Twentieth century, Western art music of the

From "The Harvard Dictionary of Music"

Copyright © 1986, 2003 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College

Perhaps the single most dominant characteristic of 20th century Western art music is its variety andeclecticism and thus its resistance to easy categorization and generalized stylistic descriptions. This stems insignificant (if essentially negative) measure from one overriding historical factor: the final collapse during theearly years of the 20th century of the tonal system used in 18th- and 19th-century music. Although thissystem had betrayed signs of serious erosion as far back as the mid-19th century, and although it had in factnever represented a completely stable, immutable set of conventions, it nevertheless provided composers ofthe "common-practice" period of 1700–1900 with a fundamental musical constant. It served as a general setof limitations on what was considered compositionally possible, yet also formed a highly flexible frameworkallowing for controlled expansion of the previously available musical resources. The loss of this systemsuddenly made available unimagined new compositional possibilities. But it also represented something likethe loss of a mother tongue; and the course of subsequent 20th-century music can be understood to asignificant extent as a series of strategies developed to compensate for this loss. The one conspicuousfeature of all these developments, however, has been the failure of a new mother tongue—that is, a new setof generally accepted conventions—to emerge. This technical fact, together with the more general socialand political realities of the period (of which this fact represents an unmistakable symptom) goes far inexplaining the fragmented character of the music of this age.

The profound effects of the dissolution of tonality on subsequent music were immediately evident. The firstatonal works of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern, in which not only key centers but other conventions of thetonal system, such as triadic harmony, were assiduously avoided, appeared before 1910. Other composerssuch as Stravinsky and Bartók developed new approaches to tonality that, though they preserved the idea ofpitch centricity, were based upon assumptions of harmonic structure and the relationship of consonance anddissonance entirely different from those of earlier music. Still more extreme indications of the entirely newcompositional situation were evident in the music of Ives, who mixed together radically contrasting musicalstyles, materials, and techniques in unprecedented combinations; Satie, whose conception of compositionoften seemed to transform music into a sort of private joke; and the composers of the Futurist movement,who believed that all possible sounds, including industrial noises and other mechanistic strains of modernlife, had become the rightful province of music.

Following WorldWar I, however, there was a widespread tendency to reemphasize connections with olderWestern musical tradition. Although few composers returned to traditional tonality, many favored formalstructures based on Baroque or Classical models, as well as more diatonic pitch structures than had beencommon in the prewar years. The leading figure in this movement, usually known as neoclassicism, wasStravinsky; but many other prominent composers of the time, including Bartók, Prokofiev, Hindemith,Copland, and the composers known as Les six, displayed similar inclinations. Moreover, the twelve-tonemusic of Schoenberg and his school, composed during the same years, also revealed certain formal andstylistic features suggesting a related aesthetic orientation.

Yet even during the period between the two world wars, dominated by neoclassicism, the more experimentalattitude toward composition fostered by the absence of tonality persevered. It remained particularly strong inthe U.S., where the heritage of Ives was carried on by such figures as Henry Cowell, Lou Harrison, and

Harry Partch. Also Edgard Varèse, who took up permanent residence in the U.S. in 1916, evolved aninnovative style with relatively few traditional ties.

The period following World War II witnessed the emergence of two widespread tendencies that seemeddiametrically opposed: serial music, which reflected a highly conscious and rational approach tocomposition, and aleatory music, which reflected an essentially intuitive one. The principal composers ofserial music included Babbitt, Stockhausen, and Boulez; the leaders of the aleatory movement were JohnCage, Morton Feldman, and Earle Brown. By the later 1950s, however, many composers came to see thesetwo approaches as simply the extremes of a single continuum of virtually unlimited compositionalpossibilities. This attitude fostered a number of new developments: music conceived primarily in terms oftexture and color (Kryzsztof Penderecki, György Ligeti), music that reinterpreted earlier music throughquotation and distortion (Luciano Berio, Lukas Foss), microtonal music (John Eaton, Ben Johnston), newapproaches to music theater (Cage, Mauricio Kagel), improvised music with audience participation (FredericRzewski, Cornelius Cardew), etc.

Viewed from one perspective, the highly eclectic quality of music during the final quarter of the century, aperiod now commonly designated as postmodern, can be seen as the logical culmination of these variedpost-serial and post-indeterminate developments. Postmodernism, however, rejects their experimental, risk-taking aesthetic in favor of a pervasive laissezfaire pluralism. One especially notable feature associated withrecent tendencies is a renewed interest in the social role of music—not so much in a political sense (as ameans of achieving cultural transformation) as simply part of a commitment to finding a larger public forcontemporary composition.

Electro-acoustic music has played an especially important role during the latter half of the 20th century.Although the sources of this music go back to the turn of the century, it flourished only after the taperecorder became generally available following World War II. Many recent compositional concerns, such asthe widespread interest in timbral and acoustical effects and in mixed media, are directly attributable to thismedium. Indeed, the general explosion of technology in the 20th century, resulting in such critical inventionsas the radio, phonograph, and computer, had a profound impact on 20th-century music and musicalattitudes.

Throughout the 20th century and beyond, there has been a constant cross-fertilization between Western artmusic and popular music. Indeed, the borderlines between contemporary idioms of jazz and rock andcertain types of recent concert music, such as that of the minimalist school (Steve Reich, Philip Glass), oftenseem quite unclear. The music of other, often remote, cultures is also becoming increasingly influential onWestern music. Another significant development has been the return in recent years to more traditionalconceptions of tonality, melody, harmony, and form (George Rochberg, David Del Tredici). Such referencesto earlier musical conventions have an unavoidable "quotational" quality when heard within today's musicalcontext (especially since most composers tend to juxtapose them with post-tonal techniques). Nevertheless,at the present time the pervasive trend in composition appears to be away from more experimental andinnovative approaches toward more traditional ones. But whether this represents the beginning of a long-term development and thus indicates a wish, or need, to formulate a new "common practice" remains at besta problematic question.

Bibliography: William W. Austin, Music in the Twentieth Century (New York: Norton, 1966). John Vinton,ed., Dictionary of Contemporary Music (New York: Dutton, 1971). Jim Samson, Music in Transition (London:Dent, 1977). Paul Griffiths, Modern Music and After: Directions since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford U Pr, 1995).Hermann Danuser, Die Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1984). Robert P. Morgan,Twentieth-Century Music: A History of Musical Style in Modern Europe and America (New York: Norton,1991). Elliott Schwartz and Daniel Godfrey, Music since 1945: Issues, Materials, and Literature (New York:Schirmer, 1993). Arnold Whittal, Musical Composition in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford U Pr, 1999).R.P.M.

Copyright © 1986, 2003 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College

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