Museum Pieces (Burkholder), notes

"Museum Pieces: The Historicist Mainstream of the Last Hundred Years"
J. Peter Burkholder [Journal of Musicology, Vol. 2 (1983) 115-134], outline, Brunner.

I. Introduction
A. Catalyst for change- Music of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s is characterized by
diversity and rapid change
B. Results found in the music that followed for the next 100 yrs
1. No rules for this music-no consensus for the new style
2.Creating music that differs radically from their contemporaries
3. Individuals change their own style & musical language from one piece to the next
C. Art Music is divorced from other traditions
D. No common conceptual tradition/no framework for understanding contributions of
individual composers
E. Labels created that do not work: Modem music, contemporary music, new music,
20th century music
F. Cannot define what binds this diverse group of composers together

II. Finding a mainstream in 20th-century music
A. No sense of shared style, but of shared concerns...
B. Mainstream is Historicism: in the past 100 years, concert music consists primarily of
music written for an audience familiar with the art music of the 18th &19th centuries.
C. Composers begin writing music for the concert hall as a museum

III. Historicism/Transition of the Concert Hall/Split of Serious and Popular music
A. Tradition arose among composers in the 19th century that involved the gradual
development of an audience familiar with music of dead composers.
B. The concert is the center of this development as it was here that the shift/split developed
1. Created the simultaneous split between classical (serious) and popular musics
2. Other Reasons for the split
C. The new respect for “dead composers” was as much commercial as artistic
1. Stemmed from music publishing, instrument manufacture, and concert management
2.This music had little to engage the attention of the musically intelligent.
3. Reaction: serious musicians went back to Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn
4. The concert became more an intellectual venue than “entertainment”
5. Serious music became something to be “understood” rather than just enjoyed.
6. Popular music turned away from the concert halls
7. The current dichotomy between “serious” and “popular” solidified [Opera was the
exception: serious and popular audiences continued to coincide at least until the
turn of the 20th century. Elsewhere music was no longer offered to an audience
including both skilled and unskilled listeners.]
8. By the last 25 years of the 19th century, the concert hail had already become a
museum for display of art works from previous generations rather than the new.
9. Problem surfaced for living composers... not to please the audience of the present,
but how to win space in the museum


IV. In seeking the museum, composers found modernism: audience opinion becomes secondary
to importance of placement in the museum
A. Composers began to emulate and study the composers of the previous several centuries,
not just their immediate predecessors, e.g., revival of Bach, Palestrina
1. this music was less familiar and therefore “new” music
2. when the works of dead composers were revived they had lost whatever original
social function they had originally
3. served and were valued as autonomous works of art available for the concert hall.
B. Young composers devoted themselves to perfecting their craft and ignoring the goal the older masters, who kept the social role of music in the forefront while composing.
C. In taking this step, Brahms and Schoenberg, and their followers developed the unique
esoteric tradition associated with modernist “classical” music. Communicating with the
audience was secondary to creating music that would last (in the museum).

V. German Tradition and the move towards experimental music
A. Ideology: emphasis on technical innovations and compositional firsts
1. Brahms was the first example
2. Later came Schoenberg, Reger, Hindemith
3. As a whole they created a new tradition of experimental music
B. Composers outside of Germany
1. Found a personal style through several means:
a. Exoticism-incorporation of non Western music, medieval music, and jazz).
This was found primarily in France and Russia
b. Nationalism- found primarily in the peripheral countries of Europe, N. America
c. Folk elements
C. Still the need to emulate German traditions: Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Hindemith, Strauss, Stravinsky, Bartok, and Ives each answered demand for novelty by bringing
aspects of other traditions into concert music, but to make it to the museum, they
needed to participate in some sense in the progressive developments of the 20th cen.

VI. Differences & Combinations of Progressive Music, Emulative, and Neo-Classical Music.
A. Both Progressivism and Emulation complement sides of the historicist mainstream.

VII. Most works written in the late 19th and first half of the 20th cen. intended as museum pieces.
A. Extreme stylistic diversity within the historicist mainstream is result of each artist seeking an individual solution to the common problem of creating museum pieces.
1. When composers like Schoenberg and Webern sought to extend new and unfamiliar
musical procedures they created music that is difficult to listen to, but rewarding
to analyze and study.
2. This music had no social function
B. Comparisons between concerts of early and “new music”
1. “Contemporary,” “Early,” and “Non-Western” music serve to provide “New Music”
a. Heard as different from the mainstream
b. Measured in some sense against central European standards
c. Attract a small, but enthusiastic audience, almost cultic following.
VIII. Exceptions: of the Historicist mainstream.
A. Music that does not pretend to continue the tradition of “serious” music.
1. Popular music, light classics, and jazz.
a. Jazz is a potential rival to “serious” music but represents a distinct tradition
rather than a sub group within European art music because its roots are deep in
African music and American vernacular culture.
B. Art Music- conservative in style, reveals no progressivism or emulation of the master
composers but serves a social function outside the museum
1. Religious music, film scoring, militaristic types of music
C. Avant Garde Music- (radical wing of progressivism)- includes a rejection of the past, rejection of the conception of the concert hall as a museum; has found no permanent
place in the concert hall and is allowed entrance primarily as a curiosity.

IX. Experimentalist Music
A. Before World War II- Varese, some of the music of Ives, Cowell, John Cage and “ultra modern” composers in the Americas After World War II, the avant garde works of Boulez,
Stockhausen, and Cage came to dominate the scene.
1. This wasn’t music of the past, but music of the future. Music about the very structure of sound as in works of Varese, Cowell, and many electronic composers also the super-serialists like Babbitt and Boulez.
2. Cage suggests “stop listening to masterpieces and start listening to sounds, the music all around us, with new and open ears.
C. Poses as concert music- is presented in concerts and recordings are made of it, but it is not music in the Western tradition and will never find a place in the museum. Experimental music is Western Music, but not music as that word is commonly understood.
D. In the last 40 years it has become research music, finding its home in universities in America and government supported research institutions in Europe.
E. Experimentalist composers create not for the museum, but for the library or laboratory.

X. All concerts in the art tradition are now living museums.
A. Promoters of contemporary music may seek to establish “museums” of their own to
display modern music.
1. There are contemporary chamber groups all across America
2. However, a realization is needed since the great orchestras of America and Europe
are never going to pursue modern music enthusiastically.

XI. Conclusion:
A. Musical value is not determined by popularity alone, especially true for museum pieces
B. While Music for public events and occasions is designed to be played only once or twice and must have instant appeal, works in the art music tradition need only find a small, but devoted audience and group of performers to find a place in the permanent collection.
C. The intense seriousness with which we take our past masterpieces has made it possible for living composers to write works that encompass and transcend all traditions.