20th-century classical music

20th-century classical music describes art music that was written nominally from 1901 to 2000,
inclusive. Musical style diverged during the 20th century as it never had previously. So this century
was without a dominant style. Modernism, impressionism, and post-romanticism can all be traced to
the decades before the turn of the 20th century, but can be included because they evolved beyond
the musical boundaries of the 19th-century styles that were part of the earlier common practice
period. Neoclassicism and expressionism came mostly after 1900. Minimalism started much later in
the century and can be seen as a change from the modern to post-modern era, although some date
post-modernism from as early as about 1930. Aleatory, atonality, serialism, musique
concrète, electronic music, and concept music were all developed during the century. Jazz and
ethnic folk music became important influences on many composers during this century.

History
At the turn of the century, music was characteristically late Romantic in style. Composers such
as Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss and Jean Sibelius were pushing the bounds of post-
Romantic symphonic writing. At the same time, the Impressionist movement, spearheaded
by Claude Debussy, was being developed in France. Debussy in fact loathed the term
Impressionism: "I am trying to do 'something different—in a way realities—what the imbeciles call
'impressionism' is a term which is as poorly used as possible, particularly by art critics".[1] Maurice
Ravel's music, also often labelled as impressionist, explores music in many styles not always related
to it (see the discussion on Neoclassicism, below).

Arnold Schoenberg, Los Angeles, 1948

Many composers reacted to the Post-Romantic and Impressionist styles and moved in quite different
directions. The single most important moment in defining the course of music throughout the century
was the widespread break with traditional tonality, effected in diverse ways by different composers in
the first decade of the century. From this sprang an unprecedented "linguistic plurality" of styles,
techniques, and expression.[2] In Vienna, Arnold Schoenberg developed atonality, out of
the expressionism that arose in the early part of the 20th century. He later developed the twelve-tone
technique which was developed further by his disciples Alban Berg and Anton Webern; later
composers (including Pierre Boulez) developed it further still.[3] Stravinsky (in his last works) explored
twelve-tone technique, too, as did many other composers; indeed, even Scott Bradley used the
technique in his scores for the Tom and Jerry cartoons.[4]

Igor Stravinsky

After the First World War, many composers started returning to the past for inspiration and wrote
works that draw elements (form, harmony, melody, structure) from it. This type of music thus
became labelled neoclassicism. Igor Stravinsky (Pulcinella), Sergei Prokofiev (Classical Symphony),
Ravel (Le Tombeau de Couperin), Manuel de Falla (El retablo de maese Pedro) and Paul
Hindemith (Symphony: Mathis der Maler) all produced neoclassical works.
Italian composers such as Francesco Balilla Pratella and Luigi Russolo developed musical Futurism.
This style often tried to recreate everyday sounds and place them in a "Futurist" context. The
"Machine Music" of George Antheil (starting with his Second Sonata, "The Airplane") and Alexander
Mosolov (most notoriously his Iron Foundry) developed out of this. The process of extending musical
vocabulary by exploring all available tones was pushed further by the use of Microtones in works
by Charles Ives, Julián Carrillo, Alois Hába, John Foulds, Ivan Wyschnegradsky, Harry
Partch and Mildred Couper among many others. Microtones are those intervals that are smaller than
a semitone; human voices and unfretted strings can easily produce them by going in between the
"normal" notes, but other instruments will have more difficulty—the piano and organ have no way of
producing them at all, aside from retuning and/or major reconstruction.
In the 1940s and 50s composers, notably Pierre Schaeffer, started to explore the application of
technology to music in musique concrète.[5] The term electroacoustic music was later coined to
include all forms of music involving magnetic tape, computers, synthesizers, multimedia, and other
electronic devices and techniques. Live electronic music uses live electronic sounds within a
performance (as opposed to preprocessed sounds that are overdubbed during a performance), John
Cage's Cartridge Music being an early example. Spectral music (Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail)
is a further development of electroacoustic music that uses analyses of sound spectra to create
music.[6] Cage, Berio, Boulez, Milton Babbitt, Luigi Nono and Edgard Varèse all wrote electroacoustic
music.
From the early 1950s onwards, Cage introduced elements of chance into his music. Process
music (Karlheinz Stockhausen Prozession, Aus den sieben Tagen; and Steve Reich Piano
Phase, Clapping Music) explores a particular process which is essentially laid bare in the work.
[vague]
 The term experimental music was coined by Cage to describe works that produce unpredictable
results,[7] according to the definition "an experimental action is one the outcome of which is not
foreseen".[8] The term is also used to describe music within specific genres that pushes against their
boundaries or definitions, or else whose approach is a hybrid of disparate styles, or incorporates
unorthodox, new, distinctly unique ingredients.
Important cultural trends often informed music of this period, romantic, modernist, neoclassical,
postmodernist or otherwise. Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Prokofiev were particularly drawn
to primitivism in their early careers, as explored in works such as The Rite of Spring and Chout.
Other Russians, notably Dmitri Shostakovich, reflected the social impact of communism and
subsequently had to work within the strictures of socialist realism in their music.[9][page  needed] Other
composers, such as Benjamin Britten (War Requiem), explored political themes in their works, albeit
entirely at their own volition.[10] Nationalism was also an important means of expression in the early
part of the century. The culture of the United States of America, especially, began informing an
American vernacular style of classical music, notably in the works of Charles Ives, John Alden
Carpenter, and (later) George Gershwin. Folk music (Vaughan Williams' Five Variants of Dives and
Lazarus, Gustav Holst's A Somerset Rhapsody) and jazz (Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, Darius
Milhaud's La création du monde) were also influential.
In the last quarter of the century, eclecticism and polystylism became important. These, as well
as minimalism, New Complexity, and New Simplicity, are more fully explored in their respective
articles.

