University of the Ozarks
 

 

HUM 2023

Humanities II

Lecture and Discussion Notes

Timeline:  ca. 1500-1600 Baroque Overview For notes on Baroque philosophy and science, see period summary
Renaissance Art Caravaggio 17th and 18th Century Fashion
Rococo Art
Machiavelli discussion questions Gentileschi Age of Reason
Shakespeare Rubens, Rembrandt, Velazquez, Vermeer and Bernini Mozart biography

 

19th Century Neoclassicism and Romanticism: 1770-1830 20th-Century Art Music after WWI EXTRA INFORMATION:
African music
 
Triumph of the Bourgeoisie: 1830-1870 20th Century Philosophy and Literature after WWI Jungian psychology: Personality types
Technological innovations of the 19th and early 20th centuries Summary of 20th-Century Events and Cultural Development from WWI to the present Film and Photography
(see also PowerPoint presentation)
Age of Early Modernism    

 

Renaissance Art

The following art works were used in the class presentations.  Most of these images can be found at the following web sites:

“Mark Harden’s ‘Artchive.’”  http://artchive.com/ftp_site.htm (1/15/02).

“Web Gallery of Art: Artist Index.”  http://gallery.euroweb.hu/artist.html (1/15/02).

                                           

                                                   RAPHAEL

School of Athens

1511

La Belle Jardinère

1507

The Entombment

1507

The small Cowper Madonna

c. 1505

Madonna di Foligno

c. 1512

The Sistine Madonna

c. 1512-14

St Cecilia with Sts Paul, John Evangelist,
Augustine and Mary Magdalene

c. 1513-16

Portrait of a Nude Woman (the 'Fornarina')

  c. 1518

 

                                           MICHELANGELO

David

 c. 1501-1504

Sistine chapel

 1508-1512

Last Judgment

 1537-1541

Pieta

 1498-99

Later pietas

 1564

Dying Slave     

 1513-16

 

LEONARDO DA VINCI

The Dreyfus Madonna
(The Madonna with a Pomegranate

 c.1469

Benois Madonna

  c.1478

The Virgin of the Rocks

 1483-86 and 1503-1506

Lady with an Ermine

 1483-1490

Madonna Litta

  c. 1490-91

The Last Supper

 1498

Mona Lisa

 1503-1506

The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne

 1510

St. John the Baptist

 1513-16

 

                                                        Parmigianino

Madonna of the Long Neck

 1534

Self-Portrait

 

Cupid Making His Bow

 

The Conversion of St. Paul

 

 

Timeline:  ca. 1500-1600

Important Reformation dates in bold print

1509

Henry VIII becomes King of England and
marries Catherine of Aragon.

1513

Machiavelli writes The Prince.

1516

Sir Thomas More publishes his Utopia.

 

Henry VIII’s daughter Mary is born.

1517

Luther posts his 95 Theses

1530

Confession of Augsburg

1533

Henry VIII declares himself head of
the Church of England

1536

Henry VIII divorces Anne Boleyn and
she is beheaded for treason (adultery).

1536

Henry VIII marries Jane Seymour.

1537

Prince Edward is born and Jane Seymour
dies from fever after childbirth.

1540

Henry VIII marries and divorces Anne of
Cleves, then marries Catherine Howard.   

1540s

Calvinism is founded

1542

Catherine Howard is beheaded for
treason (adultery).

1543

Henry VIII marries Catherine Parr.

1545-63

Council of Trent (1545 – 1563)

1547

Henry VIII dies from complications
from gout and other problems

 

Edward becomes king.

1553

Edward dies and names his wife, Jane Grey,
his successor (Lord Dudley, her father-in-law
planned to rule through her. 
She only ruled for 9 days.

 

Mary Tudor becomes queen

1558

Elizabeth I becomes queen of England,
reigning until her death in
1603.

1564

Death of Michelangelo

 

Start of the Counterreformation

1590-1610

Shakespeare’s plays performed

 

 

 

Machiavelli
Class Discussion Questions

1.  Machiavelli claims that we need to act according to how things are actually being done in the real world, not how we think they should be; a ruler cannot afford to leave in an idealized world but must deal with the real world.  Is he right?  Is there no place for idealism in politics or government, no benefit to considering things as we think they should be?

  2.  A rule in Machiavelli’s system is that a leader must be ruthless, be willing to lie, break a promise, betray or even murder when necessary.  Under what circumstances--if any--do you believe it is acceptable to lie, betray, break promises or kill?

  3.  Machiavelli insists on keeping morality and religion out of politics, a principle that operates in the U.S. constitution through its insistence on separation of church and state.  Should/can a moral person/faithful Christian function effectively in political spheres without recourse to his/her own ethical principles?

  4.  Machiavelli says that the good prince is not necessarily a good man and that evil acts are sometimes necessary for the good of the state.  Are you comfortable with this idea?   Is a good government one that is willing to prop up or (or assassinate) dictators in other countries, use methods of mass destruction, or ignore human rights violations in order to preserve the power of its state?

5.  If Machiavelli and Sir Thomas More were to be magically reincarnated into political advisors in our time, what advice would they offer to President Bush on how to handle the Middle East, in particular Saddam Hussein?

 

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William Shakespeare

1564

Born.

Probably attended Stratford

Dropped out to work in father’s leather goods business

 

1582

Married Anne Hathaway (already 3 months’ pregnant)

 

1586-92

Not much known, may have taught school

 

1592

In London, already well-known in theater

 

1592-94

Theater closed because of plague (10,675 deaths out of 200,000)

Wrote sonnets (published in 1609)

 

1594

Lord Chamberlain’s men, shareholder in co., part owner/manager

 

1594-99

Midsummer Night’s Dream

Romeo and Juliet

Richard II

Merchant of Venice

 

1595

Globe theater built

Wife and children remained at home in Stratford while he was in London

 

1596

Son Hamnet died

 

1603

Lord Chamberlain’s men becomes King’s Men under James VI

 (Queen Elizabeth died)

 

1601

His father died.

 

1599-1601

Hamlet

concentrated on tragedies to 1608 growing pessimism of age

 

1608

The Tempest

 

1611

Retired

 

1616

Died

 

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Baroque Period
1600-1750

Overview

Characteristics of the Baroque

Political, Social and Religious Influences
  • •Marked by continuing religious warfare sparked by the Protestant Reformation and by wars of expansion and conquest overseas.
  • •The arts often used for religious and political propaganda. 
    • –The Catholic Church used the arts to influence people to return to and remain in the church.
    • In an era of absolutism in France under Louis XIV, the arts were used as a tool of political power.

    • Northern arts reflected the more sober Protestant ethic and the tastes and power of the commercial middle class

  • In some ways a time of transition, still displaying many Renaissance characteristics but looking forward to the beginnings of modern scientific thinking.

  • A scientific revolution occurred during this period but people time struggled to balance the new scientific reasoning with the emotional realities of a world marked by fierce, religious conflicts.

Baroque Art

Florid Baroque (mostly in Italy)

 

•Characteristics

  • –More intense use of chiaroscuro

  • –Dramatic scenes with emotional intensity and a strong sense of motion, often achieved by non-symmetrical composition and emphasis on diagonal

  • –Emphasis on realistic depiction (even when ugly by Renaissance standards), using regular people

  • –Development of very individual, personal styles

•Artists

  • –Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini

  • –Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio

  • –Artemisia Gentileschi

  • –Diego Velázquez

  • –Peter Paul Rubens

Paintings 

Caravaggio
Martyrdom of St. Matthew

 

Gentileschi
 Judith Slaying Holofernes

Rubens
The Three Graces

Velázquez
Las Meninas

Sculpture

Giovanni Bernini
David

 

Classical Baroque

•Characteristics
  • –Centered principally in France
  • –Embraced the grandeur and opulence of the Baroque but tended to be more classical in style
  • –Best exemplified by the artists of Versailles, Louis XIV’s palace
•Artists
  • –Poussin
  • –Louis Le Vau (1612-1670), Andre Le Notre (1613-1700), and Jules Hardouin-Mansart (1646-1708)
Architecture
Rooms in Versaille (palace of Louis XIV) and illusionistic ceiling paintings
 

Restrained Baroque

•Characteristics
  • –Less flamboyant than the Italian Florid style
  • –Simpler, more reflective of middle-class Protestant sensibilities
  • –Centered mainly in the North
  • –Lots of portraits, domestic scenes and still lifes
•Artists
  • –Rembrandt van Rijn
  • –Jan Vermeer
  • –Dutch female still life painters:  Rachel Ruysch, Clara Peeters, Judith Leyster
Paintings
Rembrandt, Self-Portrait
Vermeer, The Lacemaker
Clara Peeters, Still Life
Rachel Ruysch, Still Life

 

Baroque Music

•Musical genres
  • –Birth of opera
  • –Concerto
  • –Rise of ballet
•Composers

  • –Claudio Monteverdi

  • –Georg Friedrich Handel

  • –Johann Sebastian Bach

  • –Antonio Vivaldi

  • –Jean Baptiste Lully

Characteristics of Baroque Music
  • •Complex melodies, often highly ornamented
  • •Virtuosic technique required
  • •Greater sense of motion and excitement; frequent use of driving rhythm
  • •Development of functional harmony
  • •Regular use of orchestral instruments—first real orchestra as we know it
  • •Basso continuo
  • •Doctrine of the Affections
  • •Less reliance of word painting and more concern with expressing overall emotion of a work through proper style of melody, harmony and rhythm

Musical Examples

Monteverdi, "Lament of Arianna" (see Supplemental texts, Monteverdi)
Handel, "La guistizia" from Julius Caesar (See Supplemental texts, Handel)

 

Seventeenth-Century Literature

Characteristics
  • –Emphasis on personal expression
  • –Eloquent, lofty language on the one hand and more rough, colloquial language for others
  • –Meaning is often obscure at first reading
Seventeenth-Century Writers
(see Supplemental Texts for all works listed below)

–

 

John Donne (poetry and meditations)

“Batter My Heart, Three-Personed God"

“Catch a Falling Star”

Meditation “No Man is an Island”

George Herbert (poetry):  "Love Bade Me Welcome"

Andrew Marvell (poetry):  "To His Coy Mistress"

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (poetry)" “In Which She Condemns the Inconsistency of Men”

John Milton, Paradise Lost

•

 

Baroque Science and Philosophy

Science

  • –Copernicus (heliocentric theory)
  • –Kepler (heliocentric theory/elliptical orbits)
  • –Galileo (law of inertia/astronomy)
  • –Newton (theory of gravity)
  • –Rene Descartes and Blaise Pascal (scientific method)
•Philosophy (political theory)
  • –Bossuet (divine right)
  • –Hugo Grotius (natural law)
  • –John Locke (liberalism and tabula rosa)
  • –Thomas Hobbes (social contract)
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BAROQUE MUSIC

Baroque opera

Opera was the major new art-form of the Baroque.

