DQ for Watkins, 170-95 (grad students: please be prepared to supply additional references to parallel art works, artists, and contemporaneous events that impacted upon late Expressionism)
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.
This section explores the gradual linkage (particularly in
(1) On pp170-71 Watkins describes a “general crisis” that “seemed to suggest the final overthrow of the Romantic age.” What was the shape of this crisis, what factors were understood to be contributing to it, in what arenas outside the arts did it appear, and how did composers in the period respond?
[Note that Watkins acknowledges that works which fall within “Romantic” stylistic or philosophical modes continued to be written in this period, but that certain works may be seen as “a watershed” into a new era. His thesis is not comprehensive, therefore, but selective.]
(2) Watkins further links several different national or stylistic schools, and across various art forms, in describing the elements of this “Expressionist attitude” (170), and in so doing usefully complicates the presumption that “German” or “French” musics in this period can be seen as simply, diametrically opposite. At both the beginning and the end of the chapter he shows relationships and cross-influences between these two national schools. Read the discussion of color theory, “correspondences,” and the Blaue Reiter group carefully (grad students: this would be a review of additional reading on DBR which you have already done).
(3) Note the particular characteristics of the “emotionalism” Watkins cites at the bottom of 171; what are these characteristics, how are they combined in various works cited in the text (grad students: or in additional works of the period), and how could you succinctly summarize the expressive goals of the music that results?
(4) on p173 Watkins provides a remarkably succinct but very dense summary of the goals, strategies, and results of German musical expressionism in the pre-WWI period. Be prepared to unpack this description line by line and phrase by phrase, citing specific works and composers to explain Watkins’s meaning.
(5) Watkins presents Erwartung as an effective test-case for his model of German expressionism. Articulate the specific goals and “moods” which this piece and related works sought to evoke. Explain how the musical/psychological portrait in Erwartung “moves beyond” earlier or parallel corollaries: what are the programmatic subtleties of this portrait? What are the musical specifics? Articulate the ways in which the “Self/Other” dichotomy and the phenomenon of “the Other” can help explain Erwartung.
(6) Follow along Sc. 1 and Sc. 2 using WebCT excerpts and the texts in Watkins. Identify at least THREE specific passages in the text and provide precise discussion of specific compositional choices which support each passage.
(7) Please read this Wikipedia article on the Italian Renaissance theatrical form called commedia dell’arte and articulate links between the behaviors and/or emotional associations of specific characters as they were appropriated by early 20th-century expressionists. Locate and describe at least one additional allusion to commedia characters in 20th-century arts culture from outside Watkins’s examples.
(8) Select at least THREE numbers from Pierrot, follow the texts in Watkins as you listen via WebCT, and provide precise discussion of specific compositional choices which are employed (NOTE: you must expand your analysis beyond Watkins’s own comments).
(9) See 193-94 discussion of Ravel’s La valse and articulate the linkage between Ravel’s 1923 composition and the social/artistic environment(s) that shaped it—please address this in detail.
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The Path to Pierrot: DQ for pp. 170-195 by Lisa Lee.
1) The crisis seems to be finding a way to “kill the nineteenth century dead” and launch a new modernism. There is a crisis between Romantic and Modern values. This chapter seems to say that the crisis was at least partially worked out through Expressionism. While WWI is often said to be the impetus that kills the old way, Watkins points out that the watershed works Pierrot Lunaire and Rite of Spring were both written before the actual fighting broke out—nevertheless, the tension leading up to the war must have been in the air. (Watkins, p. 170, paragraph 2, lines 3-7). He writes that works by Mahler, Strauss, Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern had already taken us to the brink of Expressionism, but says that the background has to do with the subordination of form and nature to emotional and visionary experience—and its antecedents were seen most clearly in the visual arts, in Van Gogh and Munch. (Watkins, p. 170, last 2 lines). The German Brucke group (Dresden, 1905) traditionally defines the expressionist movement. Symbolism, while a French movement, borders on or is incorporated by Expressionism at times. Theatre takes it up (Strindberg). Outside of the arts, there were the psychological works by Freud, the study by Weininger of women’s sexuality, a general interest in the sexuality of the Freudian notions, and an interest in the dark side of the mind or subconscious. (Watkins, p. 173, lines 16-19 and last 11 lines, p. 174, 1st 3 lines). Composers, as well as other artists, responded to the crisis by distorting reality in an attempt to extract essential truths. (Watkins, p. 173, line 1). This distortion of reality required them to form a new vocabulary. (Watkin, p. 173, line 5).
