# What effect - if any - do you think the Industrial Revolution had on classical music?



## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

For example, did it affect how rhythm is composed, to reflect the suddenly new noise of great machines? Did it have a greater or lesser effect on music than the Enlightenment? These kinds of things, aesthetically, technically and philosophically, how was music affected? Also, technological advances, though these might be more easily identified.

Cheers! :tiphat:


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Apart from Handel's Harmonious Blacksmith and Verdi's Anvil Chorus, there seems to be little attempt to involve mechanical rhythms until the 20th century initially with Varèse and later Stockhausen.

The greater impact was the "industrialisation" of the orchestra starting at Mannheim and leading to the massed forces of the modern day orchestra.

As you say, there were technological changes in instruments - valved trumpets, lever harps, the modern iron framed piano - mainly leading to fully chromatic instruments with more power to be used in massed orchestras.

Fascinating thread. :tiphat:


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

As regards concrete inspiration, there are some obvious cases, but from 1900 onwards - Russolo´s futurist works employing machinery, Mossolov´s "_The Iron Foundry_" for orchestra, Avraamov´s "_Symphony of Factory Sirens_", many pieces portraying trains and airplanes by various composers, and works by Varese, for example.

Concerning earlier decades or even centuries, I'm not immediately aware of any examples, though Mime has a lot of hammering to do with the Nothung sword etc. in _The Nibelungen Ring_, a story also loaded with symbolic meanings. The Boulez/Chereau Ring pointed to some possible elements of contemporary history/industrialization in the Ring story, of course ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jahrhundertring ).

A few remarks on the French Revolution signalling new approaches:
https://ageofrevolutions.com/2016/09/05/a-french-revolution-in-music/


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

joen_cph said:


> As regards concrete inspiration, there are some obvious cases, but from 1900 onwards - Russolo´s futurist works employing machinery, Mossolov´s "_The Iron Foundry_" for orchestra, Avraamov´s "_Symphony of Factory Sirens_", many pieces portraying trains and airplanes by various composers, and works by Varese, for example.
> 
> Concerning earlier decades or even centuries, I'm not immediately aware of any examples, though Mime has a lot of hammering to do with the Nothung sword etc. in _The Nibelungen Ring_, a story also loaded with symbolic meanings. The Boulez/Chereau Ring pointed to some possible elements of contemporary history/industrialization in the Ring story, of course ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jahrhundertring ).
> 
> ...


Interesting article - thanks! It was the other wheel I was curious about too, the age of revolution. We know, for example, that individual figures of this time animated Beethoven - he composed inspired by Napoleon, though later recanted. But the spirit of the age had its impact on him. But the Industrial Revolution was maybe the greatest revolution of the time, and I agree with you and Taggart that certain composers tried to snapshot its sounds into their music. I wonder is there an ethos of the Industrial Revolution that also seeped into music?


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

Taggart said:


> The greater impact was the "industrialisation" of the orchestra starting at Mannheim and leading to the massed forces of the modern day orchestra.


That's interesting - was this directly influenced by the Industrial Revolution? Did it change minds and enlarge ambitions in this way, that it inspired larger orchestras?


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Kieran said:


> Interesting article - thanks! It was the other wheel I was curious about too, the age of revolution. We know, for example, that individual figures of this time animated Beethoven - he composed inspired by Napoleon, though later recanted. But the spirit of the age had its impact on him. But the Industrial Revolution was maybe the greatest revolution of the time, and I agree with you and Taggart that certain composers tried to snapshot its sounds into their music. I wonder is there an ethos of the Industrial Revolution that also seeped into music?


I just wanted to point out a nice pun there, "other wheel" and "age of revolution."


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

JAS said:


> I just wanted to point out a nice pun there, "other wheel" and "age of revolution."


It wasn't intentional but I'll claim it was! :lol:


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Kieran said:


> It wasn't intentional but I'll claim it was! :lol:


It is a strange thing, but the best puns are usually unintentional.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

What I remember about the Industrial Revolution from tenth grade world history:

Someone named Arkwright invented something called the water frame.
John Cartwright invented the power loom.
John Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny.

Those seemed to be important facts according to the textbook in 1966.

Why I still remember them is another matter entirely.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Kieran said:


> That's interesting - was this directly influenced by the Industrial Revolution? Did it change minds and enlarge ambitions in this way, that it inspired larger orchestras?