Operas use essentially two types of music:

Aria

Recitative

(French operas also included dance numbers and choruses)

Recitative and Aria

Recitative

Speech-like melody in free rhythm

Used for dialogue and narrative

Aria

More organized melody with definite rhythm

Usually expressed one affect or emotion

Plot and action is temporarily suspended while character reflects on his/her reactions and emotions

Performance of Opera

  • Long, deep stage used for elaborate props and stage scenery; most of room taken up by stage

  • Balconies reserved for season-ticket holders

  • Theater lit by numerous candles

  • Actors used limited physical movement; instead expressed themselves through gesture

  • Prominent use of castrati as superstars of opera

Listening example from Handel’s Julius Caesar, "Massime cosi indegne" (see Supplemental texts)
 

Oratorio and Cantata

  • The oratorio arose as a concession to religious authorities’ objections to secular entertainment during penitential seasons.

  • Oratorio is similar to opera stylistically but with these differences:

    • Sacred subject

    • No staging or costumes

    • Included choruses

  • Famous example: Handel’s Messiah

Listening example from Handel’s Messiah (see Supplemental Texts)

 

Cantata

  • Also operatic in style but smaller in scale—the length of an opera scene.

  • Could be sacred or secular

  • Sacred Lutheran cantatas usually included choruses and chorales

Concerto

The concerto was one of the most important instrumental forms to develop during the Baroque period.

 

Features

  • alternation of soloists (ripieno) with full orchestra (tutti)

  • Organized into several contrasting movements

  • Usually the orchestra played a repeating theme called a ritornello

  • The soloists (either one soloist or a small group of soloists) did not play the theme but engaged in virtuosic displays of their technique.

  • Famous example: Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Concertos

    • These concertos are also program music, i.e., instrumental music that tells a story without the actual singing or speaking of text (a program of the story is provided to the audience to read).

 

Rise of Ballet

  • Another important musical genre begun in the Baroque was ballet.

  • Began as formal aristocratic dance

  • Popularized by Louis XIV, who demanded that all his nobles be proficient at dancing to retain their high positions at court

  • Courts all over Europe tried to imitate Louis XIV, hiring dance masters and composers to recreate the splendor and power of his court.

  • Louis XIV controlled the arts and used them as a tool of power.

  • Louis XIV’s court sponsored regular elaborate entertainments, involving singing and dancing, with the King himself participating in the dances

  • Jean Baptiste Lully was Louis XIV’s court composer and he had control over all music printing licences in France.

  • The level of proficiency required is what today would only be expected of professional dancers.

  • Composers also wrote stylized forms of these dances for listening entertainment and grouped them together into suites.

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Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio

1571-1610

Images of the paintings discussed in class and listed below can be found at the following web sites: 

 

Harden, Mark.  "Artchive.’”  http://artchive.com/ftp_site.htm (1/30/03).

“Web Gallery of Art: Artist Index.”  http://gallery.euroweb.hu/artist.html (1/30/03).

"WebMuseum: Baroque (1600-1790)."  http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/theme/baroque.html  (2/2/03).

 

  • 1571: Probably born in Milan but spent much of childhood in the town of Caravaggio

  • His father was a household administrator in the court of the marchese of Caravaggio in Milan

  • He had two brothers and a sister

  • Apprenticed with Simone Peterzano in Milan from 1584 to 1588

  • No records of what he did from 1588 to 1592; may have traveled

  • Sold some family land in 1592 and moved to Rome (possibly after some trouble with the police)

  • Worked in the studio of Giuseppe Cesari, Rome’s most prestigious painter (a mannerist)

  • Seems to have worked primarily painting flowers and fruit

Example:  Boy with Basket of Fruit, 1593

 

  • He was unhappy in Cesari’s assembly-line style workshop with limited opportunities

  • By 1595 had found a new patron in Cardinal Del Monte

  • Throughout his time in Rome he was constantly in trouble with police; much of what we know of his life comes from police records. He often carried a sword with him went he went out and had a short temper.

       

Examples:             Bacchus, 1596

                            St. Francis and the Angel, 1597

                            Penitent Mary Magdalen, 1597

  • Caravaggio often used prostitutes and courtesans for models; he knew many of them personally from his own social rounds of brothels, taverns and tennis courts

  • Fillide Melandroni was a frequent model; she posed for his portrait of St. Catharine

  • With Fillide as model, his work became much more real emotionally and dramatically.

    

Examples:              Judith Slaying Holofernes, 1599

                            Basket of Fruit, 1599

  • It was typical for painters of the time to make drawings of their subjects first and to use their imaginations in constructing some figures. They used the drawings to make incisions in frescos and carbon tracings in oil paintings as outlines before actually painting.

  • Caravaggio insisted on working directly from models on the canvas. His goal was to capture the realism as closely as possible. He refused to paint in fresco because the speed of execution required drawings and precluded use of live models.

  • In 1600, Caravaggio was asked to finish a commission that was abandoned by Cesari to provide two paintings of St. Matthew for the Contarelli chapel.

  • He broke some major church rules about what is appropriate for paintings of sacred subjects.

    •

  • Do not show anything about a saint’s life that is not spiritually productive (even if true).

  • Lascivious poses and nudity are inappropriate for sacred figures; sexual attractive beauty is specifically banned.

  • Do not introduce "new and unusual things into religious art’s familiar stories, making additions and changes which trouble our sight more than a little."—Paleotti (advocated of an Index of prohibited images).

  • All sacred art must convey transcendance and holiness.

        Examples:   Calling of St. Matthew, 1600

                            Martyrdom of St. Matthew, 1601

  • In 1600-1601 Caravaggio received a commission to paint two side paintings in the Farnese gallery to complement a central altarpiece by Annibale Carracci, a prominent mannerist painter in Rome and Caravaggio’s rival.

  • For this commission he painted The Conversion of St. Paul" and "The Crucifixion of St. Peter."

        Examples:       Crucifixion of St. Peter, 1601

                                Conversion of St. Paul, 1601

                                Amor Vincit Omnia (Love Conquers All), 1601

                                        private commision for Vincenzo Giustiani
                                        model: Francesco Boneri or “Cecco” M.’s new “servant boy”

             John in the Wild, 1602
                 Commissioned by Ciriaco Mattei in honor of his
                         eldest son’s name saint

             Supper at Emmaus, 1602

             Incredulity of St. Thomas, 1602

  • In 1603 Caravaggio was imprisoned for libel of a favorite church painter, Giovanni Baglione.

  • Orazio Gentileschi (father of Artemisia Gentileschi) was working in Rome at this time and was apparently a drinking buddy.

  • Some nasty sonnets in circulation referring to Baglione as "Johnny Prick" were traced to Caravaggio’s circle.

  • He was convicted and spent a month under house arrest.

    •

            Examples:          Sacrifice of Isaac, 1603
                                     Christ's Burial, 1603
                                     Madonna di Loreto, 1604

Baglione’s commentary on the Madona:

“. . . He did a Loreto Madonna painted from life with two pilgrims, the man with muddy feet and the woman in a dirty torn bonnet.  Because he trivialized the attributes that a major painting ought to have, the lower classes made a huge fuss over it.”

The model for the Madonna was a famous courtesan named Maddalena Antognetti, known as “Lena.”

  • In 1604 Caravaggio was commissioned to paint a painting of the Virgin for a Carmelite church in Trastevere.

  • The painting was rejected; it was taken down and locked aw

Example:  Death of the Virgin, 1605

 

Caravaggio was arrested at least six times between the libel suit and 1605.

Examples: Groom’s Madonna, 1606

                 St. Jerome, 1605

                 David

  • In 1606 Caravaggio fled Rome after killing an army officer, Ranuccio Tomassoni

  • He was declared a capital criminal, which meant that anyone encountering him in the jurisdiction of Rome could kill him and collect reward money.

  • He spent the rest of his life as a wanted man, moving between Genoa, Naples and Malta.

  • In 1610 he had ostensibly achieved a reprieve and was headed back to Rome, but mysteriously disappeared; his body was never found.

Examples:  Wignacourt & Page, 1608

                 Seven Acts of Mercy, 1606

                 Nativity, 1609

                 Salome, 1609

                 Ursula Transfixed, 1610

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ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI

(1593-1652)

Images of the paintings discussed in class and listed below can be found at the following web sites: 

Harden, Mark.  "Artchive.’”  http://artchive.com/ftp_site.htm (1/30/03).

