DQ for Watkins, 45-61
[audio files of selected pieces to be added to WebCT this weekend]
Please be prepared to respond in either seminar meeting or in "Comments" on the course blog. In all venues, you must be prepared to cite specific passages (by page, paragraph, line, and quotation) in support of your responses—and specific works.
The goal of this section in part parallels that previously provided for pre-Expressionist/pre-serial Schoenberg and Webern: to demonstrate that that Berg’s early music is both more directly tied to that of his immediate predecessors (in Berg’s case, Mahler above all, but also the Impressionists) and contains the seeds of his later mature style (especially in Wozzeck and the unfinished Lulu). However, this section also seeks to accomplish rather different from those paralleling the early careers of Schoenberg and Webern: it is a corrective, seeking to “correct” the simplistic presumption that Berg’s music resulted from a mere synthesis of Mahler and Schoenberg. In fact, Watkins suggests that Berg’s influences were much wider than this (as we have seen was the case with Schoenberg and Webern) and that his music “sounds different” from that of his colleagues’ as a result of conscious choices. Berg is typically described as the most “Romantic” of the Viennese serialists; Watkins complicates this effectively. The following questions build upon and exploit this basic, fruitful complication.
(1) In the opening of the discussion on Berg Op. 2, Watkins identifies influences from not only prior composers but also to contemporaneous ideas in aesthetics and philosophy. What are these ideas; from what artists, musicians, authors, and philosophers does Berg derive them; how do these ideas play out in the Op.2? Suggestion: consider linking this to the discussion of Goethe’s influence(s) upon Webern in the pdf article by Perloff, under “Materials –Week 03 – Links”
(2) In the discussion of Op.2’s “Warm die Lufte,” how would you summarize the harmonic language which Watkins identifies? What are the technical specifics of this opus’s harmonic approach? What are Berg’s goals in employing such a harmonic language? What is the impact of these harmonic choices upon formal structure? How does text play a role in formal structure here?
(3) Further to (2) above: on p47ff, Watkins identifies predecessors to “Warm die Lufte’s” harmonic language in a range of outside influences: composers, genres, and specific works. Be prepared to discuss these outside influences, and to articulate a thesis that distinguishes Berg from Schoenberg in his use of, and relationship to, these influences. Also, Watkins uses the phrase “nationalist legacies” (p47) in regards to these harmonic approaches; what is the significance of this phrase? And, do these “nationalist harmonic legacies” link Berg to any other composers, outside those Watkins mentions, who might have been making similar harmonic innovations in the same period? Who are they?
(4) pp48-50, note the parallels between Berg’s style in “Warm die Lufte” and contemporaneous works by Schoenberg. Does Berg’s music in this period, like that of Webern, continue to display such parallelism, or does Berg’s style diverge? If so, in what specific technical ways, and on the basis of what contrasting priorities and/or influences?
(5) Note the text and musical idioms Watkins cites from Ravel’s settings of Symbolist poetry in Gaspard de la nuit. Does this influence from Ravel “point toward” expressive modes and moods in Berg’s later work? Can we draw specific connections between the Symbolist French (e.g., “Impressionist”) and Symbolist German (e.g., “Expressionist”) composers of the period? Does this complicate the traditional musicological boundary drawn between these two allegedly “national styles”?
(5) Note the very felicitous phrase, used in reference to Berg, Mahler, Loos, Webern, and Schoenberg, “precision and reduction” (p51). Does this phrase speak to issues we discussed in most recent seminar meeting? What terminology did we use in that meeting? What is the relationship of that terminology to “precision and reduction”? What is the motivation behind these goals?
(6) pp51-52: Be prepared to describe all the different ways in which Berg drew upon Mahler: technical and philosophical, topical and allusive, and so forth. Suggestion: one very fruitful way to think about the relationship between these two composers is to articulate the role that techniques of quotation, allusion, and parody played in various works. Seek to discover parallels in Mahler’s and Berg’s use of such techniques.
(7) Note the detailed discussion (pp52-55) of the Altenberglieder, both for its content and as a model for a way to do detailed, score-based analysis and interpretation in a musicological context. In other words: read this for what it tells us about the Altenberg songs—but also read it as an approach you might emulate in your own research paper. Note the level of detail, the range of parameters that Watkins discusses, the way he related technical musical details to larger/prior issues (of influence, style, philosophy) in the argument. This is a good model.
(8) At the bottom of p53, Watkins references Der Blaue Reiter. Grad students, please read the linked article. All: please find all other references to this journal in the Index; how can this journal, its contributors, and its perspectives, help us understand artistic context and goals in fin-de-siecle
(9) p54, item 6 is extremely important. What is the content of this paragraph? How can we expand upon its insights to address similar trends among other composers, in other places, and at later periods in the early 20th century? (See also p57 top, same issues)
(10) pp57-58 discussion of “symmetries” is likewise extremely important. Why are these composers concerned with formal “symmetries” (on large or small scales)? What priorities does this concern implicate? How does this symmetrical focus play out in specific atonal works? In specific serial works? In later works by other composers?
1 comment:
From Lisa Lee. 1. Berg shared with Mahler and Webern a particular “spiritual affinity” for nature (Watkins, p. 45, lines 6-7). According to the Perloff article, the ideas of Klee and Webern on nature were influenced by Goethe’s writings, particularly the Metamorphosis of Plants and The Theory of Colors (Perloff, p. 188, last paragraph ff), the second of which Berg must have read since he gave a copy of the work to Webern (Perloff, p. 190, 1st full paraph, lines 3 ff). I do not know whether of not Mahler was influenced by Goethe, but it seems probable that Berg was influenced by him since we know that he gave Webern that work, can presume that Webern and Berg talked about Goethe, and because Watkins makes a point of saying that Berg shared this “spiritual affinity” for nature with Webern. Goethe believed in an original, essential plant that manifested nature’s unity in the midst of her movement and change (Perloff, p. 189, 5th line from bottom ff--an idea that Webern spoke about in terms of “comprehensibility” in his lectures The Path to New Music, if I remember correctly from the paper that I gave, Comprehensibility in Webern’s Piano Variations, for the International Webern society), and that certain fundamental laws underlie all creative process (Perloff, p. 190, 2nd full paragraph, lines 2-3). Watkins links Berg to Nietzsche through Mahler’s Third Symphony and Mombert’s text for his Op. 2, no. 4, in the phrase “From such stems the world’s profound splendor” (Watkins, p. 45, last 3 lines). The text for this song creates specific images of nature that seem as if captured at one moment; these natural images are used to set a specific tone or mood (Watkins, top of p. 46). Moreover, one could view Berg’s interest in the art nouveau-based Jugendstil of the Viennese Secession and the artist Klimt, demonstrated by his own lettering for the title pages of Op. 2 (Watkins, p. 51, bottom of page), as being plant-based in a way—art nouveau was very much involved with plant-like forms and natural imagery. Musical influences on Op. 2 about which Watkins writes include Debussy, Brahms, Schoenberg, and Ravel as well as Mahler; he compares “Warm die Lufte” with the use of fourths in a Brahms intermezzo, in Schoenberg’s Kammersymphonie, and by Satie and Ravel, and a coincidence between a Bb pedal in Ravel’s “Le gibet” from Gaspard de la nuit and Op.2, no. 4, made possibly because of an affinity in texts (hanged man, one dies) (Watkins, pp. 47-50).
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