Mannheim predates the industrial revolution. The Elector Charles III Philip moved from Heidelberg to Mannheim in 1720. He was already employing an orchestra larger than those of any of the surrounding courts. In a sense he benefited from economies of scale and from specialisation.The orchestra attracted virtuosi performers who could learn form each other. There were a number of musical innovations which filtered into the works of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven.

The orchestra was more disciplined in that they abandoned the _basso continuo_ and had less individual freedom and became more composer dominated. That's what I mean by "industrialised" - a move from small scale artisanal production to large scale production dominated by specialism and controlled by a "factory manager" - a conductor or composer.

Once people could see what could be done with a large orchestra, then the development of the orchestra followed.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

I imagine the economies of scale resulting from the mechanization of processes enabled a larger-scale production of many musical instruments (particularly winds) than might have been formerly possible. Also the large-scale production of music-reproduction mechanisms (from the Victrola onward) had an extraordinary effect on its availability/profitability, if not exactly the music proper.

(Also there is a probably urban myth that "Bolero" resulted from Ravel's staying overnight next door to a factory making incessant rhythmic noises.)


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

I have a theory that the mass production of classical recordings facilitated a general thinning out of repetitions in classical music and scores, since you could now hear it as many times you liked, in a row. 
And that it also increased tendencies to make music more advanced/complicated, deserving further hearings ...


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

It caused SteamPunk Reggie opera productions!


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

To my mind Wagner's "Descent into Nibelheim", with its rhythmic hammering and machine-like momentum, often evokes thoughts of mechanized labor:


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Kieran said:


> For example, did it affect how rhythm is composed, to reflect the suddenly new noise of great machines? Did it have a greater or lesser effect on music than the Enlightenment? These kinds of things, aesthetically, technically and philosophically, how was music affected? Also, technological advances, though these might be more easily identified.
> 
> Cheers! :tiphat:


I think the Industrial Revolution set the stage for later innovations of technology, mainly recording. There _was_ a pre-recording era of machines which could reproduce music during this time.

Also, the Industrial Revolution caused social changes and gave rise to a more affluent middle class, which became the main audience for music later on.

I think recording is really what changed music most profoundly.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Composers started imitating the sounds and especially the rhythms of trains....


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Alkan was probably one of the first with the train motif (1844)






Lumbye´s nice orchestral one is from 1847


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Bromo-Seltzer, Bromo-Seltzer, Bromo-Seltzer, Bromo-Seltzer....

What about the blues "shuffle" being the result of plowing behind a mule? That's pretty un-industrial. Birds, too. Beethoven's pastorale, Messiaen...music has always imitated other sounds.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

I remember reading Alan (?) Lomax book, The Land Where Blues Began, and he suggests that rock & roll got its name from black workers on the Mississippi, shifting huge bales of cotton onto ships, they’d rock the load first to break its stasis, then roll it. All to a hollered, rhythmic sing song. One thing I wonder about the Industrial Age, has it impacted much on music about nature, and have there been many attempts to capture the soulless aspect of industrial life, in music?


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

MarkW said:


> .
> 
> (Also there is a probably urban myth that "Bolero" resulted from Ravel's staying overnight next door to a factory making incessant rhythmic noises.)


At the same time, this could be true! This is how creativity happens. Mozart composed music for his d-minor string quartet based upon his wife's childbirth breathing! So Ravel's Bolero might be a work that's come to us filtered through industrial sound...


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

joen_cph said:


> I have a theory that the mass production of classical recordings facilitated a general thinning out of repetitions in classical music and scores, since you could now hear it as many times you liked, in a row.
> And that it also increased tendencies to make music more advanced/complicated, deserving further hearings ...


That's interesting. So the tricks and thrills of composers more rapidly reached a wider audience, so development was faster?


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Wasn't Romanticism partly a reaction _against _the industrial revolution? Still, the "satanic mills" and the ravaging of nature must have fed some powerful images of hell for artists of the time.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

Enthusiast said:


> Wasn't Romanticism partly a reaction _against _the industrial revolution? Still, the "satanic mills" and the ravaging of nature must have fed some powerful images of hell for artists of the time.


Yes, I believe it was partly a nostalgic movement idealising nature and rejecting industrialisation, which I suppose was an effect of the Industrial Revolution in itself...


