Edgard Varese: Hyperism [NAWM 192]
- work for winds, brass, and percussion
- lots of percussion color including an instrument that sounds like a siren
- woodwinds and brass do not play themes and rarely melodies; instead they produce sounds that suggest static or moving sound masses… accents, glissandos, crescendos, sforzandos, flutter-tonguing, all constantly changing timbre
- avoids familiar chords/scales–tends to use notes that are next to each other in the chromatic scale but separated by on eor more octaves
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Henry Cowell: The Banshee [NAWM 193]
- piano piece
- played directly on strings of piano
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Ruth Crawford Seeger: String Quartet 1931: Fourth movement, Allegro possibile [NAWM 194]
- string quartet
- palindrome: second half is an exact retrograde of the first, transposed up a half-step
- texture: two contrapuntal lines
- begins with violin playing one note, then two, then three, all the way to twenty-one, gradually getting softer; pitches and rhythms chosen freely
- other three instruments begin at twenty notes, then nineteen, then eighteen, etc., gradually getting louder; lower instruments play only eighth notes and pitches generated by permutations of a ten-note series
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Aaron Copland: Appalachain Spring, Excerpt with Variations on ‘Tis the Gift to Be Simple [NAWM 195]
- ballet suite
- uses dissonance, counterpoint, motivic unity, juxtaposed blocks of modernist sound, but also uses diatonic melodies and harmonies, transparent textures, direct quotations of folk or popular songs: evokes country fiddling, dancing, and singing and captures the spirit of rural America
- beginning section contain shifting meters, offbeat accents, and sudden changes of texture (Stravinsky-like); predominantly diatonic melodies and harmonies, syncopation, and guitarlike chords make the passage sound like American folk music
- well-known Shaker melody used in a later passage
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William Grant Still: Afro-American Symphony (Symphony No. 1): First movement, Moderato assai [NAWM 196]
- symphony
- blues melody (AAB form) and harmonic progression
- syncopations appear in both melody and accompaniment, phrases often end just before rather than on a strong beat
- call-and-response structure is echoed in the frequent interjections by other instruments between the short phrases of melody
- lowered fifth, third, and seventh scale degrees
- instrumental groupings similar to jazz bands: trumpets and trombones (with Harmon mutes), steady taps on the bass drum and dampened strikes on the cymbal, winds and brass used in groups of similar sound, use of a vibraphone
- second theme has pentatonic contours of a spiritual
- becomes swung
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