20th Century Music

Content Standard

The learner demonstrates understanding of characteristic features of 20th century music.

Performance Standard

The learner performs instrumental forms of 20th century (aleatory music)

Power Competencies

• Create short chance music pieces using the knowledge of 20th century styles.

• Analyzes distinctive musical elements of any given music genres and pieces.

Objectives:

1. Review the western classical music eras.

2. Describe distinctive musical elements of 20th century music; styles/movement.
3. Perform original composition of 20th century (aleatory music)

Impressionism in music was named after Claude Monet's painting "Impression, Sunrise". Impressionist
paintings depict experiences, moods, and movement. Similarly, Impressionist music also conveys moods,
scenes, and emotions rather than detailed stories.

Art and Musical Characteristics

Impressionism both in art and music suggests rather than describes, it avoids explicit meaning, shows
ambiguous imagery (which it can be understood in more than one way). It’s like a third person narrative
where the work is seen depending on how the listener or observer perceives it.
NOTABLE COMPSOERS OF THE IMPRESSIONISM MUSIC

1. CLAUDE DEBUSSY
2. MAURICE RAVEL

Debussy:

Developed a highly original system of harmony and musical structure that is expressed in many
respects the ideals to which the Impressionist and Symbolist painters and writers of his time aspired.

1. new chord combinations such as whole-tone, parallel and bitonal chords, chromaticism, dissonances

2. interesting rhythms

3. exotic scales

For Ravel, music was a kind of ritual, having its own laws. For him music must first be emotional,
intellectual second.

1. more incisive rhythm

2. unresolved appoggiaturas

3. 19th century orchestration

NOTABLE WORKS OF CLAUDE DEBUSSY

• Clair de lune 1890–1905

• Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun 1894

• The opera Pelléas et Mélisande 1902

• The Sea 1905

2. EXPRESSIONISM
- It pertains to a German school of artist and dramatist who represented the
innermost experience of the artists.

Serialism - A method of composition using series of pitches, rhythms, dynamics, timbres or

other musical elements. Began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.

Twelve-tone technique orders the twelve notes of the chromatic scale, forming a row or series
and providing a unifying basis for a composition's melody, harmony, structural progressions, and
variations. Other musical dimensions (often called "parameters"), such as duration, dynamics,
and timbre can also be arrange or organized equally.

3. Electronic Music
- Different nature sounds and musical tones transformed therefore sounds were
available anytime.
- Musicians expected that innovations and experiments on musical styles in the
early 20th century will still affect the music of the latter part of the century.
However, new music techniques and styles were developed through the
evolutions and demands of computer and machines. Modern technology and
gadgets played significant impact in all types of music of the century.
4. CHANCE MUSIC/ALEATORY MUSIC

Aleatory music, also called chance music, (aleatory from Latin alea, “dice”), 20th-century music
in which chance or indeterminate elements are left for the performer to realize.