is frequently labeled intellectual. It is, for example, greatly admired by mathematicians, who see in it a musical parallel to higher calculus. Nonetheless, there is indeed an emotional side to it. The great Toccata and Fugue in D Minor draws the listener into a vortex of sensations that are almost indescribable. The ear discerns the many melodic strands that play against each other, and the inner eye translates the sounds into patterns of light and lines that crisscross, engulf each other, and continually change into shapes never before seen or imagined. Surrendering to this music, we the listeners find ourselves visiting strange inner landscapes flooded with both thoughts and feelings.

 Listen to the Track

Bach: Toccata and Fugue in D Minor

A 

toccata

 is a freestyle musical form designed to allow the performer of Bach’s day to display virtuosity; it is frequently, as in the case of the D Minor work, followed by a fugue, which is more strictly controlled by established musical laws. In a toccata, the composer or performer may improvise on the stated themes, taking them in a variety of directions.

This practice has definite counterparts in jazz. It is no coincidence that jazz players sometimes acknowledge a strong debt to Bach, particularly for his genius at improvisation, and often include variations on Bach melodies in their repertoire. The fugue allows for the simultaneous hearing of different melodies played or sung; it is a swift-moving form, stabilized by the laws of counterpoint—that is, the melodic lines heard simultaneously must complement, not conflict with, each other.

We need only listen to the D Minor performed on an organ to be astounded that one pair of hands and feet could master so difficult a composition. The idea behind the fugue is to demonstrate that what for the average person would be an impossibility is indeed well within the capabilities of the performer. It allows both composer and performer to display their virtuosity. At the same time, the intricacies of the form require strong guidelines as well as enormous technical skills. The result may sound free and unrestrained, but in actuality the music is rigorously disciplined. The major jazz composers and performers of our time are often highly trained musicians whose flights of improvisation follow definite rules, similar to the fugues of Bach.

A Beethoven Symphony

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Sometimes the history of the humanities lopes along for many years, even decades, without producing an artist who rises to the highest levels of creative achievement. It can also happen that many artistic geniuses appear at or around the same time. The late fifteenth century in Italy, for example, saw three visual artists, acknowledged to be perhaps the world’s greatest, all contemporary with each other: Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Germany and Austria can boast that they gave the world Beethoven and Mozart during the late eighteenth century.

In the Baroque musical tradition, composers worked in a limited range of musical forms to find their own way through the music. Bach achieved greatness by making the forms accommodate his tremendous musical intellect and imagination, mastering every known form with the exception of opera. Mozart easily rivaled Bach with his phenomenal
output—and in a much shorter life span (1756–1791)—composing not only operas but symphonies, chamber music for inexhaustible combinations of instruments, several huge masses, a long list of songs, and concertos for both violin and piano. Mozart expanded the capabilities of the symphony orchestra and, in so doing, prepared the way for Beethoven, who would take it to new heights. In order to provide emotional release from a tormented life in which he gradually lost all of his hearing, Beethoven composed in new or greatly expanded musical forms; he caused fundamental changes in how music was perceived—as a subjective expression of individuality and personality.

 Listen to the Track

Mozart: Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, I

Beethoven (

Figure 6.5

) composed for churches, concert halls, small salons, private performances, royal chambers, and, above all, for himself. When he lost his hearing during the peak of his musical career, Beethoven turned inward, and out of his complex and anguished soul came sounds no one had ever heard before. Even today, more than a century and a half after the composer’s death, when every note written by him has been played and interpreted by thousands upon thousands of musicians and heard by millions, new listeners and new performers can find in the music some as yet undisclosed aspect of Beethoven’s gigantic personality.

Figure 6.5

A romanticized image of Ludwig van Beethoven painted by Carl Jäger (1833–1887) in 1870, well after Beethoven’s death

Beethoven’s symphonies may be the best known and most popular works of classical music in the Western world. Listen to the first movement of his Third Symphony, or “Ode to Joy,” the fourth movement of his Ninth Symphony. What might account for the vast popularity of Beethoven’s music?

Credit: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-29499

This new tradition combined secular, religious, and nationalistic trends into one, making the music of northern Europe the equal of Italian music, which had been for centuries the dominant musical tradition of the West. In particular, it created and then quickly broadened the scope of the symphony, which became for Germany what the opera was for Italy.

The development of the symphony cannot be measured in terms of quantity alone. Haydn wrote 104 symphonies, Mozart 41, and Beethoven “just” nine. (Later, Johannes Brahms, intimidated by the majestic symphonic creations of Beethoven, would spend 20 years working on his first symphony and would leave the world “just” four!)

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3: Eroica

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Having given the world two symphonies in the tradition of Mozart, who had already stretched the limits of the form beyond anything yet known, Beethoven in 1804 came forth with his Third or E-flat Major Symphony, which is called Eroica (“Heroic”). The premiere proved to be an occasion for which the music world was still not completely prepared, even though the work had been preceded by Mozart’s last symphony, the titanic Jupiter. After all, a symphony was originally a 20-minute concert diversion, consisting of four movements: the first moderately paced, the second slow and lyrical, the third rapid and light-hearted, and the fourth rousing and climactic. The four movements were related only in terms of a composer’s characteristic style, but they were not expected to make a unified statement of any kind.

The Eroica was twice the length of the Jupiter. It was a work so huge in conception, so complex in execution, and so overwhelming to experience that by all rights it should have invited immediate comparison with Michelangelo’s David, the Sistine Chapel ceiling, or the great tragedies of Shakespeare. Unfortunately, many of the first listeners could not accommodate the work’s heroic dimensions or its daring innovations, particularly its heavy use of seventh chords, up to that time a musical taboo (most chords were built on three tones at that time), considered barbarically dissonant, unfit for civilized ears.

In the Eroica, the four movements constitute a unity, in that each succeeding movement sounds like a perfect complement to the one before it. It is clear that Beethoven did not finish one movement and then tack on another as though the preceding one had not existed. In the opinion of music historians, the most astonishing aspect of the Eroica is that it is not just big for the sake of bigness.

The first movement is on a grand, heroic scale, an epic style with noble themes and huge orchestration to be rivaled only by the composer’s own fifth and ninth symphonies. The story is that Beethoven was inspired by the heroic image of Napoleon (

Figure 6.6

) as the liberator of Europe. He created in the opening movement music that paralleled his feelings and then dedicated the entire work to the man he perceived as savior of the free world. It is also widely believed that when word reached the composer that his hero had demanded to be crowned emperor, Beethoven rescinded the dedication.

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Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 in E-Flat, “Eroica,” I

Instead of glorifying an imperial leader, the work came to be identified with the common man movement hailing the heroism of ordinary citizens. It has the same fist-shaking thunder we find in the work of Michelangelo. A musical rebel, defying all tradition, plagued by illness that would eventually rob him of his hearing, misunderstood and criticized by many, Beethoven could readily identify with revolutionary movements in his native Germany, as well as in America and France.

Figure 6.6

A portrait of the Emperor Napoleon by French artist Jacques-Louis David, 1812

Beethoven originally dedicated his Eroica symphony to Napoleon. Listen to an excerpt from the symphony. Does the music suggest heroism to you? How?

Credit: Courtesy of National Gallery of Art/Samuel H. Kress Collection

One is tempted to hear in the second movement a musical parallel to Beethoven’s profound disillusionment with Napoleon. Profound sorrow is certainly there, as indicated by the tempo notation: marcia funebre (funeral march). It is the slowest of all slow movements, dirgelike and heartbroken. We have already spoken of it in the section on silence as a musical element. Whether Napoleon was the direct cause of the sorrow or whether Beethoven, having exhausted the range of noble emotions, found himself exploring the depths of sadness, we cannot know; but we can say that the first two movements of the Eroica strongly suggest an experience common to nearly everyone: the passage from heroic, idealistic youth to maturity and its awareness of tragedy.

The third movement, by contrast, is almost shocking with its galloping pace and precise horns, all of it sounding like nothing so much as a hunting party. Out of place? Surely not. Listening carefully to every note of the funeral march shows that there is only so much emotional wrenching one can sustain. Life must go on. The depressed spirit must pull itself up from despair.

The finale begins with a graceful, dancelike melody suggestive of polite society: civilization restored, so to speak. This melody leads through an intricate development back into the same heroic mood that opened the symphony. We have passed from romantic illusion to the depths of tragedy and, through struggle, upward again to a more mature, sober, and deliberate affirmation. The composer of the Eroica captures the human soul in full range. It would not mark Beethoven’s last glimpse of paradise.

