third edition TWENTIETH-CENTURY MUSIC An Introduction ERIC SALZMAN Composer C=? PRENTICE HALL, ENGVOOD CLANS, NEW JERSEY 07692part one Introduction ONE TWENTIETH-CENTURY MUSIC AND THE PAST ‘The music of the twentieth century seems so fundamentally different from the music of the past and so varied and wide-ranging in itself that itis difficult to realize that it has deep roots in what came before and, at the same time, a pervasive unity that distinguishes it from its past. The creative history of Western music since 1900 is inconceivable without the evolution of Western culture in the preceding centuries; our musical institutions and, indeed, our whole way of thinking about musie are inheritances from the recent and not-so-recent past, and in certain funda mental ways the tradition has continued to exert its influence even on the greatest innovators.! Nevertheless, a distinctly twentieth-century viewpoint emerges from the fact that nearly all the creative musical thinking of our century—even that which is described as “conservative”—has participated * When traditional historian talk about “modern” European history, they mean “since the French Revolution.” Similarly, "modem art surveys used to begin with David and Goya. ‘Only in music has there been general agreement not to treat this time span as one perio.2 Introduction in the search for new expressive structures. The old forms, the old expressive structures, can be implied by the term “functional tonality” understood in its broadest traditional sense, embracing ideas and “expression” on the one hand and underlying structural, organizing prineiples on the other. After 1900 the old propositions ceased to function as a priori assumptions; related to the tradition or not, tonal or non-tonal, conservative or revolutionary, all twentieth-century musical art has to establish its own expressive and intel- lectual premises. In spite of technological, social, and esthetic upheaval, our musical ‘deals are still communicated in the context of a musical life whose structure, ‘means, and institutions are largely derived from the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.? This is true of our concert and operatic institutions, of our instruments (most old violins have been so largely rebuilt that they can be considered nineteenth-century instruments), and of instrumental technique. It is true of the modern orchestra, of our chamber music ensem- bles, of our operatic forms, of the virtuoso soloist, and of the solo recital Similarly, the bulk of our musical repertory, our techniques of teaching the practice and theory of music (and the institution of the conservatory itself), as well as most of our artistic and esthetic notions and assumptions about what music is and what it ought to do—all these things reached their full development between 1700 and 1900 and have been bequeathed to us sur- prisingly intact. ‘Some of our most fundamental ways of thinking about music and musical ereation are also inheritances from the recent past. Indeed, our whole notion of “art” and artistic creation as a unique and separable human activity isa relatively modern Western idea, by no means universal in human experience, and one which strongly links the “Romantic” era with the twen- tieth century. The notion of the creation and experience of music for its own sake is one that entered Western musical culture at a fairly recent date, and in spite of many attempts in the last decades to modify this rather speci conception of the role of music in our society, we still tend to think of the highest forms of music making as the purest—that is, the most isolated and detached from other forms of human activity. Like our nineteenth-century forebears, we think of the composer as a creative individual communicating personal, original, and unique thoughts in a distinctive style and with a particularized point of view and expression. This lingering concept of the * This fs not a book that deals withthe development of musical ideas in relationship to gener hor, Clery howe, wo word was andthe soc, polite, tcl, and slentile revolutions ofthe twentieth century have had a meaning for contemporary culture parallel tothe impact thatthe fll of the ancien régime, Napeleon, the Industrial Revolution, nd the new bourgeols society had onthe life and thought of the nineteenth. Attempts will be ‘made now end then— particularly inthe final section to annotate the as yet unwiten social History of new must Twentieth-Gentury Music andthe Past 3 ‘composer as @ romantic culture hero has led us to place greater emphasis than ever on creative individuality, originality, and freedom. Finally, the nineteenth century taught us to understand the work of art as conditioned by its historical and cultural context while, at the same time and without contradiction, regarding it as an individual expression of artistic uniqueness. ‘The very notion of "the avant-garde” as itis usually understood is a nine- teenth-century, Romantic conception.