Exploring Modernism
In this class we will expand on lecture 11’s look at three early 20th-century composers who helped to bring in the Modernist period in classical music. As an intro to exploring Modernism, we will look at a subset of Modernism in music by focusing on four composers from America in the early part of the 20th century. This is not meant to be a broad survey of Modernism but a small peek at specific American forms of Modernism.
American Classical Music
Although there has been European classical music in America since the first colonists arrived in the 17th century, until the early 20th century, most of this involved performances of music composed by European composers in Europe. American composers did not achieve the same level of recognition as the 19th-century European composers we have studied so far, and they typically did not establish a uniquely American style; rather, they emulated European composers.
In the latter half of the 19th century, many European composers were interested in establishing national musical styles for their respective countries (or sometimes for ethnic groups which were part of a larger multi-ethnic state such as the Austro-Hungarian empire). Czech composer Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) was known for crafting a Czech national musical style using Czech folk music as his inspiration.
Since many in America were interested in establishing a similar national musical style in the last decade of the 19th century, they reached out to Dvořák and asked if he would consider taking a position as artistic director and professor of composition at the National Conservatory of Music in America (in New York City). He eventually accepted and moved to New York in 1893. While in America, he sought out uniquely American styles of folk music, including African-American spirituals, Native American melodies, and Scots-Irish folk music. In particular, he learned about spirituals from a student at the conservatory named Harry T. Burleigh, who would later go on to work as a composer himself. Absorbing these various folk styles, Dvořák distilled a few different musical elements that they had in common and attempted to work them into the music he wrote during this time as a way of demonstrating how an American national musical style could be constructed.
Unfortunately, most white American composers were interested only in European classical music and disdained the use of these (mostly non-white) folk musics, even if they were specifically American. Some American composers, such as Louis Moreau Gottschalk and Burleigh himself in the 19th century as well as William Grant Still and Florence Price (see below) in the 20th century, would use spirituals or other African-American music as inspiration. Despite Dvořák’s celebrity during his time in America, his influence on creating an American national musical style was limited. Primarily, this inspiration is reflected in his best-known piece, the Symphony No. 9 in E minor, “From the New World,” also known as the New World Symphony. While we will not discuss this directly, if you are interested, you can listen to a great recording of this piece [Listen on YouTube]. Here is an image of the title page of Dvořák’s autograph score.
Beginning in the 20th century, American composers began to move away from the emulation of European classical music and toward establishing their own styles of classical composition. However, this did not result in the formation of a large-scale American style but rather many different individual compositional styles. In this section, we will survey a few different American composers of the 20th century and get a glimpse of each of their individual styles.
Charles Ives
First, we will look at probably the most unusual composer (musically and biographically) in the entire semester: Charles Ives (1874–1954). Ives’s career is a bit atypical as he never worked as a composer professionally. He did spend some time as a church organist, but otherwise his main source of income was as an insurance agent. For most of his life, composition was more of a hobby, and as such, his music was not published or performed widely until much later in his life, often decades after he’d written the music. So his idiosyncratic and often strange-sounding modernist music seems out of place in the early 20th century because essentially no one heard it until mid-century. His influence on other composers was not felt until that later point, when his music became more widely known. For instance, he would later win the Pulitzer Prize in music in 1947 for his Symphony No. 3, which was composed thirty years earlier between 1908–1910.
In terms of his musical style, Ives’s music is generally extremely dissonant and atonal (lacking a sense of a home key or tonal center), but it is also filled with quotations of melodies from various outside sources including popular hymn tunes, folk songs, marching band music, patriotic songs, or popular dance music. These quotations are usually very tonal (clearly having a tonal center, using major and minor modes). In fact, the musicologist Peter Burkholder has written a seminal book on Ives which is titled All Made of Tunes, a quote from one of Ives’s songs, to describe the nature of Ives’s style: the music is constructed as a collection of various tunes against an atonal background. Many of his pieces are inspired by particular historical events or places in New England, since Ives lived mostly in Connecticut.
Thus, his music gives the impression of moving through a space. You might imagine walking down a street in a small town in New England. As you pass the church, you might hear a hymn tune, then further down the street, you encounter a marching band in a parade. Later, you might pass a bar where dance music is playing. His music in this way attempts to create an image of what musical life was like in early 20th-century New England.
