James Johnson 4/14/10 Modernism/Post Modernism

Modernism and Post Modernism

There are many definitions for Modernism and Post Modernism; its really difficult to pinpoint what my definition is. Some people see Modernism and Post modernism as part of the same movement, while others see them as two totally different items. Modernism, generally, is modern thought, character, or practice. More detailed, the term, in a non music way, describes both a set of cultural tendencies and an array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Modernism could really be about anything, whether it be music, art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and even daily life. To be more specific, modernism in music is characterized by a desire for or belief in progress and science, surrealism, anti-romanticism, political advocacy, general intellectualism, and/or a breaking with the past or common practice Modernism in music has many characteristics, and four of them stand out to me. First, the desire to make it new. No less than artists and writers, composers and musicians were fascinated by the possibilities of new, previously unheard of modes of expression, techniques, and new aesthetic as well as many cultural effects. The

James Johnson 4/14/10 Modernism/Post Modernism twelve tone system (or which can be also known as serialism) as an attempt to get beyond the earlier experiments with atonality is definitely worth exploring. Second, the infiltration of the popular. We dont have time in the lecture to listen to the music of Gustav Mahler but any understanding of modernism in music requires knowledge of his role in establishing a modern musical thought. Jazz, kitsch, music hall, operetta, folk songs, nursery rhymes each played a part in helping modernism reconstruct the traditional esoteric High Culture musical genres on new modern terms. Mahler, along with Paul Hindemith, and others, played a crucial role. Jazz had a great effect in modernism as well. If the Jazz of the twenties and thirties is inextricably associated with modernism we must remember too, that Jazz has its own modernism. The greatest music of the twentieth century comes out of the horn (the alto saxophone) of Charlie Parker. The use of recording technology was another characteristic; composers like Conlon Nancarrow and Gyrgy Ligeti both have produced extraordinary music by composing directly with the means of keeping time and recording or archiving composition. Ecstatic Waters by Steve Bryant is also a prime example of this characteristic. The last characteristic that stood out to me was the performance itself. The composer typically was the performance as an event. Daniel Albright proposed that Modernism is a testing of the limits of aesthetic construction. Besides eliminating the progress meta-narrative of the above definition, this definition is also capable of application to more the music, artists, and movements considered modernist.

James Johnson 4/14/10 Modernism/Post Modernism One of the other aesthetical boundaries tested was that of speech and singing, with composers such as Leos Janacek, Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Harry Partch suggesting greater attention to and use of speech in music. Berg wrote Wozzeck using Schoenberg's Spreichsteime, Janacek based his melodies and motifs upon rhythms and inflections of Hungarian speech, and Partch devised his first just intonation instruments partly so as to play the fine pitch inflections of speech. (Word IQ) Artists who were non-professional composers also wrote music with an emphasis on speech. Ezra Pound wrote a monophonically chanted opera; T.S. Eliot wrote "The Music of Poetry" (1942), while dada artist Kurt Schwitters wrote "speech-music" that proved highly influential on later sound poets such as Ursonate: Rondo (1921-32), based on a single word, fmsbwtzu, from a Raoul Hausmann poem. (Word IQ) Another boundry that was tested was visual art, Schoenberg was a painter, while dada and futurist visual artists such as Jean Cocteau and Luigi Russolo wrote music. Theodor Adorno accused Igor Stravinsky's music of being a "pseudomorphism of painting." Xenakis created the Philips Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World Fair after his earlier piece Metastasis. The ballet became more respected during the modernist period, and the development of the film industry created a market and outlet for film composers such as communist Hanns Eisler who borrowed Brecht and Weill's ideas of alienation from the theater. (Word IQ) Many things were tested in Modernism music, and slowly geared toward Post Modernism as time went on. "Postmodern" literally means 'after modernism'. These

James Johnson 4/14/10 Modernism/Post Modernism movements, modernism and postmodernism, are understood as cultural projects or as a set of perspectives. "Postmodernism" is used in critical theory to refer to a point of departure for works of literature, drama, architecture, cinema, journalism, and design, as well as in marketing and business and in the interpretation of law, culture, and religion in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Indeed, postmodernism can be understood as a reaction to modernism. Whereas modernism was often associated with identity, unity, authority, and certainty, postmodernism is often associated with difference, separation, textuality, and skepticism. (Word IQ) The common definition of Post Modernism is a term applied to a wide-ranging set of developments in critical theory, philosophy, architecture, art, literature, and culture, which are generally characterized as emerging from, in reaction to, or superseding, modernism. (Word IQ) As a musical condition, postmodern music is simply the state of music in post modernity. In this sense, postmodern music does not have any one particular style or characteristic, and is not necessarily postmodern in style. However, the music of post modernity is thought to differ from that of modernity in that whereas modern music was valued for its fundamentals and expression, postmodern music is valued as both a commodity and a symbolic indicator of identity. (Word IQ) Postmodern Classical music is not a musical style, but rather refers to music of the postmodern era. It bears the same relationship to postmodernist music that post modernity bears to postmodernism. Postmodernist music, on the other hand, shares

