Preface To help shape what might otherwise seem a chaotic succession of pass~ ing events, historians like to divide the course of time into discrete periods, each exhibiting a significant number of common characteristics. These temporal divisions, not necessarily rigid, undergo continuous exami- nation and revision as new scholars propose alkernate possibilitics. Nevertheless, however tenuous and changeable, these groupings are indispensable in organizing the complex fabric of historical evolution. [Phis book deats with the most recent of the large historical segments commonly distinguished by music historians, the one usually referred to as the “modem” period or simply—as in the title of the present book— “twentieth-century musié.”? But preciscly when docs the history of twentieth-century music Bégin? From a strictly chronological point of view, the answer is obvious: "1900" But twentieth-century music is a stylistic as well as a temporal category: this music is different from that of the previous century, not just because it was composed in the sub- sequent one, but because it is based upon significantly different esthetic and techrrical assumptions and therefore manifests quite distinct stylistic qualities. That fact, quite aside from the convenience of dating, explains what makes it a meaningful historical category and, despite the unprec~ ce variety of twentieth-century music, an integral whale. The passage from the “old” music to the “new” music, from nine- tetiith-century Romanticism to twentieth-century modernism, did not happen all at once, but was the result of historical processes that unfolded gradually over an extended period, Just when these processes reached a critical stage, beyond which music moved indisputably into a new era, is a question with no definite answer. [The most convenient date, and the one adopted here (in that the firse of the three main divisions of the book commences there), is the turn of the century, a reference point, precise and casily remembered but in other respects relatively arbitrary A stronger case might be made for several altemate dates. In terms of the modern period’s technical foundations, the years 1997-8, when Amold Schoenberg first broke completely with the traditional tonal system, mark perhaps the single most significant tuming point. Yet Schoenberg's carly nontonal works remain manifestations of nine teenth-century German Romanticism and its esthetic of personal cxpression—an esthetic emphasizing the originality and individuality