Our example comes from a piece which he called Orchestral Set No. 1, composed between 1911 and 1914, although there are initial sketches that date to 1903, and he continued to revise it until 1929. Ives was always tinkering with his music. The title of “Orchestral Set” shows that he is avoiding the term “symphony,” even though this is a three-movement work for orchestra and could conceivably be called a symphony. In addition, it also bears the title Three Places in New England. Each movement of this non-symphony is intended to represent a particular landmark in New England. The first movement is called “The St. Gaudens in Boston Common” and refers to the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial sculpture (created by the artist Augustus Saint-Gaudens in 1884), which sits in Boston Common near the corner of Beacon Street and Park Street. It memorializes the 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, one of the few African-American army units during the Civil War, led by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. The sculpture depicts the unit marching down Beacon Street in 1863 as they departed to join the fight.
This movement contains quotations of a variety of songs, including patriotic Civil War songs such as “Marching Through Georgia” and “The Battle Cry of Freedom.” There are popular songs by songwriter Stephen Foster, including “Massa’s in the Cold Ground” and “Old Black Joe.” (Please note these songs by Stephen Foster were written by a white songwriter and do not reflect an African American musical tradition. They are, in fact, part of the racist minstrel tradition and are not considered appropriate today, but were popular songs at the time). Ives weaves these tunes together, especially in the opening; their common use of the pentatonic scale helps to infuse an American musical style into this piece. Other tunes that are quoted here include “Reveille,” the trumpet call often used in the military to wake up soldiers in the morning, and “Deep River,” an African-American spiritual. Underneath these quotations, the bass instruments play an ostinato (a repeating melodic phrase) based on a minor third interval, which is meant to evoke an image of soldiers marching. The use of the minor third interval here is also related to the tunes that contain that interval as well.
First, take a listen to these four main tunes that are quoted in the links below. You don’t need to listen to the whole thing for each, but get a sense at least of the tune of each. Then, listen to Ives’s piece and see if you can pick out those tunes within the otherwise chaotic and atonal background.
- “Marching Through Georgia”: [Listen on YouTube]
- “The Battle Cry of Freedom”: [Listen on YouTube]
- “Old Black Joe”: [Listen on YouTube]
- “Massa’s in de Cold, Cold Ground”: [Listen on YouTube]
Ives, “The St. Gaudens in Boston Common” from Three Places in New England, orchestral set (1911–14).
Recording performed by the Cleveland Orchestra, directed by Christoph von Dohnányi. [Listen on YouTube]
Ruth Crawford
In addition to Ives, there is another early modernist composer working in the beginning of the 20th century: Ruth Crawford (1901–1953). Also known by her married name, Seeger, Ruth Crawford was the first woman to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship in composition. While her compositional style was mostly dissonant and modernist, using some serial techniques (we will discuss this more in lecture 11), she also worked extensively in documenting and preserving American folk music. Along with her husband, musicologist Charles Seeger, she worked to record and notate folk music, contributing to the revival of interest in folk music in the early 20th century. In addition, her stepson, Pete Seeger, is well known as a folk singer, particularly for popularizing the Civil Rights song “We Shall Overcome.”
Crawford’s music features a number of genres but particularly focuses on the piano. In terms of style, her music is extremely dissonant, even atonal, and features complex layers of counterpoint, with dense polyphonic textures. Despite her interest in folk music, she did not incorporate that style into her compositions.
Our example comes from a collection of piano preludes, short works for solo piano in the tradition of the piano miniatures of Debussy, Chopin, Liszt and others. The first five preludes were composed in 1924–1925 and preludes 6-9 were written in 1927–1928. Our example is the sixth prelude, subtitled “Andante mystico,” which suggests a sense of spirituality (mystical) or even etherealness. It was published in 1928 in the quarterly magazine New Music, which was run by composer Henry Cowell.
Prelude for Piano No. 6 (Andante Mystico) is a short piece but exceedingly complex. There are three contrapuntal layers in the texture, which are constantly present, each representing different pitch ranges (one high, one middle, one low). It also features a constant ostinato (repeating melody) in the high range. There is no clear form, but there are two places that we might call cadences because they give a sense of closure to a phrase or section and a pause before continuing. Follow the guide below and listen:
Crawford, Piano Prelude No. 6, Andante Mystico (piano miniature), 1928
Recording performed by Sarah Cahill. [Listen on YouTube]
0:00–0:10 (ostinato in high pitches)
0:10–0:27 (rolling chords in low pitches, melody in middle range)
0:27–0:45 (gets louder, ostinato goes lower in pitch)
0:45–1:03 (first cadence)
1:03–1:34 (ostinato resumes at original pitch)
1:34–1:43 (second cadence)
1:43–2:16 (coda, ostinato now in bass, rolling chords above)
2:16 (final, slow rolling chord and fade out)
William Grant Still
Beyond the modernist tradition in American music, there is also a tradition of incorporating African-American musical elements into an otherwise fairly traditional European classical style. We can see this in our next American composer: William Grant Still (1895–1978). Early in his career, as he tried to establish himself as a composer, he also worked as an arranger, making versions of existing music for different groups. This included work in jazz, theater, and radio, making arrangements of various kinds of popular music, as well as a stint as music director of Black Swan Records, a jazz and blues record label and the first major label to be owned and operated by African Americans, marketing music specifically to African Americans. He also briefly studied composition with George Chadwick, a composer and director of New England Conservatory (NEC) in Boston and for a longer period with Edgard Varèse, a French composer working in the United States. Through these teachers, he studied composition in the European classical tradition, but Still’s works would also infuse elements of his African American heritage into that European style.
