Chapter 21

Question 1

Expressionism

Answer 1

• give a voice (expression) to the unconscious, to make manifest humanity’s deepest and often darkest emotions
• atonality became a key component
• Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire
• Webern Five Pieces for String Quartet, op. 5 (1908)
• Berg Wozzeck (1925)

Question 2

Sprechstimme

Answer 2

• “speech voice”
• neither speech nor song but a means of declamation somewhere between the two.
• the vocalist must articulate specified pitches and rhythms and in this respect it is more like singing than speech
• Pierrot lunaire Schoenberg (1912)

Question 3

Anton Berg

Answer 3

• most successful atonal writer of the 20th century with Wozzeck
• used traditional forms in Wozzeck (fugue, inventions, suites, sonata)

Question 4

Arnold Schoenberg

Answer 4

• sympathetic to expressionism
• created serialist technique of composition
• believed in three principles
  1) avoid creating impression of principle note
  2) unify composition through motives
  3) eradicate any distinction between consonance and dissonance
• called atonality the “emancipation of dissonance”
• wrote Pierrot lunaire (1912)
• Piano Suite Op. 25 (1923)