It was like harvesting a juicy fruit that was suddenly discovered to be both good and nourishing. And it was urgent - the fruit had already begun to fall. Folk songs were collected; the Norwegian language began to be studied scientifically. The old myths and sagas from heathen times were rediscovered, and composers all over Europe began to incorporate folk melodies into their compositions in an attempt to bridge the gap between folk music and art music.
Art music is music composed by a particular person, like Beethoven. Folk music was not written by any particular person, it came from the people. That's why we don't know exactly when the various folk melodies date from. We distinguish in the same way between folktales and art tales.Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World, 1991
"What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you dreamed? And what if, in your dream, you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if, when you awoke, you had the flower in your hand? Ah, What then?"Coleridge
This is about the development of what we now call 'modernism' in music, although in fact it is only about one part of it. 'Modernism' in the first part of the twentieth century was split into two main strands - that based around Stravinsky and that based around Schoenberg. These two composers approached music from very different perspectives and indeed were quite hostile to each other. Schoenberg is, of course, best known for the development of his version of the 'serial' or 'twelve-tone' system, whereas Stravinsky (at least from the early period) is best known for his iconoclastic use of folk music and ideas in Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring).
The late nineteenth and early twentieth century was to some extent a golden era for western Europe. Ecomonically powerful and relatively stable politically, Europe dominated much of the world. Philosophically and culturally, the romantic ideal was prevalent.
Romanticism, attitude or intellectual orientation that characterized many works of literature, painting, music, architecture, criticism, and historiography in Western civilization over a period from the late 18th to the mid-19th century. Romanticism can be seen as a rejection of the precepts of order, calm, harmony, balance, idealization, and rationality that typified Classicism in general and late 18th-century Neoclassicism in particular. It was also to some extent a reaction against the Enlightenment and against 18th-century rationalism and physical materialism in general. Romanticism emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental.
Among the characteristic attitudes of Romanticism were the following: a deepened appreciation of the beauties of nature; a general exaltation of emotion over reason and of the senses over intellect; a turning in upon the self and a heightened examination of human personality and its moods and mental potentialities; a preoccupation with the genius, the hero, and the exceptional figure in general, and a focus on his passions and inner struggles; a new view of the artist as a supremely individual creator, whose creative spirit is more important than strict adherence to formal rules and traditional procedures; an emphasis upon imagination as a gateway to transcendent experience and spiritual truth; an obsessive interest in folk culture, national and ethnic cultural origins, and the medieval era; and a predilection for the exotic, the remote, the mysterious, the weird, the occult, the monstrous, the diseased, and even the satanic.Web Museum, Paris
Romanticism also encouraged a greater awareness of the 'people', most of whom until now had had little political or economic power. Folk music began to be seen as a valid and useful source of cultural information.
Links to romanticism:
However, other parts of Europe were not so fortunate.
Another aspect of Romanticism, through its emphasis on nature, the land and the people, was the possibility of Nationalism. Throughout Europe, and especially in Eastern Europe and Russia, where there was less political and economic stability, nationalism became a significant cultural force.
This is clearly a substantial difference and the difference seemed more substantial at the time than it does now. Stravinsky was seen (and promoted) as an 'intellectual savage' from the 'wilds' of Russia.
Although now often viewed as a radical, Schoenberg spent much of his life trying not to be a radical. Unlike Stravinsky's early, rather deliberate iconoclasm, Schoenberg aligned himself firmly alongside the classical tradition which to him was German classicism, stemming from Haydn and Beethoven to Brahms and Schumann. In his composition classes it was his clear opinion that no composer could compose without a thorough knowledge and understanding of this tradition. In fact, if you study his later, serial pieces, they often owe as much to the classical/romantic idea of melody, form, and the dialectic as to any 'modernist' ideas. It was left to Schoenberg's pupil Webern to develop serialism into the form that was highly influential in the post-war era. It is fair to say, then, that Schoenberg felt that he was extending the classical tradition rather than 'breaking it up' as is often felt today. Ironically, Stravinsky, too, in his neo-classical period, also felt that this was his brief, (although for a number of reasons it was certainly not the case!). Stravinsky, however, tried to extend the Italian classical tradition - hence his famous support for early baroque music, his liking for Verdi adn his despisal of Wagner.
It is difficult at present to understand exactly what Stravinsky's legacy will be. On the one hand, he is clearly one of the most influential composers of the twentieth century, and he is responsible in large part for the breaking down of the German classical tradition (which is still alive and healthy, incidentally, simply less dominating).