Beginning With His Stravinsky Was a Leader in the Revitalization of in European Art Music
Mod Fine art MUSIC
(c. 1900-nowadays)
Full general Background ON the Modernistic ERA
The Mod Era has been a menses of massive technological and socio-political alter, sparked largely by the increasingly rapid transit of people and information (via automobiles, airplanes, spacecraft and telephone, radio, goggle box, satellite transmission, the Cyberspace, etc.). There accept been more wars and outbreaks of social violence in the past century than in all previous ages combined, including two major World Wars that dramatically affected all aspects of life in Europe and America between 1914-xviii (WWI) and 1939-45 (WWII). This era has seen the gradual decline of the worldwide British Democracy (which once included India, Hong Kong and other parts of the Far East, much of Africa, Canada, and the British Isles), the establishment of the Usa equally the major forcefulness of the Free World, and the rise and autumn of Soviet Communism. The always-changing delicate remainder of economic and political power is now--more than e'er--of urgent global significance.
Important Musical Considerations in the Modern Art Music Era
The Modernistic Era has been a period of turbulent modify in musical style and gustation. Many modern "art-music" composers take explored untraditional sounds and have based their music on rhythm, texture and tone color, instead of the more traditional aspects of tune and harmony. During first half of the 20th century, the two World Wars led to political isolation that impeded the sharing of musical ideas; however, since c. 1950, at that place has been a multi-national fusion of styles, driven largely past many swell European composers, performers, scholars and teachers who sought political asylum in the U.s.a..
Modern technological advances (especially mass media) have caused rapid changes in musical style, and expanded our knowledge of music from other cultures, farther accelerating changes in musical gustatory modality while providing a wider range of music to listeners, composers and performers. Today, new musical ideas and styles can be introduced most instantly, allowing large-scale trends to change in months or years, instead of decades. Figurer-based technologies, synthesized sounds, and new recording techniques continually add new dimensions to today's music. The commercial music industry, which began in the 1930s, is now the dominant musical force across the world, leaving today's art-musicians scrambling to preserve an audience.
Important Developments in Modern Art Music
The Breakup of TONALITY
As a result of the gradual disintegration of tonality (central-centered music), various non-traditional mod approaches to harmony have emerged:
- EXTENDED TONALITY (Pan-Diatonicism)
The free apply of tonal harmonic/melodic sounds, without their usual functional reference to a central central.
- POLYTONALITY
Two or more than tonal centers operation at the aforementioned time within a musical limerick.
- ATONALITY
Music with NO TONAL Center
- SERIALISM
The process of putting pitches into a numerically-ordered SERIES that becomes the footing for all melodic/harmonic cloth in an atonal work.
- MULTI-SERIALISM (and Full SERIALISM)
An approach in which several (or all) aspects of an atonal work are serialistically controlled (rhythm, dynamics, melody, harmony, joint, instrumentation, etc.).
Experimentation with NEW SOUNDS
Modernistic composers accept taken a closer look at rhythm, instrumentation, tone colour, class, performance techniques (etc.). Harmony and tune are no longer the sole ground of musical construction. Increased employ of percussion , and employ of standard instruments in non-standard ways were important developments in this era.
The Influence of MULTI-NATIONAL STYLES
Since 1945, the sharing of musical styles and approaches from effectually the globe has accelerated dramatically, due to technological advances affecting mass media and transportation.
The Influence of Pop MUSIC
Jazz, Blues and other popular styles and technologies accept likewise affected mod art music.
Selected Composers of Mod Art Music
In the modern era, national "schools" of compositional idea gave manner to more than individual approaches:
Early-20th century Composers (active before 1950)
France
Claude DEBUSSY (1862-1918)
The leader of the French Impressionist movement, known for his pianoforte works, orchestral "tone poems," songs and an opera.
Austria (The "iind Viennese Schoolhouse")
Arnold SCHOENBERG (1874-1951)
One of the most meaning figures in Western art music. He promoted the revolutionary concepts of atonality, serialism, expressionism and Sprechstimme.
Russia
Igor STRAVINSKY (1882-1971)
a Russian-born composer, conductor, pianist recognized as the most influential composer of 20th century "art music." He is known for his ballets, piano concertos, symphonic music and operas.
United States
Henry COWELL (1887-1965)
An American composer known for his highly-experimental pianoforte works.
Aaron COPLAND (1900-90)
A nationalistic-oriented conservative American composer of the mid-20th century. He is recognized for his ballets, song, choral music and orchestral works.
