Classical Music
Angst in serious musical composition has been a reflection of the times. Musical composition embodying angst as a primary theme have primarily come from European Jewish composers such as Gustav Mahler and Alban Berg, written during the period of great persecution of the Jewish people shortly before and during the period of Nazi activity in Europe. A notable exception is the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, whose symphonies use the theme of angst in post-World War II compositions depicting Russian strife during the war. However, it is the Jewish artists, Gustav Mahler and Franz Kafka in music and literature that have embraced the theme of angst so highly in their work that they have become synonymous with the term to the point of popular joking and cartoons today.
Angst appears to be absent from important French music. Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie and Maurice Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte, composed before World War II, reflect melancholy sentiment without angst in soft, quiet compositions. The effect of angst is achieved by Shostakovich, Mahler and Berg in compositions of wide dynamic range, at times seemingly spinning out of control (Mahler), and atonal music using the twelve-tone row method of composition (Berg, Schoenberg and others) to create an angst ridden atmosphere of grotesque sound. The theme of angst is portrayed in Mahler's Symphony No. 6 ("The Tragic") and in Alban Berg's poignant Violin Concerto dedicated, "To the memory of an angel".
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Famous quotes related to classical music:
“The basic difference between classical music and jazz is that in the former the music is always greater than its performance—Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, for instance, is always greater than its performance—whereas the way jazz is performed is always more important than what is being performed.”
—André Previn (b. 1929)