Styles
Romantic style
At the end of the 19th century (often called the Fin de siècle), the Romantic style was starting to
break apart, moving along various parallel courses, such as Impressionism and Post-romanticism. In
the 20th century, the different styles that emerged from the music of the previous century influenced
composers to follow new trends, sometimes as a reaction to that music, sometimes as an extension
of it, and both trends co-existed well into the 20th century.[citation needed] The former trends, such
as Expressionism are discussed later.
In the early part of the 20th century, many composers wrote music which was an extension of 19th-
century Romantic music, and traditional instrumental groupings such as the orchestra and string
quartet remained the most typical. Traditional forms such as the symphony and concerto remained
in use. Gustav Mahler and Jean Sibelius are examples of composers who took the traditional
symphonic forms and reworked them. (See Romantic music.) Some writers hold that Schoenberg's
work is squarely within the late-Romantic tradition of Wagner and Brahms[11] and, more generally,
that "the composer who most directly and completely connects late Wagner and the 20th century is
Arnold Schoenberg".[12]

Neoclassicism
Main article: Neoclassicism (music)

Neoclassicism was a style cultivated between the two world wars, which sought to revive the
balanced forms and clearly perceptible thematic processes of the 17th and 18th centuries, in a
repudiation of what were seen as exaggerated gestures and formlessness of late Romanticism.
Because these composers generally replaced the functional tonality of their models with extended
tonality, modality, or atonality, the term is often taken to imply parody or distortion of the Baroque or
Classical style.[13] Famous examples include Prokofiev's Classical
Symphony and Stravinsky's Pulcinella, Symphony of Psalms, and Concerto in E-flat "Dumbarton
Oaks". Paul Hindemith (Symphony: Mathis der Maler), Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc (Concert
champêtre), and Manuel de Falla (El retablo de maese Pedro, Harpsichord Concerto) also used this
style. Maurice Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin is often seen[weasel  words] as neo-baroque (an
architectural term), though the distinction between the terms is not always made.
Jazz-influenced classical composers:
 Malcolm Arnold
 Leonard Bernstein
 Marc Blitzstein
 Aaron Copland
 George Gershwin
 Constant Lambert
 Darius Milhaud
 Maurice Ravel
 Gunther Schuller (third stream)
 John Serry Sr.
 Dmitri Shostakovich
 Karlheinz Stockhausen
 Igor Stravinsky

Movements
Impressionism

Claude Debussy (1908)

