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21M.262

Modern Music: 1900-1960

Undergraduate · Historical course

Fall 2006

This subject covers a specific branch of music history: Western concert music of first sixty years of the twentieth century. Although we will be listening to and studying many pieces (most of the highest caliber) the goal of the course is not solely to build up a repertory of works in our memory (though that is indeed a goal). We will be most concerned with larger questions of continuity and change in music. We will also consider questions of reception, or historiography - that is, the creation of history and our perception of it. Why do we perceive much of this music, so much closer in time to us than Mozart or Beethoven, to be so foreign? Is this music aloof and separate from popular music of the twentieth century or is there a real connection (perhaps hidden)? The subject will continue to follow some topics of central interest to music before 1960, such as serialism and aleatory, beyond the 1960 cutoff. Conversely a few topics which get their start just before 1960 but which flourish later (minimalism, computer music) will be covered only in 21M.263.

Readings

  • Morgan, Robert. Twentieth-Century Music . New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 1991. ISBN: 9780393952728.
    Required
  • This book is a strong and readable introduction to the period from about 1890-1945. The last fifteen years of our subject are covered less well (and does not cover music after 1960 much at all).
    Required
  • Textbook readings will be complemented by the writings of other people who were there in the 20th century.
    Required
  • This page lists the readings assigned in the textbook and auxiliary sources, plus a few lecture outlines.
    Listed reading
  • Textbook: Morgan, Robert. Twentieth-Century Music . New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 1991. ISBN: 9780393952728.
    Listed reading
  • Several other assigned readings are in [Strunk v.7]: Morgan, Robert, ed. Strunk’s Source Readings in Music History: 20th Century . Vol. 7. New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 1997. ISBN: 9780393967005.
    Listed reading
  • Composers and ideas which gained in importance before 1939 or at least 1945. Some works studied will be from as late as 1956 but in “older” styles.
    Listed reading
  • Antecedents and the State of Music, 1899. The “Long Nineteenth Century.” 1900-1960: The Big Questions.
    Listed reading
  • Stravinksy, Igor. “Comments,” and “Reviews of the First Performance.” In Music in the Western World . Edited by P. Weiss and R. Taruskin. New York, NY: Schirmer, 1984. ISBN: 9780028729008.
    Listed reading
  • ———. “Dissonance.” From Poetics of Music . Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1993. ISBN: 9780674678569. (Excerpts)
    Listed reading
  • Kelly, Thomas Forrest. “Igor Stravinsky, Le sacre du printemps: Thursday, May 29, 1913, 8:45pm.” In First Nights . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780300091052.
    Listed reading
  • 1. An easy introduction to analyzing Bartók: Bachmann, Tibor and Peter J. Bachmann. “An Analysis of Béla Bartók’s Music through Fibonaccian Numbers and the Golden Mean.” Musical Quarterly 65.1 (1979), pp. 72-78 (read 72-top of 77). Their work is based on Ernő Lendvai, Béla Bartók: an analysis of his music (London, Kahn and Averill, 1971).
    Listed reading
  • 2. For those wanting to go deeper, a heavier introduction: Leo Treitler, “Re: Harmonic Procedure in the ‘Fourth Quartet’ of Béla Bartók.” Journal of Music Theory 3.2 (Nov. 1959), pp. 292-98.
    Listed reading
  • Hindemith, Paul. “Atonality and Polytonality.” In The Craft of Musical Composition, trans. Arthur Mendel . New York, NY: Schott, 1984.
    Listed reading
  • Morgan. “Chapter III: The Atonal Revolution.” pp. 62-88.
    Listed reading
  • Webern, Anton, and Arnold Schoenberg. “The Limits of Compression.” In Music in the Western World . Edited by P. Weiss and R. Taruskin. New York, NY: Schirmer, 1984. ISBN: 9780028729008.
    Listed reading
  • Neoclassicism and Stravinsky (ca. 1920-1952)
    Listed reading
  • Griffiths, Paul. Igor Stravinsky, The Rake’s Progress . New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1982. ISBN: 9780521237468.
    Listed reading
  • Crawford, Richard. An Introduction to America’s Music . New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 2000. ISBN: 9780393974096. (Excerpts)
    Listed reading
  • ———. Selected Writings. In Music in the Western World . Edited by P. Weiss and R. Taruskin New York, NY: Schirmer, 1984, pp. 423-26. ISBN: 9780028729008.
    Listed reading
  • Thoreau, Henry David. Walden . Chapter 1, essentially the first 20 pages or so. (Excerpts) ( Download a copy of Walden from Project Gutenberg .) ↗
    Listed reading
  • Block, Geoffrey. Ives: Concord Sonata . New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780521498210.
    Listed reading
  • Tick, Judith. Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer’s Search for American Music . New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780195065091.
    Listed reading
  • Straus, Joseph. The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger . Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN: 9780521416467.
    Listed reading
  • Cowell, Henry. New Musical Resources . New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780521499743.
    Listed reading
  • Antheil, George. Bad Boy of Music . New York, NY: Samuel French, Inc. 1990. ISBN: 9780573606045.
    Listed reading
  • Schiff, David. Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue . New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780521559539.
    Listed reading
  • LEC #: 13 · TOPICS: Aaron Copland (Guest Lecture) · READINGS: Morgan. pp. 282-92.
    Reading assignment
  • Tommasini, Anthony. Virgil Thomson: composer on the aisle . New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 1998. ISBN: 9780393318586.
    Listed reading
  • Watson, Steven. Prepare for Saints: Gertrude Stein, Virgil Thomson, and the Mainstreaming of American Modernism. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995. ISBN: 9780520223530.
    Listed reading
  • Seymour, Claire. The Operas of Benjamin Britten . Woodbridge, UK: Boydell & Brewer, Ltd., 2004. ISBN: 9780851158655
    Listed reading
  • Felsenfeld, Daniel. Britten and Barber: Their Lives and their Music . Pompton Plains, NJ: Amadeus Press, 2005. ISBN: 9781574671087.
    Listed reading
  • Fay, Laurel. Shostakovich: A Life . New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN: 9780195182514. (Excerpts)
    Listed reading
  • Rischin, Rebecca. For the End of Time: The Story of the Messiaen Quartet . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780801441363.
    Listed reading
  • Pople, Anthony. Messiaen, Quatuor pour la fin du temps . New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780521585385.
    Listed reading
  • Babbitt, Milton. “Who Cares if You Listen?” (1958) In [Strunk v.7].
    Listed reading
  • Boulez, Pierre. “Schoenberg is Dead.” The Score 6 (1952): 18-22.
    Listed reading
  • Guerrero, Jeannie Ma. “ Serial Intervention in Nono’s Ilcanto Sospeso .” Music Theory Online 12.1 (February 2006). ↗
    Listed reading
  • Rosen, Charles. “The Performance of Contemporary Music: Carter’s Double Concerto.” In Critical Entertainments . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780674006843.
    Listed reading
  • Cage, John. Silence: Lectures and Writings . Middletown, CT: Wesleyan Unversity Press, 1961. ISBN: 9780819560285.
    Listed reading
  • Samuels, Robert, ed. and tr. The Boulez-Cage Correspondence . New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ISBN: 9780521401449.
    Listed reading
  • Cage, John. Notations . New York, NY: Something Else Press, 1973. ISBN: 9780685148648.
    Listed reading
  • Young, La Monte, and Jackson MacLow, eds. An Anthology of Chance Operations . 2nd ed. Bronx, NY: George Maciunas, 1970.
    Listed reading
  • Gann, Kyle. The music of Conlon Nancarrow . New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780521465342.
    Listed reading
Sources