FREE ESSAY ON NINE COMPOSERS

NINE COMPOSERS

This essay will consist of information about nine composers and one piece of work that
they are known for dating from 1862 to 1990. The names of these composers are: Aaron
Copeland, Claude Debussy, Charles Ives, Scott Joplin, Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong,
Leonard Berstein, Igor Stravinsky, and Arnold Schoenberg. 
The first composer I will discuss will be Aaron Copeland (1900 - 1990). Mr. Copeland was
born in Brooklyn, New York USA to Russian American immigrant parents. His style is
strongly tonal with polychords, polyrhythm, changing meters and percussive orchestration.
His influences include his teacher Nadia Boulanger, Picasso, Stravinsky and Ernest
Hemmingway. Some notable history about Mr. Copeland is that he created Appalachian Spring
for Martha Graham and he used American folklore as the subject with many of his works.
The piece I will be discussing will be Appalachian Spring Section VII Theme and
Variations on Simple Gifts I (1943-1944). The media of this piece is the orchestra and
the texture is definitely homophonic. The melody is songlike, lyrical, and danceable,
with conjunct motion. The harmony is tonal because the tune is easily recognizable. This
piece is in duple meter with a moderate tempo. The form is theme and variations because
the theme is recognizable throughout the entire piece. One of the programmatic ideas is
that this piece is to be performed as a ballet. The ballet is a story of a pioneer
celebration in spring around a newly built farmhouse in the Pennsylvania hills in the
1800's.
The second composer is Claude Debussy (1862 -1918). My Debussy was born in St.
Germain-en-laye, Paris France. His style is typically impressionistic, he used
unprecedented tone color with subtle changes in timbre. He used frequent instrument solos
and the woodwinds were used in unusual registers. Mr. Debussy also used catatonic scales
and whole tone scales. Some of his influences were Richard Wagner, Asian music, literary
and pictorial ideas and Russian model music. The music of The Prelude to the Afternoon
Faun (1894) is a piece of work that Mr. Debussy wrote after reading the poem by Stephane
Mallarme. "This poem evokes the dreams and erotic fantasies of a pagan forest creature
who is half man, half goat". The media of this piece is orchestra with shifting textures.
The melody is based on the E Major scale, and the harmony is tonal. The meter is very
vague with a moderate tempo, and the form is definitely ABA with a vagueness of rhythm
and distinct cadences.
Charles Ives is the third composer I will discuss (1874 - 1954). Mr. Ives was born in
Danburry Connecticut, USA. His style is eclectic with his influences being his father who
was a bandmaster, the war, personal experiences, and Horetio Parker. His music also has
features of American tradition. Mr. Ives is also known as a transcendentalist. A
transcendentalist is someone that lives on intuition. Some notable history about Mr.
Debussy is that he made his "living" selling insurance so he could spend time composing
his music. He also won a Pulitzer Prize. The representative work I will discuss is Three
Places in New England Putman's Camp, Redding, Connecticut (1912). The media is orchestra,
with the texture having a distorted polyphony. The melody has super imposed familiar
melodies against a chromatic background. The harmony is tonal with a complex rhythm and a
fast tempo. The form is a one movement orchestral work, most commonly known as ABA form.
Three Places in New England is a set of three pieces for an orchestra to excite memories
of American history and landscapes. Putman's Camp is a child's impression of a Fourth of
July picnic with fireworks and carnival rides. 
The fourth composer I will be discussing is Scott Joplin (1868 - 1917). Scott Joplin, the
King of Ragtime music, was born near Linden, Texas on November 24, 1868. He moved with
his family to Texarkana at the age of about seven. Mr. Joplin's style of music is ragtime
yet he was trained in "classical" music and wrote a ballet and two operas along with many
piano rags. His influences were his parents, and Julius Weiss, who became his teacher
when he was eleven. His music is a unique blend of European classical styles combined
with African American harmony and rhythm. True-life events and real places inspired many
of Mr. Joplin's songs. One of his first compositions was The Great Crush Collision, which
was inspired by a great locomotive crash near Waco Texas. The piece I will be discussing
in this essay is Maple Leaf Rag (1899) which is a classical example of ragtime. The media
for Maple Leaf Rag is the piano with a homophonic texture. The melody has conjunct motion
with tonal harmony. The meter is in duple with a steady rhythm and a moderate march
tempo. The form is standard ragtime form, which is AA BB A CC DD. Standard ragtime form
has exactly sixteen bars in each section. Maple Leaf Rag was named after a saloon in
Missouri, where he worked as a pianist. The success of this song helped Mr. Joplin to
quit his job and move to St. Louis, where he taught piano and composed.
The only female composer I will be discussing will be the great Bessie Smith who is also
known as "the empress of blues" (1894 - 1937). Mrs. Smith was born in Chattanooga,
Tennessee USA. Some of her influences include her brothers Clarence and Andrew, and Ma
Rainey who was known as "the mother of blues". Mrs. Smith recorded as many as 160 songs
from 1923 to 1933. Some notable history concerning Mrs. Smith is that she was introduced
into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in
1989. The piece I will be discussing will be Lost Your Head Blues (1926). The media for
this song is the cornet, piano and voice with a homophonic texture. The melody is
structurally shaped with a tonal harmony. The meter is in 4/4 with a flexible and
syncopated rhythm. The form is the typical twelve bar blues. The song is heartfelt and
very personal. The song is about a woman who plans to leave her man because she has "been
treated wrong." 
