20th Century Music

20th Century Music 

(Characteristics and Composers)

The music of the 20th century is significantly different to other era's such as Classical and Baroque. However, 20th century music can sometimes be influenced by the Romantic period, as the era's are still transitioning. The reason why 20th century music is significantly different is because it has a very abstract style. Baroque and Classical music could easily be recognisable because they had distinct features that you could recognise in almost every piece (for example, Harpsichords in Baroque music, an Alberti bass in Mozart's music etc...). However, 20th century music can have a variation of different features and can sometimes include features from other periods, so it is quite confusing trying to separate it from the other periods. Despite it being a mesh of different musical features, 20th century music includes features such as dissonance, syncopation and unusual time signatures. Here are some more features of 20th century music:

• Unpredictable rhythm pattern
• Unbalanced melodies
• Harmonies that don't match (unusual chords and dissonance)
• Homophonic texture (sometimes polyphonic)
• Includes a wide range of instruments (sometimes played in unconventional ways)

Composers

Ralph Vaughan Williams 

Sir Edward Elgar

George Gershwin

Modest Mussorgsky

Claude Debussy

John Cage

Impressionism

• The music giving an impression of the object it describes. 
• Debussy and Ravel are associated with impressionism music. 
• Impressionism is very implicit. It conveys subtle emotion compared to the strong emotion of the romantic era. Largely programmatic. Traditional scales are replaced with whole tones, advanced chromatic harmonies and dissonance. 
• The orchestra is used to give a wide range of timbres, like the artist uses colours from their palate
• Rhythm is often free and there is an absences of a strict pulse or metre
• Debussy's music includes whole tone scales (a scale that only goes up/down in whole tones)

Minimalism

• Key composers are: Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Philip Glass, John Adams
• Simple melodic fragments, time signature, dynamics etc...
• Extremely repetitive
• Gradual changes to elements; addition/subtraction of rhythms/dynamics etc...
• Contrapuntal texture, when there are lots of melodies going on at the same time
• Ostinato - A short collection of notes that are repeated once and once again
• Layered textures 
• Interlocking rhythms and phrases
• Diatonic harmony

Serialism

• Schoenberg is one of the main composers of the serialism period as well as Alban Berg and Anton Webern
• He felt music was too restricted. He experimented with expressionism and atonal music
• Unresolved dissonance is common as well as an un-obvious pulse (difficult to identify time signature)
• Large leaps in melodic lines (angular melodies)
• Complex rhythm patterns
• Chamber music, very hard to play
• Number of instruments are kept minimal or else it would be too messy when listening to the piece itself
• Prime order: Every note on the chromatic scale must be used but not repeated in the same phrase
• Retrograde: playing a sequence/melody backwards
• Inversion: when the intervals are flipped (e.g. major third UP would be a C to an E but a major third down would be a C to an A flat) 
• Retrograde inversion: playing a sequence backwards with the same interval but an opposite direction
• Klangfarbenmelodie: When the tone row is distributed to multiple instruments to vary timbre
• Lots of cluster chords are used (hence the dissonance)
• Verticalisation: form of harmonization - formation of chords

Neoclassicism

• Neoclassicism makes a return to balanced forms and often emotional restraint, as well as 18th century compositional processes and techniques
• Stravinsky was one of the first composers to experiment with this type of music
• Main composers for Neoclassicism: Poulenc, Tippett, Prokofiev, Stravinsky and Hindemith
• Elements from modern music: Bitonality, frequent changes of key, unexpected harmonies, unexpected chord sequences and deliberate 'wrong' notes
• Elements from Baroque and Classical music: Devices such as alberti bass, sequence and imitation, music not describing anything in particular, style devoid of emotion, forms such as sonata, concerto and symphony
• Other main features: clear texture, regular rhythms, clarity of sounds in solos and echoes of earlier composers, use of ostinati (short repeating pattern), 'functional' traditional harmonic and tonal progressions, coloured by deliberately dissonant chords, rhythmically complex - often using polyrhythms, combination of step-wise and angular melodies, deliberate use of older forms and dance styles, quotations from Classical or Baroque repertoire