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9

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Beethoven’s ninth, and final, symphony was composed around 1824, when he was totally deaf. It is easily four times the length of a late Mozart symphony, and twice that of even the Eroica. Not the journey of a young man’s soul coping with the sobering realities of life, the Ninth Symphony is rather the final statement of a gigantic mentality that has struggled for years with both physical and creative suffering—of a person who has labored to find and capture it all, as Michelangelo, two centuries earlier, had sought perfection in marble, and as Einstein, a century later, would seek the ultimate equation for unifying the interactions among all the forces in the universe.

During the first three movements of the Ninth, Beethoven gives us one haunting melody after another, complex rhythms, intricate harmonies, and bold dissonance. He seems to be striving to find a musical equivalent to every feeling that can be experienced. By the fourth movement, he appears to have concluded that the orchestra alone was not enough to express the sounds he must have heard in the far recesses of his silent world. He needed human voices.

Other composers before him had written large choral works: Bach’s Passion According to Saint Matthew, Haydn’s Creation, and Mozart’s Requiem, to name three supreme examples. But Beethoven pushes the human voice further than many have believed possible.

There remains considerable controversy about the final movement of the Ninth. Some critics say it takes us as close to the gates of heaven as we can get in this earthly lifetime. Some have called it a musical embarrassment, totally unsingable. One soprano, after attempting it, vehemently declared that Beethoven had no respect whatever for the female voice. Others have suggested that in his deafness Beethoven heard extraordinary sounds that were not contained within the boundaries of music and for which there were no known instruments, not even the human voice. Perhaps such sentiments over-romanticize the work. But perhaps not. No one will ever know what Beethoven was hearing.

 Listen to the Track
Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, IV

The musical setting for Friedrich von Schiller’s “Ode to Joy,” the main theme of the fourth movement, has attained the stature of an international hymn. By far, the majority opinion about this music is that it transcends its own “unsingability” and any breach of musical taste it may commit. Asking whether one “likes it” seems beside the point. One can only feel humbled by its majesty. Listening to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is discovering what human creativity really means.

The premiere performance of the work in Vienna, at that time the capital of European music, was attended by every Viennese musical luminary. By now fully convinced of the composer’s genius, they were eager to discover what new sounds the great man could possibly bring forth from an inner world that was barred forever from the real sounds of humanity and nature. Beethoven was the co-conductor.

Witnesses to the event have left behind stories of the performance, especially of how the maestro conducted with sustained vigor, hearing his own orchestra no doubt; for when the “other” orchestra had finished the work and the enthusiastic applause began, Beethoven had not yet put down his baton. When at last he realized what was happening, he started to walk from the stage, perhaps feeling his music had not communicated. The other conductor caught up with him and turned him around in time to see the huge audience on its feet, shouting, crying “Bravissimo!” Beethoven simply bowed his head. No one will ever know what it was he had heard, just as he could not have known what they had heard. Nonetheless, that moment lives on in the history of the humanities as a rare meeting of souls in that strange space where the spirit of art lives.

Art Songs

So far we have discussed possible origins of music, the basic elements of music, two major musical forms, and composers who achieved distinction through making glorious musical history. For many of us, however, everyday musical experience comes from songs, much shorter compositions with easily remembered melodies and rhythms.

As children, we had nursery songs to teach or lullabies to soothe us. Most of us learned the alphabet by singing the letters. Some kind of song-making—if only the spontaneous chanting of a child—is innate to the growing-up process at every time and in every place. Like poetry and the other arts, song evolved into ever more sophisticated styles. Eventually it reached a point at which the composer’s choices were rigidly defined by the rules of music.

The birth of song as art probably dates back to the classical period when epic poems such as the Iliad were sung by minstrels or bards as a means of being more easily remembered. In the early Middle Ages, monks sang their prayers as a regular part of the worship service. By the later Middle Ages, however, wealthy aristocrats demanded song as part of court entertainment, and the subject almost always was love. By the time of the great composers we have discussed, song was a recognized art form, expected in concert programs and performed by highly trained professionals. Their works have come to be known as art songs, as distinct from popular songs, which are not originally written as concert pieces. They mark a fusion of words and music, using the voice and—typically—piano to give added meaning to a poem.

Franz Schubert

A genius of the art song was Franz Schubert, who, in his tragically brief life (1797–1828), composed more than 600! He wrote painstakingly for both singer and accompanist, his musical settings precisely suiting the words and fitting the mood of the poem. An excellent introduction to Schubert songs is “The Trout,” with its sprightly melodic line and rippling fishlike accompaniment, and also “Death and the Maiden,” with its agitated melodies and strangely peaceful accompaniment. The maiden of the title sees Death, a savage-looking skeleton, approaching and pleads with him to pass by and not touch her. But Death turns out to be friendly and promises that she will sleep gently in his arms.

Among Schubert’s most famous works is the musical setting he gave to “Ave Maria.” There is a legend that the composer, chronically poor, wrote the piece rapidly on a napkin or tablecloth and sold it to someone for the equivalent of 15 cents. True or not, the story does suggest what we know about Schubert: namely, that he was unsuccessful in his lifetime, though, unlike van Gogh, he had a small circle of friends who recognized his genius.

Alma Schindler Mahler

Belated recognition for her art songs came to Austrian composer Alma Schindler Mahler (1879–1964). Early on, she was a wealthy Viennese socialite and hostess of glittering salons. Her warmth and nurturing spirit attracted numerous male artists to her. When only 17, she fell in love and married one of them, who neglected to mention that he already had a wife. Undaunted, and driven by her creative passion, she enrolled in a music school where she inspired fellow student Arnold Schoenberg, who would become a twentieth-century pioneer in the avant-garde, to compose music he heard inside him rather than what audiences would immediately accept. Alban Berg, another avant-gardist, also became a close friend and dedicated to her a masterwork, the opera Wozzeck.

Much given to amorous infatuations, she fell in love with Gustav Mahler (1860–1911), one of the great conductors and composers of the late nineteenth century. Her expectation was that they would nurture each other’s careers, but he had other plans, demanding that she give up writing her little songs and live for him alone, as wives were expected to do. Mahler was already a recognized genius as both a composer and the conductor of the Vienna Opera, answering to no one except the emperor of Austria and God, to whom he dedicated his final symphony. Twenty years her senior, as her first near-husband had been, Mahler assumed the role of protective father, treating Alma as was expected of fathers in this time and in no way interested in encouraging her to develop her own considerable talents.

Exerting the same dictatorial attitude with which he directed the Opera, Mahler instructed his wife that she must nurse the children, create a quiet home with well-prepared meals, and, in her spare time, copy all of his manuscripts. But Alma was secretly in rebellion, writing to a friend that “the man who had to spread his peacock train in public wants to relax at home” and that this “after all is woman’s fate. But it isn’t mine!”

Finally, feeling perhaps a slight twinge of guilt, Mahler spent an afternoon with Sigmund Freud and admitted his marital problems. Freud’s answer was to encourage him to look into his wife’s work. After the session, Mahler returned home, played some of Alma’s songs, then cried out, “What have I done? These songs are good,” and insisted they would be immediately published. Unfortunately, Mahler died before he could follow through on his promised support. Alma lived to be 84, with a reputation only for being the nurturer of male genius. Belatedly, her songs have been rediscovered, but sadly only 17 survive.

The Musical Avant-Garde

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Like their counterparts in visual art, innovators in concert music do not want to sound like anything that has gone before them; they do not wish to be confined by time-honored guidelines but seek to forge new directions. They are the 

avant-garde

. Translated, the term says advanced guard, but this is a military phrase. Applied to the arts, garde can also mean guardian or watchman. In other words, the avant-gardist is one who looks after our best interests by protecting us from what has become dull, overly familiar.

The need to be free from restraint has always been a key factor, especially in works of genius. Beethoven, for example, expanded the range of music in creating his Third Symphony, forcing the music to accommodate his mighty passions. In the twentieth century,

George Gershwin

’s Rhapsody in Blue combined jazz and symphonic music as had never been done before, and when the Beatles arrived on the scene, audiences could not have been prepared for the style and musical expertise the band brought to the rock genre. All of these composers did what they had to do: express themselves in ways congenial to their temperaments regardless of conventions.