“Web Gallery of Art: Artist Index.”  http://gallery.euroweb.hu/artist.html (1/30/03).

 

 

BASIC BIOGRAPHY

 

1593        Born in Rome July 8, 1593, daughter of Orazio and Prudentia Monotone Gentileschi

1605        Mother died; father began training her as an artist

    Met many many of the leading artists in Italy, including Caravaggio, whose work influenced her greatly

1610        Produced Susanna and the Elders

1612        Orazio brought rape charges against Agostino Tassi, a fellow artist and Artemisia’s art tutors

                During the rape trial Gentileschi painted Judith Slaying Holofernes

                After the trial she married a Florentine artist, Pietro Antonio di Vincenzo Stiattesi and moved to Florence

1613        Completed Judith and her Maidservant

1616        Became an official member of the Academy of Design in Florence, a rarity for a women

                Did commissions for Grand Duke Cosimo II of the Medici family

1621        Moved back to Rome, then to Genoa, accompanying her father

1621        Painted her first Lucretia and first Cleopatra

                Met Anthony Van Dyck and Sonfonisba Anguissola

                Moved back to Rome with her daughter and two servants

c.1626     Moved to Naples

1630        Painted her Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting and The Annunciation, as well as another

                Lucretia, another Cleopatra, and other works

1638        In residence at the English court of King Charles I, probably working on a project with her father

1641        Returned to Italy

                In the last years of her life she painted at least five variations on Bathsheba

1652        Died.  Only two satiric epitaphs record her death, both characterizing her as sexually promiscuous.

 

Examples used in class:

Judith Beheading Holofernes (2 versions)

Judith and her Maidservant

Mary Magdalen

Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting

Susanna and the Elders

Lucretia  

 

SOURCES

 

“Artemisa Gentileschi Online.”  http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/gentileschi_artemisia.html (2/11/03).

 

“Artemisia Gentileschi.”  http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/00/alice/artemisia.html  (2/11/03).

 

“Artemisia Gentileschi.”  http://www.u.arizona.edu/ic/mcbride/ws200/gentil.htm   (2/11/03).

 

Garrard, Mary D.   Artemisia Gentileschi.  Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1989.

 

Harden, Mark.  "Artchive.’”  http://artchive.com/ftp_site.htm (1/30/03).

 

"The Judith Paintings."  http://www.svreeland.com/j-paintings.html  (2/18/03).

 

“The Life and Art of Artemisia Gentileschi.”  http://members.ozemail.com.au/~drbrash/artemisia/index.html 

(2/11/03).

 

“Web Gallery of Art: Artist Index.”  http://gallery.euroweb.hu/artist.html (1/30/03).

 

To see a variety of  Judiths by other artists, see:
"Caravaggio's Judith."  http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~engl891/caravaggiojudith.htm  (2/17/03). 

               At this site you can click on "More Paintings" to see versions by other artists.

 

 

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Baroque Art: 
Rubens, Rembrandt, Velázquez, Vermeer and Bernini
(for Caravaggio and Gentileschi, see separate lecture notes)

Listed below are the art works we looked at in class; all the images can be found at the following web sites:

Harden, Mark.  "Artchive.’”  http://artchive.com/ftp_site.htm (1/30/03).

“Web Gallery of Art: Artist Index.”  http://gallery.euroweb.hu/artist.html (1/30/03).

“WebMuseum: Rembrandt.”  http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/rembrandt/  (2/02/03).

“WebMuseum: Rubens.”  http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/rubens/  (2/2/03).
“WebMuseum: Velázquez, Diego.” http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/velazquez/  (2/17/03).

“WebMuseum: Vermeer, Jan.”  http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/vermeer/  (2/2/03).

 

Peter Paul Rubens
(1577-1640)

Self-portrait with Isabella Brant, c. 1610

The Elevation of the Cross, c. 1610-11

The Descent from the Cross, 1611-14 

The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus, c. 1618

Portrait of Isabella Brant, c. 1625-26

Helene Fourment and Her Children, Claire-Jeanne and Francois, c. 1636-37

The Little Fur (Helen Fourment, the Second Wife to the Artist), c. 1638

Rubens, his wife Helena Fourment, and their son Peter Paul, c. 1639

The Three Graces

 

Rembrandt van Rijn

(1606-1669)

Bathsheba at Her Bath, 1654

Descent from the Cross, 1634

The Feast of Belshazzar, c. 1635

The company of Frans Banning Cock preparing to march out, known as the Nightwatch, 1642

The raising of the cross, c. 1633 

Rembrandt and Saskia in the Scene of the Prodigal Son in the Tavern. c. 1635

Self-Portraits, 1628, 1629, 1640, 1658, 1661, 1669

The Mill, c. 1650

The Slaughtered Ox, 1655

 

Diego Velázquez

(1599-1660)

The Needlewoman, c. 1640

Las Meninas (Maids of Honor), 1656-57

Maria Teresa of Spain ("with two watches"), 1652-53

Infanta Margarita, 1656

Prince Felipe Prospero, 1659
Venus at Her Mirror ("The Rokeby Venus"), c. 1644-48

 

 

 Jan Vermeer
(1632-1675)

The Kitchen Maid, c. 1658

View of Delft, c. 1660-61

Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, c. 1662-63

Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, c. 1664-65

Girl with a Pearl Earring, c. 1665-1666

The Girl with the Red Hat, c. 1665-67

The Lacemaker, c. 1669-70

The Love Letter, c. 1669-70

 

Gianlorenzo Bernini

(1598-1680)

Ecstasy of St. Teresa, 1647-52

David, 1625

 

 

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17th and 18th Century Fashion

Rose Bertin

  • First fashion designer

  • Milliner for Marie Antoinette

  • Plotted together to introduce new fashions daily

  • Charged outrageous prices—men went bankrupt paying for their wives’ dresses

Paintings used in class discussion

 

Resources
 
"Digital History of Fashion." http://www.furman.edu/~kgossman/history/ (2/27/03).
 
"The History of Fashion and Dress." http://www.costumes.org/pages/fashiondress/thr355main.htm (2/27/03).
 
"The History of Corsets." http://elisabat.netgod.net/corset.html (2/27/03).
 
"La Couturière Parisienne: 1700s." http://www.marquise.de/1700/index.shtml (2/27/03).
 
"Vigee-Lebrun: Marie Antoinette Gallery." http://www.batguano.com/VigeeMAgallery.html (2/27/03).

 

Rococo Art

 

Rococo style

  • Aristocratic style that arose during final years of Louis XIV’s reign

  • Differed from the dramatic, passionate Baroque style in its more intimate scale and lighter touch

  • Graceful and gentle in comparison, preferring soft pastels to rich, vibrant colors. It is elegant, refined and sensual.

  • Often maintained the busy texture of a Baroque painting but without the emotional, dramatic energy.

  • Glorified the superficiality of aristocratic life.

Principal Artists

François Boucher (1703-1770)

Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806)

Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721)

Marie Louise Élizabeth Vigée-Lebrun
(1755-1842)

Rose Bertin (1747-1812)

François Boucher
 Favorite painter of Mme. De Pompadour, Louis XV’s mistress

 

Paintings viewed in class
Shepherd and Shepherdess Reposing (1761)

Pastorale

Diana Resting After Her Bath (1742)

Rinaldo and Armida (1734)

Boucher, Resting Girl
Mme. de Pompadour at the Toilet Table (1758)
Mme. de Pompadour (1759)
Mme. de Pompadour (1758)
Mme. de Pompadour (1756)

 

Jean-Honoré Fragonard

Court painter to Louis XV

The Swing
The Music lesson (1769)

The Souvenir (1775-78)
The Stolen Kiss (1787-89)

The Love Letter (1770’s)

Venus and Cupid (c.1760)
Confession of Love (1771)

Young Woman Playing with a Dog (1765-1772)

A Boy as Pierrot (1776-80)

 

Jean-Antoine Watteau

Gersaint's Shopsign

Les Charmes de la vie (The Delights of Life)

Sous un habit de Mezzetin (In Mezzetin's Costume)

Plaisirs d'amour (The Pleasures of Love)

 

Marie Louise Élizabeth Vigée-Lebrun
 Court painter to Marie Antoinette (painted 30 portraits for her)

Paintings viewed in class:
Mme. du Barry
Marie Antoinette (8 portraits of the Queen posing by herself)
Marie Antoinette with her children (1788)
Marie Antoinette’s Two Elder Children (1785)

Three self-portraits

Two self-portraits with daughter Julie
Mme. Mole-Raymond

 

Sources for images:

Harden, Mark. "Artchive.’” http://artchive.com/ftp_site.htm  (1/30/03).

"Jean-Honoré Fragonard."   http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/fragonard_jean-honore.html  (2/25/03).

"Marie Louise Élizabeth Vigée-Lebrun Online."
            http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/vigee-lebrun_marie_louise_elisabeth.html (2/17/03).

 “Web Gallery of Art.” http://gallery.euroweb.hu/artist.html  (1/30/03).

"WebMuseum: Watteau."  http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/watteau/ (2/25/03).

 

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THE AGE OF REASON
1700 – 1789

18th century developments

  • Building on scientific developments of 17th century, a renewed emphasis on reason, order and objectivity

  • In the arts, there was a movement away from the theatrical and passionate to the elegant and orderly

  • Democratic ideals drive out absolutist governments

  • A philosophical movement called the Enlightenment took center stage.

Enlightenment thinking

  • Drew on classical humanistic ideals

  • Optimistic view of human nature and potential

  • Through the use of reason, humankind could be perfected

Tenets of the Enlightenment

1. Natural is best

  • Nature is orderly and good, and can be understood through science.