The sixth composer I will be discussing in this essay will be the great Louis "Satchmo"
Armstrong (1901 - 1971). Louis Daniel Armstrong was born in the Storyville District of
New Orleans, Louisiana, on August 4, 1901, he always celebrated his birth as July 4, 1900
because that is what he was told and that is what he believed. His real date of birth was
not known until after his death July 6, 1971. Mr. Armstrong's style of music was New
Orleans Style Jazz. Some of his influences include his family, Peter Davis, and Joe
"King" Oliver. Some notable history pertaining to Mr. Armstrong is that he came from a
crime-ridden community. He was arrested at thirteen for firing a gun in the air at a New
Years Celebration, and then was virtually saved by the system because he was sent to a
reform school where he met his mentor, Joe Oliver. He served as Goodwill Ambassador in
the 1950's and 1960's. Mr. Armstrong was able to invent extraordinary solo's that
transformed any melody into a jazz melody. He revealed new dimensions of the trumpet,
showing that it could be played in a higher register. The piece I will discuss will be
Hotter Than Hot that was sung by Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five. The media is cornet,
piano, trombone, guitar, and voice. The texture is very varied with the melody being
disjunct and moving around. The harmony is tonal while it is in quadruple meter with a
rapid tempo. The form is New Orleans Style Jazz, which is characterized by scat singing.
Scat singing is a combination of singing, talking and vocalizing a melodic line with
nonsense syllables.
The next composer I will be discussing will be Leonard Berstein (1918 - 1990). Mr.
Berstein was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts USA. His style of music was very versatile.
He wrote musicals, operas, and ballets and theater pieces, choral works and three
programmatic symphonies. The piece I will be discussing is Tonight from the musical West
Side Story. The media of this song is orchestra and voice and the texture is homophonic.
The melody is syncopated and it has disjunct motion. The harmony is tonal with a 2/4
meter and it is fast and very rhythmic. The form is American Theater, or commonly known
as a musical. West Side Story was a 1949 version of Romeo and Juliet written by Jerome
Robbins, Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Laurents. This musical was about rival gangs and
two young lovers entwined in it all. "West Side Story remains true to its Shakespearean
model. Things look good for the young lovers in the beginning, but when Tony--much like
Romeo--accidentally kills his lover's brother while trying to break up a rumble, violence
erupts. The musical received rave reviews for its unflinching portrayal of gang life." 
The eighth composer I will be discussing is Igor Stravinsky (1828 - 1971). Born in St.
Petersburg, Russia. Mr. Stravinsky's style is mainly primitivism. "Stravinsky's forms are
additive rather than symphonic, created from placing blocks of material together without
disguising the joins". His influences include Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov who he studied
with, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and his father. Mr.Strainsky directed the Russian
Ballet at the request of Segei Diaghilev in 1909. The piece I will be discussing is The
Rite of Spring Omens of Spring-Dances of the Youths and Maidens (1913). The media for
this piece is orchestra with no textures, very disjointed and irregular. The harmony is
very fragmented and disjunct. This song is in duple meter with a pounding rhythm and a
fast tempo. The form is ballet. This ballet about pagan Russia caused quite a fuss in the
Theatre des Champs-Elysees at its premiere in 1913. It was definitely one of the most
famous riots in the history of music. The structure of the work is interesting. 
1. "The Adoration of the Earth 
-  Introduction 
-  The Adoration of the Earth 
-  Harbingers of Spring 
-  Dances of the Adolescent Boys and Girls 
-  Mock Abduction 
-  Spring Rounds 
-  Games of the Rival Tribes 
-  Procession of the Tribal Sages 
-  Adoration of the Earth 
-  Song of the Earth 
2. The Sacrifice 
-  Introduction 
-  The Sacrifice 
-  Mysterious Circles of the Adolescents 
-  Glorification of the Chosen One 
-  Evocation and Ritual of the Ancestors 
-  The Chosen One's Dance of Death" 
The ninth and final composer I will be discussing is Arnold Schoenberg (1874 - 1951) born
in Vienna Austria. His style was definitely full of expressionism with Brahms and Wagner
being his influences. In 1908, Mr. Schoenberg abandoned the tonal system. Yet he felt
himself forced to move on from the principles which had underlain all their music, above
all the principle of tonality. For all of them, as for many other composers, music had to
be written in a key, though it might frequently move from one key to another. The point
about using the key system is that some notes are stronger than others, the strongest
being the tonic (typically indicated by the title of a work; e.g. Symphony in C minor),
the next the dominant (five notes above the tonic), and so on. This tonal system
functions, both melodically and harmonically, as a set of tensions and relaxation's; the
further a piece is from the tonic, the more a need for resolution is felt, and the
greater the sense of homecoming when the tonic is reasserted. As Eric Salzman writes,
they are large-scale, thematic, wholly 12-tone structures in which the technique becomes
fluent and pliable, focused in a way that parallels the role played by tonality in
similar Classical forms." The piece I will be discussing is Vulgarity (1912) also known
as No.1 Gemeinhet, which is from an opera, by the name of Pierrot Lunaire. The media for
this piece is orchestra, voice, and a homophonic texture. The melody is very disjunct,
with a definite atonal harmony with no meter. This is from an opera with bizarre ideas.
The song is about an evil clown drilling a hole in a skull and smoking tobacco out of it.
This is also a form of sprechtimme which in German means speech-singing.
This is the end of my essay and I must admit that I learned more about these composers
than I expected.