The need to rebel is thus the need to be who you are, and if you happen to be an artist, your art will be rebellious. Some concert composers today are tired of the diatonic scale—sometimes any scale. One composer attacks a grand piano with her fists, then climbs up onto the instrument, stands upside down inside it and plucks the hammers; others have found in the synthesizer, and later the computer, the keys to uncharted inner worlds that enable them to produce sounds no one has yet heard.

Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) is regarded by many as the father of the modern avant-garde in music. His revolutionary score for the 1913 ballet The Rite of Spring introduced sounds so unfamiliar that, combined with the provocative movements of Vaslav Nijinsky as well as his choreography, they sparked a riot at the Paris premiere. Though denounced by audience and critics alike (one critic called the music a “barnyard come to life”), Stravinsky would eventually win the day, and his unorthodox rhythms, dissonances, and timbres would prove seminal to the music that followed after him.

 Listen to the Track

Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring, “Danses des adolescentes”

One of his contemporaries was Arnold Schoenberg (Alma Mahler’s one-time classmate), born in Berlin and musically educated in Vienna. For his large-scale concert works, he reduced the size of the orchestra to 15 instruments, for which he provided dissonance in dizzying counterpoint and bizarre harmonic progressions. Embracing atonality, Schoenberg abandoned key altogether in many of his early works, notably Pierrot Lunaire, using human voices that don’t always sound like human voices to produce the intended musical equivalent of mental disturbance. In this work, Schoenberg replaced the standard musical notes with notations requiring the “singers” to speak-sing at approximate pitches. At times they sound like lost souls seeking release from solitary confinement. His 

atonality

—music that lacks a key, or tonal center—encouraged other avant-gardists to break away from bondage to familiar harmonies and structures.

In 1925, Schoenberg moved back to Berlin, where he came under the influence of the German avant-garde, which had strong counterparts in theater and visual art. This Berlin art scene was brimming with postwar cynicism and had an audience that saw only deteriorating civilization for its future. Here, Schoenberg composed his opera Moses und Aron, in which characters sing-speak of their inability to communicate with each other. Both Pierrot Lunaire and Moses und Aron remain stern tests of one’s willingness to entertain the extremely unfamiliar. But we encourage you to give it at least a fair try. To no surprise, there are contemporary avant-garde composers who consider Stravinsky and Schoenberg old-fashioned.

Much of the music of the avant-garde, as we have said, is produced on synthesizers. Leading the way was the French composer Edgard Varèse (1883–1965). Starting out as a mathematics student, he found himself unable to resist the excitement of creating new musical sounds on a machine that seemed to be able to do anything the user desired. He declared boldly that he refused to submit to sounds that had already been heard, which could really be the battle cry of the musical avant-garde. Then he added that rules do not make a work of art. Encouraged by his friend and admirer Claude Debussy, he explored non-Western sounds, eventually combining them with his own reconfiguration (or discarding) of Western scales and tonal patterns.

In 1923, his Hyperprism premiered, and, like The Rite of Spring, it caused a riot in the theater. Some of the instruments he employed were sleigh bells, rattles, crash cymbals, an anvil, Chinese blocks, Indian drums, and a washtub with a hole in the bottom that allowed the player to reproduce the sound of a lion’s roar.

At the age of 71, Varèse created Déserts, his response to atomic energy and the dangers it posed for the world. The piece, using both taped and synthesized sounds, drove the audience into a frenzy and nearly led to another riot. One critic observed that Varèse deserved the electric chair for composing such noise.

Music Beyond the Concert Hall

1. 6.3 How do we explain the emergence and impact of various forms of popular music, including folk, jazz, blues, gospel, rock and roll, and
hip-hop?

So far in this chapter we have talked about music that is most often listened to in a concert or recital hall—music that was composed, written down, scored, orchestrated, learned and performed by professional musicians. But for many of us, the more familiar experience of listening comes beyond the walls of a concert hall, through our smartphones or tablets, from our favorite movies, or at outdoor festivals and events. Often this is music just as complex and sophisticated, and as emotionally compelling for the listener, as that written for and played by orchestras, classically trained singers, or chamber musicians.

Folk Music

Unlike many art forms that have established traditions within the humanities, the folk song has followed few aesthetic rules. Some folk songs originated centuries ago, perhaps as a way of spreading news in isolated areas, perhaps as musical improvisations by people who had little else to entertain them. Folk songs didn’t require expert musical accompaniment or trained voices. They were likely to be handed down from generation to generation and changed every time they were sung. That’s why there are many versions of the same song.

Folk music enjoyed a wave of popularity in the mid-twentieth century, fueled by the work of Woody Guthrie and Huddie Ledbetter, known as Lead Belly, and then turned by accomplished musicians such as Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, and more recently, Ani DiFranco into something closer to art song. Yet it can still be a participant’s art, an affirmation of group identity. In certain parts of the country, let a fiddler introduce the first few notes of “Turkey in the Straw” and almost immediately people are clapping their hands or dancing. During the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the song “We Shall Overcome” created—and even now can create—instant bonding among people who may never have seen each other before.

Songs sung spontaneously at rallies or sporting events are not exactly folk music, but they fulfill a similar purpose in promoting group solidarity. For example, during the 1980s, the rock group Queen released a song called “We Will Rock You” that is still sung by students all over the country, especially during football games, and “We Are Family,” released in 1979 by Sister Sledge, became the rallying cry for Pittsburgh Pirates fans.

Songs about Real People and Events

During the Middle Ages, troubadours kept people informed of heroic actions in battles and skirmishes through song. Maritime lore abounds with songs commemorating events that took place at sea, such as atrocities committed by a pirate captain or the sinking of a ship to its lonely, watery grave. Folk songs often memorialize individuals, ranging from heroes like the “steel-driving man” John Henry to otherwise forgotten ordinary people, like the murdered barmaid in Bob Dylan’s haunting, rage-filled “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.” The narrator of the commemorative song is rarely identified. A typical opening line is: “My name is nothin’ extra/ So that I will not tell.” The group, the event, or the individual that the song is about are always more important than the singer/reporter.

Commemorative songs continue to be written. In 1968, the gentle hit song “Abraham, Martin and John” paid tribute to the victims of assassins’ bullets, and Don McLean’s “American Pie,” composed in 1971, offered an infectious, and slightly mysterious, story written, many people believe, to commemorate the deaths of pop stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper in a 1959 plane crash.

Work songs are also highly durable, for it is hard to imagine a time when work will not be central to most people’s lives. In some cases, the work song reflects great hardship and a state of tension between management and labor. Often, however, the music is jolly and full of bounce and joy, as though to help the original creator forget his tired limbs and meager salary.

I’ve been workin’ on the railroad
All the livelong day;
I’ve been workin’ on the railroad
Just to pass the time away.1

The nineteenth-century folk ballad “John Henry”—both a commemorative and a work song—reflects the conflict between worker and machine at a time when the steam drill was about to replace hammers swung by human arms. John Henry became a folk hero, mythologized as a superhuman individual who was stronger and smarter than a machine, for a while. In his effort to beat the steam drill through the mountain with his hammer and steel pike, John Henry’s great heart finally failed him.

John Henry said to his captain:
“You are nothing but a common man,
Before that steam drill shall beat me down,
I’ll die with my hammer in my hand.”
…

John Henry was hammering on the right side,
The big steam drill on the left,
Before that steam drill could beat him down,
He hammered his fool self to death.2

Another such worker was Joe Hill, a Swedish-born immigrant who, like so many others, came to the United States in the early twentieth century with dreams of success, only to be swallowed into a vast labor force, toiling for 40 or more hours a week and trying to survive on a minimum wage. A born folk poet and singer, Hill began to compose songs about the hardships endured by the workers and the obstinate refusal of management to meet their demands or even to offer a compromise. He became a modern folk minstrel, and his songs, simple, easily sung and remembered, soon spread from union hall to union hall, adapted to many kinds of labor problems.

Hill was also an activist, traveling throughout the country, speaking to larger and larger gatherings of workers; and he inevitably acquired the reputation of troublemaker and rabble-rouser. While he was in Salt Lake City addressing a union meeting, a murder took place and Hill was arrested and charged with the crime. In a still famous trial, the prosecution produced witnesses who placed Hill at the scene of the crime. After a short jury deliberation he was found guilty and sentenced to die by firing squad. While awaiting his execution, he wrote his final song in which he said that some people could find justice in Salt Lake City “but not Joe Hill.”