Main article: Impressionism in music

Impressionism started in France as a reaction, led by Claude Debussy, against the emotional
exuberance and epic themes of German Romanticism exemplified by Wagner. In Debussy's view,
art was a sensuous experience, rather than an intellectual or ethical one. He urged his countrymen
to rediscover the French masters of the 18th century, for whom music was meant to charm, to
entertain, and to serve as a "fantasy of the senses".[14]
Other composers associated with impressionism include Maurice Ravel, Albert Roussel, Isaac
Albéniz, Paul Dukas, Manuel de Falla, Charles Martin Loeffler, Charles Griffes, Frederick
Delius, Ottorino Respighi, Cyril Scott and Karol Szymanowski.[15] Many French composers continued
impressionism's language through the 1920s and later, including Albert Roussel, Charles
Koechlin, André Caplet, and, later, Olivier Messiaen. Composers from non-Western cultures, such
as Tōru Takemitsu, and jazz musicians such as Duke Ellington, Gil Evans, Art Tatum, and Cecil
Taylor also have been strongly influenced by the impressionist musical language.[16]
Modernism
Main article: Modernism (music)

Futurism

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

Main article: Futurism (music)

At its conception, Futurism was an Italian artistic movement founded in 1909 by Filippo Tommaso
Marinetti; it was quickly embraced by the Russian avant-garde. In 1913, the painter Luigi
Russolo published a manifesto, L'arte dei rumori (The Art of Noises), calling for the incorporation of
noises of every kind into music.[17] In addition to Russolo, composers directly associated with this
movement include the Italians Silvio Mix, Nuccio Fiorda, Franco Casavola, and Pannigi (whose
1922 Ballo meccanico included two motorcycles), and the Russians Artur Lourié, Mikhail Matyushin,
and Nikolai Roslavets.
Though few of the futurist works of these composers are performed today, the influence of futurism
on the later development of 20th-century music was enormous. Sergei Prokofiev, Maurice
Ravel, Igor Stravinsky, Arthur Honegger, George Antheil, Leo Ornstein, and Edgard Varèse are
among the notable composers in the first half of the century who were influenced by futurism.
Characteristic features of later 20th-century music with origins in futurism include the prepared
piano, integral serialism, extended vocal techniques, graphic notation, improvisation,
and minimalism.[18]

Free dissonance and experimentalism

Main article: Experimental music

In the early part of the 20th century, Charles Ives integrated American and European traditions as
well as vernacular and church styles, while using innovative techniques in his rhythm, harmony, and
form.[19] His technique included the use of polytonality, polyrhythm, tone clusters, aleatoric elements,
and quarter tones. Edgard Varèse wrote highly dissonant pieces that utilized unusual sonorities and
futuristic, scientific-sounding names. He pioneered the use of new instruments and electronic
resources (see below).

Expressionism
Main article: Expressionist music

By the late 1920s, though many composers continued to write in a vaguely expressionist manner, it
was being supplanted by the more impersonal style of the German Neue
Sachlichkeit and neoclassicism. Because expressionism, like any movement that had been
stigmatized by the Nazis, gained a sympathetic reconsideration following World War II, expressionist
music resurfaced in works by composers such as Hans Werner Henze, Pierre Boulez, Peter Maxwell
Davies, Wolfgang Rihm, and Bernd Alois Zimmermann.[20]

Postmodern music
Main article: Postmodern music

Postmodernism is a reaction to modernism, but it can also be viewed as a response to a deep-

seated shift in societal attitude. According to this latter view, postmodernism began when historic (as
opposed to personal) optimism turned to pessimism, at the latest by 1930.[21]
John Cage is a prominent figure in 20th-century music, claimed with some justice both for
modernism and postmodernism because the complex intersections between modernism and
postmodernism are not reducible to simple schemata.[22] His influence steadily grew during his
lifetime. He often uses elements of chance: Imaginary Landscape No. 4 for 12 radio receivers,
and Music of Changes for piano. Sonatas and Interludes (1946–48) is composed for a prepared
piano: a normal piano whose timbre is dramatically altered by carefully placing various objects inside
the piano in contact with the strings. Currently, postmodernism includes composers who react
against the avant-garde and experimental styles of the late 20th century such as Astor Piazzolla,
Argentina, and Miguel del Águila, USA.