® We can expect, then, to comprehend a great deal of what has hap- pened in the twentieth century in terms of the past. Just as the historical personalities of Beethoven and Wagner remain decisive in the formation of ‘our conceptions of the role of the composer in society, so does the music of these two composers suggest the development of ideas and techniques which evolved into characteristic twentieth-century modes of musical thought. The modulatory freedom in Beethoven's music stands in a direct relationship to the chromatic freedom and incipient “atonality” of Tristan und Isolde. In turn, Wagner's expanded palette of orchestral, harmonic, and contrapuntal techniques can be clearly traced in the music of composers like Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, and even César Franck, Gabriel Fauré, and Claude Debussy. The revival and refinement of classical organizational principles and the close relation of these to modern structural ideas of a music that is totally organic and interrelated are already basic in the musie of Brahms. ‘The resources of harmonic and melodic patterns that ie outside of the major- minor functional tonality system are suggested by the music of composers like Mussorgsky and even Dvorak. The “back-to-Bach” movement and the rediscovery of ‘pre-Bach” music and musical forms were accomplished facts Jong before 1900. In short, chromaticism; the extended and freer use of dissonance; the establishment of harmonic and melodic freedom; the use of harmonic, melodic, and structural ideas derived from folk music and early Western music; the concept of the structural interrelationships between all the parts of a musical composition; the discovery of the distant past and of non-Western music; the vast expansion of instrumental technique and colors the new freedom, complexity, and independence of rhythm, dynamics, and tone color—all these modern ideas have roots deep in the last century. Less obvious, perhaps, but equally important is the persistence of certain underlying modes of musical thought, especially those dealing with large statement and structure—complex and subtle ideas built up over the course of many generations and not easily dissipated even by revolutionary changes on the surface. There is a central development of musical thinking connecting Haydn directly with Mahler in a line of structural conceptions that constantly increase in size and scope. This kind of thinking remains ® Gobrouchsmusikand the socal deals ofthe 1990s represented signiieant attempts to break with these Romantic notions. And the traditional view of art has again been challenged fn the last yeas; see the final chapter ofthis book.4 Introduction surprisingly operative in the twentieth century—in the many attempts to revive and renew “sonata form,” for example, or, in a more profound way, in the development of chromatic and twelve-tone structures in the work of the Viennese, the direct inheritors of the “main line” tradition, More than anything else, however, the Romantic notion of the artist as an individualist has helped to form the modern impulse towards originality and uniqueness. In a sense, the vast and swift changes in all modern art can be seen as an intensification of a historical process of change that has long been operative in Western culture. But even if we accept the premise that the vast expansion of vocabulary and means in this century is part of an overall process that has taken place over the past centuries, there is reason to believe that, after a point, the character of the process itself changed and quantitative distinctions became clearly qualitative. For our purposes, we can define that point as the moment when traditional tonality ceased to provide the fundamental expressive and organizational foundation of musical thought and was replaced by other modes of musical expression and orga- nization. This change actually occurred in the years around 1900, and it is this fact that enables us to speak distinctively of the music of the twentieth century. ‘Western music between about 1600 and 1900 was distinguished by the development of a characteristic kind of musical thinking that has been called “functional tonality.” The word “tonality” can be defined in a rough