20th-century music

During the 20th century there was a vast increase in the variety of music that people had access to. Prior to the invention of mass market gramophone records (developed in 1892) and radio broadcasting (first commercially done ca. 1919–20), people mainly listened to music at live Classical music concerts or musical theatre shows, which were too expensive for many lower-income people; on early phonograph players (a technology invented in 1877 which was not mass-marketed until the mid-1890s); or by individuals performing music or singing songs on an amateur basis at home, using sheet music, which required the ability to sing, play, and read music, which were skills that tended to be limited to middle-class and upper-class individuals. With the mass-market availability of gramophone records and radio broadcasts, listeners could purchase recordings of, or listen on radio to recordings or live broadcasts of a huge variety of songs and musical pieces. This enabled a much wider range of the population to listen to performances of Classical music symphonies and operas that they would not be able to hear live, either due to not being able to afford live-concert tickets or because such music was not performed in their region.

Sound recording was also a major influence on the development of popular music genres, because it enabled recordings of songs and bands to be inexpensively and widely distributed nationwide or even, for some artists, worldwide. The development of relatively inexpensive reproduction of music via a succession of formats including vinyl records, compact cassettes, compact discs (introduced in 1983) and, by the mid-1990s, digital audio recordings, and the transmission or broadcast of audio recordings of music performances on radio, of video recordings or live performances on television, and by the 1990s, of audio and video recordings via the Internet, using file sharing of digital audio recordings, gave individuals from a wide range of socioeconomic classes access to a diverse selection of high-quality music performances by artists from around the world.^[1] The introduction of multitrack recording in 1955 and the use of mixing had a major influence on pop and rock music, because it enabled record producers to mix and overdub many layers of instrument tracks and vocals, creating new sounds that would not be possible in a live performance.^[2] The development of sound recording and audio engineering technologies and the ability to edit these recordings gave rise to new subgenres of classical music, including the Musique concrète (1949) and acousmatic^[3](1955) schools of electronic composition. In the 1970s, African-American hip hop musicians began to use the record turntable as a musical instrument, creating rhythmic and percussive "scratching" effects by manipulating a vinyl record on the turntable.

The 20th-century orchestra was far more flexible than its predecessors and used a much wider variety of instruments.^[4] In Beethoven's and Felix Mendelssohn's time in the 19th century, the orchestra was composed of a fairly standard core of instruments which was very rarely modified. As time progressed, and as the Romantic period saw changes in accepted modification with composers such as Berlioz and Mahler, the 20th century saw that instrumentation could practically be hand-picked by the composer. Saxophones were used in some 20th-century orchestra scores such as Vaughan Williams' Symphonies No.6 and 9 and William Walton's Belshazzar's Feast, and many other works as a member of the orchestral ensemble. Twentieth-century orchestras generally include a string section, woodwinds, brass instruments, percussion, piano, celeste, harp(s),^[5] with other instruments called for occasionally, such as electric guitar^[6] and electric bass.^[7]

The 20th century saw dramatic innovations in musical forms and styles. Composers and songwriters explored new forms and sounds that challenged the previously accepted rules of music of earlier periods, such as the use of altered chords and extended chords in 1940s-era Bebop jazz. The development of powerful, loud guitar amplifiers and sound reinforcement systems in the 1960s and 1970s permitted bands to hold large concerts where even those with the least expensive tickets could hear the show. Composers and songwriters experimented with new musical styles, such as genre fusions (e.g., the late 1960s fusion of jazz and rock music to create jazz fusion). As well, composers and musicians used new electric, electronic, and digital instruments and musical devices. In the 1980s, some styles of music, such as electronic dance music genres such as house music were created largely with synthesizers and drum machines. Faster modes of transportation such as jet flight allowed musicians and fans to travel more widely to perform or hear shows, which increased the spread of musical styles.