  • As a corollary, man himself is good by nature and is only corrupted by society (the theory of the "noble savage").

  • Naturalness and simplicity were qualities to be admired.

  • One should seek to follow natural law.

  • Natural laws governed society and all its activities, including the economy

  • Development of the principles of laissez-faire

    • "let it be" approach to economy

    • force of supply and demand should rule

    • no government regulation or intervention

    • "unrestricted enjoyment of private property"

    • all society would benefit if people were permitted to pursue their own self-interest

    •  

2.  Reason Reigns Supreme

  • Change and progress can improve society.

  • Education could free humanity from ignorance.      

  • Institutions should seek "the greatest happiness for the greatest number."

  • Faith should be placed in reason, not in religious doctrine

    • A focus on Deism--God as impersonal clockmaker rather than a personal God.

    • Happiness should be pursued on earth, not left to the afterlife. The arts in this period often focused on entertainment value rather than deep meaning

3.  Equality of men

  • All men are inherently created equal

  • Increasing concern with the common man and his rights.

 

Major Enlightenment figures

  • Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755)

    •         Separation of powers in government

  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

    •         The Social Contract (1762)

            Communal moral sense/collective will of people

            State should be small

  • Francois-Marie Arouet or Voltaire (1694-1778)

    •         Well-known atheist and satirist

            Candide and Letter on the Presbyterians

  • Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)

    •

            Gulliver’s Travels and A Modest Proposal (satires)

  • Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

    •          Essay on Man: "The proper study of mankind is man."

             Belief that humanity could create a heaven on earth if they thought

                and behaved rationally.

Artists

  • Rococo art (see presentation on Rococo style) went out of style as Enlightenment ideals became more prominent

  • Neoclassical art

    • Explored classical themes

    • Stressed balance, simplicity and restraint

    • Primary exponent of this style was Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825)

  • Satirical art

    • William Hogarth (1697-1764)

Art work viewed in class:

 

Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825)

David, The Death of Socrates (1787)

David, The Oath of the Horatii (1784)

David, Madame Recamier (1800)

Source:  Harden, Mark. "Artchive.’” http://artchive.com/ftp_site.htm  (1/30/03).

 

William Hogarth (1697-1764)

Hogarth, The Drunken Magistrate

Hogarth, She Expires while the Physicians Quarrel

Hogarth, The Quack

Hogarth, The Four Stage of Cruelty:  The Reward

According to the Murder Act of 1752, the bodies of all convicted murderers were to be displayed in chains or turned over to the surgeons for dissection.

Hogarth, The Marriage Contract

Hogarth, The Sleeping Congregation

Hogarth, The Funeral

Hogarth, Chorus of Singers

Sources
 “Art of William Hogarth.” http://www.haleysteele.com/hogarth/toc.html (2/26/03).
“William Hogarth’s Realm.” http://juliette.nfrance.com/~ju8655/hogarth/ (2/26/03).

 

Music During the Enlightenment

Major Classic Composers

  • Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

  • Ludwig van Beethoven began his career in the classical style, but is better known as the first Romantic composer of the next period.

Types of music

  • Sonatas

  • Symphonies - compositions for orchestra

  • String quartets - compositions for two violins, one viola and a cello

  • Comic opera - Singspiel

Influence of Enlightenment Ideas on Music

  • The use of music as pure entertainment.

  • Employment of clear, simple, more natural melodies

  • Melodies more folk-like to show kinship with the common man

  • Emphasis on rational, orderly structure and form

 

Components of Rational Structure

  • Clearly defined sections

  • Artistic manipulation of

    • Repetition

    • Variation

    • Contrast

  • Sonata form is the preeminent example.

Sonata Form

 

Exposition

Development

 Recapitulation
A bridge B cadence variation A bridge B cadence
1st key 2nd key variety of keys
uses any material from Exposition		 1st key 1st key

 

 

Other Classic Forms

 

Rondo Form

A B A C A D A . . .

(A is the returning theme)

 

 

 

Minuet Trio Minuet

Minuet   Trio   Minuet

AABA

 AABA CCDC CCDC AABA

 

 

Musical examples used in class
 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Symphony # 40 in G Minor, first movement

Excerpts from The Magic Flute (Singspiel)

 

 

 

Characteristics of Classic Opera

  • Comic plots rather than tragedies and other serious themes

  • Ordinary people as protagonists instead of famous historical figures and nobility

  • Operas written in the vernacular rather than in Italian.

  • In some operas, notably the Singspiel, dialogue would be spoken rather than sung.

  • The aria melodies tended to be simple and elegant, in contrast with the complex, virtuosic melodies of the Baroque.

  • Use of small vocal ensembles (trios and quartets) particularly at the ends of acts.

 

 

                                Mozart Biography

 

1756

Born Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus
Theophilus Mozart
Son of Leopold Mozart,
Music Director to Archbishop of Salzburg

1759

Began playing the keyboard at age 3 a
nd starting composing music at age 5

1762

Went on first European tour (Munich and Vienna)
as a child prodigy with sister, Nannerl

1763-1766

Tour to Munich, Augsburg, Frankfurt, Cologne,
Brussels, Paris London, Holland and Switzerland
(including a visit at Louis XV’s court in Versaille)

Wrote his first three symphonies

1767-68

Visits to Vienna
Composed first two operas

1769-1770

Visits to Italy, more operas

1777-1778

Toured with mother (Munich, Augsburg,
Mannheim and Paris)
Mother died during tour

1778-1780

Worked for archbishop in Salzburg

1780-1781

Wrote and produced Idomeneo (opera)
for the Elector of Bavaria
Resigned position in Salzburg

1782

Married Constanze Weber
First performance of opera
Die Entführung aus dem Serail
(The Flight from the Seraglio)

1785

Played violin in string quarters with
Dittersdorf and Haydn;
dedicated six string quartets to Haydn
Began work on opera, Le nozze di Figaro
(The Marriage of Figaro)

Frequent soloist performing his own
keyboard concertos

1786-1788

Performances of Figaro in Vienna and Prague
Composition of Symphony in D (K504)

Composition of opera, Don Giovanni

Father Leopold dies.

Began writing last three symphonies

1789-1790

Financial problems began to build;
wrote a lot of music for “meal money”

Opera Cosi fan tutte commissioned by
Emperor Joseph II of Austria

1791

Composed Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute)

Began commission for a Requiem for an anonymous
patron (turned out to Count F. von Walsegg)

Health deteriorated and he died before finishing
the Requiem; his student Süssmayr finished it.

 

Source:  “The Mozart Project.” http://www.mozartproject.org/index.html  (2/26/03).
 

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Romanticism

1770-1830

 

After the Enlightenment

By the end of the 18th century, the Age of Reason gave way to a new age, one influenced by three major revolutions

  • The American Revolution

  • The French Revolution

  • Industrial Revolution

American Revolution

  • Model for future revolutions

  • Established first successful democracy since ancient Athens, though not all could vote

  • Borrowed from Locke/Rousseau the idea of social contract

  • Borrowed from Montesquieu the concept of separation of powers, creating legislative, executive and judicial branches

  • Envisioned a decentralized system with states’ rights

  • Use of constitutional convention and written constitution

 

French Revolution

  • Initially a rebellion of upper and upper-middle class to establish a representative government with a limited monarchy

  • Turned violent as the King and many people associated with him were tried and executed at the insistence of the lower and lower-middle class

  • Reign of Terror followed (1793-1794) when factions clashed over reforms: Robespierre was a major figure.

  • Anyone accused of opposing the ruling government was executed, usually by guillotine.

  • Order was not reestablished until Napoleon Bonaparte started his dictatorship in 1799.

 

Industrial Revolution

Fueled by three factors:     

  • wide-scale replacement of manual labor with mechanical labor (machines)

  • the development of new sources of energy (water and steam, e.g.--the steam engine was patented in 1769) to replace human/animal power

  • the plentiful availability of raw materials, particularly iron ore and coal.       

Capitalism becomes the prevailing economic system in western Europe.

 

Capitalism

The factory system created a new class of labor, the "working class."

  • Long hours doing tedious work

  • Unsafe working conditions

  • Low wages

  • Poor housing conditions

  • No benefits       

Class tensions increased between factory owners and workers.

 

Economics of Capitalism

  • Fueled by the desire for profit

  • Built on the laissez-faire/free market economic thinking of the Enlightenment.

  • Major economics theorists:   

  • Adam Smith (1723-1790)

  • Thomas Malthus (1766-1834)

  • David Ricardo (1772-1823)     

    •

     

    Adam Smith (1723-1790)

    • An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1776

    • Economic acts of self-interest guide the most efficient use of resources

    • The public welfare is improved as a by-product of free market enterprise.

    • He also wrote treatises on ethical conduct and was a generous donor to charities.

    Thomas Malthus (1766-1834)

    • Essay on the Principle of Population (1788):

    • It is to the benefit of mankind that famines, plagues and wars take place

    • Controls population and assures adequate food supplies

    • Working class laborers are victims of their own overbreeding.

    • Employers did not need to concern themselves much with their well-being.

    David Ricardo (1772-1823)

    • Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1821)

    • Laborers would never be able to rise above subsistence-level wages and living conditions

    • It is inevitable that laborers will be poor and miserable.

    • Therefore, industrialists need not worry about the degrading effects of industrialization on such employees.

     

    End of Neoclassicism

      Jacques-Louis David, a neoclassicist, was official painter of the French Revolution

      and later of Napoleon’s court.

