6. World War I and its consequences

6. World War I and its consequences.

World War I was crucial to the development of Modernism. The shock of the devastation and carnage, in addition to the instability and hardship of the postwar years, deepened the impulse among composers, particularly in France and Germany, to use art as a vehicle for protest and criticism. The trajectory of pre-war Modernism seemed vindicated and justified. A radical break and the shedding of the veneer of objective aesthetic norms and conventions through fundamental musical innovation (e.g. the abandonment of tonality) and the explicit distortion of traditional expectations emerged as legitimate responses to the irrationality and cruelty of contemporary life. Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin (1919, orchd 1924) and Berg’s Wozzeck (1922) were crucial and influential examples. The positive embrace of technology, as well as the perceived need to abandon old distinctions between music and noise (audible in the use of string instruments to create percussive and atmospheric sounds) ran parallel with a heightened curiosity about non-Western musical practices and instruments. Not only the entire 19th century but pre-war Expressionism came under fire, which in turn fuelled a neo-classicism that sought inspiration in the search for the new in non-Wagnerian historical precedents, particularly models from the 18th century. As Schoenberg’s development of the 12-note system of composition (a strategy experimented with at the same time by J.M. Hauer) after World War I implies, during the interwar years Modernism and neo-classicism were allied through a common rejection of all forms of Romanticism. Schoenberg’s reputation as not only radical but conservative was based on his advocacy of the primacy of counterpoint and his reassessment of Brahms – long considered the arch-conservative of the 19th century – as a progressive adherent to the 18th-century principle of developing variation and the autonomy of music.

By 1933 five distinct strands of Modernism had come into being: (i) the Second Viennese School, made up of Schoenberg and his followers, particularly Berg and Webern; (ii) the French-Russian axis, dominated by Stravinsky; (iii) German Expressionism, which included Busoni and the young Paul Hindemith; (iv) indigenous Modernisms, characterized by Ives in America, Bartók in Hungary, Szymanowski in Poland, Janáček and Martinů in postwar Czechoslovakia and Carlos Chavez in Mexico; and (v) experimentalism, characteristic of Hába, Varèse and Cowell, that led to the exploration of microtonality, the embrace of ambient sound and the machine and a fascination with non-Western musics and technology. These strands often came together in the work of particular composers. Many early Modernists, including Stravinsky, Bartók and Szymanowski, asserted the radical and modernist possibilities inherent in rural folk and pre-modern traditions.

Although these five types continued to define Modernism for the remainder of the century, the Viennese school was of the greatest significance. It inspired a powerful third generation after Berg and Webern, including the work of Nikos Skalkottas, Egon Wellesz, Stefan Wolpe, Ernst Krenek, K.A. Hartmann and Roberto Gerhard. The French tradition continued with Messiaen, Boulez and Henri Dutilleux. Particularly important has been the intersection between national and local traditions and Modernism, as in the cases of György Ligeti (Hungary), Witold Lutosławski (Poland), Harrison Birtwistle (England), Alberto Ginastera (Argentina) and Morton Feldman (USA). The experimental dimension witnessed particular vitality in the last quarter of the century, especially as a result of advances in technology (sometimes employed in connection with the postwar extension of serialism beyond pitch) and, in recent years, the influence of rock music. Key figures include Conlon Nancarrow (who generated an entire repertory using the player piano) and George Crumb (whose theatrical, exotic sound textures were influential in the 1970s), La Monte Young and Terry Riley in minimalism, Roger Reynolds and Annea Lockwood in conceptual music, Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky, and later Morton Subotnik, Charles Wuorinen, Mario Davidovsky, Richard Teitelbaum and David Rosenboom in electronic music (including the use of synthesizers and computers), and John Zorn, Frank Zappa and Anthony Braxton in the connection with rock and jazz.