# Archtypes in music



## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

Which pieces of music are considered archetypes of different styles and genres? I've been wondering about all the directions in 20th century music, but lets do it all! This can maybe take a while...F.ex. was the "proto-symphony" written by Sammartini, and not Haydn? Was the first modernist Mahler or Debussy? Has somebody here already made a list or discussed the topic?
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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Interesting question but also perhaps an unanswerable one. When you look at the history of science it becomes clear that the breakthrough theory or invention was a mere step from what others were doing and saying at the time so, although we remember the genius who achieved the breakthrough, we should be looking just as much at the trend: at what was going on in the scientific community. I think it is the same with music only more so. It often seems the composers and works we remember as seminal are built upon a growing trend of less successful (less great) experiments. Even the Eroica (pivotal work, though that is)! And then in the 20th Century there was a huge flowering and flourishing of different styles and directions so it is even more difficult to say which works were the breakthrough works. Probably both Debussy and Mahler were the first modernists - depending on which modernist strand you feel is central - but you might at Schoenberg's Gurrelieder as a (but not "the"!) totally pivotal moment. Or what about Kullervo as a breakthrough work in the Finnish nationalist tradition (or merely for Sibelius - which adds up to the same thing!).


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## Guest (Mar 30, 2018)

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> Which pieces of music are considered archetypes of different styles and genres? Has somebody here already made a list or discussed the topic?


Possibly, depending on whether or not one can broadly equate archetypal with iconic...

Greatness vs. Iconicity


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

The way I interpret the term, an 'archetype' is not specific, but represents a potentiality, 'type', or 'idealized' aspect of the psyche of Man, so in that sense it is a generality, an abstraction; so specific composers or works are realizations in specific form of those potentialities or arche-'types.'

As a music theorist, I translate this into musical thought, and see that musical ideas, and mechanisms, and approaches, have run like threads through the history of music, and these ideas got more developed and more prominent as we went from the Classical era to the modern.

In simplest terms, the transition from the 7-note major/minor scales of tonality gradually gave way to the full use of the other chromatic notes, via diminished triads. Examples are Beethoven's use of dim 7's as flat-nine dominants; symmetry, manifest as divisions of the octave into 3 parts, four parts, whole tone scales, major seconds; root movement by minor and major thirds (Beethoven's Ninth, Mahler's Ninth), and other ways of 'mathematically' or geometrically dividing the octave.

Thus, to me, I see the seeds of 'modern' musical thought as having always existed (since the advent of 12 notes) in earlier times as unrealized potentialities. Thus, I see "archetypes" as not so much individual composers or works, but as ways of thinking; the specific works are just realizations of some aspects of these ideas.

Schoenberg tried to codify this with 12-tone method, which could be in musical terms his 'theory of everything' which was supposed to wrap the whole package up neatly and present it to posterity, thus insuring his standing…but "there were more things in heaven and on Earth than were dreamed of in his philosophy"...


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

Okidoki. I still think origins can be discussed. Musical ideas must have a point or place of origin. I'll read some before my subscription to oxfordmusiconline expires


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> Which pieces of music are considered archetypes of different styles and genres? I've been wondering about all the directions in 20th century music, but lets do it all!


At the end of the Medieval Period, English composers started using 3rds and 6ths to sweeten harmony, so much so that it was labeled la contenance angloise. I believe it was John Dunstaple who made that style famous, which influenced Dufay, who, to my understanding, basically formed the new Renaissance style. So I'm not sure it was one piece in particular of his that did this but his general output.

Although there were operas before Monteverdi, am I correct that it was Monteverdi's Orfeo was the first of what we know as operas, with solo airs, duets, and dances interspersed among the recitatives?


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## Mal (Jan 1, 2016)

When is a symphony not a symphony? Haydn's first two symphonies are in three movements, only in the third do we see (what looks to me!) like the "archetypal" four movements. So is his third symphony "the first real symphony". And don't insult Haydn, it's his birthday


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