      Death of Marat

      Coronation of Napoleon and Josephine

      Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867)

             Colder, starker style than David

             Best at portraits

    Examples used in presentation

    David, Death of Marat

    David, Coronation of Napoleon and Josephine

    Ingres, Hortense Reiset, Madame Reiset 1846

    Ingres, Louise de Broglie, Countesse d'Haussonville 1845

    Ingres, Josephine-Eleonore-Marie-Pauline de Galard

    de Brassac de Bearn, Princesse de Broglie 1853

    Ingres, Francoise Poncelle, Madame Leblanc 1823

    Ingres, The Source 1808

    Ingres, La Grand Odalisque, 1814

    Ingres, Odalisque and slave, 1839

    Ingres, Odalisque and slave, 1839

    Ingres, The Turkish Bath, 1862

    Ingres, Bather of Valpincon 1808

    Ingres, Jupiter and Thetis

     

    Sources for Images:
     Harden, Mark. "Artchive.’” http://artchive.com/ftp_site.htm  (1/30/03).

     “Web Gallery of Art.” http://gallery.euroweb.hu/artist.html  (1/30/03).

     

    Neoclassical architecture

  • based on models of Palladio

  • Influence on American architects like Thomas Jefferson for large homes

    and government buildings

    • Monticello

    Virginia capitol state house

    Source for images:

    "Thomas Jefferson: Architecture." http://surfaquarium.com/arch.htm (3/11/03).

    "Monticello: The Home of Thomas Jefferson." http://www.monticello.org/house/index.html

         (3/11/03).

    "Monticello, Thomas Jefferson: Great Buildings Online."
              http://www.GreatBuildings.com/buildings/Monticello.html (3/11/03).

     

    End of Neoclassicism

     

    In literature neo-classicism is evident in the novels of Jane Austen, who

  • strove to represent the lives and morals of the middle-class world.

  • created serene settings of quiet domesticity through clear writing and detailed description.

  • Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility are her best-known novels.

    •

    For an excerpt from Austen's Sense and Sensibility, see Supplemental Texts.

     

    Neoclassicism and Enlightenment ideas are eventually supplanted by

    Romanticism.

     

    Romantic Ideals

    • delight in the emotional, irrational, unpredictable, extraordinary, and/or exotic

    • trust in human intuition, inspiration and, spirituality

    • a love of freedom and rebellion; concern with the heroic

    • a strong sense of self-expression and individuality

    • a view of nature as a spiritual entity rather than a abstract, scientific phenomenon

    • trust in subjective, rather than objective, truth.

     

    Emotionalism

    Romantics were often drawn were often drawn to the most extreme emotions-- madness, anguish, ecstasy, despair, etc.

     

    Love of and reverence for nature

    • wild moments--its most terrifying, cataclysmic manifestations (earthquakes, storms, e.g.)

    • serene, divine moments; pastoral scenes viewed as indicative of the presence of Spirit or God.

    Fascination with the extraordinary; preoccupation with

    • Past ages (particularly the Middle Ages)

    • Exotic locales

    • Realm of imagination and subconscious

    • transcendent and transforming experiences

    • Preferred heroics and drama

    • The ordinary and mundane held no interest for Romantics.

    Concern with the spiritual rather than the scientific

    • search for God in nature

    • Catholic renewal movement

    • metaphysical and supernatural phenomena-- ghosts, demons, fairy folk and mythological creatures are common characters.

           

    Philosophers concerned with spirituality

    • Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854)

    • Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

    • Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)

    Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854)

    • Idealism—philosophy concerned with spiritual transcendence and transformation

    • strong sense of art itself as a spiritual experience

    • belief in art as a kind of religion in which artists’ inspiration reveals divine truths

     

    Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

    • Physical world could be understood by science.

    • There is a world beyond the physical that can only be understood by human intuition and imagination.

    Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)

    • explained human history as "the record of the World Spirit seeking to know its true nature."

    • only through the struggles of opposites that the quest of this World Spirit is advanced

    • wars and revolts were simply manifestations of spiritual growth

    Rebellion, revolution and revolt

    • Although Enlightenment thinkers talked a lot about liberty, social justice, and individual rights, Romantics were more apt to act on this humanitarian impulses and embrace the violence of revolutions

    • They idolized heroic gestures and triumphant battles.

    Nonconformity and self-awareness

    • As a corollary to their love of revolution, embraced nonconformity and self-awareness

    • Prized personal expression and individuality above all else.

    • Artists, writers and musicians often wrote for posterity, scornful of public opinion in the present, feeling themselves "above it all."

    Nationalism

    • initially expressed as an interest in the native folk cultures and a rejection of foreign influences

    • later developed into a more aggressive militant hostility toward "alien" groups

    • Most national anthems in Europe and the U.S. were composed during this period

    These Romantic ideals infuse the literature, art and music of the period.

     

    Romantic writers

    Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), known particularly for his play, Faust, and lots of poetry that composers of the period set to music

    William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

    Lord Byron (1788-1824)

    John Keats (1795-1821)

    Percy Shelley (1792-1822)

    Mary Shelley (1797-1851), the author of Frankenstein

    Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

    For examples of literature, see your Reader and Supplemental Texts.

     

     

    Romantic Art

    Many artists known for nature paintings. There were two major types:

    Pastoral

    • emphasizes scenes of peasant life

    • Such scenes equated with divine order in its moral link between humanity and nature.

    • Try to reflect the universal presence of God in nature.

    Sublime

    • focused on more devastating aspects of nature

      •

              unpredictability and violence

              brooding, impenetrable qualities.

    • reflects a sense that there is an order beyond our understanding and control.

     

    Romantic Nature Artists

    John Constable (1776-1837)

    Mostly pastoral style

    Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851)

    Known primarily for sublime style

    Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840)

    Known primarily for sublime style

    Examples used in class:

    Constable, Cornfield

    Constable, Brighton Pier

    Constable, Leaping Horse

    Turner, Lake of Zug

    Turner, Snowstorm

    Turner, Shipwreck

    Turner, Norham Castle, Sunrise, 1835-40

    Turner, Peace – Burial at Sea, 1840

    Friedrich, Winter Landscape

    Friedrich, Sea of Ice

    Friedrich, Sea of Fog

     

    Sources for images:

    Harden, Mark. "Artchive.’” http://artchive.com/ftp_site.htm  (1/30/03).

     “Web Gallery of Art.” http://gallery.euroweb.hu/artist.html  (1/30/03).

     

     

     

    Other Painters

    Other painters are more concerned with depiction of contemporary events.

     

    Connected with liberal, revolutionary ideals

    use of political allegory

    grim, emotional portrayals of violence and disaster.    

            The three most prominent of these painters were:

    Francisco Goya (1746-1828)

    Theodore Gericault (1791-1824)

    Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863)

    Images used in class:

    Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People

    Delacroix, The Death of Sardanapolis

    Delacroix, Massacre

    Delacroix, Algerian Women

    Goya, The Fifth of May

    Goya, Two Old Men

    Goya, Saturn

     

    Sources for images:

    Harden, Mark. "Artchive.’” http://artchive.com/ftp_site.htm  (1/30/03).

     “Web Gallery of Art.” http://gallery.euroweb.hu/artist.html  (1/30/03).

     

     

    Romantic Music

    For the first time in music history, the music world was no longer completely dependent on aristocratic patronage

    Musicians were able to earn a living as independent artists

    private students

    public concerts for which the middle class patrons paid fees

    As a consequence, they became more individualistic (and often eccentric)

     

    Romantic Music--Characteristics

    • Extremes in length: very long or very short

    • Emphasis on lyrical melodies that ebb and surge

    • Emotional, dramatic themes

    • Colorful use of instruments for special effects

    • Tendency to break rules of classic form or create own forms

     

    Romantic Composers

    Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

    Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

    Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)

     

    Beethoven

    Transitional figure

    Trained in classical techniques

    Expression, however, is Romantic

    Compared with classical works

    Longer and more emotional

    Broke rules of classical form

    New material in places where repetition was expected

    Blurred divisions between movements

    Used choral voices in symphony

    Best known today for his symphonies (the Fifth and Ninth being most famous) and piano sonatas

    Schubert

    Known primarily today for his Lieder or art songs

    Vocal pieces for solo singer

    Accompanied by piano

    Wrote over 600 art songs

    Texts by contemporary poets such as Goethe

    Sensitive, emotional rendering of texts

    Example: "Der Erlkönig" (The Erl-King)

     

    Berlioz

    • This is the first great age of the orchestral conductor and Berlioz was famous for his conducting style.

    • Known for his colorful orchestral works, especially program music like the Symphonie Fantastique.  See Supplemental Texts for the program.

     

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    19th Century: Triumph of the Bourgeoisie

    1830-1871

     

    Philosophical/Social Movements

    • Liberalism

    • Socialism

    • Nationalism

    • Transcendentalism

    • Abolitionism

    • Higher Criticism

    New Art Movement: Realism

    • Reaction against the official art

    • Portrayed ordinary everyday subjects in a straightforward, unsentimental fashion

    • Painters: Millet and Daumier

    • Writers: Charles Dickens

    Examples:

    Daumier, Third Class Carriage (1863)

    Daumier, The Laundress (1860)

    Millet, Shepherdess with her flock (1857)

    Millet, The Angelus (1864)

     

    Music continued to be Romantic in style

    • Longer and more complex

    • Exploration of ethnic elements

    • experimentation with forms to create new sounds, textures, and structures

    • Focused on virtuosity and display

    Romantic Composers

    • Frederic Chopin (1810-1849)

    • Franz Liszt (1811-1886)

    • Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

    • Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

    • Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)

    • Richard Wagner (1813-1883)

    • American composers: John Knowles Paine, Louis Gottschalk and Stephen Foster; spirituals

     

    Piano Music Examples

    Frederic Chopin (1810-1849)

    Nocturne

    Polonaise

    Franz Liszt (1811-1886)

    Extremely virtuosic music—sounds like you need five hands to play it

    A bit of a cult figure—women swooned at his concerts

     

    Choral Music Example
    Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
    The German Requiem

    Movement II:  Chorus

    Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras        

    Und alle Herrlichkeit des Menschen    

    Wie des Grases Blumen.                    

