Darmstadt School - Background, Influences

Background, Influences

Composers such as Boulez, Stockhausen, and Nono were writing their music in the aftermath of World War II, during which many composers, such as Richard Strauss, had had their music politicised by the Third Reich. In order to avoid this happening again, and to keep art for art's sake, the Darmstadt School attempted to create a new, anational style of music to which no false meaning could possibly be attached. Nevertheless, Boulez was taken to task by French critics for associating with Darmstadt, and especially for first publishing his book Penser la musique d'aujourd'hui in German, the language of the recent enemies of France, falsely associating Boulez's prose with the perverted language of the Nazis. All this despite the fact that Boulez never set German texts in his vocal music, choosing for Le marteau sans maître, for example, poems by René Char who, during the war, had been a member of the French Resistance and a Maquis leader in the Basses-Alpes (Olivier 2005, 57–58).

Key influences on the Darmstadt School were the works of Webern and Varèse, and Olivier Messiaen's "Mode de valeurs et d'intensités" (from the Quatre études de rythme).