Classical

Modernism

In the early 20th century, many composers, including Rachmaninoff, Richard Strauss, Giacomo Puccini, and Edward Elgar, continued to work in forms and in a musical language that derived from the 19th century. However, modernism in music became increasingly prominent and important; among the most important modernists were Alexander Scriabin, Claude Debussy, and post-Wagnerian composers such as Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss, who experimented with form, tonality and orchestration.^[8] Busoni, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Schreker were already recognized before 1914 as modernists, and Ives was retrospectively also included in this category for his challenges to the uses of tonality.^[8] Composers such as Ravel, Milhaud, and Gershwin combined classical and jazz idioms.^[9]

Nationalism

Late-Romantic and modernist nationalism was found also in British, American, and Latin-American music of the early 20th century. Composers such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, Aaron Copland, Carlos Chávez, and Heitor Villa-Lobos used folk themes collected by themselves or others in many of their major compositions.

Microtonal music

In the early decades of the 20th century, composers such as Julián Carrillo, Mildred Couper, Alois Hába, Charles Ives, Erwin Schulhoff, Ivan Wyschnegradsky turned their attention to quarter tones (24 equal intervals per octave), and other finer divisions. In the middle of the century composers such as Harry Partch and Ben Johnston explored just intonation. In the second half of the century, prominent composers employing microtonality included Easley Blackwood, Jr., Wendy Carlos, Adriaan Fokker, Terry Riley, Ezra Sims, Karlheinz Stockhausen, La Monte Young, and Iannis Xenakis.

Neoclassicism

A dominant trend in music composed from 1923 to 1950 was neoclassicism, a reaction against the exaggerated gestures and formlessness of late Romanticism which revived the balanced forms and clearly perceptible thematic processes of earlier styles. There were three distinct "schools" of neoclassicism, associated with Igor Stravinsky, Paul Hindemith, and Arnold Schoenberg. Similar sympathies in the second half of the century are generally subsumed under the heading "postmodernism".^[10]

Experimental music

A compositional tradition arose in the mid-20th century—particularly in North America—called "experimental music". Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage.^[11] According to Cage, "an experimental action is one the outcome of which is not foreseen",^[12] and he was specifically interested in completed works that performed an unpredictable action.^[13]

Minimalism

Minimalist music, involving a simplification of materials and intensive repetition of motives began in the late 1950s with the composers Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass. Later, minimalism was adapted to a more traditional symphonic setting by composers including Reich, Glass, and John Adams. Minimalism was practiced heavily throughout the latter half of the century and has carried over into the 21st century, as well as composers like Arvo Pärt, Henryk Górecki and John Tavener working in the holy minimalism variant. For more examples see List of 20th-century classical composers.

Contemporary classical music

Contemporary classical music can be understood as belonging to the period that started in the mid-1970s to early 1990s, which includes modernist, postmodern, neoromantic, and pluralist music.^[14] However, the term may also be employed in a broader sense to refer to all post-1945 musical forms.^[15]

Many composers working in the early 21st century were prominent figures in the 20th century. Some younger composers such as Oliver Knussen, Thomas Adès, and Michael Daugherty did not rise to prominence until late in the 20th century. For more examples see List of 21st-century classical composers.

Electronic music

For centuries, instrumental music had either been created by singing, or using mechanical music technologies, such as drawing a bow across a string that is strung on a hollow instrument or plucking taught gut or metal strings (string instruments), constricting vibrating air (woodwinds and brass) or hitting something to make rhythmic sounds (percussion instruments). In the early twentieth century, electronic devices were invented that were capable of generating sound electronically, without an initial mechanical source of vibration. As early as the 1930s, composers such as Olivier Messiaen incorporated electronic instruments into live performance. While sound recording technology is often associated with the key role it played in enabling the creation and mass marketing of popular music, new electric and electronic sound recording technology was used to produce art music, as well. The musique concrète (French: “concrete music”), developed about 1948 by Pierre Schaeffer and his associates, was an experimental technique using recorded sounds as raw material.^[16]

In the years following World War II, some composers were quick to adopt developing electronic technology. Electronic music was embraced by composers such as Edgard Varèse, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Milton Babbitt, Pierre Boulez, Luigi Nono, Herbert Brün, and Iannis Xenakis. In the 1950s the film industry also began to make extensive use of electronic soundtracks. Major rock groups that were early adopters of synthesizers include The Moody Blues, The Beatles,^[17] The Monkees,^[18] and The Doors.^[19]

