Aesthetics and the Christian Musician Part 6

 Aesthetics and the Christian Musician-Part 6

           Debussy paved the way to the door of despair and Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) walked through it with portions of his ballet Petruska composed in bitonality.  His ballet Le sacre du printemps was composed in polytonality with the use of polyrhythms.  His Septet (1953) and his ballet Agon (1957) were composed in Serial (12 tone) technique.  So by the end of his career Stravinsky had moved from conventional diatonic harmonic practice to Schoenberg’s despair of 12 tone technique.

            The ultimate expression of 20^th century despair in music composition was developed by Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951).  Although his earliest works were in post-Romantic style, his compositions became more and more chromatic.  Next, his works became very dissonant and pan-tonal which defied the rules of traditional harmonic practice.

            Next, he developed his 12-tone (dodecaphonic) compositions.  These works were based on a tone row using all twelve tones equally, thereby emancipating dissonance.  This technique was the ultimate 20^th century expression of despair in music composition.  It purported that all 12 tones should be used with equal emphasis with no regard to the rules of harmonic practice.  Up to this time, music always flowed from consonance to dissonance which was always resolved into consonance.

          What Schoenberg accomplished was the destruction of absolutes in music.  To him nothing was profound, appropriate, proper, right or wrong in harmonic practice.  What he changed was both the epistemology and the methodology of meaning in music composition.  So, under his epistemology there are ways of “knowing” that involve new foundations and new limits.  With this compositional methodology, he created a new way of dealing with the science of music.  His new compositional procedures established a completely new way of musical “knowing” through his new rules and procedures.