DQ for Watkins, 130-54 (grad students: Schoenberg, Kandinsky, Skriabin also)

DQ for Watkins, 130-54 (grad students: be prepared to fill out the class discussion with your insights regarding Schoenberg, Kandinsky, Skriabin, and Der Blaue Reiter. Note: you are especially asked to be prepared to both define and explain the impact of concepts of “synaesthesia” in cognitive and artistic theories of the period. Suggestion: look at the color experiments of all three above-cited artists, but also look at the discussion of Bartok’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, and the included stage directions for Salome, to flesh your commentary)

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.

(1) Although the term “decadent”, in common parlance, has pejorative connotations, Watkins clearly intends a complex and subtle set of expressive characteristics. We have spoken of some related characteristics in fin-de-siecle Vienna—of a sense of “things ‘ending.’” Based on those discussions, and your reading of this chapter, be prepared to articulate (a) a definition of “decadence” which captures all Watkins connotations, (b) examples of those characteristics associated with “decadence” which we have identified in Viennese and Parisian music already examined, and (c) a model of decadence which explains its expressions across art forms in this period. Extra credit (grad students?): relate (a), (b), and/or (c) to analogous manifestations of decadence in other time periods and art forms.

(2) pp130-35 discusses at some length the impact and symbolism of the Salome story to artists, writers, and composers in the period. Unpack the characteristic connotations associated with this story and link them to other expressive concerns manifested by composers in this period. What agendas or artistic programs did the Salome story make available? What sorts of compositional characteristics (especially timbral, formal, and harmonic) did these agendas demand or make possible? Extra credit (grad students?): relate specific passages in the Huysmans text to specific music-stylistic elements in cited works of Strauss or Bartok.

(3) pp135-38: Read these pages (about Oscar Wilde’s, Aubrey Beardsley’s, Gustav Klimt’s approaches to Salome) and then realize one of the following three alternatives:

(a) Locate a substantial portion (at least 2 scenes) from Wilde’s play-script and be prepared to lead the rest of the class in a discussion of the “musical connotations” of the reading script;

(b) Locate at least 2 hi-rez full-color images of other Klimt paintings or Beardsley etchings and be prepared to lead a discussion of those images as they reveal musical connotations of decadence;

(c) Relate the mood and mode of expression in Strauss’s Salome to the general artistic, political, economic, and historical “mood” in fin-de-siecle Vienna. Musically and metaphorically, how did Salome address or confront “problems” composers and others saw themselves as facing?

(4) pp138-43: Be prepared to articulate the relationship between Salome-era Strauss, Wagner, and, crucially, other composers outside the German orbit. Is it accurate to say that “decadent symbolism” is, or is not, allied in goals or strategies to French nationalism of the same period? Extra credit (grad students?): locate textual/musical passages in the (Watkins-transcribed) Finale of Salome and be prepared to compare/relate these to passages in Debussy’s work.

(5) pp149-51: Be prepared to articulate the specific impact of Debussy’s Pelleas upon Schmitt’s Salome (and on which later Russian composers?). Unpack and summarize the impact of Russian upon French and French upon Russian composers of the period. Extra credit (grad students?): do some independent research, find out more about les Apaches, and relate their artistic credo and their behaviors to both contemporaneous and later artistic developments (especially in France). Hint: look at the Satie connection.

(6) pp152-54: Read the background on Bartok’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle; relate this background material to the experiments in emotion, mood, and color by Der Blaue Reiter group as described in Watkins and summarized by our grad students. Articulate the specific relevant definition of synaesthesia and relate this phenomenon to the overall structure of Bartok’s opera. Conventionally we think of opera has highly programmatic, but this work reveals tight symmetrical and “abstract” musical organization; be prepared to explain. What is Bartok’s debt, in this work, to Russian nationalist composers? To German Expressionism?