Modern

Music
Audio Culture
Themes Emerging – since 20th
C
 Massive change influenced by :
 Gradual increase in the noise around us
since industrial revolution
 Recording and Radio – ability of fast
distribution
 Deliberate inaccessibility of early 20th
century composers
 Pop and jazz fill the void
 New concepts of music
Separation and convergence
of musical cultures
 Schoenberg, Stravinsky, et al – difficult
and inaccessible to most
 Jazz and pop – alternatives quickly
adopted by the masses
 By 1960s – convergence of ideas –
collaboration of jazz, pop and art
musicians
 Popular styles build on and make
accessible ideas conceived much earlier
Overview of Themes Emerging
 Early 20th century
 Period of great experimentation
 Rethinking what is music, what is sound,
silence
 Exploring new modes of listening
 Exploring the potential of electronic
(re)production
Overview of themes emerging
 Later 20th century
 The Open Work – chance, visual sounds,
indeterminacy, & other ideas
 Experimental musics
 Improvised music
 Minimalisms
 DJ Culture
 Electronic Music & Electronica
The Open Work
 Earle Brown – “December 1952”
 graphic score
 For 1 or more instruments/sound-producing
media
 Perform in any direction from any point in
the defined space for any length of time
 Shows radical shift in art music
 Boundary between printed world
(conventional scores)and recorded world
Open work - Examples
 John Cage – Music of Changes (1951)

 Boulez– 3rd Piano Sonata

 Stockhausen – Klavierstuck XI
Experimental Musics
 Expermental Musics
 Expermental Musics
 Expermental Musics
Improvised Musics
 Improvised Musics
 Improvised Musics
 Improvised Musics
Minimalisms
 Minimalisms
 Minimalisms
 Minimalisms
DJ Culture
 DJ Culture
 DJ Culture
 DJ Culture
Electronic Music
 Electronic Music
 Electronic Music
 Electronic Music
Chronology
 Electronic Music