way as a representation of a basic scale formation within which certain hier- archies prevail—expressed as points of stability and instability. Certain tones and combinations of tones represent goals and suggest stability and rest, while others imply motion to or away from these goals. Tonality in its tra- ditional form presents a principle of order in musical thought which implies that every formation of horizontal and vertical (that is, melodie and harmonic) tones has a definable relationship to every other such formation. In other words, every musical event has a “function” or a functional role which relates itto what has come before and what will happen next. The basic psychological principle here is expectation; the basic musical technique is that of direction and motion. Out of this grow the characteristic ways in which musical lines will rise and fall and the ways in which simultaneous musical lines will relate to one another in harmonic patterns. The idea of expectation suggests the use of resolution and non-resolution; of so-called dissonance and consonance; of intensity and relaxation; of cadence, accent, and articulation; of phrase ‘and punctuation; of rhythm and dynamic; even of tempo and tone color. Out of these apparently simple psychological and musical facts evolved one of the most complex and sophisticated modes of artistic expression that man has ever developed. The concept of primary goals suggested the pos- sibility of secondary goals—the idea of “modulation,” in which musical motion could turn away from its primary centers of gravity to secondary centers, ‘Tuentieth-Century Music andthe Past 5 which could then serve to reinforce the motion back to the primary ones. This made possible the complex structures of eighteenth- and nineteenth- century music, which, with their web of relationships, unfolding in time, tie every note of a piece firmly to every other note. When we say that Beethoven's “Eroica” Symphony is in Eb, we are saying much more than the fact that its first and last harmonies are Eh major triads; we are implying whole way of thinking about the organization of sound, which determines ‘every aspect of our experience of the music. Characteristic forms of tonal expression, contrast, interrelationship, and structure guided musical thinking for three centuries. Except toa limited degree in certain forms of folk and popular music, they are no longer oper- ative; since the opening years of this century, composers have ceased to accept the unquestioned validity of these concepts. Wagner's extreme chro- matic freedom, “atonal” as it may seem at times, i stil based on the listener's expectation that one musical event implies another—much of Tristan is built on the very idea of the defeat of expectation. The music of Debussy, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky, however, no longer depends on that expectation but sets forth new kinds of definitions and relationships. Even the most conservative twentieth-century music establishes forms of motion and rest with new means. When Beethoven uses the familiar dominant-tonic cadence, it has a formal and expressive significance that is inseparable from the entire fabric and structure of the musical thought; when the same musical event oceurs in Prokofiey, it isa local incident whose significance must be under- stood in other terms. While certain underlying universal principles have retained their force and validity, since 1900 there has no longer been the necessity to assume that any generally accepted premise precedes the fact of musical composition or that any one musical realization must follow or be derived from any other. The development of creative musical thought since 1900 has been rich and complex, full of remarkable achievements, remarkable and unre- markable failures, enormous and continuing promise, and seemingly endless contradiction. There is some reason to believe that developments of the last twenty years or so mark a more definitive break with the past—for better or for worse—than anything accomplished previously. But all twentieth- century music can be comprehended as a unity if it is understood against the background of the past and the dominating tonal ideas of the past. Once this unity, essentially negative in its nature, has been grasped, we can begin to understand the positive ways in which contemporary creative thought has redefined its intellectual, expressive, and creative aims. “The vexed question of “classical” tonality is obviously not so simple; the foregoing {is intended tobe suggestive rather than definitive. Most modera views about the encompassing