Minimalism
Main article: Minimal music

In the later 20th century, composers such as La Monte Young, Arvo Pärt, Philip Glass, Terry
Riley, Steve Reich, and John Adams began to explore what is now called minimalism, in which the
work is stripped down to its most fundamental features; the music often features repetition and
iteration. An early example is Terry Riley's In C (1964), an aleatoric work in which short phrases are
chosen by the musicians from a set list and played an arbitrary number of times, while the note C is
repeated in eighth notes (quavers) behind them.
Steve Reich's works Piano Phase (1967, for two pianos), and Drumming (1970–71, for percussion,
female voices and piccolo) employ the technique called phasing in which a phrase played by one
player maintaining a constant pace is played simultaneously by another but at a slightly quicker
pace. This causes the players to go "out of phase" with each other and the performance may
continue until they come back in phase. According to Reich, “Drumming is the final expansion and
refinement of the phasing process, as well as the first use of four new techniques: (1) the process of
gradually substituting beats for rests (or rests for beats); (2) the gradual changing of timbre while
rhythm and pitch remain constant; (3) the simultaneous combination of instruments of different
timbre; and (4) the use of the human voice to become part of the musical ensemble by imitating the
exact sound of the instruments”.[23] Drumming was Reich’s final use of the phasing technique.
Philip Glass's 1 + 1 (1968) employs the additive process in which short phrases are slowly
expanded. La Monte Young's Compositions 1960 employs very long tones, exceptionally high
volumes and extra-musical techniques such as "draw a straight line and follow it" or "build a
fire". Michael Nyman argues that minimalism was a reaction to and made possible by both serialism
and indeterminism.[24] (See also experimental music.)

Techniques
Atonality and twelve-tone technique
See also: atonality

Arnold Schoenberg is one of the most significant figures in 20th-century music. While his early works
were in a late Romantic style influenced by Wagner (Verklärte Nacht, 1899), this evolved into an
atonal idiom in the years before the First World War (Drei Klavierstücke in 1909 and Pierrot
lunaire in 1912). In 1921, after several years of research, he developed the twelve-tone technique of
composition, which he first described privately to his associates in 1923.[25] His first large-scale work
entirely composed using this technique was the Wind Quintet, Op. 26, written in 1923–24. Later
examples include the Variations for Orchestra, Op. 31 (1926–28), the Third and Fourth String
Quartets (1927 and 1936, respectively), the Violin Concerto (1936) and Piano Concerto (1942). In
later years, he intermittently returned to a more tonal style (Kammersymphonie no. 2, begun in 1906
but completed only in 1939; Variations on a Recitative for organ in 1941).
He taught Anton Webern and Alban Berg and these three composers are often referred to as the
principal members of the Second Viennese School (Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven—and sometimes
Schubert—being regarded as the First Viennese School in this context). Webern wrote works using
a rigorous twelve-tone method and influenced the development of total serialism. Berg, like
Schoenberg, employed twelve-tone technique within a late-romantic or post-romantic style (Violin
Concerto, which quotes a Bach Choral and uses Classical form). He wrote two major operas
(Wozzeck and Lulu).

Electronic music
The development of recording technology made all sounds available for potential use as musical
material. Electronic music generally refers to a repertory of art music developed in the 1950s in
Europe, Japan, and the Americas. The increasing availability of magnetic tape in this decade
provided composers with a medium which allowed recording sounds and then manipulating them in
various ways. All electronic music depends on transmission via loudspeakers, but there are two
broad types: acousmatic music, which exists only in recorded form meant for loudspeaker listening,
and live electronic music, in which electronic apparatus are used to generate, transform, or trigger
sounds during performance by musicians using voices, traditional instruments, electro-acoustic
instruments, or other devices. Beginning in 1957, computers became increasingly important in this
field.[26] When the source material was acoustical sounds from the everyday world, the term musique
concrète was used; when the sounds were produced by electronic generators, it was
designated electronic music.
After the 1950s, the term "electronic music" came to be used for both types. Sometimes such
electronic music was combined with more conventional instruments, Edgard
Varèse's Déserts (1954), Stockhausen's Hymnen (1969), Claude Vivier's Wo bist du Licht! (1981),
and Mario Davidovsky's series of Synchronisms (1963–2006) are notable examples.