    Das Gras ist verdorret                        

    Und die Blume abgefallen.                

    		For all flesh is as grass
    and all the glory of man
    As the flower of grass.
    The grass withereth,
    And the flower falleth away.

     

    Orchestral Music Example

    Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

    A Midsummer Night’s Dream—program music

     

     

    Opera Examples

            Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)

                    Italian composer

                    Aida

    Richard Wagner (1813-1883)

    German composer

    The Ring of the Nibelungen: The Valkyrie

    Wagner

    • most revolutionary of the Romantic opera composers and is credited with important musical innovations.

    • wrote his own librettos as well as his own music

    • borrowed and adapted themes from German and Norse mythology as well as medieval romances.

    Wagner’s Innovations

    • Gesamtkunstwerk– "total artwork"

      • all elements of the drama--texts, voices, orchestra, plot, scenery, staging--were on equal footing

    • Continuous melody

      • did away with the traditional division of music between recitative and aria

      • music is wedded closely to the words

    • Leitmotifs

      • recurring themes associated with particular characters, events, objects, or ideas in the opera

      • The same technique used in scoring many modern films

     

     

    Wagner’s Innovations

    • Wagner had an opera house built to his specifications in Bayreuth, Germany, specifically to produce his operas. It had an orchestra pit located beneath the stage.

    • The operas are VERY long [The entire Ring of the Nibelungen cycles takes 16-20 hours, usually performed over 4 nights].

    • He felt that his was a nationalist music, music that only Germans could understand.

    • He was also known to be anti-Semitic; these sentiments are found in his theoretical writings and more subtly in his opera libretti.

    Wagner’s Most Famous Operas

    Tristan and Isolde

    The Ring of the Nibelungen

    Der Meistersinger

    Lohengrin

     

    Verdi

    • Italy’s greatest Romantic opera composer.

    • plots derived from contemporary Romantic writers

    • voice would continue to be the most important element in the drama, but under Verdi the orchestra did play a more commanding role.

    • Verdi was fiercely nationalist and there are nationalistic overtones in many of his operas. People interpreted his operatic characters and plots as allegories for the patriots and political events of their country

     

    Example:  See Aida, Tomb Scene--See Supplemental Texts.

     

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    Technological Innovations

    of the 19th Century and Early 20th Century

     
    1794 Cotton gin
    1797 Interchangeable parts for guns; did not have pervasive use, however, until 1840s-1850s
    1806 Coffee Pot
    180y Steamboat
    1817 Erie Canal (first canal in 1800)
    1830

    Cast iron range

    •In six days needed 5 hrs. and 26 minutes of maintenance

    •Used 292 lbs. of coal
    1831 Reaping machine
    1833 Sewing machine (some sources say 1846)
    1834 Threshing machine
    1835 Textile workers were 46% women, 15% children under 13
    1836 Revolver (“six-shooter”)
    1840 Paint tubes
    1842 Ether anesthesia
    1843 Vulcanized rubber
    1844 Telegraph
    1845 False teeth
    1835-1860

    Growth of railroads

    First transcontinental railroads in 1862
    1857 Passenger elevator
    1858 Burglar alarm
    1859 Oil well
    1863 Roller skates
    1867 Barbed wire (some sources say 1874)
    1867 Typewriter (some sources say 1873)

    1870

    		 Pneumatic subway

    1875

    Electric dental drill

    1875

    Mimeograph machine (pre-Xerox duplication device)

    1876

    Telephone

    1877

    		 Phonograph

    1879

    Incandescent light bulb

    •Electric service available to cities in 1890s

    1880

    		 Hearing aid

    1882

    Electric fan

    1884

    First roller coaster

    1885

     

    First skyscrapers

    •First was in Chicago was 9 stories tall.

    •1892:  21 stories

    •Empire State building 86 stories

    •WTC was 110 stories

    1888

    Kodak camera

    1889

    		 Dishwasher

    1880s

    		 Electric trolley
    1891 Escalator
    1892

    Gasoline-powered Car

    •1908:   Model T of Henry Ford and
    start of assembly line production
    1893 Zipper
    1890's Electric iron

    1898

    		 First submarine

    1901

    		 Double-edged safety razor
    1902 Air conditioning
    1903 Airplane (Wright Brothers)
    1910-20's Refrigerators
    1911 Electric automobile starter (replacing the crank)

    1914

    		 Panama Canal
    1914-1917

    World War I military technology

    •Machine guns

    •Barbed wire

    •Airplanes

    •Poison gas

    •Submarines

     

    The Age of Early Modernism

    1871-1914

     

    Important Developments

    • Second Industrial Revolution

    • Modernism

    • Imperialism

    • Rise of psychology as a serious discipline

    • Increasingly urbanization

    Second Industrial Revolution

    • new energy forms--oil and electricity

    • new inventions and technology:

      • Steam engines

      • Automobiles

      • Airplanes

      • Telephone

      • Typewriter

      • Rotary press

      • Refrigeration

      • Postal service

    • Consumer economy develops

    • Advertising began to become a strong force Increased leisure time spurred new recreational activities:

      • Resorts

      • musical halls

      • Movies

      • Bicycles

    Urbanization

    • Culture in industrialized countries became increasingly urban

    • By 1900 almost 30 percent of the West’s population lived in cities.

    • Standard of living improved and middle classes became more affluent

    • Urban slums grew more crowded and working conditions dangerous.

    • Labor unions arose to combat poor conditions, using the strike to incite changes.

    • Universal public education was enacted

    Impact on Women

    • Women began to have more opportunities for employment

      • teachers

      • nurses

      • office workers

      • sales clerks

      • domestic servants (though new time-saving appliances replacing many)

    • Female and child labor in factories was now regulated

    • Female suffrage movement gained momentum, giving rise to feminism; women won the right to vote in the United States in 1920.

    Social unrest, colonization, imperialism

    • Conflict between liberal governments and conservatives, labor unions and socialists

    • Industrialized nations engaged in increasingly aggressive colonization and imperialism, particularly in third-world countries in Africa and Asia.

    • U. S. fought imperialist wars against Mexico and the Philippines.

    Mark Twain, The War Prayer

    Mark Twain’s The War Prayer was written in response to American imperialism. 

    For text, see Supplemental Texts.

     

    From Albert Bigelow Paine’s Mark Twain, A Biography (Harper & Brothers, 1912):

    To Dan Beard, who dropped in to see him, Clemens read the "War Prayer," stating that he had read it to his daughter Jean, and others, who had told him he must not print it, for it would be regarded as sacrilege.

    "Still, you are going to publish it, are you not?"

    Clemens, pacing up and down the room in his dressing-gown and slippers, shook his head.

    "No," he said, "I have told the whole truth in that, and only dead men can tell the truth in this world."

    "It can be published after I am dead."

     

     

    World War I

    • The period ends with the onset of World War I, a conflict rooted in nationalistic sentiments and complex military alliances:

      • France, Great Britain and Russia against Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy.

    • Because of advances in technology and industrial might, it was to be the bloodiest war on record to that point in history.

    Modernism

    • New experimentation and pursuit of novelty

    • ideas developed that questioned traditional Western beliefs about morality, freedom and reason.

    • Stress on personal individualistic perspectives rather than collective communal values.

    • The impetus for these new ideas came primarily three figures:

      • Friedrich Nietzsche

      • Sigmund Freud

      • Carl Jung

    Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

    • There are no absolute principles or no moral certainties.

      •

    • Civilization is a human invention, not something guided by God

    • Middle-class and Judeo-Christian ideals are the values of "herds" or "slaves."

    • A new morality would emerge that would rise above vulgar mass values, one that would extol human creativity and personal heroism.

    • Rise of Übermenschen or supermen who would live beyond the mundane concepts of good and evil currently observed by society.

    • Ignoring his exaltation of the individual and his distaste for nationalism, the Nazis in the 1930s would use his writings to justify their theories of Aryan supremacy.

    Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

    • Repudiated the idea that human nature is essentially rational.

    • He argued that human personality is the result of fierce internal conflict between inner realities and external realities. The struggle took place between different parts of the psyche or self:

      • id (primitive instincts and desires)

      • superego (conscience)

      • ego (the public face that mediates and balances, resolving the conflicts).

    • The mentally ill are those who cannot or will not reach a balance between these conflicting sources.

    • Freud founded psychoanalysis, therapy focused on uncovering the roots of neurotic behavior through the use of

      • free association

      • dream analysis

    • In The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), he described his methods for interpreting dreams. Most dream symbols

      • express wish fulfillment

      • have repressed sexual content

    Carl Jung (1875-1961)

    • Challenged Freud’s interpretative premises and methods of dream analysis. Not all dreams are wish fulfillment; some are

      • premonitory

      • reflective of subconscious realities unacknowledged by the conscious mind

      • archetypal

    • Collective subconscious

      • Dreams have both personal content and a universal meaning

      • Universal meaning revealed by archetypal images drawn from share human experience

      • Archetypes found in dreams, myths and fairy tales

    • Every human being has both feminine and masculine elements in his/her personality

      • These aspects must be balanced properly in order for a person to function properly as a social being.