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

The 20th century had profound effect on composers because of noise generated from machines, automobiles, airplanes and the first world war. This changed the environment under which composers worked and strongly affected their collective product. To cite just one example it is impossible to imagine Le Sacre du Printemps being written 100 years earlier.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

larold said:


> The 20th century had profound effect on composers because of noise generated from machines, automobiles, airplanes and the first world war. This changed the environment under which composers worked and strongly affected their collective product. To cite just one example it is impossible to imagine Le Sacre du Printemps being written 100 years earlier.


The world was a far different place in 1813 from what it was in 1913, in so many ways--it wasn't just the noise of machines that caused composers to write music in 1913 that was very little like that of a century before.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Kieran said:


> For example, did it affect how rhythm is composed, to reflect the suddenly new noise of great machines? Did it have a greater or lesser effect on music than the Enlightenment? These kinds of things, aesthetically, technically and philosophically, how was music affected? Also, technological advances, though these might be more easily identified.
> 
> Cheers! :tiphat:


The emergence of rail travel meant musicians could travel farther and wider than before. So, the travelling virtuoso could ply his trade much easier compared to the era of horse and cart. The age of steam also brought other advances which led to easier dissemination of music. The speed of printing was increased dramatically. Consequently, ideas about new music travelled wider too.

People moved to the cities for work, creating more consumers of music - sheet music, concerts. There where other impacts of urbanisation, for example establishment of music academies in the major cities, as well as orchestras and opera companies. Those in the emerging middle class took pride in owning pianos, manufacture of the instruments became an important industry.

Industrialists became important patrons to musicians (eg. Nadezhda von Meck to Tchaikovsky), and even funded buildings (eg. Andrew Carnegie who funded New York concert hall named after him).


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## Eusebius12 (Mar 22, 2010)

and even 




has a touch of the 5 year plans about it

I guess though that this is very pre-industrial, despite the similar instrumentation, and the (gaudy) special effects:


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Enthusiast said:


> Wasn't Romanticism partly a reaction _against _the industrial revolution? Still, the "satanic mills" and the ravaging of nature must have fed some powerful images of hell for artists of the time.





Kieran said:


> Yes, I believe it was partly a nostalgic movement idealising nature and rejecting industrialisation, which I suppose was an effect of the Industrial Revolution in itself...


William Blake's poem The Tyger is like a prophetic warning about the juggernaut of industrialisation, which had devastating impact on local cultures including music.

I never forget an anecdote related by Michael Tippett, who said that when he was a boy in the early 20th century, folk songs where commonly heard around Suffolk but by the time he was in his thirties, there was no sign of them. This process started in the 19th century, so by the early 20th century you had composers like Grainger, Vaughan Williams with Holst, and Bartok with Kodaly travelling and recording folk songs which where seen as to be dying out. You wouldn't think but the most potent response to industrialisation where the statements these composers made against it, the many works they produced either inspired by or directly quoting folk sources.

Once recordings became widespread, music hall ditties and songs from operetta became the songs which ordinary people knew the words to (similar to pop music today). Folk music was by then a collector's item, museum piece.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Sid James said:


> Once recordings became widespread, music hall ditties and songs from operetta became the songs which ordinary people knew the words to (similar to pop music today). Folk music was by then a collector's item, museum piece.


I blame the chapmen who went round peddling their ballads myself. Many so-called folk songs can be traced back to the penny broadsides.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

If I remember correctly Edward Said links Glenn Gould's very fast performances of gigues in the English Suites with the Industrial Revolution, I can't remember which essay, maybe in Music at the Limits


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Mandryka said:


> If I remember correctly Edward Said links Glenn Gould's very fast performances of gigues in the English Suites with the Industrial Revolution, I can't remember which essay, maybe in Music at the Limits


Interesting, but though influential, Said's other, main historical views have since received a lot of criticism. (Gould's eccentricities such as fast tempi weren't only present in his Bach. And he wasn't the only one experimenting with fast tempi either, of course).


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## Tallisman (May 7, 2017)

It could be argued that the beginnings of industrialisation and modernisation served as the very spark for Romanticism itself. So I'd say 'major impact'.


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## KRoad (Jun 1, 2012)

Once Marx had made those comprising the chromatic substratum aware of the exploitative nature of Capitalism, the bass and lower register instruments in general became more _present _in classical music composition, achieving in the process consciousness both _of_ and _for_ themselves.

