- The speed of 20th-century music attainments in so many areas was accelerated
music moved from one new practice to another very rapidly
no previous era can be compared with the diversity and extremes
- The search for originality on the part of every composer led to a great variety of expression
Neoclassicism
Neoromanticism
Serial composition
Microtonal music
musique concrete
- Scientific research led to a number of discoveries and inventions that affected and influenced music
Rapid sound communication - telephone and telegraph of the 19th century led to
the invention of the phonograph and radio
by mid-century, recorded music was available to most of the world
- Scientific investigations into the human psyche by Freud, Jung, Adler and others
Attempted to provide explanations for what artists were already exploring
Schoenberg's "Pierrot Lunaire"
Berg's "Wozzeck" and "Lulu"
- Two great political movements made deep impressions on the arts
Fascism - Italy
Communism - Nazi's in Germany
They condemned all nontraditional creativity as decadent and typical of the
weakness of the Western democratic society
Much of the creativity of Germany and Italy was carried on by exiled artists who fled
mainly to the United States
- With the rise of Josef Stalin, the Soviet Union was cut off from
mainstream 20th-century musical thought
A strong emphasis was placed on traditional, nationalistic trends of the 19th century
- After World War I, the other European countries had scarcely recovered economically
before they were hit by the great economic depression of the 1930's
and then World War II

II.  Function of Music

- Great changes in the function of music from:
Commercial aspects of music distribution
New means of musical communication
Popular radio music had no intention of raising the musical level of the listener
and had the tendency to develop more undiscriminating listeners
- Organized concert series in large and small urban centers were
largely a 20th-century phenomenon
- Composers were more and more at the mercy of the performers and concert promoters
who felt the necessity to emphasize traditional works to large but often
undiscriminating audiences
- A new 20th-century outlet for composers was the motion picture industry
On the periphery of the musical mainstream, but
in a sense was a continuation of the Wagner ideal of integrated music and drama
- The church was not significantly involved with the music of this period
Parish choir directors, trying to raise the musical level of their church,
revived music of the past, especially Baroque and Renaissance
- Opera continued to function as an important means of reaching a large public
Central Europe had an active opera life
United States was limited to a few large cities and short seasons
Some of the subjects most popular were social issues
Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" (1935)

III.  Style and Performance Practice

- Many composers continued to write in a style closely akin to the Romantic
often referred to as Post-Romanticism
- Composers found it necessary to devise new ways to say new things
- Impressionism was a response to Romanticism
Emerged at the end of the 19th century
Became a connecting link between Romanticism and the new experimentalism
- Two other manifestations of the composers' search for new stylistic expression
Microtonality
12-tone technique


- Formal Organization

The most important new means of formal organization was
Twelve-tone or dodecaphonic technique later to be called
Serialism, which may incorporate less than 12 pitches and might extend
to timbre, rhythm, or other musical elements
A significant characteristic was the variation principle
Repetition and contrast were used less frequently
Repetition actually became variation
There was a tendency toward brevity - all elements were tightly organized


- Melody

Alternative scale forms were often used
Whole-tone scale used frequently by the Impressionists
Melodic lines of this era may include:
wide intervallic leaps
a high degree of rhythmic complexity
extreme ranges in order to make use of varied tone qualities
Asymmetrical phrases and periods
A tendency to form melodies from short, motivic fragments
In serial music, notes of a melodic line were often sounded over several octaves
or divided among several instruments
rather than keeping it in one timbre or range
The general tendency to write in a type of counterpoint lessened the importance of melody
"Sprechstimme" (speech intonation) was utilized by some in place of melody


- Rhythm

Traditional metric units continued to be used
Many pieces use irregular and asymmetric measures and phrases
Much use is made of odd-numbered metric patterns (5, 7, 9, 11)
Quickly-changing meters
The use of polyrhythms is seen


- Harmony

Much more dissonant
Atonality
Bitonality
Polytonality
Non-traditional scale patterns/chord structure
Medieval Modes
Folk scales
Non-Western scales
Whole-tone scales
Synthetic scales (devised by the composer)


- Texture

Contrapuntal texture was frequently employed
Especially by twelve-tone composers
Exploited thin textures in which silences played an important role
A counterpoint of rhythms was often heard
As well as timbre counterpoint
The NeoRomantic style, both harmonic and contrapuntal, was inclined to be
very thick and heavy -- full, rich, (and often dissonant) chordal structures