In 1931, his Afro-American Symphony (also known as his Symphony No. 1) premiered, performed by the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, marking the first symphony by a Black American composer to be performed by a major orchestra. This premiere helped him to draw a larger audience and gain commissions for works by major organizations. The Afro-American Symphony is somewhat neoclassical in form, drawing on the longstanding symphonic tradition, but incorporates elements of African American music, including the blues, hymns, and spirituals. Each movement has a corresponding epigraph (a short poetic excerpt) that helps to explain the intention behind the movement. These epigraphs were not included with the symphony in performance but are found instead in Still’s own notes and sketches. In his journal, he wrote this about his symphony:
“I seek in the ‘Afro-American Symphony’ to portray not the higher type of colored American, but the sons of the soil, who still retain so many of the traits peculiar to their African forebears; who have not responded completely to the transforming effect of progress.”
Our example is the fourth movement; the epigraph comes from the poem “Ode to Ethiopia” by Paul Laurence Dunbar, a well-known Black poet in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The poem, published in 1893, is an expression of pride in African-American heritage and hope for the future, during a period of segregation and oppression. The epigraph is just a portion of the poem:
Be proud, my Race, in mind and soul,
Thy name is writ on Glory’s scroll
In characters of fire.
High ‘mid the clouds of Fame’s bright sky,
Thy banner’s blazoned folds now fly,
And truth shall lift them higher.
This movement is subtitled “Aspiration,” reflecting the hopefulness of the poem. It is constructed as a loosely formed rondo (the typical form for the last movement of a symphony). Yet, it is very different from a classical rondo finale in that it is a slow movement and not an upbeat fast movement. Still expresses this sense of hope and aspiration in a more serious and emotional way.
There are essentially two main themes to this movement: a hymn-like theme and a blues theme. The hymn melody which we can call A is in F minor and appears three times in the movement. First, it is played by strings in the beginning with low brass accompaniment. Then, it returns played by the cellos and finally, it comes back one last time at the end more triumphantly in brass (trumpets, trombones and tuba). The blues theme, which we can call B, is a bit more lively (although the overall tempo is still slow) and is based on the blues scale, derived from jazz, which takes the major scale and alters certain notes (called blue notes) that give it the characteristic blues sound. The B theme is varied slightly a number of times as it returns. So this isn’t a typical rondo, but we can think of A as a refrain and B as the episodes when it returns.
Listen to the recording and follow along with the form guide below:
Still, Afro-American Symphony: IV. “Aspiration” (symphony), 1930
Recording performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, directed by Paul Freeman. [Listen on YouTube]
A: 0:00–1:43 (initial statement of hymn theme in strings with low brass accompaniment)
B (episode 1): 1:43–4:59
1:43–2:07 (blues theme in woodwinds alternating with brass)
2:07–2:37 (strings play B theme, alternating with woodwinds)
2:37–3:09 (builds up to brief climax, subsides with only horns and woodwinds)
3:09–4:32 (B theme slowed down, strings with bassoon then flute)
4:32–4:59 (cadence of B theme in strings, woodwinds transition back to A)
A’: 4:59–6:16 (hymn theme in cellos, also harp, cut off by B’)
B’ (episode 2): 6:16–7:37 (tempo change- faster this time)
6:16–6:32 (B theme returns faster with short, staccato notes in woodwinds)
6:32–6:42 (chromatic slides in strings and woodwinds)
6:42–7:04 (A theme appears! but in fast, staccato version with brass)
7:04–7:13 (more chromatic slides in strings, blues theme in woodwinds)
7:13–7:32 (A theme comes back again in brass)
7:32–7:37 (transition from B to final A section)
A’’: 7:37–8:33 (final, climactic statement of hymn theme in brass, hint of blues in the strings)
Florence Price
Next, we have another important American composer of approximately the same generation as Still: Florence Price (1887–1953). She was the first African-American woman to gain recognition as a symphonic composer. Like Still, she spent time studying composition at New England Conservatory with George Chadwick. Price was primarily a piano and organ player, and after studying at NEC returned to Arkansas (where she was born) to teach music. After her marriage, she and her family moved to Chicago to escape racial oppression in the South. There, she continued to study composition at the American Conservatory. By the 1920s, she began to gain recognition for her compositions, including winning a number of awards. Her Symphony No. 1 in E minor won first prize in the Rodman Wanamaker competition in 1932, receiving a premiere performance by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1933, making her the first African-American woman to have an orchestral piece performed by a major American orchestra. Her musical style is fairly conservative and generally Romantic (in contrast to Ives, for instance). Yet, like Still, she does incorporate spirituals and dance music within classical forms or uses other techniques derived from African American music, such as call-and-response or other dance rhythms.