Ist doch klar, oder?


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Taggart said:


> I blame the chapmen who went round peddling their ballads myself. Many so-called folk songs can be traced back to the penny broadsides.


I didn't know about that, and had a look at the wikipedia article on penny broadsides. Perhaps its a case of folk music becoming diluted prior to its extinction? No doubt increased urbanisation which led to reduced population of rural areas was a also a big factor prior to the advent of recording technology. Before rail travel, most people lived their entire lives within a small radius of where they where born.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Sid James said:


> I didn't know about that, and had a look at the wikipedia article on penny broadsides. Perhaps its a case of folk music becoming diluted prior to its extinction? No doubt increased urbanisation which led to reduced population of rural areas was a also a big factor prior to the advent of recording technology. *Before rail travel, most people lived their entire lives within a small radius of where they where born*.


And even later too, btw. When we moved from the capital to a Danish provincial area in the early 1970s, some of the elderly locals had only visited a town 20 km to the south, as the maximum distance away from their home, ever.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

In the 1950s, Edgar Varése used electronic and altered sounds (music concreté) in his work Deserts. The tape was recorded in the USA, in Philadelphia, using sounds recorded in foundries, mills, and factories.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

The industrial revolution started congregating people in the cities and pulling them away from their rural communities because of necessity or the financial advantages. That was a huge change in society that led to some of its horrors, read Marx and Dickens and child labor. I think the horrors of it, at least the sound of it, came to a head in the 20th century with examples being Prokofiev and George Antheil, and in modern architecture someone like Gropius. Were they celebrating the acceptance and sounds of the industrial revolution or were they in reaction to the regimentation and mechanization of society? Charles Chaplin also had something to say about the industrial revolution in his classic Modern Times. But in general, I think it pulled people away from their roots, created a certain mobility in society with labor roles becoming more impersonal, and this can be heard in the rhythms and speeding up of some of the music. In 19th century music, I hear very little of this influence except maybe in the mad hyper pace of the Tarantellas by Chopin and Liszt. Certainly not in Brahms, Mahler or Bruckner.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

My reading of Prokofiev's personality is that his self-absorption was such that the sort of extrapersonal societal and economic megatrends that might have influenced other composers were as water off the back of this particular duck. His only real interests were music, fine dining, machinery (automobiles), chess, himself, and, again, music. He is one of my very favorite composers .


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Well, looking beyond Prokofiev's personality for a moment, wasn't there his ballet commissioned by Diaghilev, _ Le pas d'acier (The Steel Step)_, a "modernist" ballet score intended to portray the industrialization of the Soviet Union? I would find it difficult if not impossible not to hear its rhythms and deliberate portrayal of industrial mechanization, including its ugliness. I very much like the rhythmic score and the ballet was quite a success when it was premiered in Paris... I also hear the suggestive sound of modern mechanization in some of his other works, such as his _Toccata_, previously mentioned, and I feel that he was quite aware of what was happening in industry and perhaps not just in himself.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

^^^^The idea for _Le pas d'acier_ came from Diaghilev. Prokofiev jumped at the idea, as it would give him a chance to show that he was up to speed on contemporary Soviet life, on machinery, and could expand his use, as he says, of "diatonics" and "themes composed solely for white keys". However, the ballet and its music were later denounced by the Soviets, who accused Prokofiev of not really knowing anything about contemporary Soviet life, but instead of aping "the mechanical subjects of urban art, so dear to the bourgeoisie". But there seems to have been no thought by Prokofiev to depict factory life and sound as ugly.


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## bravenewworld (Jan 24, 2016)

Perhaps a tenuous link could be established between the rise of the more heavily dissonant Contemporary Classical music and the increasing industrialisation of the world in the late 19th and early 20th century. The shift in ambient noise from sounds such as birdsong, horses and the like towards the noise of machinery and car-horns etc. could be linked to the shift from the lush and organic orchestration of the Romantics and the harsher sounds contemporary composers were more willing to employ. That's just a loose theory, and if you asked me to provide evidence in its favour, I could provide you nothing. (Yes, I know the Industrial Revolution technically began in the 1760s, but it really gathered 


I do think that, realistically, the increased literacy which accompanied industrialisation as middle classes were created, and the rise of recording technology, were far and away the most important influence of the Industrial Revolution


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

The OP was asking about the influence of the Industrial Revolution in music, and I believe there's plenty of it that can be heard in Prokofiev, not only in his ballet, _Le pas d'acier_, but in his Symphony No. 2, Op. 40, Prokofiev's violent two-movement symphony ''of iron and steel,'' that can also easily be associated with factories and the industrialization that was taking place in the Soviet Union and elsewhere.