- Instrumentation and Tone Color

Although compositions using large forces were still written,
there was a tendency to use small ensembles of unusual combinations
Heterophony of color was achieved by the contrast of widely differing timbres in combination
Tendency to combine wind and string instruments in nearly equal numbers
Wind instruments were used more often for solos
The voice was often combined with instruments for the variety of tone color


- Performance Practice

At times, notational and dynamic indications were extremely specific
Other times, the opposite was true -- more freedom was given to the performer
Directions were found in the vernacular instead of the traditional Italian
The high standard of the recording industry made virtuosity expected of every performer
Conducting demanded the same virtuosic standard
A high degree of music specialization separated the performer and composer
A few exceptions occured
Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev were excellent pianists

IV.  Music for Voices

In general, the vocal forms used in the early 20th century were those found in the earlier periods.  They were adapted to contemporary contrapuntal and harmonic practices.  The voice in solo and choral compositions was treated more as an instrument than previously.  Vocal ranges were expanded, and intervallic skips, which are not technically difficult for instruments, were demanded of the voice.

 
- Single-Movement Forms
Art song


- Choral Works

A great demand developed for choral music for:
Church
Amateur
Professional
Public school
University
This demand gave rise to shorter works, usually one movement
Usually unaccompanied, but some with piano or organ accompaniment
Often contrapuntal
During the first part of the century, large numbers of folk songs were being collected
(for sociological and academic purposes)
Composers effectively set numerous folk songs for choral performance
 
- Composite Forms
Opera
Some operas retained the symphonic character of the Wagnerian tradition
Others were much more concise and intense
In some there was a return to set forms of aria and chorus
Some operas, such as Berg's "Wozzeck," were written in large symphonic forms
in which several scenes were treated as movements or sections
such as the sonata or the variation form
Some operas, composed with the twelve-tone technique, were very dissonant
Some reverted to the ballad opera of the 17th century with simple forms and tunes
Musical Theatre
Came close to a revival of the Ballad Opera
19th-century melodic and harmonic tradition
20th-century free jazz rhythms
Descendant of the Opéra Comique and the Operetta
Usually romantic
with spoken lines
choreography
choruses
music related to popular song and jazz
Oratorio
Remained almost as dormant as it had in the latter half of the 19th century
Those that were written retained the traditional formal plan
The style, though, was in keeping with the current style practices and tendencies
Composers experimented with instrumentation and tone color
Instrumental ensembles were more than accompaniment and vocalists were less than
featured soloists
Liturgical Music
Early in the 20th century, there was little music written for purely liturgical purposes.  Some settings of the Mass for the Roman Catholic Church were written using the twelve-tone system, but these were rare, and their performance as liturgical music is even rarer.  Likewise, some able composers wrote music for the Protestant church and the Jewish synagogue.

V.  Music for Instruments

No form is unique to the 20th century.  Composers of instrumental music returned to the classic form of the sonata as an ideal for their compositions.  While most composers retained the traditional terminology of the Classic era, new schemes of formal organization, melody, harmony, rhythm, texture, and tone quality gave them new meaning.

 
- Single Movement Forms
Overture and Symphonic Poems
The overture continued as a single-movement form quite apart from its original purpose as a prelude to a dramatic work.  Most overtures in the 20th century were short symphonic poems, often of dramatic expressive quality.  Dramatic musical works rarely employed and overture in the traditional sense, so there were few overtures of this kind in the repertory of the 20th century.
Variation
While modern composers were generally concerned with problems of construction, variation form regained its popularity.  However, the traditional techniques of variation gave way to such devices as variations on a tone row, on tonal coloring, and on rhythmic patterns.
Short Forms: Dances, Poetic Pieces
Many short works were written in modern or exotic dance forms, or in simple two-part or three-part song forms.  Most of these works were written for piano, though solo instruments combined with piano and small ensembles, or even orchestral compositions, were sometimes cast in these forms.


- Composite Forms

Sonata, Chamber Music, and Symphony
Concerto
Suite
Ballet, Modern Dance
Incidental Music for Film and Drama

VI.  Composers

Leos Janacek
Edward Elgar
Claude Debussy
Erik Satie
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Arnold Schoenberg
Charles Ives
Maurice Ravel
Ernest Bloch
Béla Bartók
Igor Stravinsky
Anton Webern
Edgar Varese
Alban Berg
Sergei Prokofiev
Paul Hindmith
Roger Sessions
Henry Cowell
George Gershwin
Aaron Copland
Dmitri Shostakovitch

VII. Historians and Theorists

Heinrich Schenker
Donald Francis Tovey
Willi Apel
Paul Hindemith
Aaron Copland