Area of Study 2 Schoenberg:

‘Peripetie’ from

Five Orchestral Pieces

Expressionism and Serialism

Expressionism1900’s

This is a style developed in the early 20th Century as a reaction to the late Romantic era and composers such as Brahms and Wagner. Both composers were moving further away from the more classical ways of writing music, by using more chromatics (#’s & b’s) and less cadences which signify a key leading to the breakdown of tonality toward the turn of the century. This was making the music more emotional, and full of suspense.

Composers therefore wanted to react against the direction Wagner, Debussy et al had taken their music. Composer therefore went one way or another. Revisiting classical styles, forms and structures from before the breakdown of tonality or pushing forwards into atonal music. Music developed quickly through the 20th Century, and was largely based on exploration and experimentation, leading to new trends, techniques and soundsThe Expressionist movement was strongest in Germany at the end of the 1st World War. There was a strong feeling of disillusionment and discontent regarding living conditions and restrictions imposed on the country. Artist, writers and composers wanted to express their emotions through their art form as intensely as possible. Rather than trying to create life-like and realistic paintings, Expressionist artists would use unnatural colours and distortion to portray their emotions. Expressionism is often dark and moody but it can also communicate feelings of happiness and joy. Atonal music therefore allowed them to create dark intense feelings through music.

KEY FEATURES Expressionist Music is Atonal – meaning not using the original Key signatures and chords,

making each of the 12 semitones equally important Each piece of Music usually only expresses one very intense emotion The pitch range of instruments is used fully, using the difference in sounds and colours

that can be heard. Timbre is as important as melody – the sound of the instrument contributes as much as

pitch Extremes in dynamics area very common, as with the extremes of having minimum

instruments playing to the full ensemble playing loudly Pieces are generally quite short, it is difficult to write a long piece of music without the

template or key structure, or recognizable themes as heard in ‘traditional’ music

Influential figuresArnold Schoenberg was an extremely influential figure in expressionism, experimenting with new ways of expressing themselves, producing atonal music. He had two pupils, Alban Berg and Anton Webern. The three of them became known as the ‘Second Viennese School’. They were known for using the ‘Twelve Tone Technique’, which later developed into Serialism.

Listen out for, Clashing / dissonant harmonies “jumping” from instrument to another instrument Frenzied, disjointed melodies including wild leaps and violent explosive contrasts with

instruments being played to the extremes of their ranges.

Most of this music will not have recognizable phrases as like ternary form or Baroque style pieces

Large orchestras Atonal – music in no particular key Complex rhythms

Famous composersStravinsky, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern

Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh

‘Peripetie’ is the fourth of Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces. The title means ‘A sudden change’. Listen to the music and, using the following terms: rhythm; metre; tonality; melody, describe how Schoenberg creates the feeling of sudden changes.________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

What do you think of this style of music?________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Schoenberg - 1874-1951

• Born in Vienna, Austria • Founded the Second Viennese School – a group of composers who wrote Expressionist

music• Taught Berg & Webern.

• Was a Jew (but adopted Protestantism for a few years)• His music was condemned by the Nazis as being decadent

• He started writing atonal music when his wife left him for his friend an artist. • Developed a technique known as serialism or twelve tone system

Five Orchestral Pieces: Peripetie (1909)

Written in: 1908-9 for Richard Strauss, also a 20th Century composer, who didn’t like it! It was written in the style of Expressionism and is a set of atonal pieces for full orchestra. They are not connected to each other through any themes.

Stylistic features Large orchestra – although used sparingly Wide ranging dynamics / detailed dynamics Wide pitch ranges of all instruments – pitches and harmony used for effect Atonal – Not in a key Melodic material moves quickly from instrument to instrument Frequent use of techniques / devices, altering the basic timbre – e.g. pizzicato, mute etc Complex rhythms No traditional harmonic relationship

Homework:Write a paragraph of information about these orchestral pieces. Your work must be word processed and include details about when and where it was first played; the history behind the title of the individual pieces and why Schoenberg found it difficult to get this work performed.

PERFORMANCE MARKINGS

Look at the following signs/abbreviations. List one place where you can find them in the score and write down what they mean:

Definition Bar

a2 or a3

divisi

pizz

arco

bell up

1 solo

tutti

+

INSTRUMENTATION

This work is written for a very large orchestra of about 90 players; however there are very few places in which the orchestra plays together. Schoenberg changes the instrumentation rapidly throughout creating many contrasts in timbre. He felt that the combination of instrumental sounds, or ‘tone colour’ was just as important as the melody and invented the term klangfarbenmelodie which means tone-colour melody.

The instruments play at extreme their extreme ranges in terms of pitch. Look at bar 2, what do you notice about the double bass part? ________________________________________________________________Now look at the final 2 bars and you will notice that the instruments playing here are all playing at opposing pitches and at their most extreme ranges.