Joan Baez, a folk singer who epitomized the human rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, wrote a commemorative ballad about Joe Hill, one that has already achieved the status of genuine folk art.

From San Diego up to Maine,
in every mine and mill,
where working-men defend their rights,
it’s there you find Joe Hill,
it’s there you find Joe Hill!3

Songs about Rogues and Outlaws

The scoundrel song celebrates the Dionysian personality—the perennial favorite of our hidden selves—the lawless, irresponsible, but charming rogue you couldn’t trust or marry or put in charge of an important operation but who is always fun. A traditional Irish favorite is “The Moonshiner,” which upholds a life of drinking, carousing, gambling, and avoiding work. The narrator proudly sings that “if you don’t like me, you can leave me alone.” Who can argue with that premise? He intends to

. . . eat when I’m hungry and drink when I’m dry,
And if moonshine don’t kill me,
I’ll live till I die.4

To be sure, society would perish if it depended upon wild rovers, but the singer of scoundrel songs was usually a loner who could not, would not, adapt easily to the demands of organized society and so could hardly have been expected to celebrate the morally upright, the hard-working, and the pious.

Accumulation and Narrative Songs

The accumulation song is deliberately drawn out, with verse after verse and a refrain repeated after each one. Songs such as “The Twelve Days of Christmas” and “Old MacDonald” start off with one detail (one gift, one animal) and then add more and more as the song continues. Accumulation songs extend group solidarity for longer periods, prolong the high spirits of the gathering, and keep loneliness at bay. The warmth and hominess of accumulation songs is echoed in what is sometimes referred to as primitive, or folk, art, like that of Grandma Moses (Figure 6.7).

Figure 6.7

Grandma Moses, We Are Coming to Church, 1949

How does this work by the mid-20th-century artist Grandma Moses provide a visual parallel to folk music?

Credit: Christie’s Images Ltd./SuperStock

The narrative song, as its label implies, tells a tale, often at great length, answering, like the accumulation song, the need of listeners to stay together as long as possible. It was the folk version of the epic, usually filled with accounts of wondrous and miraculous events. The Scottish ballad “Binorie” recounts the sad story of a miraculous harp that was fashioned from the breastplate of a murdered girl and that sings as it plays. The harp reveals the events leading up to the girl’s murder, then comes to the shocking climax: “My sister it was who did me slay.” Quite possibly the song, like many others, was based on an actual event.

Country and western music has carried on the narrative tradition of folk music, adding its own unique tales to the repertoire. During the late 1960s “Ode to Billie Joe” was popular as a crossover song, topping country charts as well as the Top 40. Fans listened intently to the tragic story of a teenage boy who jumped to his death from the Tallahatchie Bridge. What was unique about the song was that it gave subtle suggestions about the “why” of the incident but never actually told us in so many words. Radio talk shows had hundreds of callers who gave their opinions, but the composer, Bobbie Gentry, refused to divulge the secret.

Songs of Protest and Social Justice

The 1960s, a period of widespread alienation in the United States, saw a significant revival of folk music. Young people, often far from home, got together for the night in hastily improvised camps or in communes with ever-changing members and became instant—if temporary—friends through the common bond of singing. Joan Baez, composer/singer of “Joe Hill,” and Judy Collins attained huge popularity by reviving old songs, particularly those that still spoke to the rebellious spirit seeking freedom from restraint. But the main thrust of the folk revival was the tightness of the group. It could have a distinctly spiritual side. At concerts, Judy Collins sang the old hymn “Amazing Grace” and soon had 10,000 voices joining in with hands interlocked in a show of community. The hymn, once revived, has remained an integral part of our culture; it was sung by President Obama at a memorial service for nine murdered black churchgoers in South Carolina in 2015.

New folk minstrels emerged, using protest songs to make statements against war, pollution, and the corruption of the establishment. Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance” were written and sung in protest, originally against the Vietnam War, but since then against other wars, or all wars. They are modern folk songs that attain the level of art. Lennon summed up the dream of a world without war, hunger, and hatred in what may be the most important folk song of the last century: “Imagine.” Though composed and sung by a master musician, “Imagine” has all the simplicity and the passionate honesty of the folk tradition. These three songs will probably endure as long as there are troubled times. And when will there not be?

Folk Themes in Concert and Ballet

Folk music has inspired concert composers of the past and present. Beethoven was charmed by the Gaelic folk tradition and composed songs based on both Irish and Scottish melodic patterns.

The American composer Aaron Copland (1900–1990) was so delighted by his country’s folk music, especially songs of the Old West, that his music has come to define America in sound. Billy the Kid, one of Copland’s many ballet scores, utilizes the folk song “Goodbye, Old Paint” (sung by a cowboy to his horse) in a stirring theme and variations. Rodeo interweaves themes and rhythms from Saturday night barn dances. El Salón México is an orchestral suite woven out of traditional Mexican folk material and exuberant Latin rhythms, set against Copland’s unique dissonance. Perhaps the composer’s most famous score was written for the ballet Appalachian Spring, which employs a number of folk themes, notably the old Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts.” The ballet itself celebrates time-honored rituals such as the raising of a barn by everyone in the community.

Folk themes such as those incorporated into this ballet often came from other cultures. Appalachian music, for example, has deep roots in the Gaelic folk music of Ireland and Scotland as well as the British folk tradition. The Israeli hora and the Italian tarantella are folk dances known throughout the world. Polka music was originally derived from Polish folk themes. We encourage you to pay attention to the many folk cultures brought to these shores from other countries and the rich musical experiences they provide.

Spirituals and Gospel Music

The 

spiritual

 had its beginnings in the need of African slaves to articulate and preserve their roots, to give meaning to their suffering, and to demand a rightful place in society. Taken—stolen—away from their homeland as far back as the seventeenth century, with no future except slavery, pain, and death, they took comfort in their relationship with God and an ultimate reward in a paradise where everyone was free.

Deep river, my home is over Jordan,
Deep river, Lord, I want to cross over into camp-ground.
I want to cross over into campground.5

Spirituals emphasize God’s personal concern for each person, however obscure that person may be in the eyes of other mortals. For instance:

I sing because I’m happy,
I sing because I’m free
For His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know He watches me.6

As the spiritual genre grew and developed, it was made more and more complex by church choirs and soloists, each of whom would add the mark of their individual interpretations. Often transported by religious ecstasy, they created the new genre of gospel music. Over the years this genre, while remaining as an indigenous part of church services, has also moved into the arena of popular music. It is characterized by giving the singer free reign to add enough notes to allow a fuller emotional expression.

Mahalia Jackson (1911–1972) became the best-known and highly influential exponent of the gospel genre. Born in New Orleans when that city was bursting at the seams with new music—ragtime, jazz, and blues—she grew up next door to a church in which music played a vital role. She heard traditional hymns played and sung with many rhythmic variations. In addition, the sounds of Mardi Gras music, street vendors, and the songs belted out from the barrooms with wide-open doors and windows seeped into her blood. Devoutly religious, Jackson blended spirituals and aspects of the New Orleans secular style into religious songs that became nationally famous when she moved to Chicago and married a businessman, who recognized her potential and launched her career. In 1954, Columbia Records signed her to a long-term contract, and gospel music was soon on the charts.

A civil rights activist, Jackson took part in the historic March on Washington in 1963, singing before thousands assembled on the Mall to hear Martin Luther King Jr.’s epoch-making “I Have a Dream” speech.

Ragtime

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Ragtime music dates back to the turn of the twentieth century, to a period when the legendary fortunes of the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Goulds, and Astors were being amassed and when the American monied aristocracy, their acquaintances, and all those who emulated their Victorian manners were entertaining guests with salon orchestras playing stately waltzes. The aim was to establish European elegance on this side of the Atlantic.

Some of the less privileged, eager to take advantage of the freedom to pursue upward mobility, wanted to gain the social recognition already enjoyed by wealthy families, and they wanted to show everyone they were capable of creating elegance of their own. Ragtime emerged from the African-American community and its musical traditions, transformed by the influence of European styles. African-American musicians wanted to do more than play the minstrel-show type of music with which white audiences had come to identify them. Ragtime came along at just the right moment. The acknowledged master of the new genre was Scott Joplin (1868–1917), who began his career in backrooms and honky-tonks but became a national celebrity with the publication of “Maple Leaf Rag” in 1899.

