Complexity. Listening pleasure. Xiao Yun Chang MIT 21M.011 Essay 3 December

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1 Xiao Yun MIT 21M.011 Essay 3 December Complexity Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring, Part I, first half Schoenberg, Pierrot Lunaire, Songs 18 and 21 Webern, Symphony, Opus 21, Movement 2 Berg, Wozzeck, Act III, Scene 4 to the end Ives, Country Band March Debussy, Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun Crawford, Piano Prelude No. 6 Bartók, Concerto for Orchestra, IV: Int. Intermezzo Copland, Appalachian Spring, excerpts Mahler, The Song of the Earth, III: Of Youth Joplin, Maple Leaf Rag Orff, Carmina burana, Opening: O fortuna Ravel, Don Quixote to Dulcinea, Songs 1 and 3 Listening pleasure Schoenberg Pierrot Lunaire, Songs 18 and 21 Berg, Wozzeck, Act III, Scene 4 to the end Orff, Carmina burana, Opening: O fortuna Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring, Part I, first half Debussy, Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun Bartók, Concerto for Orchestra, IV: Int. Intermezzo Mahler, The Song of the Earth, III: Of Youth Crawford, Piano Prelude No. 6 Copland, Appalachian Spring, excerpts Webern, Symphony, Opus 21, Movement 2 Ives, Country Band March Joplin, Maple Leaf Rag Ravel, Don Quixote to Dulcinea, Songs 1 and 3

2 Page 2 Beyond the Perceivable As western music evolves in time, it has departed from the very original purpose of intoning sacred texts and become a form of art with a great variety of expressions. While some composers still aim to impress or entertain the audience, many modern composers move beyond into the exploration of new forms and principles of combining notes and experimentation of sound effects. The conundrum of judging modern music arises when the abstractness of these compositions deviates from the pleasure to the ear, and this essay will focus on the multidimensional characteristics of modern music. By considering the two rankings according to complexity and listening pleasure, this essay will illustrate how the two dimensions capture some traits of modern music and fail to address others. The first ranking of complexity is a measure of the amount of efforts one has to pay in the listening process in order to comprehend the pieces. A higher ranking suggests a greater deviance from the standards of easy listening simple rhythms, clear tonality, and purposeful forms. Giving hints of where the music possibly leads to, music with these features allows the audience to engage in prediction and enjoy the beauty presented under certain modes. On the contrary, the rule-breaking pieces starting from the late-romantic era might leave the audience in uncertainty. Among the breakable rules, tonality is the most challenged. Tonality to a classical piece is as the root to a tree, which centers on the root and develops on that firm basis; when the concept of tonality is confronted, it also shakes the way of organizing a piece music. The first challenge was posed by the post-romantic and impressionist composers, whose pieces are characterized by chromaticism, new scales such as pentatonic (as in Of Youth ) and whole-tone scales, extended chords and parallel motions,

3 Page 3 all of which contradict the conventional ways leading tone does not have to resolve, major sevenths (measure 11 of Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun ) and tritones (measure 4 of Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun ) amplify dissonance, and even the tonic key is obscure. In the twentieth century, dissonance was emancipated from the obligation to resolve to consonance (F&M 402) by the abandonment of single tonality. The Rite of Spring illustrates this new idea: written in a key signature for C major or A minor, the Introduction starts with a series of notes (C B G E A ) totally out of the scale and never resolves to a consonant C major or A minor chord. When consonance is no more the absolute purpose of harmonic progression, dissonance becomes the subject of interest as composers needed new harmonic principles, one of which is the atonal twelve-tone method, giving the twelve tones of the chromatic scale equal importance (F&M 402). An exemplar of the twelve-tone method, Schoenberg s Pierrot Lunaire depicts a frenzied character with dissonant harmony played by the instruments and a groaning-like vocal line sung in Sprechstimme. Each note with a fleeting pitched moment followed by prolongation out of tune, Sprechstimme aggravates the eeriness of the piece. One of Schoenberg s students, Berg also employs Sprechstimme in his opera Wozzeck to portrait a tragedy, while another student of Schoenberg, Webern, strives for complete control of the twelve tones the principle of total serialism. His Symphony is in theme-variation form strictly based on a single tone row and canon and ostinato techniques (F&M 424) for contrapuntal lines an accidental similarity with Bach! Sounding like a mess, however, the piece might not be aesthetically appealing to the audience as it is merely an exploration of musical principle which remains underappreciated.

4 Page 4 The internal philosophical value of a piece does not necessarily equal the external impressiveness. It reveals the weakness of ranking these pieces by complexity: when the complexity comes from perplexed principles unrelated to the outward expressiveness, a piece might be ranked high without sounding more attractive than the rest. Ives Country Band March is a representative example of this point. This piece is certainly complex with its use of polyrhythm and polytonality in reproducing the intersecting sound effect of several marching bands, but it is questionable whether the sound effect is any different from actually having several bands randomly perform on stage. It is crucial to understand that the aural pleasure might not be associated with intellectual pleasure. Although ranking by listening pleasure complements the weakness addressed above, it tends to be easily influenced by subjectivity and underestimate the value of progressive musical notions. A piece that evokes the desire to know fully about the piece or the composer is likely to contain nontraditional yet comprehensible elements that create pleasure. Webern s Symphony is ranked near the bottom because its lack of comprehensible, pleasant aspect. Orff s Carmina burana fits in this definition with its nontraditional secular text sung by a large choral group in harmony evoking archaic music (F&M 438); the earthy, satirical (F&M 436) themes along with the medieval-like music is almost a ridicule of early music. Bartók s Concerto for Orchestra, IV: Int. Intermezzo also carries a sense of derision when the popular tune of Shostakovich s Symphony No. 7 abruptly appears in the middle of the piece; it also interrupts the rondo form, a common form seen in classical music. Maple Leaf Rag, music of a very popular genre, is ranked around the bottom of this ranking, and one shall not find it surprising. The fact that rag appears frequently in the

5 Page 5 contemporary media makes it less of a trigger of curiosity. However, were the syncopated rhythm not pleasant to the ear, rag would not have been beloved by the general public. The ranking fails to justify the significance of changes that make popular music popular, as these changes are taken for granted by subjectivity. To be able to appreciate these changes, one must understand the rules broken by the changes, tracing back to the older conventions, in this case, the typical emphasis on down beats. The two rankings have displayed some value judgments of modern western music, yet each of them is not sufficient to fully determine the intrinsic values of the pieces because music has gone beyond mere entertainment to a highly abstract form of art that involves intellectual, philosophical reflections. The enjoyment of such music requires an appreciation for the pursuit of deeper formal issues hidden behind external expressions.

6 Page 6 Bibliographies Kristine Forney and Joseph Machilis. The Enjoyment of Music. Eleventh Edition. New York: Norton, 2011.