MUSIC FOR THE PIANO

SESSION SIX: AN AGE OF UPHEAVAL, 1890-1920

Six of the leading of the period 1890-1920 were: Anton Bruckner, Richard Strauss, Jan Sibelius, Gustav Mahler, , and .

AN AGE OF UPHEAVAL In today’s session we will examine piano music written between 1890 and 1921, and focus on three questions:

§ How did political and social change affect the piano music of the era?

§ What kinds of piano music were created between 1890 and 1920?

§ What does it sound like?

POLITICAL AND SOCIAL INSTABILITY The thirty years between 1890 and 1920 were a momentous time in world history. Despite unparalleled material wealth for a tiny fragment of the population, the vast majority of Europeans lived in abject poverty. Politically Europe had become an uneasy and unstable balance of power among nations held together by autocratic ruling dynasties and overextended military and financial and systems. The traditional great powers of Europe - England, France, and Austria-Hungary – saw one another as bitter social, economic, and political rivals. Germany, a brand-new nation dating from 1870, suddenly loomed as a potentially strong and disruptive power. In , a backward and corrupt empire was not a major power except in terms of its vast territory.

WORLD WAR I In this unstable social and political climate, the First World War erupted, seemingly without warning, in the fall of 1914. The five-year war itself was a period of unparalleled destruction and suffering. The uneasy peace that followed pitted vengeful victorious nations against rebellious, resentful losers. Through the Treaty of Versailles, by 1920 Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire had lost most of their territory and indeed their very identity, as most of their land was carved up by the victors into new, unstable states. Germany, saddled with immense reparation payments to England and France, was entering a period of political and economic chaos. Russia, which sued for peace and left the war in 1917, underwent two revolutions, a moderate one in 1917 that deposed its ruling family and brought saw the Communist Party come to power; and a more drastic one in 1922 that saw the rise of a more extreme socialist state and the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

NATIONALISM These political events were made more severe and long- lasting by coinciding with a great cultural upheaval, the flowering of nationalism, that is, the self-conscious expression of each nation’s cultural roots and personality. In music, this expression took the form of emphasizing folk music and the sounds of folk instruments, ancient cultures, and folk heroes and their achievements.

The expression of nationalism took different forms, at different times, in different nations:

• In Italy, many operas based on historical Italian and Italian folk themes, and piano variations based on Italian folk and operatic music

• In Germany, Wagner’s operas based on ancient Teutonic folk legends, and songs with texts by German poets such as Goethe and Heine

• In Spain, on Spanish folk music and especially the sounds and rhythms of guitar music

• In Hungary, on the folk music of various ethnic groups and on folk heroes and legends

• In Russia, on Russian folk heroes, legends, and military victories

• In England, on folk music about the sea and rural life, and on favorite English poets, especially Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Robert Burns

• And in the United States, which had a much shorter history, on Native American life, folk material (mostly British), and on the frontier life connected to the great westward expansion then under way.

By 1890 these momentous new influences began to influence, and finally to overthrow, the long classical- romantic musical tradition that had begun with Haydn and continued through Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and the romantic composers.

The glorious end of this tradition may be found in the piano music of , now in his sixties, and in the music of , the foremost romantic of the next generation.

*BRAHMS: INTERMEZZO IN A MAJOR, 1893 Around age 60 Brahms began to compose a series of short character pieces, which are today some of the most beloved, and most frequently played, pieces in the piano literature. The Intermezzo in A Major is characteristic of these works: an introspective, rich-sounding, improvisatory piece. This performance is by the great American , Emanuel Ax.

*RACHMANINOFF, ETUDE TABLEAUX IN A MAJOR, 1916 At the conservative end of the musical spectrum are the piano works of Sergei Rachmaninoff, who is often called the very last great romantic composer. His Etudes Tableaux represent the unprecedented intensity and technical difficulty of his piano writing. Here is a stunning performance by Murray Perahia.