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Joplin: “Maple Leaf Rag”

Joplin heard the original ragtime tunes played by small African-American combos on riverboats. They may have been variations on old plantation songs, minstrel-show cakewalks, and banjo melodies, played at lively tempos. White audiences expected African-American music to be high-spirited, but 

ragtime

 would be different. Its label was coined to identify the syncopation that was the trademark of the new genre. 

Syncopation

 occurs when the melodic line of a piece is played against, not with, the accented beats of the rhythm accompaniment; the notes fall in the cracks between the beats. Syncopated pieces are usually difficult to play because the left hand and the right hand emphasize different beats or divisions of the beat. (For a perfect example of syncopation, listen to George Gershwin’s “Fascinatin’ Rhythm.”)

Joplin was captivated by the new sounds, but he wanted to turn them into a legitimate, recognized genre that would be associated with African Americans but also prove the equal of the foreign imports. This meant imitating or at least coming close to European rhythm. He slowed down the pace to make the music even more stately. On the sheet music of his “rags” he would write: “Do not play this piece fast. It is never right to play Ragtime fast.”

The waltz is always played in three-quarter time. Ragtime, played almost exclusively on the piano, is written in two-quarter time, its tempo also never changing. The primary influences on Joplin’s music, in addition to riverboat songs, were the popular European marches as well as the waltz and the quadrille, a dignified French square dance.

The enormous popularity of “Maple Leaf Rag” and other Joplin hits made African-American musicians sit up and take notice, especially in New Orleans, which was a stronghold for the liberal acceptance of new music. Jelly Roll Morton (1890–1941) introduced Joplin to New Orleans but played him at a faster tempo, an innovation that would be integrated into yet another American musical genre: jazz.

Jazz

The musical roots of jazz are African. The music brought to this country by slaves was marked by what is known as a “call and response” pattern. Participants would sing or play a particular combination of tones, and this combination would be answered by singing or playing a variation on it. The original purpose was similar to that of the folk song: community bonding.

During the late nineteenth century, African-American musicians went to New Orleans where they studied European genres and rhythmic patterns. But they brought with them a knowledge of their own traditional sounds, derived from what were called “field hollers” as well as rhythmic songs sung by slaves as they worked, and the spirituals that were a profound part of African-American religious life.

The typical scale used in African music contains five tones instead of the European scale of seven. At first, the New Orleans musicians tried to combine the two without sacrificing the African scale. The result was that they added slightly lowered notes called blue notes to the diatonic scale. From ragtime they borrowed syncopation. The synthesis of all these strains made possible the evolution of jazz.

As the decades of the twentieth century rolled by, the form attracted a range of musical geniuses, some self-taught, some classically trained. They had—and continue to have—one thing in common: knowing how to maintain a balance between control and the need for soaring release. The call and response form had required that the responders change the original theme, adding their own variation. Even when jazz became a sophisticated art form, improvisation continued to be its major characteristic.

Whatever their training, jazz instrumentalists and composers admire Bach because he lifted improvisation, the art of taking flight from a set theme, to new heights. A typical jazz piece follows a disciplined pattern. The group, or the soloist backed by the group, will play the main theme once through, sometimes a well-known song, sometimes an original tune composed for the group. Then one instrument after another performs a variation of the theme.

Original jazz works often have titles that are specific to a place or time, like “Take the A Train” (referring to a New York City subway line that runs to Harlem), “One O’Clock Jump,” and “Stompin’ at the Savoy” (the Savoy was a Harlem dance hall that rivaled the midtown Roseland, which mostly catered to a white clientele). From the beginning, jazz has shaped and defined the “cool scene”—a late-night coming together of sophisticated people who want to lose themselves in the music and escape, if only briefly, from their problems, just as the performers seek to lose themselves in the music.

Following in the footsteps of Jelly Roll Morton, great jazz soloists such as Charlie Parker and Louis Armstrong became famous for going off on lengthy variations, often improvising for 10 or 15 minutes before returning to the theme. One motive behind jazz improvisation was to explore the potential of one’s instrument and take it to places that no one else had ever found. In a life tragically interrupted when he was only 28, a phenomenal cornet player named Bix Beiderbecke is said to have been obsessed with the desire to find the perfect note beyond the normal range of other players. Presumably, he did not live long enough to reach his goal. Some who were fortunate enough to hear him report that, as he pushed his instrument beyond the ordinary limits of its capabilities, his face turned almost scarlet and all of his facial muscles threatened to break loose from his skin.

Duke Ellington

Musical histories that deal with jazz as a serious and major art form give preeminence to Edward Kennedy Ellington—known universally as Duke (1899–1974)—the person who did the most to bridge the gap between the concert hall and the intimate jazz club (

Figure 6.8

). A bandleader who had Manhattan society driving to the Cotton Club in Harlem during the late 1920s, Ellington sought to expand the range of jazz through continual experimentation

with what he called his “jungle effects.” When the sounds of “growling” trumpets and trombones, sinuous clarinets and eerie percussion were recorded, the originality of the orchestration was immediately grasped internationally by music critics and record buyers. . . . As a jazz arranger his great gift was in balancing orchestration and improvisation.7

Ellington brought jazz to Carnegie Hall, where it could be played and evaluated in a setting built for the performance of classical concert music. In so doing, he wrote out elaborate and complex orchestrations—something no one had done before him. He did leave room for solo flights (or else it would not have been jazz), but his own compositions, like “Mood Indigo,” “Satin Doll,” and “Sophisticated Lady,” which he usually performed while wearing elegant evening clothes, display a classic sense of discipline and musicianship.

Figure 6.8
Duke Ellington

Some scholars label jazz America’s greatest contribution to the world of music. Do you agree? What makes jazz uniquely American?

Credit: Bettmann/Corbis

George Gershwin

Another major American composer who brought jazz to Carnegie Hall in the early years was George Gershwin (1898–1937). He started his career as a Tin Pan Alley songwriter, but Gershwin, who had been classically trained, was hungry for greater things. He moved on to compose the scores for Broadway musicals of the 1920s and the opera Porgy and Bess.

In 1924, he found his chance. Paul Whiteman, a bandleader also hungry for serious recognition, commissioned him to write a concert jazz piece. The result was Rhapsody in Blue, which combined the textures of romantic works for piano and symphony orchestras with the pulsations, dissonance, and syncopated rhythms of jazz. Gershwin thus put an American art form on the international musical map. The Rhapsody became an overnight success and has sold millions of recordings. It remains in the standard concert repertoire of nearly every major orchestra.

Jazz has remained a major art form, studied in almost every school and performed regularly in concert halls throughout the world as well as in annual festivals devoted exclusively to both jazz classics and the very newest styles and musicians. The Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island and Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York are two notable examples producing important artists who are at ease in both the classical and jazz scenes.

Miles Davis

One such performer was trumpeter and pianist Miles Davis (1926–1991), whose versatility led him to the forefront of innovators in many genres of jazz, including bebop and cool jazz. By the time he was 18, Davis had shown so much talent that The Julliard School offered him a scholarship, but he proved too impatient to wait for graduation. When he was 19, he made his first recording and joined the jazz quintet of Charlie Parker, the premier saxophonist of the period. Because of his youth and lack of professional experience, Davis was used as a sideman—a non-soloist who played back-up to the stars. It was not long before he stepped into the solo spotlight. In 1955, he created the Miles Davis Quintet, which took jazz to new heights.

In his earlier work, Davis experimented with bebop, which had become the rage in the 1940s. An offshoot of the parent form, jazz, bebop was almost totally improvised and therefore greatly favored by soloists who wanted the music to serve their unique showcase needs. The more mature Davis of the Quintet gradually eased away from the eccentricities of bebop and moved toward what became known as cool jazz, a form more disciplined, more faithful to the music, and less given to wild flights of musical fancy. By the late 1950s, Davis, who also played Carnegie Hall, was presenting jazz versions of concert music, and still later, he began integrating electric instruments into the mix, eventually producing what critics consider one of the greatest albums of all time, Bitches Brew (1970).

Blues

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The term blues derives from the melancholy mood produced by music that made liberal use of expressively lowered tones, the so-called blue notes. The genre has permeated our vocabulary to such an extent that “blue” seems always to have meant “down in the dumps.” Many jazz tunes are bouncy and lively, but the jazz repertoire includes its share of blues.

The genre had its origins, as did ragtime and jazz, in the songs sung by slaves after a grueling day in the fields. While they sometimes desired an upbeat mood, the workers must have, just as often, sought an outlet for depression. As the form became caught up in the entertainment industry of jazz, sophisticated composers and singers turned the old songs into haunting expressions of sadness that found ready listeners among audiences of varied backgrounds.