function ofthe old tonality derive from the writings of the Austrian theorist Heinrich Schenker.6 Introduction ‘The history of musie in the twentieth century can be understood in terms of two great cycles: first, the abandonment of functional tonality after 1900, the explorations of vast new materials before and after World Wer I, and the new tonal and twelve-tone syntheses that followed; and second, the very different but parallel set of rejections, new beginnings, explorations, analyses, and syntheses following World War II. The bond that connects all of twentieth-century music grows out of the fact that each composer—and ‘each piece—has had to establish new and unique forms of expressive and intellectual communication. To understand the music of this century, we must examine these forms. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES (Out of a growing number of surveys on music of the twentieth century that ‘can be found on library shelves, only a few need be cited here (none of these cover the whole period). William Austin’s Music in the 20th Century (New York, 1966) and Peter Yates's Twentieth-Century Musi: Its Evolution from the Bnd of the Harmonic Era into the Present Era of Sound (New York, 1967) are both limited largely to the period before World War Ii; Arnold Whittal’s Musie Since the First World War (London, 1977) is limited roughly to a fity- year period, Three more recently weitten surveys concentrate on the music composed since World War II: Michael Nyman's Experimental Music: Cage ‘and Beyond (New York, 1974), Reginald Smith Brindle’s The New Music: The ‘Avant Garde Since 1945 (London, 1975), and Paul Grifths's Modern Music: ‘The Avant Garde Since 1945 (London, 1981). More specialized studies dealing. with composers from particular countries can be found in the bibliographical notes for Chapter 8. Two important source collections are limited largely to the first half ofthe century: Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music, eds. E. Schwartz and B. Childs (New York, 1967; repr. New York, 1978) and The American Composer Speaks: A Historical Anthology, 1790-1965, ed. Gilbert Chase (Baton Rouge, 1956). See also the discussions of composers by ‘other composers in Henry Cowell’s American Composers on American Music: ‘A Symposium (New York, 1893; repr. 1962) and Perspectives on American Composers, eds. B. Boretz and E. T. Cone (New York, 1971), largely a"Prince- ton perspective”, Nicolas Slonimsly’s astonishing year-by-year documentary Music Since 1900 now has a supplement (through July 1986) to its fourth edition (New York, 1971). Slonimsky has also revised Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (7th ed., New York, 1984) to include a wide range of twentieth century composers, even some of the younger figures. The New Groce Dic~ tionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London, 1960) does the same on a still wider scale; The New Grove Dictionary of American Music eds. H. Wiley Hitchoock and Sadie (New York, 1986) not only supersedes the ‘American-musie entries in The New Grove of 1980 but is indispensable for all ‘kinds of musie in the United States up to early 1986. John Vinton compiled ‘Twontieth-Century Music and the Past Dictionary of Contemporary Music (New York, 1974), in which the entries on the various parameters of musical sound ate particularly strong. Mention should bbe made ofthe volume Aspects of Twentiath-Century Music, ed. Gary Wittich (Englewood Clifs, N.J., 1975), a “theoretical” discussion but one which exam- ines the changes inthe various parameters of musical sound during the twentieth ccontury. Several atempts have been made to produce generalized studies of twentieth- century materials and methods to serve as theoretical statements or teaching, matter; only one or two of these, connected with the work of particular eo posers, will concer us (see the relevant chapters of this book). The following specialized periodicals—several of them no longer in existence—contain all sorts of matter pertaining to the history, ertiism, documentation, esthetics, theory, and practice of twentith-century music: Modern Music (New York, 1924-1946); Tempo (London, 1946); Music Survey (High Holborn, W.C., 1947-1952); Music Today (Int. Soc. for Contemporary Music, London, 1849— 19592), The Score (London, 1949~1961);Journal of Music Theory (New Haven, 1957}; Die Reihe (Vienna; Eng. tr. Bryn Mawr, PA, 1958-1968); Darm- stadter Beitrige zur Neuen Musik (Mainz, Germany, 1958~_ ; Perspectives of New Music (Princeton, 1962}: Electronic Music Review (Trumansburg, NY, 1967-1968); Source: Music of the Avant