2) Expressionist attitudes can be read into Symbolism (French) as well as Expressionism (German). Watkins gives examples of a fusion in Kandinsky’s artwork Night: Melisande (1907), a German expressionist painting on a French symbolist subject; in Debussy’s fascination with Pierrot and the moon in Suite Bergamasque; in Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit (which includes Pierrot); and in Ravel’s La Valse, which projects the collapse of the Viennese dance and society in tense, disoriented swirling hysteria (Watkins, p. 194, last paragraph). Similarities among various groups of composers, artists, poets, etc. would correspond to Kandinsky’s/Blaue Reiter theory of correspondences: there are correspondences among the arts in the search of a collective, higher cosmic awareness that transcends nationality or artistic medium/mode of expression. (Watkins, p. 171, 1st full paragraph, line 4 ff). 3) This emotionalism is of a certain kind. It is nocturnal, visionary or hallucinatory, and of the world of nightmares. It distorts reality in an attempt to extract essential truths. (Watkins, p. 171, last line, p. 172, 1st line, and p. 173, 1st line). The expressive goals can be stated similarly: the goals are to depict the world of the subconscious and by this, extract essential truths; to extract essential truths, one must distort reality. As far as other Expressionist works, not mentioned by Watkins: Eric Salzman, in his book on twentieth-century music, has a long list of operas and works for musical theatre that he links to Expressionism in various ways (pp. 96-98); it does not seem that these would all fit Watkins’ description, however. At least by subject matter, perhaps Wolgang Fortner’s Blood Wedding (1907) is expressionistic. I do not know of expressionistic works that are not treated by Watkins! He discusses all of the works that I have studied in the past in connection with the “ism.” I could not find examples of works (in my other text books) that he doesn’t mention somewhere in his text!
4) Goals include the extraction of essential truths. Expressionism intends to get at the essential truths through the subconscious mind. Strategies include distortion of reality, exaggeration, interest in questions of sexuality and Freudian psychology, and the use or depiction of or reference to nightmare, hallucination, the nighttime, and the visionary. Schoenberg’s Erwartung, the sole character of which is a hysterical, psychologically ill woman, whose sexuality is present in an hysterical context, who ranges between nightmare and hallucination, fulfills these considerations.
5) I have articulated the goals and moods of expressionism as applied to Erwartung above. What is fascinating about Erwartung is the programmatic subtleties of constantly shifting moods; the character goes in and out of fear/hysteria and a more calm and reflective mood. Watkins writes about the musical specifics on page 175. The shifting psychological moods are depicted through changes in tempo markings every three to four measures; by ambiguities in tonality; with changing orchestrational color components; through shifting dynamic levels; and through incomplete textual phrases or ellipses (no extended lyrical gesture). The “other” to the listenr exists in that the woman is the other, an irrational, predatory, sexual being out of Weininger’s study and Freudian analysis. The other to the woman at times is her lover; at other times the other is the “other woman,” the great harlot, death, with whom the lover is unfaithful through dieing.
6) Schoenberg uses a sudden loud dynamic level and a faster tempo for “I’m frightened.” Conversely, he uses a quiet dynamic level and a slower tempo for “So horribly quiet and void.” He also slows down when the woman is lovingly reflecting “it is so sweet with you,” and there is a higher pitch for “sweet.” Flutter-tonguing on the flute predicts “Then you may die,” and, earlier, the “moon just now was so bright” is predicted by bell-like sounds. “What? Let go!” is accompanied by terrifyingly loud trumpets and a shrill scream-like sound from the woman. “It was so quiet hidden away in the garden” is quiet. “With so much love” is sung expansively with wide intervals and sustained pitches. All of it constitutes word painting of the psychological state of the woman more than the words themselves, however. She sounds breathless when she sings, “What is that?”
7) Arlecchino, Harlequin, and Truffaldino are the equivalent of Pierrot. He is a zanni, that is, a servant, from Bergamo, and is a funny character who is a combination of a dunce and a smart person who outwits his master. His love interest is named Columbine (amongst other names), also a zanni. (I studied commedia del’arte in theatre class, and went to see the Goldoni play performed by Tech last fall.) Pierrot becomes a moon-struck clown as appropriated by 20th-century Expressionists, associated with strange happenings and moods, blood, wine, and a sad or at least weird demeanor. Picasso painted Harlequin many times, including in the Three Musicians of 1921; one can tell his Harlequins by the costumes they wear—diamond-shaped patterns (they are white elsewhere)—and their masks.
8) Not including any information from Watkins and not having a score makes this difficult for me, but here are some comments: The dialogue between the flute and the voice in The Sick Moon is representative of the text in that the singer is having a dialogue with the moon—speaking to the moon directly. He chooses to have the two outer parts of the Red Mass be the “public scene” of the Mass, which is calmer and quieter, but the middle section, the “inner” or “private” relation to the host, or the moment that Pierrot meets the host himself, displays the turmoil and psychological evil of the moment through sudden loudness and dramatic singing. The cat squeals of Serenade are not so obvious on the violin, but the pizzicato of the text is mimicked in the vocal part.
Derision for Pantaloon is apparent in the ironic-sounding vocal tone of the middle voice.
9) Ravel’s La Valse was a comment on the social/artistic environment of Vienna. Watkins writes that Ravel portrays the mounting tension and ultimate collapse of Vienna through its signature dance, the waltz, through whirlwind motion that has psychological impact. While the work is not atonal in the traditional Expressionistic sense, it carries a kind of expressionistic hysteria and projects the collapse of the Viennese decadent pre-WWI sensibilities. (Watkins, p. 194, last paragraph).
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