Word: tonal
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Maeterlinck's understatements, Debussy gave a sheeny, translucent orchestral background, a tonal tapestry winding on & on with never a big aria or ensemble piece for the singers. The love avowal of Pelleas & Mélisande ("I love you." "I love you, too.") is sung to a magnificent orchestral silence. The opera therefore demands and gets reverent handling from singers who can look and act poetic on the stage. The first Mélisande, in 1902, was Mary Garden, who was given the role by the director of the Paris Opera Comique, although Debussy had agreed that Maeterlinck...
...years passed, Stravinsky's Sacre du Printemps bid fair to be the most fought-over composition of the 20th Century. One English critic described it as "a threat against the foundations of our tonal institutions," declared that it should have been dedicated to Dr. Crippen, a dentist celebrated for murdering his wife, cutting her body in pieces. But dapper, energetic Igor Stravinsky found himself the most influential composer of his generation. To younger composers the Sacre became music's Declaration of Independence. By 1920 nearly every musical youngling was throwing over his counterpoint for Stravinskian grunts & groans...