Garde (Davis, CA, 1967-1973), Contact: Contemporary Music Magezine (Birmingham, later Heslington, Yorks England, 1971~_ ); NUMUS-West: North America’s New Music Journal (Mer- cer Island, WA, 1972-1975), Soundings (Los Angeles, 1972~ ); Interface: Journal of New Music Research (Lisse, Netherlands, 1972~ }; Xenharmon- ikon: An Informal Journal of Experimental Music (Rahway, later Highland Park, NJ, 1974-1975); Analog Sounds (New York, 1574-1979); *Asterisk: A Journal of New Music (Ann Arbor, 1874); MelosiNeue Zeitschrift fir Musik (Geom 1978 as Newe Zeitschrift far Musik, Mainz, Germany, 1975-_ ); Ear Magazine (New York, 1973- }; and Computer Music Journal (Menlo Park, CA, 197),part two The Breakdown of Traditional Tonality TWO THE SOURCES More than anything else, the expansion of the use and meaning of chromatic inflection led to the development of the large tonal canvases of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The structural use of modulation produced the large instrumental forms that are the great intellectual achieve ment of traditional tonality. Chromaticism pre-dates classical tonality, of course, but through the pattern of changing key relationships it came to play a particular structural role in the growth of tonal forms. In the evolution of things, it was modulation and chromaticism—and their local allies, second- ary dominants and altered chords—that ultimately undermined that very tonality. Modulation, aided by the universal acceptance of equal tempera- ‘ment, helped create convincing, dramatic structures of large scope by delaying and ultimately reinforcing the musical motion of a piece towards home base. In the Classic and Romantic symphony, modulation and chromaticism were ‘essential in the formation of large structures. With many of the Romantic ‘composers, Chopin and Liszt for example, chromaticism played its major10 The Breakdown of Traditional Tonalty role in matters of expressive detail; in Brahms and, especially, in the gigantic struetures of the Wagnerian music drama, it functioned both as detail and as the basis for structural prolongation. Tristan und Isolde is still part of the Classic-Romantic tradition in that its extreme chromaticism is still based on expectation defeated by “false” and evasive resolution, harmonic delay, and long-range suspension. Nevertheless, in parts of Tristan and Parsifal we are at the point where a quantitative development is very nearly a qualitative one, where the distinction between “tonal” and “atonal” chromaticismn becomes a fine psychological line. Tristan und Isolde was first performed in 1865, but, in a way, its not become decisive until the end of the century. None of the direct heirs of the Wagner tradition—Bruckner, Strauss, even Mahler: ‘was primarily concerned with the development of Tristanesque chromat procedures, although each of them employed the new harmonic, melodic, and modulatory freedom as the basis for a late-Romantic, tonal style. The only post-Wagnerian who used a complex chromatic idiom was Max Reger (1873-1916), but Reger's chromaticism is carefully systematized and based on eighteenth-century forms and procedures derived from Bach and Mozart. Reger had a certain influence—mainly theoretical—on Hindemith; other- wise his significance for the twentieth century is small. The composer who most directly and completely connects late Wag- ner and the twentieth century is Amold Schoenberg (1874-1951). The inventor of twelve-tone music began his career in perfect Tristanesque Wagnerianism, and in works like Verklarte Nacht (1898), the Gurrelieder eycle (1901; orches- tration completed 1911), Pelleas und Melisande (1902-1909), and the First and Second String Quartets (1905, 1908) the implications of Tristan and Parsifal are carried forward, eventually beyond the realm of tonal expectation ‘and tonal form. By contrast, Richard Strauss (1864-1949) and Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) absorbed Tristan chromaticism into their composing equipment without any special effort to develop further in this direction. Strauss developed few new techniques and, essentially, he found no new universal forms. His style up to and perhaps including Der Rosenka- valier (1909-1910) suggests not so much a development from as a thorough exploration of the implications of the Wagnerian revolution. It is impossible to deny the impact of works like Salome (1903-1905) and Elektra (1906— 1908) on the early development of twentieth-century music, but itis difficult today to assess the significance of that impact. Perhaps the relationship is clearest on the dramatic-psychological