Class Notes 4/30/13
A Musician's role:
staff of the wealthy: low class, above the cook at an estate.
Go into it because it's the job your father has done.
If your patron (benefactor) wants you to write dinner music for Friday night's party, you must comply! No opportunity to be ÒcreativeÓ or be inspired. Do what you are told. Often, the finished work is discarded after its initial performance!
Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Vivaldi, etc. all worked in some form of this ÒPatronage systemÓ.
Beethoven born into it as well; father was a [mediocre] court singer. Forced young child to practice late at night and after the bars closed when his father staggered in.
Went to play for Mozart as a teenager, and Mozart recognized his potential.
He became a new sort of musician - no deadlines, no writing for hire, only when he wanted to compose. He was a novelty to the aristocracy of Vienna, and several wealthy people paid Beethoven to live and work there.
He modified the genres of music that were in existence at the time. This was the Romantic spirit. Mozart and Haydn write in a formula, but Beethoven changed that recipe each time he set out to compose a new work.
He gradually lost his hearing over time, and the last 10 years of his life, he composed some of the most adventurous works with no ability of hearing at all!
Heiligenstadt Testament - a long lost letter to his brothers that admitted that he contemplated suicide. It's considered his Òsuicide noteÓ, and contains many of the traits of a musician and artist that we now attach today; music is an Art, no deadlines, music saved him from taking his life, becoming a philosopher (at least stretching out to other liberal arts as expression), longing for death, isolating himself, wanting to keep records of his health and problems with hearing for later generations to study; patience; spending time in the country and nature;
Composers that followed Beethoven all strived to keep the new ideal of a musician and artist but refine if for their time.
Skip ahead to Twentieth century - the end of the Common Practice Period. Composers must find another way of organizing their music - sound (i.e., music in a key) is no longer acceptable. Two extremes are Twelve Tone Music and Indeterminacy.
Twelve Tone Music - developed by Arnold Schoenberg. MORE rational control of the composer over the finished product. Twelve tones in an octave before they begin to repeat. His idea is to create a melody of twelve notes, one note of each, and compose around that. No notes may be omitted or repeated, and once the twelve note melody is constructed, it is entered in a ÒmatrixÓ or grid of notes down and across. When you have reached the end of one row, you can begin anywhere on the matrix and follow it through.
As a visual example, study Richter's artwork Ò180 FarbenÓ.
Atonal music is music without a key, and this is one method of getting there. All twelve tone music is atonal, but not all atonal music is twelve tone.
Indeterminacy (also called aleatoric or chance music) - the composer has LESS rational control over the finished product. At each performance of the work, something is left to chance that cannot be duplicated. When instruments come in, a work for a radio depends what is on different stations, how long to keep something going, etc. The most famous example of indeterminacy is by a composer named John Cage, and is titled Ò4 Minutes, 33 SecondsÓ. I played this in class.
Here is a video of the work being performed by a major orchestra on television!
Here is a performance on piano.
The score is marked ÒFor any instrument or combination of instrumentsÓ. It is written in 3 movements, each of which is marked ÒtacetÓ. Tacet is a term which means Òdo not playÓ.