The Musical Language of the Twentieth Century: The Discovery of a Missing Link- The Music of Georg von Albrecht (Quellen und Studien zur ... Music History from Antiquity to the Present)

314 Pages·2012·17.814 MB·

by  Elliot Antokoletz

The Musical Language of the Twentieth Century
quellen und studien
zur musikgeschichte
von der antike
bis in die gegenwart
herausgegeben von Michael von Albrecht
Band 43
PETER LANG
Frankfurt am Main · Berlin · Bern · Bruxelles · New York · Oxford · Wien
Elliott Antokoletz
The Musical Language
of the Twentieth Century
The Discovery of a Missing Link
The Music of Georg von Albrecht
PETER LANG
Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften
Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche
Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the
Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is
available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
ISSN 0175-6257
ISBN 978-3-631-63244-4
© Peter Lang GmbH
Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften
Frankfurt am Main 2012
All rights reserved.
All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any
utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without
the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to
prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions,
translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in
electronic retrieval systems.
www.peterlang.de
Contents

Preface 7
1 Sources of the Musical Language and Style 9
2 Modal and Structural Variation in Selected Piano Works 25
3 Hybrid Modes and Interval Sets as Formal Determinants in
Piano Sonatas of Albrecht, Scriabin, and Prokofiev 77
4 The Twelve-Tone Idea as Scale or Theme: The Cyclic Set,
Inversional Symmetry, and Diatonic/Whole-Tone
Transformations in the Late Piano Sonatas 137
5 From Russian Folk Music to Serialism in Three Violin Works 176
6 Musical Integration and Poetic Correspondences in
Two Twelve-Tone Songs 214
7 Metamorphosis and Identity in a Twelve-Tone Solo Violin Work 244
8. The Opera as Synthesis: Das Vaterunser, op. 50 268
9 Epilogue 291
Works 301
Bibliography 305
Index 307
5

Preface

Divergent musical trends have been traced by historians and theorists throughout
the works of many twentieth-century composers. Scholarly studies have revealed
a general tendency toward absorption and synthesis of cultural influences—
musical, literary, and artistic—based on the conscious intention of a given
composer to transform the various influences into a new musical language and
style. In the early part of the century, national figures such as Debussy,
Stravinsky, Bartók, Vaughan Williams, and Ives, as well as the neoclassical
Stravinsky, Prokofiev, French composers of "Les Six," Hindemith, and others
have drawn from earlier music styles, folk-music materials from both Eastern and
Western cultures, popular music, jazz, and other idioms for their inspiration and
musical content. Many of these composers have also revealed significant stylistic
and technical influences from the music of their contemporaries. This has led to
the adoption of techniques ranging from an occasional local use of traditional
harmonic functions to polymodal combination and serial procedures, often in
contexts based on complex metric/rhythmic formulizations.
Georg von Albrecht, whose folkloristic activities and compositional
inclinations invoke the creative spirit of Bartók, is an exemplar of a composer
who has synthesized traditional and contemporary elements from both Eastern
and Western European sources. Albrecht was inspired by many cultures, his
music imbued with Byzantine and ancient Greek elements, Hebrew folklore, and
Gregorian elements, as well as the pentatonicism of Eastern Asia. Russian and
Lithuanian folklore underlies virtually all of his works. These sources are
conjoined in his music with architectural conceptions derived from Western
European musical thought.
To realize the composer's artistic essence fully, that is, to present more
than a summary description of his external influences and internal compositional
techniques, is not an easy task. This study is intended to conjoin meaningful
musical analyses with a broader range of aesthetic issues to gain insight into the
composer's philosophical bases as well as musical thought. The goal of this book
is to provide not only an understanding and appreciation of Albrecht's musical art
per se, but to link his compositional approach to a broader historical and
theoretical context. The significance of this study lies in the discovery of a
7
"missing historical link" in the evolution of principles that range from the
pentatonic formations of folk music to the more abstract realm of serial
procedures, and to demonstrate how they are absorbed and transformed.
This book may be considered a kind of musical extension of Albrecht's
memoirs.1 The composer's own insights into his music theory and practice within
the context of the historical, political, social, and cultural upheavals of his time
have provided a general conceptual basis for a more concrete analytical scrutiny
and theoretical interpretation of the musical fabric itself. The earlier publication of
my articles on Albrecht's music in the first five volumes of the International
Journal of Musicology are absorbed and expanded in the present study into a
more integrated and comprehensive view of the music within its historical
context. As I have pointed out in the Preface to Albrecht's memoirs, "Both
Albrecht’s music and the present book certainly encourage us to discover 'missing
links' in our knowledge of twentieth-century music. They contribute to bridging
the gulf between East and West, traditional and modern, musicians and
musicologists and, last but not least, the composer and his audience."2
I should like to express gratitude to my dear colleague and friend, Michael
von Albrecht, for his support of this project and for his input regarding his father's
life and thought. His own musical knowledge has been a source of inspiration
during the entire project as I had become immersed in the beauty of the music. I
should also like to acknowledge the publisher of Albrecht's music, Verlag Peter
Lang, Frankfurt am Main, for permission to reproduce the many musical excerpts
in this volume.

1 Georg von Albrecht. Vom Volkslied zur Zwölftontechnik. Schriften und Erinnerungen eines
Musikers zwischen Ost und West. Published as vol. 3 of Quellen und Studien zur Musikgeschichte von der
Antike bis in die Gegenwart, ed. Michael von Albrecht (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Peter Lang, 1984). See
the English translation, Georg von Albrecht: From Musical Folklore to Twelve-Tone Technique:
Memoirs of a Musician Between East and West, ed. Elliott Antokoletz, trans. Michael von
Albrecht and Francis R. Schwartz (Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2004).
2 Ibid., p. xii.
8
Chapter 1
Sources of the Musical
Language and Style:
Early Historical Conditions, Cultural
Sources, and Motivations for Folk-Music
Investigation in Russia

The Russian-German composer and folklorist, Georg von Albrecht (b. Kasan, 19
March 1891, d. Heidelberg, 15 March 1976), himself had pointed to the
inextricable connection of folk music with Russian musical culture, though the
full impact of the endless ethnic varieties of the musical folk sources in Russia on
Russian composers and Western modern music was still to be discovered in the
early twentieth century. Albrecht questioned the degree to which those “among
us” are familiar with the essential aspects of Russian musical folklore, even in
terms of its most basic character, which is largely removed from the Western
Major and Minor scale system, lyrical melody that recalls Celtic songs,
asymmetrical melodic construction, unique polyphonic relations that articulate the
more significant moments of the text by the use of lower voices to accompany the
primary melody by free “exclamations.”1
Albrecht’s encounter with Tsvetkov, a retired schoolmaster and choir
director whom he came to know during the Great Civil War in 1919, was one of
the most memorable of his early years. The words of the elderly man, as he gave
the young Russian folklorist/composer his own personal collection of diverse folk
melodies, are quite revealing in terms of the more general attitude emerging in the
Russian musical culture of the time:

All these are folk songs, good old folk songs! Some days ago I heard your
lecture on this subject. You left out some important aspects, but I feel that

1Georg von Albrecht, “Volksmusik—ein Faktor der musikalischen Kultur
Rußlands,” (Folk music: an integral part of Russian musical culture), first
published in Das Medaillion (Jahrgang 1946), Heft 3; see G.v. Albrecht, Vom
Volkslied zur Zwölftontechnik (Frankfurt, 1984), p. 2.
9