plane; we would call it Freudian and trace its influence on the development of “expressionist” musical theater in works like Schoenberg's Erwartung and Berg's Wozzeckand Lulu. Musically, wwe can see two important contributions. In the small, Strauss finds it pos- sible—in a way that Wagner never did—to delay or even omit the resolution ‘of harmonic and melodic “dissonance”; in the large, he extends this principle ‘The Sources a of free, “dissonant” motion to produce “free association” forms which often defeat the natural and expected phrase-motion with breaks in the continuity of thought and with abrupt confrontations and juxtapositions obviously deriv- ing from dratnatic-psychological considerations. However, Strauss never really abandons functional tonality; itis somehow still operative, and, at the very monent when he seemed to be on the point of destroying it, he turned— first in Der Rosenkavalier and then definitively in Ariadne auf Nazos (I911— 1912)—to classical forms and techniques in a clear attempt to reinstate it Ariadne is, in effect, the first piece of neo-Chassicism; it predates Stravin- skyan neo-Classicism by a number of years. But, as we shall see, Stravinsky's neo-tonality is synthetic; Stravinsky actually had to go through the process of destroying functional tonality and then inventing a new kind of tonality to replace it. Strauss never went that far; he went to the edge of the abyss and then tuned back. He redefined his own limits as those of functional tonality. Strauss lived through nearly half of the twentieth century, long enough to become the only significant composer who still fly accepted and believed in those limitations.” The case of Mahler is still more complex. To some extent, he can be said to have duplicated the Wagnerian revolution in symphonic music, partly by adapting the symphonic tradition to a vocal and lyrio-dramatic conception of musical discourse (achieved largely through the intermediate forms and techniques of the late-Romantic lied as represented, for example, in the work of a composer like Hugo Wolf). Mahler's basic language is the common practice of the nineteenth century—securely tonal, even fundamentally dia- tonic. Through the long, long extension of lyric, melodic lines, an ever- extended delay of the cadence, a magnificent long-range harmonic motion, careful planning and pacing of dynamic and rhythmic curves, and extensive and skillful modulation, he extended relatively simple and apparently limited {ideas into enormous and powerful structures. Mahler, in fact, built entire structures on a complex interrelationship of tonal areas to the point where, although detail is always clearly set forth in terms of tonal function, the long- range motion builds up in new tonal shapes; these large-scale compositions ‘move successively through wider and wider ranges of tonal areas and often resolve in tonal regions far from those in which they have set out. Mabler’s work, consisting almost entirely of symphonies and orchestral songs, makes extensive use of folk song and, in fact, synthesizes many aspects of nine- teenth-century style. Atthe same time Mahler, like Charles Ives, articulated a crisis of traditional values and a world-view which became widely under- stood only later through the massive intervention of technology in cultural * Conscious “latsiisn” can be found in many Strauss works after Der Rosenkacalirs a good ease can he made fra kind of new tonal sythesis in some ofthe composers ate work, parallel in some important respects to Schoenberg's "non-tonal” synthesis; se especially the Metanorphasen for 23 solo strings of 1045B ‘The Breakdown of Traditional Tonality Bust of Gustav Mabler by Rodin, which ie on display in Philharmonic Hall, Lincoln Genter for the Performing Arts. © 1965, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Photographed by Bob Serating Photo, New York. The Sources 18 life, The essentially new view of tonal form, the remarkable expansion of phrase-structure, the use and expansion of modulation and color, the very scope and range of the large-scale, multi-faceted music, and its simultaneous character of involvement and detachment all have had an important influence in the twentieth century. Mahler seems at first to have escaped the tonal upheavals ofthe early years of the century, but the underlying spiritual crisis is nonetheless explicit in his work. Indeed, it is Mahler's achievement that he made this crisis his subject matter; this itself has kept his music alive and relevant in the latter part of the century. ‘One important late-Romantic remains to be mentioned here: the