The Musical Language of the Twentieth Century

Preface

Divergent musical trends have been traced by historians and theorists throughout the works of many twentieth-century composers. Scholarly studies have revealed a general tendency toward absorption and synthesis of cultural influences— musical, literary, and artistic—based on the conscious intention of a given composer to transform the various influences into a new musical language and style. In the early part of the century, national figures such as Debussy, Stravinsky, Bartók, Vaughan Williams, and Ives, as well as the neoclassical Stravinsky, Prokofiev, French composers of "Les Six," Hindemith, and others have drawn from earlier music styles, folk-music materials from both Eastern and Western cultures, popular music, jazz, and other idioms for their inspiration and musical content. Many of these composers have also revealed significant stylistic and technical influences from the music of their contemporaries. This has led to the adoption of techniques ranging from an occasional local use of traditional harmonic functions to polymodal combination and serial procedures, often in contexts based on complex metric/rhythmic formulizations. Georg von Albrecht, whose folkloristic activities and compositional inclinations invoke the creative spirit of Bartók, is an exemplar of a composer who has synthesized traditional and contemporary elements from both Eastern and Western European sources. Albrecht was inspired by many cultures, his music imbued with Byzantine and ancient Greek elements, Hebrew folklore, and Gregorian elements, as well as the pentatonicism of Eastern Asia. Russian and Lithuanian folklore underlies virtually all of his works. These sources are conjoined in his music with architectural conceptions derived from Western European musical thought. To realize the composer's artistic essence fully, that is, to present more than a summary description of his external influences and internal compositional techniques, is not an easy task. This study is intended to conjoin meaningful musical analyses with a broader range of aesthetic issues to gain insight into the composer's philosophical bases as well as musical thought. The goal of this book is to provide not only an understanding and appreciation of Albrecht's musical art per se, but to link his compositional approach to a broader historical and theoretical context. The significance of this study lies in the discovery of a

"missing historical link" in the evolution of principles that range from the pentatonic formations of folk music to the more abstract realm of serial procedures, and to demonstrate how they are absorbed and transformed. This book may be considered a kind of musical extension of Albrecht's memoirs.1 The composer's own insights into his music theory and practice within the context of the historical, political, social, and cultural upheavals of his time have provided a general conceptual basis for a more concrete analytical scrutiny and theoretical interpretation of the musical fabric itself. The earlier publication of my articles on Albrecht's music in the first five volumes of the International Journal of Musicology are absorbed and expanded in the present study into a more integrated and comprehensive view of the music within its historical context. As I have pointed out in the Preface to Albrecht's memoirs, "Both Albrecht’s music and the present book certainly encourage us to discover 'missing links' in our knowledge of twentieth-century music. They contribute to bridging the gulf between East and West, traditional and modern, musicians and musicologists and, last but not least, the composer and his audience."2 I should like to express gratitude to my dear colleague and friend, Michael von Albrecht, for his support of this project and for his input regarding his father's life and thought. His own musical knowledge has been a source of inspiration during the entire project as I had become immersed in the beauty of the music. I should also like to acknowledge the publisher of Albrecht's music, Verlag Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main, for permission to reproduce the many musical excerpts in this volume.

1 Georg von Albrecht. Vom Volkslied zur Zwölftontechnik. Schriften und Erinnerungen eines Musikers zwischen Ost und West. Published as vol. 3 of Quellen und Studien zur Musikgeschichte von der Antike bis in die Gegenwart, ed. Michael von Albrecht (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Peter Lang, 1984). See the English translation, Georg von Albrecht: From Musical Folklore to Twelve-Tone Technique: Memoirs of a Musician Between East and West, ed. Elliott Antokoletz, trans. Michael von Albrecht and Francis R. Schwartz (Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2004). 2 Ibid., p. xii.

Chapter 1 Sources of the Musical Language and Style: Early Historical Conditions, Cultural Sources, and Motivations for Folk-Music Investigation in Russia

The Russian-German composer and folklorist, Georg von Albrecht (b. Kasan, 19 March 1891, d. Heidelberg, 15 March 1976), himself had pointed to the inextricable connection of folk music with Russian musical culture, though the full impact of the endless ethnic varieties of the musical folk sources in Russia on Russian composers and Western modern music was still to be discovered in the early twentieth century. Albrecht questioned the degree to which those “among us” are familiar with the essential aspects of Russian musical folklore, even in terms of its most basic character, which is largely removed from the Western Major and Minor scale system, lyrical melody that recalls Celtic songs, asymmetrical melodic construction, unique polyphonic relations that articulate the more significant moments of the text by the use of lower voices to accompany the primary melody by free “exclamations.”1 Albrecht’s encounter with Tsvetkov, a retired schoolmaster and choir director whom he came to know during the Great Civil War in 1919, was one of the most memorable of his early years. The words of the elderly man, as he gave the young Russian folklorist/composer his own personal collection of diverse folk melodies, are quite revealing in terms of the more general attitude emerging in the Russian musical culture of the time:

