Exploring Twentieth-Century Music: Tradition and Innovation

by Arnold Whittall

• ISBN13: 9780521016681
• ISBN10: 0521016681
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-03-24
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

In this wide-ranging book, Arnold Whittall considers a group of important composers of the twentieth century, including Debussy, Webern, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartók, Janfcek, Britten, Carter, Birtwistle, Andriessen and Adams. He moves skilfully between the cultural and the technical, the general and the particular, to explore the various contexts and critical perspectives which illuminate certain works by these composers. Considering the extent to which place and nationality contribute to the definition of musical character, he investigates the relevance of such images as mirroring and symmetry, the function of genre and the way types of identity may be suggested by such labels as classical, modernist, secular, sacred radical, traditional. These categories are considered as flexible and interactive and they generate a wide-ranging series of narratives delineating some of the most fundamental forces which affected composers and their works within the complex and challenging world of the twentieth century.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Acknowledgements	ix
1 The work in the world	1	(14)
Western orientations	1	(2)
Progressiveness and place	3	(3)
City life	6	(2)
Place, personality and Sibelus	8	(4)
Environmental sensibilities	12	(3)
2 Reflections, reactions	15	(19)
Debussy in the mirror	15	(6)
Webern's tribute to perfection	21	(4)
Form and content: Webern's Op. 27/iii	25	(5)
Canonic resonances	30	(4)
3 Rites of renewal and remembrance	34	(21)
Janácek's conventions	34	(6)
Janácek in context	40	(7)
Bartók and tradition	47	(2)
Bartók in 1939	49	(6)
4 Transcending the secular	55	(18)
From classical to neoclassical	55	(7)
Dithyramb	62	(3)
Here and now, there and then	65	(8)
5 Overlapping opposites: Schoenberg observed	73	(16)
Character	73	(2)
Models	75	(5)
Meanings	80	(4)
Music, religion, politics	84	(5)
6 The subject of Britten	89	(19)
Fulfilment, frustration	89	(7)
Masking Dionysus	96	(7)
The constraints of genre	103	(5)
7 Engagement or alienation?	108	(19)
Between politics and art	108	(5)
Marxism and after: Kagel	113	(4)
Beethoven and after: Tippett and Shostakovich	117	(4)
Judging Schnittke	121	(3)
Affirmation, irony	124	(3)
8 Rites of transformation	127	(18)
Words about harmony	127	(3)
Aspects of the Requiem: Mozart, Wagner, Henze	130	(8)
Wagner, Britten, Henze	138	(4)
The German labyrinth	142	(3)
9 Modernism, lyricism	145	(22)
Shadow and symmetry	145	(5)
Perspectives on Carter	150	(7)
Angles on Birtwistle	157	(10)
10 Experiment and orthodoxy	167	(19)
Minimalism, modernism, classicism	167	(2)
The Dionysian clockwork	169	(7)
Ways, means, materials	176	(3)
Mechanical and spiritual	179	(7)
11 Modernism in retreat?	186	(22)
What kind of century?	186	(2)
Theory, science, semiotics	188	(3)
Resonance in space	191	(6)
Echoes of voice	197	(2)
Songs of ambivalence and experience	199	(5)
A final focus	204	(4)
Notes	208	(15)
Bibliography	223	(10)
Index	233