Music went through a dramatic change during the Expressionist movement. No longer were songs ruled by melody and continuity. With mass production of new metals and tools melodies broke into abstract fractions of sound and rhythm. Paralleling the patterns of the factory atmosphere, music became less organized, and often gave the audience more than one line of music to listen to at the same time, transmitting feelings of heavy movement and strength as one witnessed a piece. There was no longer one singular tune that carried a piece through to the end.

The print on the left is the cover for the playbill of Kokoschka's Murderer Hope of Womankind (1907) that was also set to music in the form of an opera by Paul Hindemith in 1912. Expressionist artists often worked closely together, greatly influencing each other's work even in different modes of art such as music to drama, or drama to painting.

In my piece I chose to skew the empty scale lines to show that although Expressionist music was often spiritually inspiring, it was very different from the rhythmic compositions that preceded the movement. By slanting the horizontal element and stressing a bit more the upward movement of the lines, a critical occurrence in Expressionist music is made visual. No longer was the concentration of movement horizontal, but vertical. The stress of simultaneity of a combination of movements to create a larger, more abstract reaction revolutionized Expressionist compositions.

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