Music 1102A/B Lecture 29: Nov 16. Ruth Crawford
19 Nov 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Writing in a new style meant avoiding old styles: crawford deliberately avoided using some of the most basic elements of music in any conventional way. Instead she used a new idiom freed from conventional constraints of harmony, melody and rhythm. Crawford blazed new ground for american women composers in the first half of the 20th century. 1930 became 1st woman awarded a prestigious guggenheim fellowship in composition: used the money to travel to europe (berlin) where modernism arose in all arts, 1920s-earl(cid:455) (cid:1005)93(cid:1004)s = (cid:862)a(cid:374)(cid:455)thi(cid:374)g goes(cid:863) (cid:373)e(cid:374)talit(cid:455) through e(cid:454)pressio(cid:374)is(cid:373) (cid:449)ithi(cid:374) art. Rather than studying with these modernists, crawford forged her own brand of modernism: placed self-imposed limitation avoiding basic elements (i. e. meter, tonality, patterned rhythms) Notes go by fast but they are all of equal value. Establishes absolutely no sense of meter or fixed pattern of rhythms. Instead, a small series of units are heard.