enigmatic Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924). In his teaching and writing about music, notably in the Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music published in 1907, the famous piano virtuoso anticipated part of the development of contem- porary ideas with visionary clarity. But his own vast output eseapes the late nineteenth century only occasionally: in the use of chromatic, expressive dissonance in a few late works like the Elegies for piano of 1907 and in the intense contrapuntal chromaticism of some of the other keyboard works. Busoni's chromatic practice, like Reger's, was as much a return to eighteenth- century ideals as a derivation from Wagner; however, the idea of a “neo- Classical” chromaticism seems to have had no important development (except for a few works of Schoenberg, to be discussed later). ‘The tonal tradition in its most typical forms is Italo-German, and it can be said to have declined in Central Europe by virtue of its own inner, contrapuntal, chromatic development. Elsewhere this tonal tradition was much weaker, and once the overwhelming domination of Italian and German style had been shaken off, other, older traditions could rise to the surface and lead to new ideas. In Eastern Europe, for example, the Romantic redis- covery of folk music had a decided impact on tonal ideas. While the folk music of Germany, Austria, and Italy actually seems to have accommodated itself over the years to classical tonal organization,® the traditional music of Hungary and the Slavic countries always maintained its modal independence, and even the so-called Hungarian-Gypsy music of Lisat and Brahms* suggests certain melodic usages (and a harmonic carry-over) at variance with common diatonic tonal usage. Eastern modal ideas show up in the work of composers = Mabler had a more direct and supericialinfluence, most notably on the mode san symphony but aio on Kurt Weil, Leonard Bersen, and cet Kinds of must 2 For pre-tonal forms in German folk musi, see erly chorale settings n tly, a pre- tonal folk music has persisted outside of the main urban centers. “Both of these composers had, ofcourse, a diect influence on posterity. Schoenberg. has written eloquently of the intellectual impact of Brahms on modern musical thought; Liat who was an inovator in practically every musleal domain, has been said to have prefigured nearly everyone from Water to Beng but ironically, his fate musi, innovative to the point of stonally,seoms to have had Ite direc influen“ ‘The Breakdown of Tradttional Tonalty like DvoFék and the Russian “Five” (although tonally accommodated); in the case of a Mussorgsky, such ideas were decisive in forming a melodic and harmonic style which often contradicted prevailing contrapuntal-tonal notions. (The performing editions of Rimsky-Korsakov and other well-wishers were designed to eliminate or smooth out such “erudities.”) One highly developed Western art-music tradition has consistently remained somewhat outside the central development: thet of France. Although the classical abstract formulation of tonal usage derives from the theoretical writings of Rameau, the actual evolution of French practice has taken place quite independently of the Italian-German tonal evolution. Characteristic of this independence is a metrical, rhythmic, and phrase flexibility closely related to the free, non-accentual character of the French language. This relative freedom from “tonic” accent confers on French music a quality of fluid, poetical prose as opposed to the metrical “verse” construction of Italian and German music; in turn, French music often seems much less directional and much more coloristic. The independence was very persistent in the eighteenth century; it was less noticeable in the nineteenth, when French composers—Berlioz was a notable exception—tended to accept classical Italian and German rhythmic and structural forms. The influence of Wagner ‘was as decisive inthe latter part ofthe century as that ofthe classical masters had been earlier, but Wagner atleast could suggest fluid prose and expressive color, and the French version of Wagnerian chromaticism is a very distinct i minor development with consequences for the twentieth century. One characteristic form of Wagnerian chromaticism came to France by way of Belgium through the work and influence of César Franck (1822-1690). Franck and the Franckophiles, Vincent d'Indy (1851-1931) and Ernest Chausson (1855-1899; d'Indy’s pupil, Albert Roussel [1869-1937], carried the line into still another generation) used extensive schemes of chromatic modu- lation combined with a