Folk and "Exotic" Sounds in European Art Music

                In response to the questions posed as to which individuals and their compositional methods are varying degrees of traditional or contemporary, I found myself with the same answer for each, and that was dependant on the use of folk music.  In many ways, folk music represents the most traditional of all genres of music and yet it existed largely unappreciated in the concert halls for a long period of history. As mentioned earlier, Mozart’s Turkish Rondo, Haydn’s “Gypsy” Trio, Beethoven’s arrangements of Russian songs for pedagogical purposes and pieces like that did include both folk music and exotic elements, but it seems as though this was (in the Classical/Romantic period) as a quaint ornament to otherwise strict Germanic compositional styles. It seems, however; that the boldness of Stravinsky, Bartok, Kodaly, Janacek and others to outright say “folk music was my inspiration for this melody” or to write in a folk music style was to bring traditional national cultural music into popular perception. It is interesting that similar experiments in recording and cataloging music of the Native American’s were happening around the same time that Bartok was doing his research (according to the text An Introduction to America’s Music by Richard Crawford).

                In the sense that concert hall music is traditional, to me, no figure stands out more than Rachmaninoff. Here is an individual that lived well into the 20^th century, enjoyed a great deal of success and is still regularly performed today (the Van Cliburn competition which wrapped up recently featured many pianists playing the 2^nd and 3^rd piano concerto to a very enthusiastic audience).  The concertos are indeed beautiful expressions of grand writing for the piano and orchestra, as are the Variations on a Theme by Paganini. These pieces are often melodically lyrical, moody with sections that tend to tap into that part of an audience that is looking for a rush. The greatest example of Rachmaninoff’s writing that shows his traditional, yet contemporary side is the very well known Prelude in C Sharp Minor. In many ways the harmonies of this piece are very Romantic recalling remnants of Chopin’s Prelude in C minor. On the other hand, the piece seems to have a clear ABA form with much more variation than many classical preludes tended to have (admittedly, many Romantic preludes do though, again, Chopin comes to mind in the way his “Raindrops” prelude changes as well as several others). In the end, it seems as though Rachmaninoff’s most novel aspect was the fact that he maintained what was becoming seen by his contemporaries as an “antiquated” style. However, the pieces’ enduring popularity against his contemporizes perhaps means that Rachmaninoff was (and still is) in line with popular trends.

                The final figure, for this discussion, is Ravel. In the interest of full disclosure, growing up as a young music student, Ravel was my favorite composer and I worked very hard trying to imitate his style (eventually my composition teacher began to scold me for doing this).  Ravel was hardly the only composer to write music for the left hand alone, however; the Concerto for left hand stands out as a remarkable achievement, especially when pitted against the massive chord voicing in Rachmaninoff. In a very profound way though, this is an incredibly traditional method as many of the first keyboard instruments (such as the portative organ) were often played with only one hand.  Ravel was also very novel in his use of Jazz aspects in his pieces, however; the aspects of Jazz which were incorporated into his works (such as the sliding and saxophone use in Bolero were in practice and common in the 19^th century in the Americas. The piano concerto in G has a great deal of bitonality and incredible virtuosity but it remains a Classical Concerto that follows a fast-slow-fast format. This is probably the biggest point above all the others; regardless of the use of dissonance, or dissonant sounds, odd meters or any of the exploited techniques used by composers of the 20^th century, often these individuals were still writing titles such as “symphony” “concerto” and “prelude.”  To be fair, there were some free-formed pieces being written, but it would have been impossible for the new composers to completely sever ties with the previous 3 centuries.