All these are folk songs, good old folk songs! Some days ago I heard your lecture on this subject. You left out some important aspects, but I feel that

1Georg von Albrecht, “Volksmusik—ein Faktor der musikalischen Kultur Rußlands,” (Folk music: an integral part of Russian musical culture), first published in Das Medaillion (Jahrgang 1946), Heft 3; see G.v. Albrecht, Vom Volkslied zur Zwölftontechnik (Frankfurt, 1984), p. 2.

my music will be in good hands with you. As for me, I do not need it any more because I have one foot in the grave. Yes, these are Russian, Tartarian, Finnish melodies, melodies from all regions of our huge country, many of them collected and written down by myself. From my earliest years I have been fascinated by discovering again and again in the stream of these melodies a reflection of our Russian life in all its diversity and psychological richness, a reflection both pure and truthful. I am sure you feel the same way.2

A new awareness of the folk poetry and music of Russia since the eighteenth century was part of the social changes impacted by increasing class divisions between the educated upper-class and that of the people. Albrecht, in his essay, traces the social reforms that were to stimulate folkloristic research in Russia and the use of the folk idiom as a basic resource for a new artistic creativity emerging in the first half of the nineteenth century. Albrecht’s historical observations provide insight not only into the sources of folk-music investigation, but also the move toward synthesis by Russian composers, who were drawn to both the content and structure of the popular sources. This was a profoundly natural inclination for these composers, as indicated in Albrecht’s historical assessment, worth quoting in depth:

It was soon after Peter the Great that an interest in the poetry and music of the peasants awoke in Russia. The reforms furthered by this czar produced a gap between the lifestyle of the educated upper-class and that of the people. The more this rift was felt, the more the educated began to long for a return to the roots by means of art. The colorful collections of The Oldest Russian Poems (heroic legends) made by Kirsha Danilov the Wanderer (about 1730) and the Simple Russian Songs collected by the priest Vassily Trutovsky (1782), who acted as a gusli player and singer at the court of the Empress Catherine II are valuable early contributions to our knowledge in this field. Research on folklore was stimulated later by the increase of patriotism after the victory over Napoleon, the discovery of the specific harmonic and tonal background of Russian folklore by the first great Russian composer Michael Glinka (1804-1857), together with the fact that this composer and most of his followers chose the melodies of folklore as a starting point for their creativity. Kireyevsky (1830), Stakhovich (1851), Yakushkin (1860) and many others made their

2ibid., p. 2.

expeditions and strove for a total immersion into the life of the people. Yakushkin, for instance, disguised himself as a pedlar. The work of these collectors were rich and based on solid scholarship. Balakirev (1835), Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908), and Lyadov (1845-1914), along with their own compositional work, conscientiously arranged the collected melodies on the basis of the specific popular polyphony found in Russia. Prokunin, Tchaikovsky (1872), Orlov (1890), Pyatnitsky (1910-1916) made literal transcripts of the polyphony of the old peasants' choruses. From 1901 onward research was focused by the "Moscow Musical-Ethnographic Commission, in which the most important composers of all national groups in Russia cooperated. To give an example, the fourth volume published by this commission in 1909 contains 133 melodies (some of them of considerable size) from 32 nations. Sixteen composers collaborated, among them Taneyev, Gretchaninov, Glière, Kastalsky, Arakchiyev. In Soviet Russia research in this field did not stop and perhaps covered an even broader range of ethnic and social groups. The editions of the "Musical Sector" in Moscow are a worthy continuation of the tradition of the Musical-Ethnographic Commission and give proof of the fact that the poetic and musical creativity of the peoples of Russia is as vivid as ever. One Thousand Songs of the Kirgise People," collected by the singer Satayevich (Orenburg, 1924) reveal an astounding richness of grandiose melodies and rhythmic structures. The same is true of the newest collections of melodies from the Altai, Turkmenistan, the Caucasus, and the Ukraine. If we compare the relationship between professional and popular music in Russia with the same in Western Europe, we find a fundamental difference. In Western Europe it was church music rather than popular music which formed the basis of an organic and autonomous evolution of professional music. Conversely, Russian composers up to the present day are conditioned by both the form and the content of popular music, which in Russia is still fully alive and deeply congenial to the composers.3 What

3This article was written ca. 1950 and perhaps in some respects conveys a nostalgic view; see now the publications of Marina Frolova-Walker, who showed the dependence on Western traditions even in those composers who stressed their own “Russianness,” as in Frolova-Walker, Russian Music and Nationalism from Glinka to Stalin (Yale University Press, 2007.)