      • Every man has an inner woman--the anima

      • Every woman an inner man--the animus.

      • In Jungian dream analysis, such figures appear as members of the opposite sex.

    • •Jung also developed a system of personality type classification that is still in use today-in modified form (Myers-Briggs test). 
      • He analyzed and labeled the various ways in which people operate in and relate to the world.
        • –Extroversion (E) vs. introversion (I)
        • –Thinking (T) vs. feeling (F)
        • –Sensing (S) vs. intuitive (N)
        • –Judging (J) vs. perceiving (P)
      • •A person’s particular combination of these traits--there are 16 possible personality types--has great influence on personal relationships and the types of careers to which he/she is suited.
       

    Literature

    • There are many types of literature in this period that challenge traditional viewpoints. We are going to study only two:

      • Naturalism

      • Expressionism

    Naturalism

    Naturalistic literature focused on sociological issues, striving for scientific objectivity and using harsh social commentary to depict modern industrial society in an unfavorable light.

    It also drew on the new insights into human temperament uncovered by contemporary psychology.

    • Emile Zola (1840-1902) was the chief exponent of Naturalism. His novels deal with social ills, portraying all characters in a deterministic manner that depicts them as victims of their inborn dispositions.

    • Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) wrote problem plays, such as A Doll’s House (1879) that dealt with social issues.

    • Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), in works such as The Three Sisters, portrayed ordinary life in the small towns of Russia.

    Women Naturalist Writers

    • Kate Chopin (1851-1904)

      • concentrated on female characters in conflict with social morality and the restrictions of gender roles

    • Most famous and controversial novel:  The Awakening

    • Short story (in your reader):  "The Story of an Hour"

    • Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935)

      • "The Yellow Wallpaper"

      •

    • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930)

      • "The Revolt of Mother"

      • "The Apple Tree"

    Expressionism

    • Expressionists believed that bourgeois-inspired art could no longer express the truth and sought new means of expression.

    • Expressionists often probed the darker sides of human psychology.

    • Although August Strindberg (1849-1912) was the originator of the Expressionistic style, its best writer was Franz Kafka.

    Franz Kafka
    (1883-1924)

    • Kafka’s stories

      • question traditional ideas about reality

      • depict the deep alienation and helplessness felt by modern man.

    • Best-known works

      • The Metamorphosis (1919)

      • The Trial (1914)

    Modernist "isms" in Art

    • Impressionism

    • Post-Impressionism

    • Expressionism

    • Pointilism

    • Early abstract art

    • Cubism

    • Primitivism

    • Fauvism

    Examples:

    Early Modernism: Manet, Dejeuner

    Impressionism: Monet, Houses of Parliament, 1905

    Impressionism: Monet, Impression: Sunrise, 1872

    Impressionism: Monet, Waterlilies, 1906

    Impressionism: Renoir, Girl with a Watering Can, 1876

    Impressionism: Renoir, On the Terrace, 1881

    Impressionism: Degas, Ballet Dancers in the Wings, 1900

    Impressionism: Degas, The Dance Class, 1874

    Impressionism: Cassatt, Portrait of a Little Girl, 1878

    Impressionism: Cassatt, La Toilette, 1881

    Post-Impressionism: Cezanne, Mount Ste-Victoire, 1898-1900

    Post-Impressionism: Cezanne, Mount Ste-Victoire, 1904-06

    Post-Impressionism/Early Expressionism: Van Gogh: Starry Night, 1889

    Van Gogh: Sunflowers, 1888 and Irises, 1889

    Van Gogh: Self-Portrait with Felt Hat, 1887-88
    Van Gogh: Sunflowers, 1888 and Irises, 1889

    Early Expressionism: Munch, The Scream and Dead Mother

    Pointilism: Seurat, Grand Jatte, 1884-86

    Seurat, Eiffel Tower, 1888

    Cubism: Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907

    Picasso, Guernica, 1939

    Primitivism: Gauguin, Nevermore, 1897

    Gauguin, Van Gogh Painting Sunflowers, 1888

    Fauvism: Matisse, Harmony in Red, 1911

    Fauvism: Matisse, La Musique, 1939

    Expressionism: Kandinsky, Composition VI, 191

    Kandinsky, Improvisation 31 (Sea Battle), 1913)

     

    Modern Architecture

    • Architecture in the 1880s was dominated by the Chicago School

      • Accommodated dense populations and rising real estate costs

      • followed the dictum "form follows function."

      • Skyscrapers became symbols of Modernism and modern life.

    • Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959)

      • domestic architecture

      • homes that were harmonious with their natural surroundings, blending into the landscape

      • interiors without fixed walls to create more fluid effects

      • Invented the so-called "prairie style" house

    Example:  Wright, Robie House, Chicago, 1909

     

    Film and Photography

    Films and photography become an important part of cultural life during this period.

    • First films in early 1900’s

    • first film theaters in U.S. in 1905-07.

    • 1908: Hollywood is founded

    • 1909: First animated cartoon

    • Favorite American film genres: melodrama, westerns and slapstick comedy

    • 1915: D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation

    • United Artists established by Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, and D. W. Griffith

    • Charlie Chaplin becomes international star of American silent comic films

    Photography

    • Photography now competes with painting as a source of realistic portraits, perhaps nudging painters into other ways of painting in order to maintain a market.

    • Photographers and painters often copied each other’s styles.

    • In 1888 George Eastman produced the first simplified camera system for general public and first mass developing and processing

    • First mass-marketed camera produced in 1900.

    • 1906-08: First commercially successful photographic color process

    • 1913: Eastman Kodak company founded

    • 1914: First 35mm still cameras developed

     

    Types of Photography

    • Portraits

    • War photography

    • Landscape photographs

    • "Art" photography: Pictorialism

    • Documentary photography

    Julia Margaret Cameron

    • Victorian amateur photographer

    • Used large glass negatives

      • necessitated long exposures

      • resulted in soft, out-of-focus portraits

      • Long exposures might also result in "bug-eyes" as posers tried to stay still

    Examples: 

    Cameron, Devotion, 1865

    Cameron, Summer Days, 1865

    Cameron, The Mountain Nymph, 1865

     

    War Photography

     

    Matthew Brady (1823-1896) and Timothy O’Sullivan (1840-1882) were known for their photography of the Civil War and its leaders.

     

    Examples:

    Timothy O’Sullivan, Gettysburg, 1863

    Matthew Brady, The Sick Soldier, 1863

     

    Landscape Photography

    • Many of the early American landscape photographers worked in the West and Southwest

    • Among the best known landscape photographers of the early 1900’s were:

    • Carleton Watkins (1829-1916)

    • Timothy O’Sullivan (1840-1882)

    • Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904)

      • Also known for advances in motion photography

    Examples:

    Timothy O’Sullivan, Tufa Domes, Pyramid Lake, Nevada, 1867

    Carleton Watkins, Yosemite Valley,

    Muybridge, The Valley of the Yosemite

    Watkins, Yosemite Falls

     

    Landscape Paintings of the Same Period

    • Compare the early landscape photographs to the work of landscape painters, who tried to paint a Romantic image of the U.S. as a blessed, sacred land

      • Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902)

      • Thomas Hill (1829-1908)

    Examples:

    Albert Bierstadt, Valley of the Yosemite, 1864

    Thomas Hill, View of Yosemite Valley

    Bierstadt, Bridal Veil Falls

     

    Pictorialist Photography

    • Pictorialists tried to imitate the effect of painting

    • Most people viewed photography at the time as an advance in science, not art

    • Alfred Stieglitz was the best-known advocate for pictorialism (though his later work is straight photography).

    Examples:

    Stieglitz, The Hand of Man, 1903

    Stieglitz,The Flatiron Bldg., Manhattan, 1903

    Berenice Abbott’s documentary photo of the same subject—Flatiron Bldg.

     

    Documentary Photography

    • Photography was used to document social conditions, construction of buildings and government projects

    • Photographs for documentary purposes were expected to be absolutely realistic and "straight" without any creative manipulation by the photographer

      •

    • Lewis Hines (1874-1940) was an important documentary photographer.

      • Documented the building of the Empire State Building in New York

      • Most famous for series of photographs showing

        • Child labor in mills and factories

        • Immigrants at Ellis Island

        • Poor homes and neighborhoods

        • Building of the Empire State Bldg.

      • child labor in the mills and factories, images of poverty among lower class workers Photos of immigrant at Ellis Island.

    Examples:

    Lewis Hine, Orphan in a Pittsburgh Institution, 1909

    Lewis Hine, 11 yr. old mill worker, 1909

    Lewis Hine, Girl Worker in Carolina mill

    Lewis Hine, Riveters on Empire State Building, 1930

    Lewis Hine, Slavic Immigrant, 1905

    Lewis Hine, Tenement buildings in Washington, DC, 1908

    Lewis Hine, Biloxi, Mississippi, 1911

    Lewis Hine, Child Bathing in Sink, 1911

     

     

    Trends in Music

    • Impressionism

      • Claude Debussy

    • Expressionism

      • Arnold Schonberg, Pierrot Lunaire

      • Alban Berg, Wozzeck

    • Primitivism

      • Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring

    • Ragtime and blues

    Impressionism

    • Very limited movement in music

      •

    • Claude Debussy (1862-1918) was the only composer who was consistently impressionistic in his composing style

    • Example: Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun).

    • Sought to create in music the same effects as impressionist painters

      • blurred sounds

      • flexible rhythms

      • meandering melodic lines.

      • used orchestra to create delicate effects and a mood of dreaminess and transience.

    Expressionism in Music

    • Drew on Freudian psychology to express a distorted view of the world that focused on anguish, pain and alienation.