Blues songs are almost always about the empty aftermath of a once-burning passion. They are written from either a male or a female point of view. Men sing of women’s faithlessness, and women return the compliment about men. Probably the most famous of all blues songs is “St. Louis Blues” by W.C. Handy (1873–1958), who also composed “Beale Street Blues.” If jazz is associated with New Orleans, the headquarters of the blues was Memphis, and it is on Beale Street that many of the great blues clubs are located, attracting visitors from all over the world.

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Handy: “St. Louis Blues”

Many of the soloists who elevated the form to a high status had tragic lives themselves, caused by bad relationships, social discrimination, or substance abuse. Famous was Bessie Smith (1894–1937), believed by many to have developed the blues style imitated by countless others. Bessie immortalized many lines from blues lyrics, including “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all.”

One of the most versatile of all the blues singing greats—as well as one of the most
tragic—was Billie Holiday (1915–1959) (

Figure 6.9

). Singer and songwriter, she excelled in jazz, jazz blues, torch songs, and swing. Nicknamed Lady Day, she was strongly influenced by jazz instrumentalists, developing a style that has never been imitated. The most famous of her own songs is “Lady Sings the Blues,” and she is also remembered for a dramatic rendition of “Strange Fruit,” a song about lynching.

Figure 6.9

Billie Holiday, c. 1940s

One central myth of the humanities is that all great artists live lives full of pain. Do you agree? Or can happiness also inspire great art?

Credit: World History Archive/Alamy

Popular Song

During the 1930s through the early 1950s, the so-called big bands were all the fashion. To escape the downbeat mood of the Great Depression and then the World War II years, people flocked to supper clubs to hear and dance to the well-orchestrated music of full-scale orchestras led by Glenn Miller, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, and numerous others. Miller developed a whole new style, featuring tight harmony serving as background for his own trombone solos. Goodman became the leading clarinetist of the day, crossing over easily from the night club to Carnegie Hall. Many songs that have since become standards were written for these aggregations, and many singers, including

Frank Sinatra

, made their debut with the big bands. Sinatra was soloist with the Tommy Dorsey orchestra.

The big-band song, such as “This Love of Mine,” the piece that vaulted a thin and wispy Sinatra into public prominence, had a very specific pattern. Usually about 3 minutes in length, it would be played once by the orchestra, then a soloist or group would sing it through once. Until Sinatra became a sensation and the main reason people came to hear the Dorsey band, most of the orchestras played so that couples could dance. But the lyrics to the songs were extremely important also because phonograph records (78 speed) were hot items in music stores.

The period was also the heyday of the movie musical as well as the Broadway show, which featured songs meant to be recorded and popularized as so-called hits. This necessity imposed stiff restraints upon lyricists who had to develop and conclude an idea in the usual 3 minutes, with words vaguely applicable to the film or stage context but able to tell their own story apart from any other context. A classic among these songs is Jerome Kern’s “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” with lyrics by Otto Harbach, who really deserves to be labeled a poet. Harbach develops a very common theme, dating at least as far back as Roman poetry: that of love lost. At first, the narrator believes the beloved is faithful, though friends think otherwise, advising that “when your heart’s on fire” you must realize that “smoke gets in your eyes.” But the narrator scoffs, only to discover that his love has left him. The friends are now the ones who scoff, but the narrator, in an absolutely brilliant repetition of the song title in a different context, points out that tears come when the flame of a beautiful romance is dying out and “smoke gets in your eyes.”

Irving Berlin

Irving Berlin (1888–1989) could not read or write down a note of music but compiled the greatest number of enduring twentieth-century popular works. His songs generally express simple, honest, and universal emotions. While he could define the everlasting joys of love, he had no peer at providing the bittersweet happiness of nostalgia. It’s all over, but one is left with fond memories all the same. The nostalgia of “White Christmas” elevated a popular song written for a sequence in a movie to the status of a Christmas carol.

In 1938, the popular singer Kate Smith asked Berlin to compose a patriotic song with which she could conclude her broadcast celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I. After several attempts proved futile, the composer remembered a song he had written for an Army camp show during that conflict, a song rejected for being “too jingoistic.” He found “God Bless America” buried in an old trunk, polished it a bit, and then offered it to Smith. Its first performance on the broadcast of November 20, 1938, electrified both the studio and the vast national audience. The song contains ten short lines and, sung once through, probably takes less than 3 minutes. No one has to be told about the song’s impact in all times and on countless occasions since. When Jerome Kern was asked to indicate Berlin’s place in American music, he answered tersely: “Irving Berlin is American music.”

Frank Sinatra

The reputation of Frank Sinatra (1915–1998) not only outlived the big-band era but expanded until it may very well be claimed that he was the greatest vocal stylist of popular songs. Composers and lyricists jumped at the chance to write for him because he was without peer in delivering a song’s message through his vocal flexibilities and his acting talent. Many of the songs with which he was associated have become classics, though almost no contemporary singer has been able to duplicate the power of the original performance, which crystallizes emotions all of us share and gives us comfort in the knowledge that we are not alone.

A Sinatra classic is “One for My Baby,” in which the narrator is sitting at a bar very late at night with no one around except a bartender who may be, but is probably not, listening, having heard the story so often. Nonetheless, the narrator pours out his heart. He has been abandoned by his one true love, though he does not deny having been responsible for the breakup; now there is only the effort to escape the pain through drink. The refrain to which he keeps returning asks the bartender to give him two more drinks: “one for my baby” and “one more for the road.” As both poems and songs do when they achieve art, this one captures a certain moment, an image in the flow of time with universal applicability—that of the loner in a bar late at night with no clear future and, obviously, no one to comfort him.

Rock and Roll

Rock is the most pervasive musical phenomenon of our time, having endured in its many forms for well over half a century. It is a major way of defining our culture in sound. 

Rock

 is a fusion of rhythm and blues, gospel, country and western, and rap styles. It has many complex facets, ranging from the conscious artistry of serious musicians to the out-of-control, body-bending shouting by athletic musicians prancing around a stage. Rock is first and foremost a celebration of the Dionysian spirit let loose and often exulting in a total disregard for rules. Lyrics often denounce the establishment (any establishment) and glorify the strident life of total freedom.

Some historians of popular culture trace the origins of rock to 1955, the year in which the film Blackboard Jungle leaped onto the screen with an explosion of music titled “Rock Around the Clock.” With its overly pronounced and rapid beat, the song had film audiences jumping in the aisles and dancing—even as the rock concerts would be doing in a few years. The band that arranged and played the piece was Bill Haley and the Comets, and to them is given the credit for introducing the musical movement first called 

rock ’n’ roll

, although scholars and historians agree that the roots of rock reach back into the African-American music of the 1940s called rhythm and blues.

Rhythm and blues music had long been a staple in small African-American dance clubs in the South. Because of their confined spaces, these clubs could accommodate only small combos, which made a big sound in compensation. The new sound spread quickly in popularity wherever small clubs were located and eventually moved from the African-American community onto mainstream radio stations—generally, however, adapted by white performers. The polite dances of the big band era no longer suited a postwar generation bogged down in academic studies or nine to five jobs and in need of weekend release. The beat of rock ’n’ roll accentuated by the strings of a twirling bass fiddle met the new needs.

Little Richard

Audience excitement generated by rock groups and rock concerts within a few years was foreshadowed in the frenetic energy of Richard Wayne Penniman, who called himself Little Richard (b. 1932) and claimed that he was the founder of the entire movement. He was certainly one of early rock’s most outlandish performers, dressing usually in formal attire that was a bit disheveled, or it became so as he accompanied himself on the piano, without sitting down, frequently jumping on top of the instrument, never letting up on the crashing chords. Rock historian Nik Cohn agrees that Little Richard was the true father of rock:

Dressed in shimmering suits with long drape jackets and baggy pants, his hair grown long and straight, white teeth and gold rings flashing in the spotlight, he stood at, and sometimes on, the piano, hammering boogie chords as he screamed messages of celebration and self-centered pleasure.8

In 1957, Little Richard, once more known as Richard Wayne Penniman, abruptly left the music world to become an evangelist preacher. But he did not find spiritual ecstasy incompatible with the music for which he was famous; and so he has gone back and forth between the two main areas of his life.