COMPOSERS 1890-1920 Today’s session focuses on the following composers:

• Amy Beach, an American pianist and composer, lives in Europe until the outbreak of , when she returns to the U.S.. She is the first American woman to write large-scale works for the piano, including a concerto, a , and a sonata for violin and piano.

• Alban Berg, a young Austrian pianist and composer studies composition with Arnold Schonberg and creates a single piano sonata that remains one of the most original and beautiful pieces written during this 30-year period.

• Johannes Brahms, a German composer of the older generation, who continues to write reflective, introspective character pieces of a deeply tender and personal quality.

• , a middle-aged French composer whose genuinely original music is full of novel scales and chords, rhythms, and many pianistic effects. He is a prolific composer of piano music who also wrote operas and orchestral music. Soon after completing his second book of piano Preludes, he dies of influenza in the closing days of World War I.

• , the young Spanish composer, writes music of many different genres, including piano music highly influenced by the flamenco and other folk styles.

• Sergei Rachmaninoff, a middle-aged, successful Russian pianist and composer, is forced to flee Russia after the revolution of 1917 and settles permanently in the United States. He composes four symphonies, four operas, a large amount of choral and vocal music, but more piano music than anything else, including three celebrated concertos.

MUSIC FOR SOLO PIANO, 1890-1920

NEW MUSICAL STYLES The age of upheaval that we are examining today produced, not one new musical style, but a wide range of styles. This new music expressed aspects of the culture that had been suppressed or minimized by previous generations.

• Impressionism expressed the populist view of the culture, focusing on the everyday lives of ordinary, even marginalized people

• Dissonance expressed the violent extremes of the culture, including sexuality, mental illness, crime, and extreme passions of all types

• American jazz expressed a marginalized, Afro-centric group.

How would the piano fare as a vehicle for expressing these new musical styles?

*DEBUSSY, LA CATHÉDRALE ENGLOUTIE, 1913 This is a famous example of Debussy’s impressionistic style, which evokes an impression of a person, place, or event:

• Very widely spaced chords – right hand plays very high up on the keyboard and left hand plays very low

• Parallel movement – both hands move up or down at the same time

• No melody in the traditional sense

Here is a fine performance by Dominic Piers Smith, a young English pianist and winner of the 2007 Yamaha Competition.

*BERG: PIANO SONATA, 1909 Another famous work that expresses the anxiety and dissonance of the era is Alban Berg’s Piano Sonata, which has long been a staple of the concert pianist’s repertoire.

It has many similarities to other piano music written at about this time: quiet and introspective in mood, a romantic, improvisatory style, and the repeated use of short melodic motives. Unlike other piano sonatas of the period, it has only one movement, and perhaps more important, it wanders from one key to another, and then to another, rather than staying in one key throughout, which produces a mysterious and unsettling effect. The performance is by the brilliant Canadian pianist, Marc- Andre Hamelin.

*JOPLIN: MAPLE LEAF RAG, 1899 Maple Leaf Rag is the first and most popular of Scott Joplin’s many piano “rags,” so named for their characteristic ragged, uneven rhythms. Piano rag music spread quickly to the music centers of Europe and influenced the piano music of Debussy, and of subsequent generations of composers. This performance is from a piano roll recorded in1916 by Scott Joplin himself.

CHAMBER MUSIC WITH PIANO, 1890-1920

*BEACH: PIANO QUINTET, 1907 Amy Beach, like Brahms, represents the final generation of romantic composers. She was the first American woman to write large-scale musical works, including two symphonies, a , and several major pieces of . Her Piano Quintet is a dramatic, three movement work with a virtuosic piano part, performed here by a group young Argentinean musicians.

CONCERTED MUSIC WITH PIANO, 1890-1920

*DE FALLA: NIGHTS IN THE GARDENS OF SPAIN, 1915 Manuel de Falla was the leading Spanish composer of this era. His music is nationalistic in character, full of guitar- like rhythms and Spanish folk themes. “Nights in the Gardens of Spain” is a piano concerto in all but name. It has been a staple of the concert repertoire throughout the hundred years since it was written. This performance is by the great Argentina-born pianist Daniel Barenboim and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.