    • To accomplish this, composers used new techniques:

      • atonal music--music not set in a traditional key that lacked sense of center and employed extreme dissonance

      • Sprechstimme—style of singing in which the vocalist half-sings/half-intones the text.

    Expressionist Composers

    • Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) was the most prominent expressionist composer

      • Pierrot lunaire (Moonstruck Pierrot)

    • His student, Alban Berg, was also a prominent Expressionist

      • Wozzeck is a quintessential example of the style [We will watch part of this opera in class].

    Example:

    Pierrot lunaire
    text by Albert Giraud; music by Arnold Schoenberg (1912)
    [See Listen CD 5, tracks 17-23; for text, see Supplemental Texts.

     

    In the next period, we will listen to another work of Expressionism:  Alban Berg’s Wozzeck, Bar scene

    [See Listen, CD 5]

    Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)

    • Russian modernist composer

    • Most famous work: the primitivist ballet, The Rite of Spring

      • Collaborated with Sergei Diaghilev

      • Subject of ballet: primitive fertility rites

      • Characterized by raw dissonance, furious, complex rhythms, and unorthodox choreography

      • Caused a riot at its first performance

    • Not all works are primitivism. He experimented in a variety of styles throughout his life

     

    New American Music

    • After the American Civil War and the abolition of slavery, new music emerged from African-American communities

    • This music used practices derived from African traditions

      • Call-and-response

      • Polyrhythms

      • Melodic inflections ("blue" notes)

                        For further information on African music, see separate lecture notes.

    • Ragtime

      • prominent from the 1890s to the end of World War I

      • perfected by Scott Joplin (1868-1917).

    • Blues

      • expressive style of singing that evokes the pain and sorrow of life

      • best-known commercial performer of early blues was Ma Rainey.

    Beginnings of Jazz

    Note: Although your textbook identifies jazz as a product of this period and treats blues and ragtime as if they are forms of jazz, in fact, true jazz does not develop until the 1920s--blues and ragtimes are not considered by most jazz scholars to be jazz forms.

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    20th Century Philosophy and Literature
     After WWI

    Existentialism

    • philosophy that focused on personal freedom and responsibility

    • urged human beings to

      • take responsibility for their own actions and decisions

      • confront anxiety and death honestly

      • to accept the ultimate meaninglessness of life beyond what each individual creates for himself/herself.

    • Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) provides the best expression of this philosophy in his work Being and Nothingness:  "Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realizes himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is."--Sartre

    • Most existentialists were atheist or agnostic

      • They did not see human life as imbued with any cosmic purpose or meaning.

      • They emphasized, however, that this condition was not an excuse for acting as if life doesn’t matter; each individual is responsible for creating meaning in his/her own life.

      • Existentialist themes are very common in literature of the period: anxiety, the absurdity of existence, death, nothingness, alienation.

    Literature

    • Modernist literature was concerned principally with depicting the subjective consciousness of its narrator

    • A large number of writers using a method called stream-of-consciousness

      • a method in which one tries to emulate the narrator’s thinking and feeling processes without filtering or editing.

    • On first reading, such accounts often sound fragmented, random, arbitrary, and even incomprehensible.

    • Practitioners of the stream-of-consciousness method include James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner.

    • Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury

      •

    • Among the poets prominent in this period were

      • William Butler Yeats (1865-1939

      • T. S. Eliot, author of The Waste Land and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

    • Both feature a difficult style filled with literary/mythological allusions.

    • Among the poets prominent in this period African-American culture produced two important authors

      Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

      Zora Neale Hurston (ca. 1901-1960)—

      • both associated with the Harlem Renaissance, a movement that also encouraged the development of jazz.

      • Both writers try to express the difficulties of being black in a white culture

    •  

    Late 20th Century Literature

    There has been in the second half of the twentieth century an increasing interest in literature from non-western perspectives and in works that examine racial and ethnic experiences.

    Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

    Allen Ginsberg, "A Supermarket in California"

    Elie Wiesel, Night

    James Baldwin, "Stranger in the Village"

    Martin Luther King, jr. "Letter from a Birmingham Jail"

    Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

    20th-Century Music after WWI

    The Development of Jazz

    Over the course of the twentieth century, a great variety of jazz styles developed
  • Dixieland/New Orleans jazz
  • Swing
  • Bebop
  • Cool jazz
  • Fusion jazz
    •

    Rise of Popular Music
    • Rock and country music arose out of the same musical material as jazz: the blues.

    • Over the century, like jazz, pop music develops in a variety of styles.

      • Rock ‘n roll, rockabilly, rhythm & blues, country music

      • Surfer music, protest/folk rock

      • British rock (Beatles, Rolling Stones, Who)

      • Motown, soul, funk

      • Acid rock, heavy metal, fusion

      • Disco, funk, glam rock

      • Punk, reggae, ska, grunge, thrash, hardcore, rap, hip-hop

     

    Sampling of 20th Century art music styles after WWI

    • Electronically-manipulated music (Varese)

    • Aleatory or chance music (Cage)

    • Minimalism (Glass)

    • Jazz (Duke Ellington)

    • Performance art (Monk)

    • Non-traditional use of instruments (Crumb)

    • Neo-classicism (Copland)

    Electronically-manipulated music

    • Poem electronique by Edgar Varese

    • Musique concrete

      • sounds made by ordinary objects, rather than traditional musical sounds, subjected to electronic manipulation

    Music of John Cage
    (1912-1992)

    • less serious and more informal approach to music-making,

    • Taught that the ordinary sounds that surround us constitute music.

    • He wrote pieces for car radios, conch shells and living room furniture

    • Best known for his infamous work, 4’33"

      • For the "performance" of this work, a player (no instrument specified) sits with his/her instrument for 4’33".

      • no music is played but the audience is expected to hear music in the other sounds present in the room.

    • Cage is also known for his aleatory music or "chance" music

      • the composer provides some music for performing but leaves the order in which the parts should be played and by whom to chance operations

      • insures that the piece will never sound the same from performance to performance.

    Non-traditional use of instruments

    • Many composers experimented with creating non-traditional sounds from traditional musical instruments

    • Black Angels by George Crumb

      • a work for string quartet that requires each instrument to make sounds atypical of its use in traditional classical music.

      •  

    Minimalism

    • Philip Glass and Steve Reich are prominent minimalists.

    • They use small bits of melody and sounds repeat over and over again

    • The best composers make small changes every now and then to keep it interesting

    • These techniques create a hypnotic type of music, much imitated by purveyors of New Age music.

    Performance Art

    • Meredith Monk has experimented with new ways of using the voice

    • Includes sounds not normally associated with traditional singing

    • Many of her works use vocables rather than formal lyrics

    • She tends to use minimalist techniques.

    Neoclassicism

    • Some composers turned their backs on modernist experimentation and created music that used elements of the past:  Baroque dances and theme & variations, e.g.

      •

    • Often use 20th-century harmony and orchestration but old-style forms

    • Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring and Rodeo also emphasized American folk elements.

     

    Summary of 20th-Century

    Events and Cultural Developments

    from WWI to the present

     

    Aftermath of WWI:
    What happened?

    1917: End of WWI

    1917: Bolshevik Revolution in Russia

    1929: Stock Market Crash

    beginning of the Great Depression

    Rise of totalitarianism and fascism

    Totalitarianism

    • 1928-1953: Stalin in Russia

      • Forced labor camps for opponents

      • more than 10 million people killed

      •

    • 1922-1945: Mussolini in Italy

    • 1933-1945: Adolf Hitler

      • Concentration camps; the Holocaust

      • Six million people killed

    Science

            Development of quantum physics and splitting of atom

     

    Cultural Trends after WWI

    • Break between modernists and mass culture

    • Cubism, Surrealism,and De Stijl

    • stream-of-consciousness literature (Faulkner) and T. S. Eliot

    • documentary photography of Hine and Lange

    • Music of Schoenberg and Berg, Stravinsky and swing jazz of Duke Ellington.

    WWII and its Aftermath:
    What happened?

    • 1939-1945: WWII

    • 1945: Dropping of first atomic bomb

    • 1945: Beginning of Cold War

    • 1945-64: Old British and French colonies became separate countries; Iron Curtain goes up--construction of Berlin Wall

    • 1949: Mao Tse Tung initiates Communist Revolution in China

      •

    • 1950’s: Invention of birth control bill

    • 1950-1953: Korean War

    The 1960’s: What happened?

    • 1960’s: Civil Rights Movement in U.S.; massive social unrest; hippie movement; sexual revolution

    • 1960-1973: Vietnam War

    • 1963: Assassination of President John Kennedy

    • 1968: Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

    Recent History: What happened?

    • 1985: Glasnost with Soviet Union

    • 1989: Berlin Wall comes down; the two Germanys begin reunification

    • 1991: Persian Gulf War

    • 2001: World Trade Center terrorism

    • 2003: War on Iraq

    Cultural Trends after WWII

    • Some artists and musicians continue to push the modernist envelop, striving for the non-traditional and innovative

    • Others return to more classical forms and values

    Sampling of Cultural Trends
    after WWII

    • Art

      • Pop Art

      • abstract expressionism

      • neoexpressionism

      • neorealism (photorealism)

    • Music:

      • Neoclassical music (Copland)

      • Music employing ordinary sounds as music; aleatory music (John Cage)

      • Minimalism (Philip Glass and Meredith Month)

      • performance art of Meredith Monk

      • development of rock 'n roll/pop music

    • Philosophy:

      • Existentialism of Jean Sartres

    • Literature:

      • Emphasis on exploring subjective perspectives

      • Feminist literature

      • African-American literature

      • magical realism

     

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