After the 2nd World War, trends such as neoclassicism, European modernism and home-grown trends such as jazz were present in America’s classical music scene as composers reacted to the devastation of both world wars, turning away from the Romantic style.
Modernism in music refers to new and innovative styles that composers wrote in during the 20th century which challenged conventional ideas of the elements of music – melody, rhythm, texture, harmony and form. It was a reaction to the hardship and shock of World War I, the Holocaust and Hiroshima. Although it can be traced back to the early 19th century, it was only in the 20th century that many different styles of music which went against the laws of the tonal system proliferated, causing radical change in ideas. Trends of modernism include Expressionism, Experimentalism and Serialism (twelve-tone technique).
Specifically, Arnold Schoenberg’s (1874-1951) creation of the serial composition techniques accorded equal importance to all twelve notes of the chromatic scale, removing the more important role of the tonic and the dominant.
Neoclassicism in music originated during the period between the two World Wars. A rejection of the Romantic style, composers wrote music in a simpler and more structured fashion like that in the Baroque and Classical periods. However, neoclassical works tended to display both Classical and modern 20th century styles as composers were also influenced by the effect of music’s evolution. Composers who wrote works in the neoclassical style include Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) and Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971).
While in America, the decade of the 1920s when jazz was popular was known as “The Jazz Age”. It originated from African-American musical styles (Blues, Plantation songs and Ragtime) in New Orleans in the early 20th century but gained prominence just before 1920. Technological advancements such as the radio and sound recording made jazz much more accessible. With the outbreak of the two World Wars, Americans turned to jazz for a sense of patriotism, optimism and a relief from the destruction. Jazz music subsequently took on other forms such as Swing and big bands (1930s), Bebop (1940s), Cool Jazz (1950s) and Free Jazz (1960-1980). Composers such as George Gershwin (1898-1937), Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) and Stravinsky composed works containing jazz elements such as syncopation, blues elements, cyclic structures and the use of swing rhythms.
These trends influenced composers in America to a great extent as they wrote many works either in the respective styles or incorporated elements from the styles into their works. This paper aims to show the effect of these influences on the works of Igor Stravinsky and Leonard Bernstein where they composed a significant number of works incorporating elements from these three styles (including a mixture of styles in one work) and that they retained their originalities despite these influences.
Stravinsky is arguably most well-known for his Diaghilev ballets composed in the Russian style – The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1910-1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913) which have rich orchestration, harsh dissonances, modally-inflected melodies, polytonality, complex polyrhythms and ostinati. Apart from writing in the Russian style, he also composed neoclassical works when he travelled to France in 1920 and America in 1939. While living in America, he also wrote serial works and several works which contained jazz elements.
Neoclassical works that Stravinsky wrote in America include the Symphony in Three Movements (1945), Orpheus (1947) and The Rake’s Progress (1951).
The Rake’s Progress, Stravinsky’s only full-scale opera, was premiered in Venice in 1951. Its plot is based on William Hogarth’s eight pictures that Stravinsky had seen in a Chicago exhibition in 1947 – the rise and fall of Tom Rakewell, son of a rich merchant, whose womanizing, drinking and gambling across eighteenth-century London led to his incarceration at Bedlam, the infamous lunatic asylum. The characters Anne Truelove (Tom’s lover) and Nick Shadow (the Devil) were later added to the plot.
This opera has three acts and is set in 18th century England. It contains features of previous operatic traditions – arias with melismatic flourishes and dry recitatives with harpsichord accompaniment.
In the duet and trio movement from Act I Scene I, Stravinsky portrays classical influences as the texture is generally thin and homophonic, with Anne singing the melody and the orchestra playing the accompaniment. As the movement develops, the texture becomes more contrapuntal as material from the first oboe is imitated by the first violins and played against Anne’s main theme. Also, Stravinsky uses simple, tonal-functional harmony and broken-chord figurations in the second violins and violas which are characteristic of the Classical period:
Fig. 1: Stravinsky – The Rake’s Progress, Act I Scene I, Duet and Trio, mm. 12-17.
Fig. 2: Stravinsky – The Rake’s Progress, Act I Scene I, Duet and Trio, mm. 18-27.
However, Stravinsky used the first inversion of the tonic instead of the root which makes the harmony less stable and this modern idea combined with previously mentioned features accounts for his neoclassical style.
Besides writing in a neoclassical style, Stravinsky wrote works containing jazz elements. These include Praeludium (1944), Scherzo à la russe (1944) and the Ebony concerto (1945).
Ebony concerto was written for Woody Herman’s jazz band after Stravinsky was impressed by its performances. Although a full-scale jazz work, it also exhibits neoclassical elements. The three movements were written in traditional classical forms – sonata form, binary form and theme and variations respectively.
The first movement opens with the first subject group consisting of a syncopated theme in the trumpets which exhibit jazz influences:
Fig. 3: Stravinsky – Ebony Concerto, 1st movement, mm. 1-4.
