The Music Of Europe

The Music Of Europe

Staatsoper - The National, or “State,”

Opera of Austria, serving the Habsburg

court during the Austro-Hungarian Empire until

World War I

While grand works were performed on

the Viennese stage, folk musicians have

always been performing in the streets

and in bars.

European Unity in Modern Europe

Béla Bartók (1881-1945) –– Hungarian composer and folk music collector

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWVfyjJbZb8

Music in Peasant and Folk Societies

Volkslied –– German for “folksong” of traditional European societies, included under this single term by the end of the eighteenth-century

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) –– a German folklorist who grew up in the Baltic area of Eastern Europe. He coined the term Volkslied, and the collection and study of folk music spread throughout Europe.

The Individual and Society, Creativity

and Community In the idealized folk society, all music

theoretically belongs to the community. The total musical product depends on a group’s willingness to subsume individual identity into that of the ensemble.

Musical Instruments

Various Bagpipes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoDNgxFabjg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAQTTgU3tUA

Saz –– a lute-like instrument used widely in Turkish art music and spread throughout the region of southeastern Europe, into which the Ottoman Empire extended

Hummel –– a dulcimer played widely throughout Sweden and associated historically with Swedish folk styles

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0niJw8ZV2Q

Gusle –– a bowed lap fiddle, played throughout

southeastern Europe, especially to accompany

narrative epic repertorieshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0niJw8ZV2Q

Musical Professionalism and

Social Structure Periodic attempts to keep instruments out

of Christian religious music are among the hallmarks of conservative religious movements. The Puritans, when they ascended to power in 1649, forming the English Commonwealth, inveighed against instruments in churches and ordered that organs be destroyed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUiYFNIIl8s

Music and History Folk music has been seen as a means of

revealing and articulating history in both musical and cultural ways. But the construction of history out of folk song styles has clear ideological and nationalistic implications. The historicization of national music, too, was a statement of identity serving political ends. Is the same strategy still used today? Folk music is periodically revitalized to highlight contemporary political issues.

Music in Peasant and Folk Societies:

“Folk music” was an eighteenth-century concept, part of a larger intellectual movement that romanticized rural life.

Music in Urban Society:

Urbanization was on the increase during this period. “The folk” represented an earlier, more innocent era viewed through the fuzzy light of nostalgia by displaced city dwellers. In the city, there was an increasing tendency toward specialization of musicians: hereditary musical castes (Gypsies) and ascribed outsiders (Jewish musicians) were assigned the low status task of providing entertainment music to order.

Klezmer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4Hdqi2BYZoKlezmatics http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRpYbMqPY2c

Gypsie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT4IufMeyYA

National Styles: More the result of politics than of a

consistent and unified history, “national musics” may combine disparate styles and repertoires from different parts of a country, symbolizing a modern kind of unity.

30. Romantic Program MusicA Czech Nationalist: Bedřich Smetana

Bedřich Smetana (1824–1884)

Bohemian composer

Early music studies in Prague

Cycle of symphonic poems My Country (Má vlast)

Health declined (syphilis), grew deaf

The Enjoyment of Music 11th, Shorter Edition

Bartered bride furiant http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqEOn5C9Gdo

Smetana: The Moldau (Listening Guide)

Second of the symphonic poems from My Country

River Moldau (Vlatava)

Music suggests scenes along the shore of the river

The Enjoyment of Music 11th, Shorter Edition

Smetana: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOxIbhqZsKc

30. Romantic Program MusicA Scandanavian Nationalist: Edvard Grieg

Edvard Grieg (1843–1907)• Attended Leipzig Conservatory• Influenced by Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann• Returned to Norway to promote Scandinavian music through an academy that he founded• Wrote symphonies but preferred small scale works, including songs• Wrote many piano works—a concerto and arrangements of Norwegian folk tunes. • Collaborated with playwright Henrik Ibsen to write music for Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt.

Grieg: Peer Gynt, Suite No. 1, Op. 46 excerpts (Listening Guide)

• Peer Gynt was based on a Norwegian folk tale• It premiered in Norway in 1876.• Listening Guide excerpts include:– “Morning Mood” – “In the Hall of the Mountain King”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyM2AnA96yE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeDiL3SokY8

30. Romantic Program MusicOther nationalists

The Enjoyment of Music 11th, Shorter Edition

Russia• Mikhail Ivanovich

Glinka• “The Mighty Five”

– Mily Balakirev – Alexander Borodin – Cesar Cui – Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov – Modest Musorgsky

Czech • Antonin Dvořák • Bedřich Smetana

England• Edward Elgar• Frederick Delius

Spain• Isaac Albeniz• Enrique Granados• Manuel de Falla

Norway, Edvard Grieg

Finland, Jean Sibelius

Concerts and the Virtuoso:

Another legacy of the 19th century was the rise of virtuosity. The virtuoso became a celebrity for whom normal social mores were suspended. In many ways, the “Great Artist” was as much of a marginal person as the professional specialist, for whom normal mores were also relaxed: they were troublemakers, attractive lovers, and had the freedom to move around.

Beethoven http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT7_IZPHHb0

Liszt - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6NEmyjLqA4

Paganini - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HY5Nn0XRAw

Hearing the Folk in Classical and the Classical in Folk Music:

Listening to classical music selections of any European classical or nationalist composer, including Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Sibelius, etc., students should be able to conceptualize the folk melodies in the art music context.

Discussion How is Los Angeles a multi cultural musical

environment?

What can we classify as the folk music of our country, and how have nationalist composers incorporated it into their compositions?

Jazz? Rock? Pop? Rap?

What types of music might we find in our society which are communal and egalitarian, as are folk music types of Europe, or even Africa or Indonesia?

Next Week: Music of Latin America

Read Chapter: 9