Elvis Presley

One year before Penniman’s departure, a young singer from Mississippi named Elvis Presley (

Figure 6.10

) appeared on television’s popular Ed Sullivan Show, the premier venue for showcasing new musical talent. Elvis (1935–1977) quickly became a cultural phenomenon, scandalizing older audiences with a gyrating pelvis while simultaneously making rock wildly popular with younger audiences.

Figure 6.10

Elvis Presley, 1957

Often simply called The King, Presley fused elements of rhythm and blues, gospel, and country and western to create a unique and powerful style. What do you think accounts for Presley’s astonishing impact on music and on this country?

Credit: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ6-2067

The immediate musical influence on Elvis was gospel, particularly its exuberance. With his guitar, Elvis added the beat and chord progressions of the rhythm and blues being played in Memphis. He incorporated elements from country and western songs, injecting them with a high-powered aggressiveness that remains the signature of all rock. In some circles, his music became known as country rock or rockabilly.

In the opinion of rock historian Charlie Gillett, Elvis reached his peak as an artist in the early years when his songs delivered the passionate themes of the country-and-western genre—usually broken romance or condemnation of infidelity—as well as rock’s liberation of the spirit. His first hit song was titled, characteristically enough, “Heartbreak Hotel,” which achieves near poetry in its metaphors, such as the hotel of that name located on Lonely Street.

In Gillett’s opinion, however, becoming a superstar so quickly was the worst thing that could have happened to Elvis. He signed a multimillion dollar contract with RCA, which insisted on putting a high-powered slick gloss on the music. The singer’s former emotional directness became lost against a background of “vocal groups, heavily electrified guitars, and drums . . . more theatrical and self-conscious as he sought to combine excitement and emotion, formerly generated without any evident forethought”9—in other words, with honest spontaneity. Other singers and combos followed this trend, and the simple term rock was given to a variety of styles, many with the ear-splitting amplification of Presley’s later work.

The Beatles

By the early 1960s, rock ’n’ roll had become popular throughout the Western world and would soon spread even further. Now there is scarcely a corner of the globe where it cannot be heard. In England, particularly, it beckoned to a younger generation that was tired of the rigid mores and traditions of that country. They liked what they were hearing from the other side of the Atlantic. Yet what music historians consider rock’s most important band did not emerge from the United States, where the genre was born, but in the economically depressed northern English port of Liverpool. In 1964, the Beatles made an indelible mark on American consciousness the moment they were introduced on the Sunday night TV variety show, The Ed Sullivan Show, which had showcased Elvis Presley eight years earlier. The Beatles were whimsically named and immaculately well-groomed, their songs were bouncy and exuberant, and as performers they were disciplined. Their harmonies were complex and increasingly sophisticated (admired by no less an expert than the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein), but the clarity of the lyrics made it seem as though they were singing with one voice. That Sunday night performance is considered by many as the greatest debut of any singers, anywhere.

Like their predecessor Elvis, and before him Frank Sinatra, the Beatles were mobbed wherever they went. Sales of their records hit the stratosphere. Parents shook their heads in despair over what they saw as the decline not only of music, but of an entire generation. John, Paul, George, and Ringo, with their unfamiliar new style and a repertoire destined to take its place among the all-time classics, appealed almost uncontrollably to a rising subculture of “hippies,” young people who championed freedom from all social and moral restraints. In all of its phases since the 1950s, rock has retained its revolutionary social battle cry, becoming the ultimate Dionysian music of our time.

The Beatles, charming and witty, might have attained enormous popularity even if their music had been second-rate, but of course it was not. Paul McCartney, John Lennon, and George Harrison created songs of such originality and beauty that many—songs like “Yesterday,” “Eleanor Rigby,” “A Day in the Life,” “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” and “Let It Be,” for example—rank among the best popular songs in Western culture. And the album St. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is generally considered one of the two greatest rock albums ever made, along with Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

Both Lennon, whose life was cut short in 1980 by a deranged fan’s bullet, and George Harrison, who played guitar for the group and who died in 2001, were strongly influenced by the culture and religion of India. All four Beatles briefly studied meditation at an ashram. Harrison studied the sitar with Ravi Shankar, a master Indian musician. His own songs, less well-known than those of Lennon and McCartney, are deeply felt poems set to very mystical, spiritual musical sounds. Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney, both now in their early 70s, continue to perform.

The Rolling Stones

If the Beatles were the good boys of rock, the Rolling Stones, another British group that emerged in the 1960s, were the bad boys. The Stones didn’t dress alike; they didn’t cut their hair alike; and they made no effort to be amusing or charming. If parents worried about the Beatles, they were driven to distraction by the Stones, whose lead singer, Mick Jagger, wagged his tongue and his hips lasciviously and sang songs with titles like “Sympathy for the Devil,” and whose lead guitarist, Keith Richard, flaunted his drug habit. But like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones produced a series of extraordinary records and a long list of rock classics—“(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” “Gimme Shelter,” and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” among them. The Stones songs moved rock almost single-handedly from something fairly lighthearted to something densely dangerous. Rolling Stone magazine says this about “Gimme Shelter”: “Like nothing else in rock & roll, the song embodies the physical experience of living through a tumultuous historical moment. It’s the Stones’ perfect storm: the ultimate Sixties eulogy and rock’s greatest bad-trip anthem, with the gathering power of soul music and a chaotic drive to beat any punk rock.”10 And in the words of rock singer, critic, and poet Patti Smith:

By 1967 they [the Stones] all but eliminated the word guilt from our vocabulary . . . I never considered the Stones drug music . . . they were the drug itself . . . thru demon genius they hit that chord . . . as primitive as a western man could stand. Find the beat and you dance all night.11

The Rolling Stones continue to tour, with three of their original line-up—Jagger, Richards, and drummer Charlie Watts, all now over 70—still playing. Their concerts—multimedia events in huge stadiums—continue to sell out quickly. They may not have invented the big-time rock concert, but they have certainly perpetuated the art, filling venues such as Yankee Stadium and the Los Angeles Coliseum. Enthusiastic fans are known to camp out days in advance in order to buy tickets, and that ritual continues undiminished. The rock concert begins where polite society left off. It cuts through the many layers of so-called civilized behavior that evolved to put a lid on untrammeled expressions of feeling, and it demands from the audience shouting, stamping, gyrating on their feet with cries of ecstasy—a return to the pleasures of the sheer act of living, unverbalized, unanalyzed, uncensored.

Woodstock and Altamont

By the mid-1960s, promoters began to see the appeal of bringing multiple bands together for huge outdoor concerts, far larger than the theater and music hall concerts where rock and roll bands had been performing. The most famous rock concert ever held took place in a small village near Woodstock, New York, in August 1969, when performers ranging from Joan Baez to Janis Joplin, from the Grateful Dead to Jimi Hendrix gathered for a three-day celebration of love and freedom, and to protest the war in Vietnam. There were 32 acts in all, and about 400,000 young people filling the meadow in front of the stage.

The crowds were so unexpectedly huge—promoters had anticipated about 50,000, and eventually, unable to handle the crush, simply let everyone in for free—that the New York State Thruway, the main highway leading north from New York City, had to be shut down. Equally unexpected was the weather: Monsoon rains cascaded down, and thousands of screaming fans played in the mud, oblivious to the hardships and indignities they were enduring. The performances were memorable, but even more historic was the collective experience, which made a powerful statement that war as a means of settling human problems was not an acceptable expression of humanity.

Local residents, horrified by what was happening to their once pleasant neighborhood, denounced the concert as a blight on American history. In all probability, however, the annual rites in honor of Dionysus, which gave birth to the great era of Greek tragedy, also got out of hand. Dionysian revelry and human creativity are often closely paired.

If Woodstock was the high point of collective rock culture, a free concert the following December at Altamont Speedway in northern California may have been the low point. Headlined by (who else?) the Rolling Stones, Altamont took the collective joy of Woodstock and turned it to the dark side. Four people died—three in accidents, one stabbed to death by a member of the Hell’s Angels, who had been hired as “security.” The Grateful Dead, the original organizers of the concert, refused to play because the level of violence among the fans was so high. So in the space of six months, the massive “tribal gatherings” of rock and roll came and went. Today, festivals such as South by Southwest (known as SXSW in Austin, TX) and Coachella (in Indio, CA) are well-organized, well-disciplined—and cost hundreds of dollars to attend.