flexible, asymmetrical sense of line and a tendency for rich, chromatic harmonies to shade off into color inflections in a very French way. Henri Dupare (1848-1933; who corresponds somewhat to Hugo Woll), Guillaume Lekeu (1870-1894; another Belgian), and Emmanuel Cha- brier (1841-1894; at different times the most Wagnerian and the most anti- ‘Wagnerian of French composers) all made their Bayreuth pilgrimages. Equally important, the literary influence of Wagner, particularly as transmitted through the work of the “symbolist” poets, played no small role in creating the rather special esthetic and intellectual atmosphere of fin-de-si¢cle Paris. The tendency towards a flexible melodie style joined to a rich, sen- suous, subtle harmonic palette is most highly developed (and most free of Wagnerism) in the work of Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924), a composer who developed his poetic, evanescent chromaticism within the bounds of a com- ples, refined sense of tonal structure. Fauré, like Reger and Mahler, never left the confines of functional tonality, and his influence on later develop- The Sources 6 ‘ments was only peripheral, but the freedom and subtlety ofhis style represent the artistic climate in France in the late nineteenth century and suggest, in a way parallel to Debussy’s, the coming tonal revolutions. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES ‘The sources of contemporary music have only recently received serious atten tion. One of the few classic studies in this field, Ernst Kurth's Romantische Harmonik und ihrer Krise in Wagner's “Tristan” (2nd ed., Berlin, 1923), has never been translated into English. Elliott Zuckerman’s The First Hundred Years of Wagner's “Tristan” (New York, 1964) is stronger on literary than rmusieal matters; the same is true for the more recent study by Anne D. Sessa, Richard Wagner and the Englisk (Rutherford and London, 1978). Carl Dahl- hhaus's Between Romanticism and Modernism: Four Studies in the Music of the Later Nineteenth Century (trans. Mary Whittal, Berkeley, CA, 1980) dis- ccusses both the literary and musical influences of Wagner: J. Peter Burkholder's brief article “Viewpoint: Brahms and ‘Twentieth-Century Classical Music” (ineteenth-Century Music 8/1 [1984], 75-83) suggests thatthe breakdown of tonality was a crisis of purpose rather than musical language. Jim Samson's often illuminating study Music in Transition: A Study of Tonal Expansion and tonality 1900-1920 (New York, 1977) deals in part with the reinterpretation of tonality by Liset and other late-Romantic composers as well as by Busoni, Debussy, Barték, end Stravinsky. More specialized books include Dika Newlin’s Bruckner, Mahler, Schoenberg @nd ed., London, 1975); David B. Greene's Mahler: Consciousness and Tem- porality (New York, 1984; a psychoanalytica/phenomenological approach to the life and music of Mahler); Henry-Louis de La Grange’s Mahler (vol. 1 Garden Gity, NY, 1978: the French multi-volume publication has been updated {1078, 1083, 1984) to incorporate many new feets discovered since 1971); Donald Mitchell's multi-volume study Gustao Mahler: The Early Years (Lon- don and Boston, 1980), The Wunderhorn Years (London, 1975), and Songs and Symphonies of Life and Death, Interpretations and Annotations (Berkeley, 1985}; and Norman Del Mar’s three-volume study Richard Strauss (London, 1962, 1969, 1973). The literature on Busoni includes a biography by Edward J. Dent (London, 1933, repr. 1874; Larry Sitsky’s recent study Busoni and the Piano (Westoort, CT, 1986), and Daniel M. Raessler’s article "Schoenberg and Busoni: Aspects of Their Relationship” (Arnold Schoenberg Insitute Jour- nal 7/1 [June 1983], 6-27). The Busoni Sketch isavailable in English transation (eprinted in Three Classics in the Aesthetic of Music, New York, 1962), as are the various writings of Schoenberg: Theory of Harmony (Berkeley, CA, 1978; paperback ed., 1983) and Style and Idea (ed. Leonard Stein, trans. Leo Black, paperback ed., with revisions, Berkeley, CA, 1984)16 ‘The Breakdown of Traditional Tonality (On the French background there is Martin Cooper's French Music from the Death of Berlioz to the Death of Fauré (London, 1951), Serge Gut and Daniele Pistone’s La musique de chambre en France de 1870 @ 1918 (Paris, 1978), and Laurence Davies's César Franck and His Circle (London, 1970). Romain Rol- land's Musicians of Today (Paris, 1908; Eng. trans. New York, 1915) has the status of a document. Recent biographies of French composers include Robert Orledge on Fauré (New York, 1989) and Ralph $. Grover on Ernest Chausson (Lewisburg and London, 1980).