MUSIC AND TIME:
Structure and Temporality in Post-Tonal Music
The course investigates how musical form and structure effect the perception of time in the music of the 20th and 21st centuries. The class takes a deep dive into analyzing works by various composers, including (but not limited to) Sibelius, Berg, Stravinsky, Janáček, Steve Reich, Harrison Birtwistle, Pierre Boulez, and George Benjamin. Additionally, we will include works by other 20th century artists outside of the field of music—poets, novelists, architects—and see how they engage with form and time, and how their art can inform our ability to listen to music from the past 125 years.
List of topics / pieces:
Content Dictates Form (Traditional Introductions):
Haydn: String Quartet Op. 76, Nos. 3 & 4
Beethoven: Symphony No. 6
Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 30 in E Major Op. 109
Schubert: Gretchen am Spinnrade
New Visions of Old Forms:
Berg: Wozzeck — Acts I and III
Sibelius: Symphony No. 7
Sibelius: Tapiola
The Whole and the Fragment:
Stravinsky: Symphonies of Wind Instruments
Messiaen: Des canyons aux étoiles
Stockhausen: Kontakte
Alex Mincek: Chamber Concerto
Stasis:
La Monte Young: Composition 1960 Number 7
Debussy: Jeux; Selected Preludes
Webern: Symphony Op. 21
Tyshawn Sorey: For George Lewis
The Balinese Gamelan: Music from the Morning of the World (Nonesuch Explorer Series)
Circular Forms:
Birtwistle: The Triumph of Time
Boulez: Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna
Andrew Norman: Sustain
Continuous Variation:
Carter: String Quartet No. 2, A Symphony of Three Orchestras
Reich: Music for 18 Musicians
George Benjamin: Sudden Time; Upon Silence
Andrew Norman: Play
SELECTED READINGS:
Allen, Thomas: Time and Literature
Boulez, Pierre: ‘Form’ from Orientations
Edwards, Allen: Flawed Words and Stubborn Sounds - A Conversation with Elliott Carter
Goldman, Jonathan: The Musical Language of Pierre Boulez — Rituel and the architecture of antiphony
Griffiths, Paul: Olivier Messiaen and the Music of Time
Hall, Patricia: Berg’s Wozzeck Studies in Musical Genesis, Structure, and Interpretation
Kramer, Jonathan: The Time of Music - New Meanings, New Temporalities, New Listening Strategies
Laufer, Edward: Sibelius Studies — Continuity and Design in the Seventh Symphony
Venn, Edward: Birtwistle Studies — Birtwistle and the labyrinthine processional
Rosen, Charles: Sonata Forms
Stockhausen, Karlheinz: ‘Momentform’