DECLINE AND FALL OF THE WESTERN MUSIC

DECLINE AND FALL OF THE WESTERN MUSIC ( WS 121.161) (2CD)

WAGNER – BRAHMS – MAHLER – STRAUSS – SCHOENBERG

KNAPPERSBUSCH – WALTER – VAN BEINUM – ​​SARGENT – MITROPOULOS

1949-1961

The rift between public appreciation and musical production became irreparable in the 1920s, when the rise of atonal and twelve-tone music definitively alienated the general public from Western classical music. Symptoms of this decline, however, were already evident in some compositions appearing in the mid-19th century. This anthology, despite all the limitations of this genre, seeks to highlight the process through which it all came about, and follows the common thread of the great cycles of Lieder and Cantatas for female voice and orchestra, a genre to which, from Wagner to Schoenberg, especially Austro-German composers have dedicated themselves. The last two pieces ( Vier letzte Lieder by Strauss and Erwartung Schoenberg's) are exemplary of a cultural destiny to which European art was destined: in the first case, with continuity, there would have been survival; in the second, collapse. As it was.