Steve Schwartz wrote:
>[One of the things I keep going on about -- one of those Big Ideas that
>seem to strike me about every twenty years -- is how, in almost every
>century but the twentieth, so-called "vernacular" music, either folk or
>popular, has invigorated art music, and vice versa.
But twentieth century composers who have used folk music include: Bartok,
Enesco, Vaughn Williams, Chavez, DeFalla, Stravinsky, Ives, Janacek,the
tango guy whose name escapes me, and that's just the few I can remember
sitting in my lab after a long day's work. Then add the composers who
used jazz: other than the obvious Copland, Bernstein, Gershwin, you can
add Milhaud, Poulenc, Ravel, even Debussy. And Stravinsky appears on that
list too. So how do you justify the statement about the 20 th century?
A case can be made that folk music was one of the great catalysts for the
creation of post- romantic twentieth century music- with the very large
exception of the Second Vienna School.
Bernard Chasan
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