The slow second movement opens with a blues-influenced theme which is played by the tenor and baritone saxophones and the harmon-muted trumpets (pg 16-17):
Fig. 4: Stravinsky – Ebony Concerto, 2nd movement, mm. 1-9.
Therefore, it can be seen that Stravinsky combined the neoclassical and jazz influences into a single work and does not conform to the norm of each styles.
After writing The Rake’s Progress in 1951, Stravinsky turned to writing serial works after hearing the music of Schoenberg and Webern on tape. His output of serial works was substantial as he wrote works that were progressively serial. Cantata (1952) was Stravinsky’s earliest work which used a series. Threni (1958) was his first completely twelve-tone work and later on, he wrote works which used a rotational grid such as Movements (1959) and Requiem Canticles (1966).
Stravinsky’s Requiem Canticles was commissioned by Princeton University and dedicated to the memory of Helen Buchanan Seeger. It was written for contralto and bass soloists, chorus and orchestra (without oboes and clarinets) and uses Latin text from the mass of the dead in six vocal movements with a Prelude, Interlude and Postlude.
Here, Stravinsky uses two twelve-note rows (to be continued)
American composer, Leonard Bernstein was also influenced by the three trends as he wrote a significant number of works incorporating these elements. He is generally more well-known for his musical theatre and concert works.
Bernstein’s works containing jazz influences include Fancy Free (1944) and West Side Story (1957). These theatrical works combined music, song, dance and spoken dialogue with vernacular elements such as jazz rhythms and blue notes. Apart from theatrical works, Bernstein’s orchestral works containing jazz elements include Symphony No. 2, “The Age of Anxiety” (1949, rev. 1965) and Prelude, Fugue and Riffs (1949).
The Broadway musical, West Side Story, was inspired by William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. It depicts the racial conflict surrounding the love story between Polish American Tony and Puerto Rican Maria.
Several occurrences of jazz influences in West Side Story are ‘Jump’ from ‘Dance at the Gym’ which has a 12-bar phrase and contains swing and syncopated rhythms and the offbeat syncopated chords in ‘Prologue’ with a time signature 6/8 produce a swing effect:
Fig. 5: Bernstein – West Side Story, ‘Jump’, mm. 1-6.
Fig. 6: Bernstein – West Side Story, ‘Prologue’, mm. 1-6.
Besides jazz, Bernstein was also influenced by neoclassicism as he used fugal and canonic techniques in his works such as Hashkiveinu (1945), Trouble in Tahiti (1952) and Prelude, Fugue and Riffs (1949).
Bernstein’s Prelude, Fugue and Riffs (1949) was commissioned by Woody Herman and was written for solo clarinet and jazz ensemble. Its second movement contains a fugue featuring the saxophones. Although Bernstein does not write a strict fugue, the movement is still highly contrapuntal:
Fig. 7: Bernstein – Prelude, Fugue and Riffs, ‘Fugue’, mm. 25-42.
Here, the subject in the 2nd alto saxophone is passed to the 1st alto saxophone which plays it a minor 7th higher, against the syncopated accompaniment in the 2nd tenor saxophone and bass saxophone. As the subject is passed to the bass saxophone, both alto saxophones play a countersubject.
Finally, Bernstein employed some use of the twelve-tone technique usually for programmatic purposes although “his taste ran strongly towards composing with a pitch centre”. Some of these works are his Symphony No. 2, “The Age of Anxiety” (1949, rev. 1965), Symphony No. 3, “Kaddish” (1963, rev. 1977) and Halil (1981).
Bernstein’s Symphony No. 3, “Kaddish”, was commissioned by the Koussevitsky Music Foundation and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. It is dedicated to the memory of John F. Kennedy. “Kaddish” is a prayer for the dead which does not make any mention of death and functions as a requiem and the celebration of life.
In “Kaddish”, Bernstein contrasts atonality (which involve twelve-tone rows) and tonality to portray the fluctuating faith in God as depicted in the prayer.
For example, in the Scherzo, the waltz theme is alternated with a twelve-tone row in the second violins to depict the loss in faith that God is perfect as the speaker narrates, “I’ll take You to Your favourite star, The world most worthy of your creation.”:
Fig. 8: Bernstein – Symphony No. 3, ‘Kaddish’, ‘Scherzo’, mm. 1-8.
The atonality continues throughout the movement as the faith in God is lost. The tone-row is subjected to variation, building up to a climax before transforming to a lyrical and tonal melody played by the violas and English horn as seen:
Fig. 9: Bernstein – Symphony No. 3, ‘Kaddish’, ‘Scherzo’, mm. 226-236.
This tonal section depicts Bernstein’s “renewed faith in man rather than in God” as tonality triumphs over atonality in this movement.
In conclusion, I think that the influences of neoclassicism, European modernism (specifically the twelve-tone technique) and home-grown trends such as jazz caused Stravinsky and Bernstein to produce a significant number of works in different styles which incorporated these elements, including works which contained a mixture of these influences. At the same time, it enabled them to showcase their compositional prowess as they wrote works in their personal styles even as they wrote works in different styles.