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University of Cincinnati UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI Date:___________________ I, _________________________________________________________, hereby submit this work as part of the requirements for the degree of: in: It is entitled: This work and its defense approved by: Chair: _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ A Play of Style: Comparing and Contrasting Neoclassicism in Selected Piano Solo Repertoire in the 1920s A Doctoral Document Submitted to the Division of Graduate Studies and Research of the University of Cincinnati In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of Doctoral of Musical Arts In the Division of Keyboard Studies of the College-Conservatory of Music May 22, 2006 by Sha Wang 222 West McMillan Street, Apartment 4 Cincinnati, Ohio 45219 B.M. Chapman University, 2002 M.M. University of Cincinnati, 2004 Advisor: David C. Berry, Ph.D Reader: Frank Weinstock, Professor Reader: Robert Zierolf, Ph. D Abstract The 1920s was the golden age of a style of composition often called neoclassicism, which was represented by the works of such composers as Igor Stravinsky, Paul Hindemith, and Sergei Prokofiev. Neoclassicism is often associated with an attitude against nineteenth-century Romanticism, which frequently employed lush orchestration, chromatic harmony, and extra- musical associations. Many works of the 1920s adopted an opposing style; however, neoclassical works of the time, while sharing many common features with one another, also embraced differences in musical language, such that neo-tonal as well as some expressionistic and serial works fit the term. This document focuses on a sampling of the solo-piano repertoire from this era by some German and French composers. These works are often underappreciated by concert pianists, for they do not necessarily display virtuosic or technical brilliance. However, through my detailed analyses, I hope to encourage musicians and audiences to give a fresh look at these works and to appreciate their unique qualities and artistry. ©Copyright 2006, Sha Wang All Rights Reserved Acknowledgment I would like to acknowledge significant professors and mentors who made this document possible. I would like to express my deepest and most sincere gratitude to Document Committee Chair, Dr. David C. Berry, Committee members Prof. Frank Weinstock and Dr. Robert Zierolf for their endless efforts and help through years of mentoring and guidance. A special dedication to Mr. Harmon Wilkinson, my long-time sponsor and friend, for he showed me the real way of living a meaningful life. Finally, inexpressible gratitude to my amazing parents, Shangjie Wang and Yuanchao Liu, whose bravery and unconditional love are the very reason for everything I have achieved. My gratitude also goes to Nadine Wilkinson, Richard Sisley, Mary Liu, Karen Knecht, and many others I fail to mention. Table of Content Prologue Page Chapter 1: From Cocteau’s “Every-Day” Music to Stravinsky’s Neoclassicism 2 Act I – Two Russians in Paris Chapter 2: Sonata 1924 by Stravinsky and Sonata No. 5 by Prokofiev 10 Chapter 3: Sing and Dance with Serenade in A and Divertissiment 21 Act II – And There Were the Germans Chapter 4: Dance with the Past? Schönberg’s Walzer 31 Chapter 5: Schönberg’s Suite, Op. 25 and Hindemith’s 1922 Suite für Klavier 42 Act III – Contratanti Finale Chapter 6: Style without Boarders 52 Bibliography 56 2 Prologue Chapter 1: From Cocteau’s “Every-Day” Music to Stravinsky’s Neoclassicism The musical style called “neoclassical” traces its origin to the turn of the twentieth century. As the curtain drew to a close on the nineteenth century musical stage, the European music scene was still overwhelmed by the after effects of late nineteenth-century Romanticism. From Berlioz and Liszt, to Wagner and Mahler, the words “grand” and “virtuosic” exerted dominance. As traditional tonality was pushed to the limit, the personal egos of composers, who were continuing the legacy of their national music and liberating it from foreign influence, led to eclectic compositional styles in the twentieth century. In reaction to the dense textures, tremendous orchestral force, and intense chromaticism that emerged in the previous century, some French artists stood apart with a return to order and a “New Simplicity.”1 According to the French poet Jean Cocteau, the work of French composer Erik Satie (1866-1925) provided an ideal example of this new simplicity. Cocteau remarked that Satie had “cleared, simplified, and stripped rhythm naked.” Being “sick to death of flabbiness, fluidity, superfluity, frills, and all the modern sleights-of-hand,” he had “voluntarily abstained in order to remain simple, clear, and luminous.”2 Here Cocteau describes the very essence of the “New Spirit” or “New Simplicity” in early twentieth-century Parisian artistic circles. In Cocteau’s collected essays, A Call to Order, he observed that “Satie teaches what, in our age, is the greatest audacity, simplicity [....] Enough of clouds, waves, aquariums, waterspirits, and nocturnal scents; 1 Scott Messing, Neoclassicism in Music: From the Genesis of the Concept through the Schoenberg/Stravinsky Polemic (Michigan: U.M.I Research Press, 1988), 77. 