Despite this initial success, she didn’t always receive the recognition that her music warranted. Her Symphony No. 1 (the prizewinner) was not published until 2008, her Symphony No. 2 is now completely lost, and her Symphony No. 4 was not performed in her lifetime and not published until 2020. Price was clearly aware of what specifically was holding her back and she described these issues in a letter to famed conductor and music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Serge Koussevitsky, in 1943:
“To begin with, I have two handicaps—those of sex and race. I am a woman; and I have some Negro blood in my veins. Knowing the worst, then, would you be good enough to hold in check the possible inclination to regard a woman’s composition as long on emotionalism but short on virility and thought content; until you shall have examined some of my work? … As to the handicap of race, … I should like to be judged on merit alone—the great trouble having been to get conductors, who know nothing of my work … to even consent to examine a score.”
Despite these setbacks, she did have success with her Symphony No. 3 in C minor (1938). This work was commissioned by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a 1930s New Deal initiative created by the Franklin Roosevelt administration to create jobs for the many unemployed people during the Great Depression. While the WPA mostly funded public works projects (roads, bridges, etc.), it also funded artists, including musicians, through the Federal Music Project. Price’s Symphony No. 3 was first performed at the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1940 by the Detroit Civic Orchestra.
More so than earlier works, in the third symphony, Price incorporates more dissonant and modernist sounds into this work. For her, this combination of modernist elements with African-American elements represented not just the heritage of African Americans but their present-day (at the time) lived experience.
Our excerpt is the third movement, which in a Classical symphony would typically be a minuet (or, in the case of Beethoven’s Fifth, a scherzo). However, Price actually marks the finale as a scherzo and instead labels this movement “Juba”. Juba refers to a dance practiced by African slaves prior to the Civil War, which often involved lots of hand-clapping and body-slapping by the dancers that created sound. This use of the human body as a percussive instrument is supposedly due to the banning of the use of drums by slaves. In addition, the Juba is supposed to be descended from an African dance. Although the true origins of this dance are unclear, Price’s use of this instead of a minuet (a European dance) in this spot in the symphony is a clear attempt to take a European tradition and incorporate something of African-American musical culture into it.
Despite the references to the Juba dance in the melodies and sounds of this movement, it actually follows a relatively typical scherzo form. It is organized into two contrasting sections, A and B (fast and slow), while the first A section can be broken down into an internal aba form with two distinct themes.
(The finale movement that is labeled scherzo follows a loose sonata form, which definitely leaves some open questions about why she chose these titles for the third and fourth movements). Follow along with the form guide below as you listen.
Price, Symphony No. 3 in C minor: III. Juba (symphony), 1940
Recording performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra, directed by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. [Listen on YouTube]
A (fast, two themes in E♭ major and G major respectively): 0:00–2:01
a (theme 1 in E♭ and modulating passage, then repeat of theme 1): 0:00–0:55
b (theme 2 in G played twice): 0:55–1:36
a (theme 1 repeated in E♭): 1:36–2:01
B (slow, blues theme in A♭ major): 2:01–3:01
A’ (fast, just theme 1 in A major): 3:01–3:49
B’ (slow, blues theme in A♭ major): 3:49–4:20
A’’ (fast, just theme 1 in E♭ major and a coda): 4:20–5:04
Discussion Questions:
- How can we characterize American classical music in the early 20th century based on these examples? What are the ways in which these composers craft a unique style apart from European classical music?
- What musical elements in these examples are similar to the European classical tradition (mostly Romantic period) and what elements are unique to these composers?
- These composers highlight the contributions of women and African Americans to classical music, but also in some ways reveal the inequities of American society, especially in that period. How does this affect the way we think about classical music and its role in American society?
