《Lecture 22耶鲁大学开放课程《聆听音乐》讲稿 》.pdf

Yale University Listening to Music Lecture 22 Professor Craig Wright: So today were going to engage Modernism. Were going to be talking principally about the music of Igor Stravinsky. I should also mention Arnold Schoenberg. Just as Verdi and Wagner were the principal composers of opera in the nineteenth century, so Schoenberg and Stravinsky were the principal proponents--not only of instrumental music, but some vocal music--in the first half of the twentieth century. So we want to keep them carefully positioned on our radar screen here. Igor Stravinsky, of course, was a Russian composer, born in St. Petersburg. You have the dates up there on the board, Im sure. He studied with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, who wrote one famous piece, Scheherazade--which I used to hear all the time as a kid--and then caught the eye of Sergei Diaghilev. Serge Diaghilev was an impresario. Whats an impresario? Who can tell me what an impresario is? Its a fancy word for--Thaddeus. Student: A producer. Professor Craig Wright: A producer. Okay. Think of the Broadway show The Producers. Hes simply a producer. And what Diaghilev was producing and importing into Paris from Russia was Modernist art from Russia--Modernist painting, Modernist ballet, Modernist art music, and Modernist opera. So thats what we want to keep in mind with regard to Sergei Diaghilev. And for Diaghilev, Stravinsky composed, early in his career, three important ballet scores, and you have those titles up on the board there: Firebird with its date--what? 1909--Petrushka, 1911, and then The Rite of Spring in 1913. Now, the first of these ballets to really show a heavy Modernist content is not so much Firebird but more the second of this troika here, Petrushka. Its modern because of the new approach to rhythm. In the Romantic music that we have been listening to, we