User:Iadmc/new sections for 20th-century classical music

I wrote this as I was unhappy with the list at the beginning of the article as it stood in this edit --Jubilee♫clipman 20:37, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

20th century classical music was extremely varied and thus there was no dominant style. However, a salient feature during this classical music time period was the increased use of dissonance. Because of this, the 20th century is sometimes called the "Dissonant Period" of classical music, because much of its music was a reaction to or against the common practice period, which emphasized consonance (Schwartz and Godfrey 1993, 9–43). The International Paris Exposition celebrating the centennial of the French Revolution in 1889 is referred to by one writer as the watershed transitional moment from consonance to dissonance (Fauser 2005).

Introduction

At the turn of the century, music was characteristically late Romantic in style. Composers such as Gustav Mahler and Jean Sibelius were pushing the bounds of Post-Romantic Symphonic writing. Neoromanticism was developed in France by Francis Poulenc and Henri Sauguet and quickly spread to other countries. Much of the music of Mahler and Sibelius could be included here; as could that of Samuel Barber (in America), Gustav Holst, Frederick Delius and Ralph Vaughan Williams (in Britain), Paul Hindemith and Arnold Schoenberg (in Germany and Austria), and Heitor Villa-Lobos (in Spain); however, all of these composers explored many other styles between them. Futhermore, the terms "Post-Romantic" and "Neoromantic" are often confused and used loosely to include each other.

At the same time, the Impressionist movement, spearheaded by Claude Debussy, was being developed in France. The term was actually rejected by Debussey, and Maurice Ravel's music, also often labelled with this term, explores many in many styles not always related to it. Nevertheless, the term Impressionism has become standard for music characterised by non-resolving extended chords (such as Ninths and Augmented triads), pentatonic and whole-tone melodies, highly colourful orchestration, and a preference for shorter non-symphonic forms.

Many composers reacted to the Post-Romantic and Impressionist styles and moved in quite different directions. The various trends were later loosely lumped together and labelled "Modernism". In Vienna, Arnold Schoenberg developed atonality, out of the expressionism that arose in the early part of the 20th century, and later developed the twelve-tone technique and Serialism. This was later developed by his "disciples" Alban Berg and Anton Webern and other composers (including Luciano Berio and Pierre Boulez) developed it further still. Stravinsky (in his last works) explored Serialism, too, as did many other composers, though some, such as Kenneth Leighton, used the technique in works that are almost tonal. Italian composers such as Francesco Balilla Pratella and Luigi Russolo developed musical Futurism. This style often tried to recreate everyday sounds and place them in a "Futurist" context. The "Machine Music" of George Antheil and Alexander Mosolov developed out of this. The process of extending musical vocabulary by exploring all available tones, was pushed further by the use of Microtones in works by Charles Ives, Julián Carrillo, Alois Hába, Ivan Wyschnegradsky, and Mildred Couper, among many others. Microtones are those intervals that are smaller that a semitone; human voices and unfretted strings can easily produce them by going inbetween the "normal" notes, but other instuments will have more difficulty - the piano and organ have no way of producing them at all, aside from retuning and/or major reconstuction. In the 40s and 50s, composers started to explore the use of technology in music in musique concrète (Pierre Schaeffer) and live electronic music. The term Electroacoustic music was later coined to include all forms of music involving magnetic tape, computers, synthesisers, multimedia and other electronic devices and techniques. Process music (Karlheinz Stockhausen) and Steve Reich) and Spectral music (Gerard Grisey and Tristan Murail) are both further developments of this. Cage, Berio, Boulez, Milton Babbitt, Luigi Nono and Edgard Varèse all worked in this field, often in "happenings" that promoted the music. From the 60s onwards, elements of chance have often been introduced into music. This has resulted in various musical styles and techniques such as indeterminacy, Aleatoric music, Stochastic music, Intuitive music. and free improvisation. Experimental music explores many different influences.

After the First World War, many composers started returning to previous centuries for their inspiration and wrote works that draw elements (form, harmony, melody, structure) from this music which thus became labelled Neoclassical. Igor Stravinsky (Pulcinella and Symphony of Psalms), Sergei Prokofiev (Classical Symphony and Romeo and Juliet, Ravel (Le Tombeau de Couperin and La Valse) and Hindemith (Mathis der Maler and Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes of Weber) all produced Neoclassical works.

Important cultural trends often informed music of this period, Romantic, Modernist, Neoclassical, Postmodernist or otherwise. Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Prokofiev were particularly drawn to Primitivism in their early careers, as explored in works such as The Rite of Spring and Chout. Other Russians, notably Dmitri Shostakovich, explored the social impact of Communism and Socialist realism in their music; indeed, other composers, such as Richard Strauss and Benjamin Britten explored political themes in their works (Also sprach Zarathustra and War Requiem, respectively. Nationalism was also an important means of expression in the early part of the century. The culture of the United States of America, especially, began informing an American vernacular style of classical music, notably in the works of Charles Ives, John Alden Carpenter, and (later) George Gershwin. Folk music (Vaughan Williams' Variants on Dives and Lazarus, Gustav Holst's The Planets) and Jazz (Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, Darius Milhaud's La création du monde) were also influential.

In the latter quarter of the century, eclecticism and polystylism became important. These, as well as Minimalism, New Complexity and New Simplicity, are more fully explored in the articles Contemporary classical music and 21st-century classical music. Indeed, the music of the twentieth century saw a large cross-over of styles: many of the above concepts are evident in popular music, film scores and video game music, and many element from these are found in 20th-century classical music.