20TH CENTURY / MODERN MUSIC

2oth Century music is largely exploratory and experimental which in turn leads to trends,

techniques and sounds. As each new trend appeared, it was labelled resulting in a whole array of

new terms.

 Melody wide leaps; chromatic; dissonant; angular; spiky; fragmented; sliding in

the voice and sometimes no sign of melody

 Harmony dissonant; note clusters; often no sense of key or phrase

 Rhythm vigorous and driving; syncopation; unusual metres; polyrhythms; metre

changes per bar

 Timbres tone colour all important; percussive sounds; extreme pitches; electronic;

more percussion; ‘played’ with normal instruments

Stravinsky (rites of spring), Schoenberg (5 pieces for orchestra), Britten (Peter Grimes)

Impressionism

This term is a term borrowed from the style of painting of a group of French artists. Rather

than make their painting look real, they gave a mere impression of vague. This was a move away

from the German romanticism. They way in which impressionism was achieved in music was by

playing with tone colours and timbres. There was a vague feel of metre and beat, as well as

tonality. Whole tone, pentatonic and modes were used. 7th, 9th and 13th chords were used and

parallelism caused a vague feel as well. In piano music, a huge amount of pedal was used. Debussy

is the most well-known composer of this style. Violes by Debussy (uses whole tone scale in

beginning)

20th Century Nationalism

Nationalism started during the second half of the Romantic era and continued during the 20th

Century. Vaughn Williams from England, Bartok and Kodaly from Hungary and Charles Ives from

America started using folk songs and rhythms and incorporating them into their compositions,

often using a different scale or in a new way. Bartok music for strings percussion and celesta
Jazz

American Jazz influenced some 20th Century music by adding a new vitality in rhythm

(syncopation); melodies based on the blues scale and an introduction of more percussive sounds.

Gershwin was a forerunner in this area. He often described his pieces as a jazz-influenced

concert piece. Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue

Polytonality

This is when composers write music in two or more keys at once. (Two keys at once can also be

referred to as bitonality). Putnams Camp from three places in New England by Charles Ives an

impression is given of marching bands competing at the same time in different keys.

Atonality

This is when a piece is absent of tonality. Atonal music avoids using any key or mode by making

free use of all 12 notes of the chromatic scale.

Expressionism

This is another term borrowed from painting where artists used their vivid pictures to express

the inner-most experiences and their subconscious, often expressing mental breakdown.

Expressionism in music began as an exaggeration and distortion of late Romanticism. They

poured out their most intense emotional expressiveness into their music. Expressionist music

was often atonal, disjointed with ‘un-pretty’ melodies, often using violent, explosive contrasts of

instruments playing harshly at extreme ranges. Schoenberg five pieces for orchestra

Pointillism

All instruments are treated soloists often playing single notes in isolation. The result is a fabric

of sound which consists of dabs of instrumental colour. This can be compared to pointillistic art

where artists used ‘points’ of colour rather than brush strokes. Webern symphony 21
Serialism / Twelve-note music

A composer first arranges all twelve notes of the chromatic scale in any order of choice. This

becomes the basic series upon which the entire composition is based. No notes should appear

out of turn. Besides using these notes in its original form, it can be inverted; used in retrograde

or retrograde inversion. These themes are then woven together contrapuntally or vertically (in a

chord).

Neoclassicism

Many composers wanted to react to the thick, congested textures of the late Romantic era, so

they replaced this with clarity of line and texture. The expression of intense emotion was

avoided. They used stylistic features and musical forms of previous periods. Prokofiev composed

the Classical symphony and explained it as ‘a symphony that Haydn might have written had he

been alive in our day). Prokofiev Classical symphony

Aleatory or chance music

Aleatoric music allows for greater freedom involving a degree of chance or unpredictability.

Examples: In Cage’s Imaginary Landscape he composes for 12 radios all tuned to different

stations. Each radio has two players, one to adjust the volume and the other the station. In

Stockhausen’s Piano Piece XI, there are 19 sections to be played in ant order. The pianist can

choose from six different tempi, dynamics and articulation.

Electronic Music