Folk music

Folk music, in the original sense of the term as coined in the 18th century by Johann Gottfried Herder, is music produced by communal composition and possessing dignity, though by the late 19th century the concept of ‘folk’ had become a synonym for ‘nation’, usually identified as peasants and rural artisans, as in the Merrie England movement and the Irish and Scottish Gaelic Revivals of the 1880s.^[20] Folk music was normally shared and performed by the entire community (not by a special class of expert or professional performers, possibly excluding the idea of amateurs), and was transmitted by word of mouth (oral tradition).^[21]

In addition, folk music was also borrowed by composers in other genres. Some of the work of Aaron Copland clearly draws on American folk music.^[22]

An important work on registering traditional tunes of the Balkanic region was that of Béla Bartók since it is probably the first composer who was interested in recording audios as well as analysing them from an ethnological point of view.^[23]

	Barbara Allen (song) Barbara Allen (song) is a traditional folk ballad.
Problems playing this file? See media help.

Bluegrass music

Bluegrass music is a form of American roots music, and a related genre of country music. Influenced by the music of Appalachia,^[24] Bluegrass has mixed roots in Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and English^[25] traditional music, and was also later influenced by the music of African-Americans^[26] through incorporation of jazz elements.

Settlers from the United Kingdom and Ireland arrived in Appalachia during the 18th century, and brought with them the musical traditions of their homelands. These traditions consisted primarily of English and Scottish ballads—which were essentially unaccompanied narrative—and dance music, such as Irish reels, which were accompanied by a fiddle.^[27] Many older bluegrass songs come directly from the British Isles. Several Appalachian bluegrass ballads, such as "Pretty Saro", "Barbara Allen", "Cuckoo Bird" and "House Carpenter", come from England and preserve the English ballad tradition both melodically and lyrically.^[28] Others, such as The Twa Sisters, also come from England; however, the lyrics are about Ireland.^[29] Some bluegrass fiddle songs popular in Appalachia, such as "Leather Britches", and "Pretty Polly", have Scottish roots.^[30] The dance tune Cumberland Gap may be derived from the tune that accompanies the Scottish ballad Bonnie George Campbell.^[31] Other songs have different names in different places; for instance in England there is an old ballad known as "A Brisk Young Sailor Courted Me", but exactly the same song in North American bluegrass is known as "I Wish My Baby Was Born".^[32]

In bluegrass, as in some forms of jazz, one or more instruments each takes its turn playing the melody and improvising around it, while the others perform accompaniment; this is especially typified in tunes called breakdowns. This is in contrast to old-time music, in which all instruments play the melody together or one instrument carries the lead throughout while the others provide accompaniment. Breakdowns are often characterized by rapid tempos and unusual instrumental dexterity and sometimes by complex chord changes.^[33]

There are three major subgenres of bluegrass and one unofficial subgenre. Traditional bluegrass has musicians playing folk songs, tunes with simple traditional chord progressions, and using only acoustic instruments, with an example being Bill Monroe. Progressive bluegrass groups may use electric instruments and import songs from other genres, particularly rock & roll. Examples include Cadillac Sky and Bearfoot. "Bluegrass gospel" has emerged as a third subgenre, which uses Christian lyrics, soulful three- or four-part harmony singing, and sometimes the playing of instrumentals. A newer development in the bluegrass world is Neo-traditional bluegrass; exemplified by bands such as The Grascals and Mountain Heart, bands from this subgenre typically have more than one lead singer. Bluegrass music has attracted a diverse following worldwide. Bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe characterized the genre as: "Scottish bagpipes and ole-time fiddlin'. It's Methodist and Holiness and Baptist. It's blues and jazz, and it has a high lonesome sound."^[34]

Opera

In the early years of the century, Wagnerian chromatic harmony was extended by opera composers such as Richard Strauss (Salome, 1905; Die Frau ohne Schatten, 1917), Claude Debussy (Pelléas et Mélisande, 1902), Giacomo Puccini (Madama Butterfly, 1904; Il trittico, 1918), Ferruccio Busoni (Doktor Faust, 1916, posthumously completed by his student Philipp Jarnach), Béla Bartók (Bluebeard's Castle, 1911–17), and Hans Pfitzner (Palestrina, 1917).

