MUS 300 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Ostinato, Anton Webern, Atonality
Document Summary
Convey ideas by suggestion rather than direct statement. Use of chromaticism, pentatonic scales, whole tone scale to breakdown tonality. The presence of regularly strong beats is minimized. Dynamics stay within a relatively narrowly defined range. A large orchestra is used to give the composer a broad tonal spectrum of instrumental colours. Paintings have bright colours; a boldness to them. Orchestration is often not focused on strings, but other instruments of the orchestra. Igor stravinsky (1882 1971), bela bartok (1881 1945) are good examples of. Arose in vienna during the time of sigmund freud"s experiments with the mind. Melodic lines are often widely disjunct and non-vocal in character. Atonal dispense with a tonality or key. Arnold schoenberg (1874 1951), alban berg (1885 1935) and anton webern (1883. 1945) are the most prominent composers of expressionist music. Arnold schoenberg created a new system of musical organization that abandoned the traditional key/tonality system that was the basis of western music.