Late-20th century (agile since 1950)
United States
Samuel Barber (1910-81)
an American composer of the mid-20th century; a leading figure in the neo-Romantic motility; famous for his operas, songs, pianoforte and orchestral works.
John Muzzle (1912-92)
an American composer/philosopher of the mod experimental ( avant garde ) move. He developed "chance music" and explored non-traditional sounds.
Milton BABBITT (1916-2011)
an American composer of the late 20th century & mathematics professor at Princeton University; noted for his synthesized, totally-serialized music.
George CRUMB (born 1929)
this music professor at Princeton is one of the leading figures of the modernistic avant garde move in the 1960s and 70s.
Philip GLASS (built-in 1937)
ane of the leading American composers of the late 20th century minimalist movement.
Steve REICH (born 1936)
one of the leading American composers of the late 20th century minimalist movement.
Ellen Taaffe ZWILICH (born 1939)
a bourgeois late 20th century American composer, known primarily for exploring modern sounds through neo-Classic approaches to orchestral and chamber music.
Hungary
Gyorgy LIGETI (1923-2006)
a Hungarian composer (Austrian nationalized) who is one of the leading figures in the "avant garde" movement of the tardily 20th century. He is known for his use of new vocal/instrumental techniques and tone colors (see WebBook chapter on "Choral Music").
Poland
Krzystof penderecki (born 1933)
1 of the greatest musical innovators of the late 20th century, and the leading Polish composer of the modernistic era.
Early approaches to modern art music
Impressionism
The first modern mode to emerge was Impressionism —developed in the late 1890s by the French composer Claude DEBUSSY as a rejection of excessive Wagnerian German language Romanticism. Modeled after the impressionistic art motion, musical impressionism is based on understatement, blurred furnishings, and the creative use of color.
Expressionism
In respond to French Impressionism, Austrian-German composers developed Expressionism around the plow of the 1900s, equally a blatant expansion of Wagnerian Romanticism. Expressionism is particularly associated with iii composers working in Vienna in the early 20th century: Arnold SCHOENBERG and his two students Anton von WEBERN and Alban BERG. These iii are collectively known every bit the 2d Viennese School of composers. (The first "school� of composers to eye in Vienna was comprised of HAYDN, MOZART, and BEETHOVEN in the Classic Era.)
The music of the second Viennese School was designed to shock listeners, with dissonant, intensely colorful, often horrific music based on graphically morbid texts or ideas. The primary reason that this music sounds so harsh is that information technology is atonal (has no "home" central, and it rejects traditional tonal melodies and harmonies). An of import example of musical expressionism is SCHOENBERG's orchestrally -accompanied vocal-cycle Pierrot lunaire (1912), which features Sprechstimme —an eerie half-sung, half-spoken singing way.
Serialism
By the mid-1920s, SCHOENBERG and WEBERN were promoting a compositional technique called 12-tone serialism , in which the twelve chromatic pitches available on the modern piano are bundled into an ordered "row" that is strictly maintained throughout a work. The "row" can exist used frontward, backward, or in "mirror image" in either direction:
F ocus on Rhythm and Tone Color
Igor STRAVINSKY, a Russian-built-in composer who worked in both Paris and the Us, was one of the offset composers to shift the primary focus of his musical style to rhythm and tone colour. His landmark ballet , The Rite of Spring , explores new instrumental colors/combinations, and features harsh, irregular rhythmic accents and ostinatos (brusk, repeated musical figures) that create massive percussive effects with the entire orchestra.
"AVANT GARDE" approaches to modern fine art music
The French term avant-garde ("at the forefront") is used to draw highly experimental approaches "on the cutting edge" of modern music.
Not-Traditional Uses of Instruments and Voices
I of the most spectacular modern musical innovations has been the concept of using traditional instruments in unusual ways. This avant-garde arroyo was outset implemented by the innovative American composer, Henry COWELL in The Banshee (1925). In this modern programmatic graphic symbol piece for grand piano, one performer holds down the sustain pedal, while some other performer creates a myriad of unusual sounds by directly manipulating the strings of the instrument.
In the 1940s, COWELL's pupil, John CAGE turned the musical earth on its ear—initially through his compositions for prepared piano . In such works, CAGE strategically inserted objects similar erasers, screws and nails between the strings of the piano to make it audio like an ensemble of completely different instruments.
In the 1970s and 80s, the Smoothen composer Krzystof PENDERECKI, the Hungarian composer Gyorgy LIGETI, and the American composer George CRUMB used orchestral string instruments and/or man voices to create unusual sounds in their collage-like works.
