At the beginning of the 20th century, composers of classical music were experimenting with an increasingly dissonant pitch language, which sometimes yielded atonal pieces. Following World War I, as a backlash against what they saw as the increasingly exaggerated gestures and formlessness of late Romanticism, certain composers adopted a neoclassic style, which sought to recapture the balanced forms and clearly perceptible thematic processes of earlier styles[1] (see also New Objectivity and social realism). After World War II, modernist composers sought to achieve greater levels of control in their composition process (e.g., through the use of the twelve-tone technique and later total serialism). At the same time, conversely, composers also experimented with means of abdicating control, exploring indeterminacy or aleatoric processes in smaller or larger degrees.[2] Technological advances led to the birth of electronic music.[3] Experimentation with tape loops and repetitive textures contributed to the advent of minimalism.[4] Still other composers started exploring the theatrical potential of the musical performance (performance art, mixed media, fluxus).[5] New works of contemporary classical music continue to be created. Each year, the Boston Conservatory at Berklee presents 700 performances. New works from contemporary classical music program students comprise roughly 150 of these performances.[6]
To some extent, European and the US traditions diverged after World War II. Among the most influential composers in Europe were Pierre Boulez, Luigi Nono, and Karlheinz Stockhausen. The first and last were both pupils of Olivier Messiaen. An important aesthetic philosophy as well as a group of compositional techniques at this time was serialism (also called "through-ordered music", "'total' music" or "total tone ordering"), which took as its starting point the compositions of Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern (and thus was opposed to traditional twelve-tone music), and was also closely related to Le Corbusier's idea of the modulor.[7] However, some more traditionally based composers such as Dmitri Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten maintained a tonal style of composition despite the prominent serialist movement.
The vocabulary of extended tonality, which flourished in the late 19th and very early 20th centuries, continues to be used by contemporary composers. It has never been considered shocking or controversial in the larger musical world—as has been demonstrated statistically for the United States, at least, where "most composers continued working in what has remained throughout this century the mainstream of tonal-oriented composition".[8]
Serialism is one of the most important post-war movements among the high modernist schools. Serialism, more specifically named "integral" or "compound" serialism, was led by composers such as Pierre Boulez, Bruno Maderna, Luigi Nono, and Karlheinz Stockhausen in Europe, and by Milton Babbitt, Donald Martino, Mario Davidovsky, and Charles Wuorinen in the United States. Some of their compositions use an ordered set or several such sets, which may be the basis for the whole composition, while others use "unordered" sets. The term is also often used for dodecaphony, or twelve-tone technique, which is alternatively regarded as the model for integral serialism.
Between 1975 and 1990, a shift in the paradigm of computer technology had taken place, making electronic music systems affordable and widely accessible. The personal computer had become an essential component of the electronic musician's equipment, superseding analogsynthesizers and fulfilling the traditional functions of composition and scoring, synthesis and sound processing, sampling of audio input, and control over external equipment.[13][needs update]
Musical historicism—the use of historical materials, structures, styles, techniques, media, conceptual content, etc., whether by a single composer or those associated with a particular school, movement, or period—is evident to varying degrees in minimalism, post-minimalism, world-music, and other genres in which tonal traditions have been sustained or have undergone a significant revival in recent decades.[15] Some post-minimalist works employ medieval and other genres associated with early music, such as the "Oi me lasso" and other laudeofGavin Bryars.
New Complexity is a current within today's[when?] European contemporary avant-garde music scene, named in reaction to the New Simplicity. Amongst the candidates suggested for having coined the term are the composer Nigel Osborne, the Belgian musicologist Harry Halbreich, and the British/Australian musicologist Richard Toop, who gave currency to the concept of a movement with his article "Four Facets of the New Complexity".[18]
^OED, entry "Polystylistic", quoting Christian & Cornwall's Guide to Russian Literature (1998): "Zhdanov is eclectic; he mixes high poetic, archaic, scientific and everyday realities without imposing any hierarchy. His manner may be called ‘polystylistic’", and entry "Polystylist", quoting Musical America, November 1983: "An eclectic only passively collects material from different sources, but a polystylist puts together what he collects, consciously, in a new way."
Anderson, Martin (June 1992). "A Conversation with Kalevi Aho". Tempo. new series (181 (Scandinavian Issue)): 16–18. doi:10.1017/S0040298200015138.
Bandur, Markus (2001). Aesthetics of Total Serialism: Contemporary Research from Music to Architecture. Basel, Boston, Berlin: Birkhäuser. ISBN3-7643-6449-1.
Colburn, Grant (Summer 2007). "A New Baroque Revival". Early Music America. 13 (2): 36–45, 54–55.
Holmes, Thomas B. (2008). Electronic and Experimental Music: Pioneers in Technology and Composition (3rd ed.). London and New York: Routledge. ISBN978-0-415-95781-6.
Watkins, Glenn (1994). Pyramids at the Louvre: Music, Culture, and Collage from Stravinsky to the Postmodernists. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN0-674-74083-1.
Cardoso-Firmo, Ana. 2011. "La Cantatrice Chauve de Jean-Philippe Calvin". In Dramaturgies de l'Absurde en France et au Portugal, [full citation needed], pp. 199–203. Paris: Université de Paris 8.
Danuser, Hermann. 1984. Die Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts: mit 108 Notenbeispielen, 130 Abbildungen und 2 Farbtafeln. Neues Handbuch der Musikwissenschaft 7. Laaber: Laaber-Verlag. ISBN3-89007-037-X
Duckworth, William. 1995. Talking Music: Conversations with John Cage, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, and Five Generations of American Experimental Composers. New York: Schirmer Books; London: Prentice-Hall International. ISBN0-02-870823-7 Reprinted 1999, New York: Da Capo Press. ISBN0-306-80893-5
Gann, Kyle. 1997. American Music in the Twentieth Century. New York: Schirmer Books; London: Prentice Hall International. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning ISBN0-02-864655-X.
Griffiths, Paul. 1995. Modern Music And After: Directions Since 1945. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN0-19-816578-1 (cloth) ISBN0-19-816511-0 (pbk.) Rev. ed. of: Modern Music: The Avant Garde Since 1945 (1981)
Morgan, Robert P. 1991. Twentieth-century Music: A History of Musical Style in Modern Europe and America. New York: Norton. ISBN0-393-95272-X
New Music: Music since 1950. 1978. Vienna: Universal Edition. N.B.: Biography-bibliography dictionary. Without ISBN
Whittall, Arnold. 2003. Exploring Twentieth-Century Music: Tradition and Innovation. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN0-521-81642-4 (cloth) ISBN0-521-01668-1 (pbk)