2 Ibid. 3 what we need is a music of the earth, every-day music.”3 A work that exemplifies this new style is the ballet Parade. This collaboration of Sergey Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, Cocteau’s story, Pablo Picasso’s setting, and Leonid Massine’s choreography, presented audiences with an every- day street scene featuring entertainers, acrobats, and popular music. This “new spirit” also excited a young group of composers, who came to be known as “Les Six”: Tailleferre, Milhaud, Honegger, Durey, Poulenc, and Auric. Though their compositional directions differed from each other, the common approach in their music is “light in tough, direct in approach, and free of the pretensions of the concert hall.”4 In Germany the Wagnerians were still triumphant; the heroism of Richard Strauss’s music was still receiving applause. However, the emergence of a new style was well documented in novelist Thomas Mann’s essay in 1911: But I think about the masterpiece of the twentieth century and something occurs to me that differs very importantly and, as I believe very favorably from Wagnerism – something that appears logical, structural, and clear; something that is equally austere and serene; something not from so petty a will as his, but from a fresher, nobler, and healthier spirituality; something which finds its greatness not in the Baroque or colossal, nor its beauty in frenzy – a new classicism, it seems to me, must come.5 This anti-expressionist inclination is also described as “neue Sachlichkeit” (new objectivity), which was adopted not only in music but also in other artistic disciplines.6 As the golden age of Neoclassicism began to dawn after the First World War, the simultaneous rise of the Second Viennese School of Schönberg, Webern, and Berg seemed to separate them from the rest of European composers. Their innovative use of serialism is often considered revolutionary. However, one should not erect rigid barriers between the Second 3 Robert Morgan, Twentieth-Century Music (New York: Norton & Company, 1991), 159. 4 Morgen, Twentieth-Century Music, 162. 5 Messing, Neoclassicism, 63. 6 Arnold Whittall, New Grove Dictionary, 2nd edition online. s.v. “Neo-classicism,” available at http://www.grovemusic.com, accessed on 5 January 2006. 4 Viennese School and the Parisian composers, between Serialism and Neoclassicism, and between those working in German and French regions. Though of seemingly opposing compositional styles, such composers as Schönberg and Hindemith both returned to order, balance, and structure – to some the most essential musical elements of the Classical Era. The common ground shared by such different composers lays in their connection to the past and the return to traditions. In spite of occasional tensions among composers, Stravinsky later stated that “We [himself, Schönberg, Webern, and Berg] all explored and discovered new music in the twenties, of course, but we attached it to the very tradition we were so busily outgrowing a decade before.”7 Indeed, Stravinsky’s unique Neoclassical style did not start with Pulcinella (1919-20), a work that overtly borrowed from eighteenth-century musical sources. As early as his collaborations with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, the modernistic use of Russian folk music and dances already foreshowed his later musical style. Les noces (1917-21), the piece that is often used to mark the end his Russian period, is saturated with neoclassic elements, such as the reduced texture and the reuse of the peasant’s dances. In fact, the inheritance of Russian nationalism was combined with a vernacular-oriented compositional approach in later works such as Piano Rag-Music (1919) and Ebony Concerto (1945). The Germans were even more greatly connected to the past. Schönberg saw himself as the successor of Beethoven, Brahms, and Mahler. As he commented on his own harmony treatise, his new way of organizing pitches was as much evolutionary as any other chromatic harmonic development: My Harmonielehre did not speak very much about “atonality” and other prohibited subjects but almost exclusively about the technique and harmony of 7 Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Conversation with Igor Stravinsky (NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1959), 145. 5 our predecessors, wherein I happened to appear even stricter and more conservative than other contemporary theorists. But just because I was so true to our predecessors, I was able to show that modern harmony was not developed by an irresponsible fool, but that it was the very logical development of the harmony and technique of the masters. 8 His idea of “ensuring the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years” was rooted not only in the novelty of serialism, but also in the balance between the old and the new. Such examples can be found in the combination of serialism and Baroque dances in Piano Suite, Op. 25 (1921-23) and the use of sonata form in the first movement of the Wind Quintet, Op.26 (1923-24).
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