In the early part of the 20th century we had
a lot of different style things going on not only in music but in the visual arts
that we have given names that and with -ism. If you
pick up any art textbook you get to that part of the thing you'll see a like 15 or
20 different
isms stuck in there. In music we really only talk about a couple of them.
We've already talked about impressionism now let's look at
expressionism. Impressionism French,
who are the big enemies of the French? The germans,
so if the french were doing something the Germans were going to do something
different
and that's what expressionism is. So
what the basic um, underlying construct for construct expressionism
is psychological. Remember this is a period of time where
you know we're coming through Freud and all those early psychologists
thinking about what makes people do the things that they do
how why do people behave the way they do and a lot of it has to do
with for the dark side of the human psyche. So the
expressionist really focused on that
dark site. So in music
we don't hear a lot we don't hear a lot what expressionist music
that is just instrumental. The really good examples
for expressionist style for music are in opera because that's a really great way
to be able
to tell the story of these people's behavior. It's harder to do in some other ways
so opera is forever
our main route towards expressionist style. So
we're looking at dark sides of people's behavior
very intense kinds of music now were in the 20th century now so we can do lots
of different kinds of sounds
one of the things the composer's tried to do was to get away from the idea being
in
any sense a key at all. We talked a little bit about atonal music
earlier this is where we hear a lot of it. If we're trying to do really create
tension
and a sense of perhaps the lostness of a person um,
psychically speaking atonal music is a good way to do that.
You don't get a sense of where we're going that that the music doesn't have a
focus.
We don't know what key we're in, where we headed we just don't know.
That's a really good musical underpinning
for a story where we have a character who doesn't really know
where they're going or they're going where they're going.
So the music itself can't can
build on that tension our personal strikes at this character's having.
So atonal music have a couple of major composers who
um focus on that. Arnold Schoenberg is one
and the other is Alban Berg. And we're going to look at a work by Berg as
a good example
of that kind of approach. But Berg also did
some very interesting things in the work that we're going to look at that are
much from
that tie back to some really old kinds of things.
One of the things that he's done in this work is
to use structures that we've
or at least terminology of things that we've heard before.
The work that were looking at is about is an opera called
Wozzeck. Wozzeck is the main character's name and it's a three-act
opera.
So Berg in sort of an homage to
previous periods and styles names his three acts
exposition, development,
catastrophe. So sort of leads us into thinking he's doing is sonata cycle
sort of thing there
but then catastrophe so we know that something bad is going to happen at the
end.
But then he takes each act
and each act has 5 scenes so he's it's all balanced so it's very classical style
they're right we've got three very balanced sort of
acts but each act is
a set of variations so it's a sort of theme and variation thing.
One act his variations on rhythm or a note
so he's taking a very traditional kind of approach
putting it into an entirely new context getting rid of a sense of tonality so we've
we've lost our
sorta feel for that. And then the the final thing that he adds to that that's
new
and it really connects to our ideas about what people do in modern style
music
is that he has the singer's sing in different kinds of ways.
So if if you look at the music, there's the music for this the the written out
music for this
you would see that
the pitches are not specifically defined so we've got the rythm that the
that the words supposed to follow and maybe some general sort of
ups and downs of the sounds but they're not even marked with real notes they're
like little
X's or some kind of interesting symbol that's different.
And what what the composer wanted the singer her to do here
was to create this new this new and sort of
eery sort of sound where the pitches aren't specific
you can't really get a sense again of what key we're going toward here.
And even sometimes it may not even be particularly sung it may be closer
to spoken word. The term for that is
Sprechstimme. Sprechstimme good good
German set of consonants there for you. And
we will see that in the excerpts that we're going to watch.
So in the story a Wozzeck, Wozzeck is a soldier and
who has banned the subject
of um some
sort of secret testing.
There's another character a doctor who has taken Wozzeck
as a subject and is
treating him some ways and to affect his behavior. So it's like a really early
psychological
I'm testing setup. And and Wozzeck doesn't really know that this is
happening to him.
Wozzeck has it has a a girlfriend Maria Marie
and they have a child, but there's this other character name the drum major
he doesn't have a name he has a title he's the drum major
who also wants Marie. So we have all this
sort of conflict over the woman we have a character who has been psychologically
manipulated in the first place
obviously this is our setup for catastrophe. So
what happens is that eventually Wozzeck actually kills Marie.
Not unusual people get killed in the opera, right?
But what happens next is his reaction
to that. You know why did he do that and then he's trying to
get back the knife that he stabbed her with and
and then he actually drowns himself. So
think things don't go well this is a catastrophe part in all that happens in
the last act.
I've given you a couple of scenes to watch from this
one is the scene where he kills Marie so you see just the two of them
with its it's a very stark kind of approach and that's very typical of
expressionist opera.
Generally the scene scenery is sort of dark to set that mood that we're in a
and a dark part in a person's mind.
And you can see I'm that that
their relationship is sort of changing as the scene goes along as he's
kinda devolving into the evil part that's going to kill her eventually.
There's another scene in between this and the one that you want to watch and
you can go look at if you like
but then the next thing they want you to watch is the scene
where he is now feeling all this remorse about having killed her
he's worried that they will find out that he did it it's a team needs to
find the weapon and get rid of it
and then on in his own death at the at the end of that.
The final scene of the opera which I've not given you to watch but you can
certainly find it yourself,
is not what you might expect. So we've had this murder we've now got got
basically a
a suicide, the final scene is their child.
So we had the parent, he has no parents now so we have an orphan at the end. So that's
sort of
the ultimate tragedy of the things that we have this orphan,
and the final scene is this this orphan he doesn't know yet that his parents are
dead.
Other people in the scene do and he is
basically playing ring around the Rosie with his friends like on a little hobby horse
you know they're just playing games
and you're just left with his child who
has no parents doesn't know it he thinks everything's happy and he's just
playing his childhood game. So it's a very powerful kind of ending
to what has already been an extremely powerful opera.
So as you watch it listen for some Sprechstimme or the singing is not quite
what you'd
not what you expect from singing. Think about
the sense of not being in a key.
Listen to see if you can figure out where some things going
and and see if he actually takes you where you thought it was where that
line was leading. Probably it won't and you might also think about the psychological
aspects of it not just the music
how are these characters interacting had we get to this catastrophe
and the think about how the music really underpins that and gives us
that whole expressionist idea.