Written for dancer Martha Graham About an engaged 19th-century Pennsylvania couple finishing building their farmhouse Scored for chamber ensemble 13 instruments Called Ballet for Martha, was given the unofficial name Appalachian Spring by her Won Pulitzer Prize for music Diatonic melodies and harmonies Transparent textures Recognizable allusions to familiar music, folk songs Dissonance, counterpoint, motivic unity Juxtaposed blocks of sound Evokes country fiddling, dancing, singing in rural America Shifting meters, offbeat accents, sudden changes of texture Stravinsky influence Diatonic melodies and harmonies, syncopation, guitarlike chords American folk music Pandiatonicism - Vertically combine consonant and dissonant notes of the diatonic scale 4th and 5th leaps, wide spacing of chords Sparsely populated landscape Superimposed tonic and dominant triads William Grant Still (1895-1978) o Afro-American Symphony, No. 1: First movement (1930) First symphony by black composer to be performed by major orchestra One of the most prolific composers of his era The Dean of African-American composers Traditional 4 movements, sonata-form/slow/scherzo/fast finale Longings; Sorrows; Humor; Aspirations Not programmatic, but character sketches of poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar (wrote about Southern black life) Blues melody and harmonic progression, 12-bar-blues Characteristic features of African-American music Syncopations in both melody and accompaniment Call-and-response between short phrases of melody Lowered 3rd, 5th, 7th scale degrees, blue notes Jazz band sounds, Harmon mutes, bass drum/cymbals Form typical of European symphonies, but surprising key changes
Pentatonic contours and melancholy air of spirituals
Swing rhythms written out rather than implied Integrated string sounds of symphonic orchestra with distinctive wind and brass sounds of jazz orchestra Defined a style for film and popular music Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) o West Side Story, Act I, No. 8, Cool (1957) Modern setting of Romeo and Juliet Rival teen gangs in Manhattans west side, Sharks vs. Jets Nominated for 5 Tony Awards, won one Addressed race, ethnicity, and cultural assimilation Musics function throughout show is to suggest emotional states of gangs and characters Styles and gestures from jazz, Latin music, modernist classical music Disjointed, angular style of bebop Prominent tritones, jazz timbre instruments Bebop and cool jazz symbolize conflict Jets dance in modern jazz style, expresses energy and anticipates violence to come Fugue on subject full of half-steps and large leaps, all 12 chromatic notes Entrances at minor 3rd intervals avoid normal tonal associations of fugue Fugue subjects developed and transformed, interweaved Vincent Persichetti (1915-1987) o Symphony for Band, No. 6, Op. 69: First movement (1956) Standard in concert band repertoire Typical 4-movement symphony form Contributed to effort to establish permanent classical rep for wind ensembles Well suited, orchestrated for band medium, lots of different instruments Wide variety of timbres in constantly changing combinations Thematic material shared among every section Heavy focus on percussion, lots of instruments Rapid exchanges between percussionists, difficult parts Ambiguous tonal center, chromaticism and rapidly moving harmonies Theme fragmented and developed, open fifths and rising tenths New harmonic environments, syncopated, leaping melody
Jazzy character contrasts with scalar, pastoral first theme
Short recap, transformation and augmentation of themes No traditional tonal harmony, but still traditional elements Mostly diatonic themes, chords based on 3rds and 5ths Changes of pitch collection, shades of dissonance create harmonic motion, tension, resolution Musical language typical of Persichetti