Main Composers: Stravinsky, Shosti, Cage, Ives, Schoenberg, Bartok

Igor Stravinsky (1882 1971)

- Background information
o 1882 born near St. Petersburg Russia into music family he liked wagner
o studied composition/orchestration with Rimsky Korsakov
o 1909 Sergi Diaghilev commissioned Stravinsky to compose for is company
(firebird, petrushka, rite of spring)
o 1913 Paris premiere of Rite of Spring great riot
o 1914 exiled to Switzerland dealt with homesickness by using Russian
folklore for works
o 1930 symphony of psalms
o 1939 LA, USA
- Russian Period
o Rite of Spring
Adolescent girl chosen for sacrifice, dance till death
Primitivism deliberate representation of elemental, crude, uncultured,
and cast aside sophistication/styleish of modern life trained art
First scene: Danse de adolescents accented chords create
unpredictable pattern of stresses and destroy metric, yet it is still
strategically written in danceable format (8 measures).
Final dance Danse sacrale reduced meter by changing meters and
alternation of notes with rests
Dissonances based on scales from Russian classical music
(diatonic/octatonic collections
- Neoclassical Period
o 1919, Diaghilev asked Stravinsky to orchestrate pieces by 18th century
Pergolesi, this sparked neoclassicism
o he does not revive old styles but alluding to them in order to create
something new (unique combo of old and new)
o broad movement from 1910s 50s composers revived, imitated, revoked
styles of pre-romantic, he turned away from Russian folk-music and returned
to an earlier time for a source of inspiration
o Symphony of Psalms
For mixed chorus and orchestra, omits violins, violas, and clarinets
Includes perpetual motion, sequences, frequent ostinatos,
Neotonality composer finding new way of establishing single pitch as
tonal center
- Influence
o Popularized neoclassicism
o Elements had been nurtured in Russian music
o Introduced new traits (ie; change of meter, Steve Reich)

Bela Bartok (1881-1946)

- Background
o 1881 born in hungary to musical family, studied piano/composition
o 1904 heard woman singing folk song and decided to collect folk
music/dance.
o 1926 39 mikrokosmos 153 progressive piano pieces
o 1934 ethnomusicologist at academy of Sciences, prepped critical editions
of Hungarian folk music
included his top works Music for strings, percussion, celeste, high
point of career
- Stylistic Convention
o Synthesised Hungarian, Romanian, Slovak and Bulgarian peasant music with
elements of German and French classical tradition (rhythm, melodic)
o Felt Hungarian music was fresh start, free of romantic sentimentality
o Piano works (allegro barbaro) and other piano works introduced it as more of
a percussive einstrument
o Pieces after WWI pushed tonal ambiguities with Violin Sonatas
o From Hungarian music, he drew rhythmic complexity and irregular meters,
modal scales and mixed modes, resulting in complex counterpoints
- Example of Synthesis
o Many peacies in mikrokosmos demonstrate this, eg Staccato and Legatto
like Bach 2 part invention, use of inversion, cannon between hands, and
tonal structure resembles Bach, shape of melody is reminiscent of Hungarian
melodies built from a short phrase that rises and falls between the span of a
4th, repeats transposed up a 5th and returns to tonic