Although critics have long bemoaned the “death of rock and roll,” the changes that its emergence wrought on the music scene in this country and the world are undeniable. The pulsating beat of rock has wound its way through any number of incarnations—disco, emo, punk, club and house music—but it does survive. Almost every country has given birth to a rock group of varying importance. Many are proponents of progressive rock, which includes an endless variety of experimental genres and subgenres. They tend to attract smaller legions of devoted fans and are glad they don’t have to play the kind of music demanded by a mass market, thus freeing themselves to go in many new directions.

Hip-Hop and Rap

The broad term 

hip-hop

 defines an entire way of being (as rock really doesn’t), and it has differing musical expressions as integral components. As one hip-hop critic points out, it “encompasses rap, baggy clothing, break-dancing, graffiti, vocabulary, and a general life style.” The latter can be described as freewheeling and centered on the rights of individuals to declare their identity in any way they choose.

Rap

, a major subgenre of hip-hop culture, is half-sung, half-spoken music with a pronounced and steady beat supporting rapid-fire rhyming words performed by singers with great verbal dexterity and extensive vocabularies. The subject matter is frequently social protest, but it can also range from philosophical cynicism about life to frank descriptions of sexual encounters. Rap enthusiasts insist that much of the material is sheer poetry.

Rap had its origins in the urban setting of the Bronx in the late 1970s with toasts, dub talk, and improvisational poetry delivered over music at weddings, proms, and other celebrations. Reminiscent of the call-and-response characteristic of the plantation songs, it would begin with a DJ, band leader, or master-of-ceremonies shouting in rhythm something like “Wave your hands in the air/ And if you got on clean underwear / Shout ‘Oh yeah!’” The excited crowd would then scream “Oh yeah!” The first broadly successful rap album, Rapper’s Delight performed by the Sugarhill Gang, appeared in 1979.

Some of rap’s exponents have been called folk poets, like Lonnie Rashid Lynn (b. 1972), better known as Common (previously, Common Sense). His debut album Can I Borrow a Dollar? won him an almost instant cult following, and in the late 1990s he went mainstream. In 2003 he won a Grammy for his song “Love of My Life (An Ode to Hip-Hop),” and in 2006 was awarded a second Grammy for “Southside,” a rap song performed with Kanye West. He has performed all over the world and, to the dismay of many conservatives, was invited to perform at the Obama White House.

Rap has also been criticized for glorifying violence and drugs and expressing intolerance toward women and gays—for not being “nice” or politically correct. Defenders counter that an artist is an artist, and that the history of the humanities is filled with examples of works that are not “nice,” or were created by people who cannot be characterized as “nice,” but are compelling and classic (and sometimes even masterpieces) nonetheless. They defend rap by pointing out that it does not exist to promote antisocial values, but instead honestly depicts the realities of urban life.

At its best, as in the work of Common, Jay Z, Eminem, and Kanye West, rap represents a virtuoso use of language and an incredibly spontaneous kind of poetry, an exercise in exciting creativity.

What We Listen to Today

The world of popular music has changed dramatically over the past ten years, with the advent of iPods and streaming. Albums, which used to sell millions of copies, are now fortunate to sell a few hundred thousand. Hot artists come and go almost daily—Amy Winehouse to Adele to Ariana Grande. Singers such as Taylor Swift and Beyoncé wield astonishing control over their creative output and their financial lives, control that early artists such as Little Richard, Chuck Berry and even Elvis Presley never came close to achieving. Hip-hop and rap musicians have become, in many ways, the aristocracy of our celebrity culture. Sean Combs (variously known as Puff Daddy and P Diddy), Jay Z, and Kanye West all have clothing lines, record labels, and various other corporate interests. What they do makes the front pages—and the business pages—of major newspapers. Jay Z and his wife Beyoncé (see 

Figure 6.11

), are arguably the number one “power couple” in our country, and perhaps the world, today.

Figure 6.11

Jay Z (Shawn Carter) and his wife, the singer Beyoncé Knowles, 2015

Like Kanye West and his wife Kim Kardashian, Jay Z and Beyoncé are cultural icons, not simply performers. Does the celebrity culture we now live in influence the way you listen to music? In what ways?

Credit: Epa European Pressphoto Agency b.v./Alamy

Is the music better now? Well, the range is wider in popular music than it has been in many years. There is room now for rappers and gentle singer-songwriters such as Ed Sheeran, belters like Adele, and calculating survivors such as Madonna. Lady Gaga moves easily back and forth between generational anthems like “Born This Way” and duets with the octogenarian crooner Tony Bennett. Some argue that the soul of popular music has been buried by corporatization. Do you agree?

Contemporary World Music

The diverse contemporary musical scene includes contributions from many other cultures, and we must always remember that one of the goals of humanities study is to raise our awareness that there are alternative modes of human creativity. A Chinese composer may be experimenting with new scales and new sounds on a synthesizer; a Cambodian equivalent of Lady Gaga may be recording her first CD with an equally crowd-pleasing verve but singing music that is not based on notes familiar to the West; an Islamic pop singer may be thrilling a café audience with a love song in a plaintive vibrato to the accompaniment of an instrument that is akin to but not the same as a mandolin or guitar; a vocal group in Ghana may be swaying as they chant an updated version of a much older song of welcome. Many non-Western sounds can be heard on the Internet, and, because of today’s rapid-fire communication, they will influence tomorrow’s musical styles in both hemispheres.

In China, popular music is no longer limited to the marches and patriotic songs approved by the Communist government before it opened its doors to the outside world. Some Western influences were there during the early twentieth century, but some musical forms, including rock, were judged to be a threat to the government because they encourage freedom of expression and were banned. A singer/composer named Cui Jian emerged during the student demonstrations of 1989, exuberantly singing daring lyrics denouncing government tyranny. Defecting to the West, where he found a strong welcome, he performed before thousands in a 1999 Central Park concert. Almost as popular in both Asia and the West is the Tang Dynasty, a Beijing rock band that blends the sounds of the Asian five-note scale with the more familiar diatonic, or seven-note, Western scale.

Traditional Chinese music is still prevalent, making liberal use of percussion, especially drums, tympani, gongs, cymbals, bells, xylophones, and triangles. String sections include the two-stringed violin, the dulcimer, the lute, and the harp. The woodwind section comprises flutes, pipes, and Chinese trumpets, which look but do not sound like oboes.

Islam has supported a variety of musical forms, including jazz. The highest selling Arab albums come from an Algerian musician named Khaled, whose output has gone diamond, platinum, and gold. In 2009, he was a featured performer at the Montreal Jazz Festival. In 2010, he performed his piece “Didi” at the World Cup opening ceremony in South Africa. Khaled has had to move to Paris because Islamic fundamentalists objected to his portrayal of women both dancing and dressed provocatively.

An afternoon can be well-spent in exploring these new sounds, now abundantly available online.

There is not space enough here to discuss all of the strange and wondrous new sounds that are being produced all over the world by both men and women. Our goal in this chapter has been to suggest how your life can be infinitely enriched if you are willing to listen—listen to the great classics of the past and the perhaps great-one-day experiments of the present. Don’t forget that Beethoven was often considered too “modern” by some of his contemporaries. But with all the sound for you to hear, don’t forget to spend a little time with your silences.

A Critical Focus: Exploring Claude Debussy’s “Clair de Lune”

 Listen to the Audio

Claude Debussy (1862–1918), a French composer, created harmonies that were regarded as revolutionary in his day and that have been largely influential on modern-day composers. His best-known composition, “Clair de Lune,” is the third movement of his Suite bergamasque, a piano piece published in 1905. The title “Clair de Lune” means “moonlight” and was taken from a poem by Paul Verlaine, a French poet of the Symbolist movement.

 Listen to the Track

Debussy: Clair de Lune

· Which of the basic elements of music, described in the first section of this chapter, can you identify in this piece? Which ones seem most important to your listening experience?

· Would you describe “Clair de Lune” as Apollonian or Dionysian? How would you characterize these terms as applied to music?

· Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” belongs to a musical school known as Impressionism. How would you describe the similarities and differences between Impressionism as an artistic movement and as a movement in music?

Looking Back

In this chapter,

· we identified and discussed the basic elements of music,

· we explored the differences among classical forms, including the fugue, the symphony, and the art song, and discussed the ways in which the form influences our experience of the music, and

· we offered a brief history of popular music in the United States, including folk music, spirituals and gospel, ragtime and jazz, blues, rock and roll, and hip-hop.

Key Term Flashcards