The 20th century saw an increase in the variety of music that people had access to due

to the invention of mass market gramophone records and radio broadcasting. This
enabled a wider range of people to listen to Classical music symphonies and operas,
which were previously limited to middle-class and upper-class individuals. The 20th
century saw dramatic innovations in musical forms and styles, such as the use of altered
chords and extended chords in 1940s-era Bebop jazz. Composers and songwriters
experimented with genre fusions, electric, electronic, and digital instruments and musical
devices, and faster modes of transportation allowed musicians and fans to travel more
widely. Recording technology also provided composers with a new "instrument" of
recorded sounds, which could be manipulated in endless ways. Ultimately, composers
agreed that all sounds, even noise, can be considered forms of music.

MODERN PERIOD
 The Modern period the defining feature of modern art generally) the breaking-down of all
traditional aesthetic conventions, thereby unleashing complete freedom in all aesthetic
dimensions, including melody, rhythm; and chord progression.
 The convention of major-minor tonality '(already heavily strained by Wagner and his
successors) was completely abandoned by many composers.
 The development of audio recording technology, along with the ability to quickly and
cheaply distribute recordings and scores, was central to the revolutions of modern
music.
 Moreover, non-Western music was suddenly open to exploration thus exposing Western
composers to countless exotic musical ideas.
The modern period artists are:
1. >Claude Debussy.
>Achille-Claude Debussy was born
on August 22, 1862, in Saint-
Germain-en-Laye, France, the
oldest of five children.
>While his family had little money,
Debussy showed an early, affinity for
the piano, and he began taking lessons
at the age of 7, by age 10 or Il, he had
entered the Paris Conservatory,
where his instructors and fellow
students recognized his talent but often
found his attempts at musical
innovation strange.

EARLY WORKS AND COMPOSITION:

 In 1884, when he was just 22 years old, Debussy entered his cantata L'Enfantprodigue
(The Prodigal Child) in the Prix de Rome, a competition for composers.
 While in Rome, he studied the music of German composer Richard Wagner, specifically
his opera Tristan und Isolde.
 Wagner's influence on Debussy was profound and lasting, but despite this, Debussy
generally shied away from the ostentation of Wagner’s opera in his own works.
 Debussy returned to Paris in 1887 and attended the Paris World Exposition two years
later.
 The music written during this period came to represent the composer’s early
masterpieces—Ariettes oubliées '(1888), Prélude l'aprés-midi d'un faune (Prelude
Co the Afternoon of a Faun; completed in 1892 and first performed in 1894) and the
String Quartet (1893)—which were clearly delineated from the works of his coming
mature period.
 Debussy’s Seminal Opera, Pelléas et Méiisande, completed in 1895 and was a
sensation when first performed in 1902, though it deeply divided listeners (audience
the members and critics either loved it or hated it), attention gained With Pelléas, paired
with the success of Prélude in 1892, earned Debussy extensive recognition.
 Over the following 10 years, he was the leading figure in French music, writing such
lasting works as La Mer (The Sea; 1905) and Iberia (1908), both for orchestra, and
Images (1905) and Children’s Corner Suite (1908)/both for solo piano
 Around this same time, in 1905, Debussy's Suite bergamasque was published.
 He died of colon cancer on 'March 25, 1918, when he was just 55 years old, in Paris.

2. > Arnold Schoenberg was born on September

13, 1874, in Vienna, Austria.
> Schoenberg was largely self-taught as a
musician.
> The composer’s early works bear the
unmistakable stamp of high German Romanticism,
perhaps nowhere more evident than in his first
important composition, Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4
(1899)
>With works like the Five Orchestral Pieces
(1909) and the epochal Pierrot lunaire (1912)
Schoenberg embarked upon one of the most
influential phases of his career.
>Still, the high drama and novel expressive means
of Schoenberg's music also inspired a faithful and
active following.
>Most notable among Schoenberg's disciples were
Alban Berg and Anton Webern, both of whom
eventually attained stature equal to that of their
famous mentor.
>These three composers the principal figures of
the so-called Second Viennese School were the
central force in the development of atonal and 12-
tone music in the first half of the twentieth century and beyond.

 Schoenberg’s Suite for Piano (1921-1223) his first completely 12-tone Composition.
 Schoenberg made repeated; though varied, use of the technique across the spectrum of
genres, from chamber works like the String Quartet No.4 (1936) and the Fantasy for
Violin and Piano (1949) to orchestral works like Violin Concerto (1935-1936) and the
Piano Concerto (1942), to choral works like A Survival from Warsaw (1947)
 Schoenberg fled the poisonous political atmosphere of Europe in 1933 and spent the
remainder of his life primarily in the United States, a naturalized citizen in 1941.
 Though debate over the man and his music rages on, Schoenberg is today
acknowledged as one of the most significant figures in music history.
 The composer, a well-known triskaidekaphobe, died in Los Angeles, on July 13, 1951.