There was once an old man who said: “I have lived to see the post-chaise give way to the locomotive but I cannot and will not accept the automobile!” What would he have said to the aeroplane? But this old man was not different from the people today, who seem unable to accept the new music and take it as a personal affront when they must listen to it. Like the automobile and the aeroplane, however, it is here, and is a part of the 20th century!
Nothing that lives stands still; there must be constant change and growth, or decay sets in. This is as true of music as it is of ourselves and the things around us. We have watched this process of change in music from prehistoric man to the 20th century; we have seen certain periods bursting with new ideas, works and forms; we have seen individuals tower above their fellows, marking epochs to which their names have become attached, like the Palestrinian era, the Bach era, and the Wagner period; and we are living in a moment of new ideas, works and forms, on which we cannot pass final judgment. Time alone must be the judge!
There is no point at which a period ends and a new one begins, for they overlap. We saw harmony grow out of polyphony; we saw the romantic Beethoven rise out of the classic Beethoven; in the romantic Chopin, we found the germs of impressionism (for definition, see page [483]), and in Debussy’s impressionism, we see the breaking away from traditions into a new world of sound.
Polyform Music
When we begin our music lessons, we are taught the musical alphabet,—the major scale, and then, the minor and the chromatic. So accustomed are we to these scales that we forget there was a time when they did not exist, and that new ones may be added, for they are not fixed for all time. There have been, as you know, the no-scale time, the pentatonic scale, the Greek modes, the Ecclesiastical or Church modes, the diatonic (major and minor) scale, the chromatic scale and the so-called whole-tone scale of Debussy. Beethoven and all the writers of the classic period used the diatonic scales which gave their works a definite tonality, that is, a home tone to which all the tones try to return. If, for example, you sing Yankee Doodle and stop before the last note, you feel very uncomfortable, because you have not sounded the home tone towards which all the tones are reaching. To the diatonic modes, Chopin and Wagner added a frequent use of the chromatic scale, which enriched music. In addition to diatonic and chromatic harmony, along came Debussy with his melodies in whole steps, and he also went back to the old Greek modes, using them in new and unexpected ways. Today we have all the past to draw upon and the composers are quick to take advantage of their rich inheritance and to add innovations.
In the 20th century the influences have come from Paris and Vienna,—Debussy and Schoenberg,—and later Stravinsky, the Russian. From the French has come a style of writing called polytonality, and from Vienna has come atonality. Don’t be afraid of these names for they are easily explained!
Courtesy of “Musical America.”
Arnold Schoenberg (Austrian).
Igor Stravinsky (Russian).