C hance Music
Music composed at random or based on an improvised choice of fabric is chosen take chances music (in other words, music in which aspects of composition or performance are left up to chance). The major proponent of this compositional arroyo was the American composer John CAGE. The best-known example of take chances music is Muzzle's 4'33" —a multi-movement work in which the performer makes no audio at all (the real "sound" of the piece is created past the audience itself, and the noise of the concert hall). CAGE has forced musicians to ponder "What IS a musical piece of work?"—Is information technology what the composer has written on the page . . . is it the style the performer decides to interpret it? . . . or, is information technology what the listener HEARS and UNDERSTANDS? Call back about it: The same functioning heard by two unlike people tin exist perceived in two completely dissimilar ways. Is silence music? Is there e'er really silence? Doesn't every sound heard in the concert hall (noise and music akin) affect the way the slice is perceived by the listener?
Electronic Music
Among the start to experiment with synthesized sounds was the American composer Edgard VARESE. In his Poeme electronique (1958), he created entirely new sounds by using a reel-to-reel tape recorder and electronic filters to combine and change "natural sounds" (an avant-garde approach called musique concr�te ).
Computer-based Composition and Operation
In the 1960s and 70s, with computers offering new possibilities for tone colors and complete structural command, mathematician-composers such as the Milton BABBITT (a mathematics professor at Princeton) wrote totally-serialized avant-garde works, in which all aspects (rhythm, dynamics, tune, harmony, joint, instrumentation, etc.) are controlled by a numerical serial. Full-serial works usually require such precise details that they can only exist performed accurately by machines.
Minimalism
Minimalism —a more contempo avant-garde arroyo first developed in the late 1960s—is based on repetition and gradual manipulation of elementary rhythms and/or harmonies, and short melodic patterns, producing an hypnotic effect. Two important American composers who use this compositional process are Steve REICH , Philip Drinking glass. (Note: Although minimalistic works are based on minor amounts of material, such works can be quite lengthy).
Conservative approaches to modern fine art music
Some modern composers have chosen to write in the traditional genres of opera, ballet, symphony, string quartet, sonata and concerto. Nevertheless, most of these works are conceived in untraditional ways, with freer formal designs, unconventional harmonies and melodies, etc.
American Nationalism
In the early 20th century, American nationalism was on the rise, as reflected in the Romanticized band marches of John Phillips SOUSA.
In the 1930s, a new generation of U.s.a. composers gear up out to institute a national symphonic arts tradition; thus, Aaron COPLAND and others wrote symphonies, concertos and ballets, based on familiar American melodies, images and themes.
Neo-Classicism (the "New Classicism")
Between 1920 and 1940, many composers began to comprise traditional Classic/Baroque forms and gestures into their modern-sounding works. The Russian composers Igor STRAVINSKY and Sergei PROKOFIEV were among the commencement to "update the past" in the style known equally neo-Classicism .
COPLAND's "Simple Gifts" from Appalachian Spring is neo-classic in its incorporation of a "classic" Theme and Variations form rendered past archetype-sounding gestures in the orchestra. Ellen Taaffe ZWILICH'south Concerto Grosso 1985 is neo-Classic in its use of traditional ritornello form and quotation music in which material from an before Baroque composition by Handel is quoted extensively.
Neo-Romanticism (the "New Romanticism)
In the 1950s, many composers reacted confronting harsh atonality and experimentation past returning to a more traditionally expressive compositional approach called neo-Romanticism. This movement has been primarily spearheaded by American composers such as Samuel BARBER, whose Adagio for Strings is a landmark of the style.
The Influence of Popular Music Styles on Modern Fine art Music
Although near modern art-music composers accept intentionally isolated themselves from the popular and commercial influences, several leading European fine art-music composers including Stravinsky, Milhaud, Debussy and Ravel incorporated aspects of jazz into some of their works. More notably, several nationalistic American composers including William Grant However, George GERSHWIN and Leonard BERNSTEIN, made conscious attempts to span the gap between art music and popular/jazz styles: STILL's Afro-American Symphony (1931) features Afro-American spirituals, ragtime, and blues styles. GERSHWIN'southward opera, Porgy and Bess (1934-5), uses blues-based idioms to depict the suffering of American Blacks during the Nifty Depression. BERNSTEIN'south West Side Story (1957)—is a "musical" (short for "musical theatre" piece of work) that adapts Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet into a bitter rivalry between two New York City gangs.
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SUMMARY OF Primary Mod Art MUSIC TERMS, COMPOSERS AND CONCEPTS
Source: https://wmich.edu/mus-gened/mus150/1500%20webbook%20modern%20artmusic/Modern%20ArtMusic.htm