How does Schoenberg create different timbres on the cymbal? __________________________________________________________________________

Describe the instruments below:

Piccolo __________________________________________________________________________

Cor anglais __________________________________________________________________________

Bass clarinet _________________________________________________________________________

Contrabassoon __________________________________________________________________________

Tam-tam __________________________________________________________________________

STRUCTUREThis piece could very loosely be described as a Rondo, however not a traditional Rondo due to the lack of tonality and changes of rhythm. Therefore it is referred to as “free rondo”. The whole piece is built on the idea of using hexachords and is split into 5 sections.

Section 1 (A)Bars 1 - 18

Section 2 (B)Bars 19 - 34

Section 3 (A1)Bars 35 - 43

Section 4 (C)Bars 44 - 58

Section 5 (A1)Bars 59 - 66

All main items or motifs are introduced here

New ideas are combined with original motifs

All main ideas return in reverse order

More new ideas are combined with original ideas

Earlier motifs lead into a loud climax.

TONALITY AND HARMONY

The piece is atonal and uses a lot of dissonant harmony.The chords and melodies are often built from hexachords – a set of six pitches. This is one of the unifying features of ‘Peripetie’. We first hear them in the opening woodwind fanfare, if we write them in scale order you can see the intervals between the notes:

Note name C# D E F G# ASemitone interval 1 2 1 3 1

Now look at the sustained chord in the horn chord in bars 8-13, Schoenberg has transposed the first hexachord to a new pitch level. It still however creates the same type of dissonant chord.

A Bb C C# E F 1 2 1 3 1

He uses this same chord again in bars 37-39 in the horns.

Finally, look at the chord in the last two bars of the piece:

E F G Ab B C 1 2 1 3 1

It’s the hexachord again transposed to another pitch level! This happens throughout the piece though some of the hexachords have different sets of pitches.

MELODYDissonance – you will hear allot of dissonance in this piece, which generally appears when there is no key. It is where more than one note is played at the same time that do not sound pleasing together – e.g c and c sharp.The main idea of this piece is the Hexachord (see above), a Compliment is also used, which is the other 6 remaining pitches being put together. The hexachord is played and portrayed in many different ways – played one note after the other, all at the same time like a chord, or shared between instruments. It can also be transposed, Inverted played in Retrograde.Octave displacement, Klangfarbenmelodie and canon are also used.Write bar number where you can find each of these techniques.______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________There are seven different motifs that are short and fragmented. Write down the features of each of the motifs below including the following key words: disjunct; octave displacement; augmentation; triplets; sextuplet; chromatic movement.

Motif a ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Motif b ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Motif c______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Motif d ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Motif e ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Motif f ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Motif g ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

RHYTHM, METRE AND TEMPO

The metre changes between _________________________________________________.

The tempo is Sehr rasch, what does this mean? _________________________________________________________________________

The rhythms are very complex and include triplets, syncopation, demisemiquavers, sextpulets and dotted rhythms. He changes them very quickly and often layers the different rhythm patterns on top of each other to create a complex contrapuntal texture.

TEXTURE AND DYNAMICS

The texture changes constantly throughout this piece, so you cannot describe it as being a certain type, however it is often contrapuntal/polyphonic. There are times where the texture becomes more sparse and is monophonic. Can you find an example of this? _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Remember, Schoenberg uses allot of instruments, but very sparsely. When he uses allot of instruments, it is usually for dramatic effect and to create atmosphere.

To create the contrapuntal texture Schoenberg uses imitation. In the final section you will see an example of three different canons that are all heard at the same time.

A main feature of Expressionist music is the use of extreme contrasts in dynamics. There are more performance directions than ever. Schoenberg was obsessed with dynamics and such like, to get the balance to be perfect and the exact sound he envisaged.

Look through the score and write down the two most extreme dynamics that Schoenberg uses:

_________________________________________________________________________

Serialism in Modern Music

Kandinsky

Serialism was created in the 1920 – 1940’s by German composers who were trying to move away from the traditions of ‘classical’ music in terms of melody, harmony and tonality. Serialism allowed the composers to write longer pieces of music without “drifting towards a key”, by its very design all 12 notes had exactly equal importance, and therefore there was no chance of moving towards a key or tonal centre. Serialism abandoned the idea of major, minor or modal tonality altogether. Melodies and harmonies were created using a mathematical principle where each note of the chromatic scale is used democratically, in order.The composer arranges the 12 notes of the chromatic scale into a certain order known as the:The Prime Row (P): ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Prime is then changed to get 3 more versions:

The Retrograde (R):____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Inversion (I):______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Retrograde Inversion (RI):____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Having got the different rows, the composer can then transpose each row, 11 times, becoming P1 through P11, I1 through I11 etc.

Transpose each Row:____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The composer now has up to 48 different 12 note rows to choose from to create the melody, countermelody and harmony with.

He will use the elements of music and a number of melodic techniques to create mood and contrast in the piece.Canon, Imitation, Sequence, Pontillism, Verticalization.

Terms Definitions

Chromaticism

Atonal

Klangfarbenmelodie

Hexachord

Principal Voice

Secondary Voice

Serialism

Prime row

Inversion

Retrograde

Retrograde inversion

Enharmonic

Verticalisation

Dissonance

Canon

Pontillisism