In some ways, I feel that he liked experimenting with the brash sound of it, because it was an opportunity to be anti-romantic and unsentimental, one side of his nature, though I believe, despite his excessive narcissism, that he also had a softer side to himself that came out in such works as his ballet _Romeo & Juliette_. Nevertheless, I believe it can be easily put forth that he could be one of the most industrial-sounding of any 20th-century composer, who could sound industrially harsh, cruelly impersonal, iron and steely grotesque, at least among any modern composer with a big reputation. But that for anyone, he's worth getting to know better for the beauty and animal vitality of his work as well. Hang onto your seats:


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

The Miraculous Mandarin is surely set in a teaming modern city, a product of the industrial age.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Enthusiast said:


> The Miraculous Mandarin is surely set in a teaming modern city, a product of the industrial age.


It is, and contrast Bartok's portrayal of the seedy side of city life with say Haydn's London symphonies, which present glimpses of a city of the Enlightenment and centre of empire in the 18th century. Whereas Haydn conveys the busy city in a light filled tapestry, with its street musicians, bells, courtly dances, Bartok's ballet gives us a storyline about prostitution and murder, with correspondingly harsh and brittle score. Its like comparing paintings by Canaletto and Grosz.

I remember reading an opinion on why the East Europeans tended to stick to tonality and retained an interest in folk music while other parts of the Continent (namely the Germany and Austria, but also for a while Italy and Russia) had a fascination with new urban based trends (eg. atonality, later serialism, Futurism). It was argued that for composers like Bartok, Martinu, Szymanowski that folk basis, while built solidly on Germanic tonal and structural foundations, provided them with a sense of their own culture in music which was at the same time independent of Germany or Russia (their former colonisers) and modern.

The big irony here is that to preserve folk music you needed an Edison gramophone, and also some means of travel to get to the backwoods to record the threatened local cultures.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

^^^^Probably could include Spanish composers in with the East Europeans in wanting to retain a basis in their indigenous culture.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Strange Magic said:


> ^^^^Probably could include Spanish composers in with the East Europeans in wanting to retain a basis in their indigenous culture.


Definitely, for example de Falla founded a festival of flamenco there. Its also worth noting that while the East Europeans based their own newly founded national music on Germanic roots, Spain did the same but was more filtered through French influences. Falla, Granados and Albeniz all spent time in Paris. They tended to avoid the larger symphonic forms and composed sets of miniatures, in Falla's case he also wrote some ballet. There is though Surinach, of a later generation, who studied with Strauss and his music does have more a link to middle Europe. I've got his String Quartet and Piano Concerto and they come across more like Bartok than than anything French. Having said that things aren't so cut and dried when one considers how the East Europeans also knew about and where impacted by what was going on in France. In Martinu's case, he spent time there also.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

_The Miraculous Mandarin_ mentioned by Enthusiast. Great example. One can hear the rhythms of the factories and the sound of the car horns in the cities... But I must say that I find some of the industrial/urban-sounding music to be dehumanizing and horrifying. Who here would have wanted to work in one of these God forsaken factories being so brilliantly described in sound? Not I, not in the might of the Soviet Union or anywhere else in the modern world at the time. But industrialism was growing and certainly noticed by Bartok, Prokofiev, and it can, of course, be heard in some of their major works. In Prokofiev's depictions, I sometimes get the strong impression that he was _celebrating_ the sound of the factories and industrialization as an expression of the growing industrial power taking place in the Soviet Union that he approved of. Of course, he might have felt differently if he himself had been forced to work in one of these God awful places... The industrialism and busyness of the modern city, including city sounds and car horns, can of course also be heard in Gerswhin's _An American in Paris,_ with cars being one of the biggest products of the modern industrial age. I would bet my bottom dollar that Gershwin had heard Bartok's _TMM _before writing _AAiP_.






How the IR affected the build and quality of specific instruments: https://www.quora.com/What-major-influences-did-the-Industrial-Revolution-have-on-music


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