James Johnson 4/14/10 Modernism/Post Modernism characteristics with postmodernist artthat is, art that comes after and reacts against modernism. It favors eclecticism in musical form and musical genre, and often combines characteristics from different genres, or employs jump-cut sectionalization (such as blocks). It tends towards traditional harmonic while at the same time employing colorful orchestration and generally traditional serious forms. These forms usually include all the sonata-based forms such as symphony, as well as traditional choral forms in which language and the poetic is placed as the most important aspect of musical lyricism. (Word IQ) Minimalism is usually regarded as the first "post-modern" style. Minimalism was in part a reaction to the perceived inaccessibility and sterility of modernist classical music of such composers in the tradition of Arnold Schoenberg, Pierre Boulez, the early John Cage, and others among the avant-garde. The earliest minimalist composers included LaMonte Young, who had studied under Schoenberg and incorporated elements of serialism in his early minimalist works, and Terry Riley, who was largely influenced in his composition by the repetitiveness of Indian music and rock music. I believe that todays music of Rock and Pop could be considered as post modern music. Minimalism and related postmodern musical styles laid the groundwork for re-integrating popular and 'highbrow' music, which had been seperated since the rise of Modernism. By the 1970s, avant garde rock and pop musicians had become interested in electronic instrumentation, the use of Eastern rhythms and instruments (for example the use of the Sitar by the Beatles) and drone like, repetitive music, stylistically similar to Minimalism (such as the music of The Velvet Underground and Kraftwerk). Tape loops also prefigured the use of

James Johnson 4/14/10 Modernism/Post Modernism 'sampling' in Techno music and House music, and the 'scratching' of hip-hop. Moreover the 'ironic' 'cut and paste' approach of Stockhausen's later work (which used elements from both 'high' and 'low' art) was highly influential on many pop and rock composers in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s: see, for example, Frank Zappa or The Residents. (Word IQ) Phillip Glass was born in Baltimore, Maryland and studied the flute as a child at the Peabody Conservatory of Music. His music can be described as minimalist. He then went on to the Juilliard School of Music where he switched to mostly play the keyboard. After studying with Nadia Boulanger and working with Ravi Shankar in France, Glass traveled, mainly for religious reasons, to north India in 1966, where he came in contact with Tibetan refugees. He became a Buddhist, and met Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, in 1972. He is a strong supporter of the Tibetan cause. His distinctive style arose from his work with Ravi Shankar and his perception of rhythm in Indian music as being entirely additive. When he returned home he renounced all his earlier Milhaud-like and Coplandlike compositions and began writing austere pieces based on additive rhythms and a sense of time influenced by Samuel Beckett, whose work he encountered writing for experimental theater. Finding little sympathy from traditional performers and performance spaces, Glass formed the Philip Glass Ensemble and began performing mainly in art galleries, these galleries being the only real connection between musical minimalism and minimalist visual art. His works grew increasingly less austere and more complex, and in his consideration, not minimalist at all, culminating in Music in Twelve Parts. He then collaborated on the first opera of his trilogy Einstein on the Beach with Robert Wilson. The trilogy was continued with Satyagraha, themed on the early life of

James Johnson 4/14/10 Modernism/Post Modernism Mahatma Gandhi and his experiences in South Africa, and was completed by a powerful vocal and orchestral composition in Akhnaten, which is sung in Akkadian, Biblical Hebrew, Ancient Egyptian and the language of the audience. Glass's work for theater includes many compositions for the group Mabou Mines, which he co-founded in 1970. Since the 1990s, Glass has increasingly written for more conventional forces such as the string quartet and symphony orchestra. Glass orchestrated some of David Bowie's music from the albums Low and "Heroes" in his Low Symphony and "Heroes" Symphony, and he worked also with Aphex Twin. (Word IQ) Phillip Glasss Mad Rush, is the perfect example of minimalist music. The piano is the bare fundamentals of music and the music itself has two themes. Both themes just keep switching back and forth with slight variations to them each time they are presented. A truly beautiful and haunting piece.