Further extension of the chromatic language finally broke with tonality and moved into the style of atonal music in the early operas of Arnold Schoenberg (Erwartung, 1909; Die glückliche Hand, 1912) and his student Alban Berg (Wozzeck, 1925), both of whom adopted twelve-tone technique for their later operas: Schoenberg's Moses und Aron, and Berg’s Lulu. Neither of these operas were completed in their composers’ lifetimes, however, so that the first completed opera using the twelve-tone technique was Karl V (1938) by Ernst Krenek.^[35]

At the same time, the neoclassicism that became fashionable in the 1920s is represented by Stravinsky's opera buffa Mavra (1922) and his opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex (1927). Later in the century his last opera, The Rake's Progress (1951), also marks the end of the neoclassical phase of his compositions. Other operas of this period by composers identified as neoclassicists include Paul Hindemith's Mathis der Maler (1938) and Francis Poulenc's Les mamelles de Tirésias (1945).^[36]

The most internationally accepted post–World War II composer of operas was Englishmen Benjamin Britten (Peter Grimes, 1945; Billy Budd, 1951; The Turn of the Screw, 1954; A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1960, Death in Venice, 1973)^[37]

Popular music

Popular music, sometimes abbreviated pop music (although the term "pop" is used in some contexts as a more specific musical genre), is music belonging to any of a number of musical styles that are broadly popular or intended for mass consumption and wide commercial distribution—in other words, music that forms part of popular culture.

Popular music includes Broadway tunes, ballads and singers such as Frank Sinatra.^[38]

The relationship (particularly, the relative value) of classical music and popular music is a controversial question. Richard Middleton writes:

Neat divisions between "folk" and "popular", and "popular" and "art", are impossible to find... arbitrary criteria [are used] to define the complement of "popular". "Art" music, for example, is generally regarded as by nature complex, difficult, demanding; "popular" music then has to be defined as "simple", "accessible", "facile". But many pieces commonly thought of as "art" (Handel's Hallelujah Chorus, many Schubert songs, many Verdi arias) have qualities of simplicity; conversely, it is by no means obvious that the Sex Pistols' records were "accessible", Frank Zappa's work "simple", or Billie Holiday's "facile".^[39]

Moreover, composers such as Scott Joplin, George Gershwin and Andrew Lloyd Webber tried to cater to both popular and high brow tastes.

Blues

Blues musicians such as Muddy Waters brought the Delta Blues, played mostly with acoustic instruments, from the Mississippi delta north to cities like Chicago, where they used more electric instruments to form the Chicago Blues.^[40]

	The Wrong Road The Hall Brothers' "The Wrong Road"
Problems playing this file? See media help.

Country music

Country music, once known as Country and Western music, is a popular musical form developed in the southern United States, with roots in traditional folk music, spirituals, and the blues.^[41]

Disco

Disco is an up-tempo style of dance music that originated in the early 1970s, mainly from funk, salsa, and soul music, popular originally with homosexual and African-American audiences in large U.S. cities, and derives its name from the French word discothèque.^[42]

Hip hop

Hip hop music, also referred to as rap or rap music, is a music genre formed in the United States in the 1970s that consists of two main components: rapping (MCing) and DJing (audio mixing and scratching).

Jazz

Jazz has evolved into many sometimes contrasting subgenres including smooth jazz, Bebop, Swing, Fusion, Dixieland and free jazz. Jazz originated in the early 20th century out of a combination of the Blues, Ragtime, Brass Band Music, Hymns and Spirituals, Minstrel music and work songs.^[43]

New-age music

Mostly instrumental pieces creating sounds of a soothing, romantic, mood-elevating or generally relaxing nature.^[44] Steven Halpern's Spectrum Suite, released in 1975, is generally credited as the album that began the new-age music movement.^[45]

Polka

The polka, which first appeared in Prague in 1837, continued to be a popular form of dance music through the 20th century, especially in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and areas of the United States with a large population of central-European descent. A particularly well-known 20th-century example is Jaromír Vejvoda’s Modřanská polka (1927), which became popular during World War II in Czechoslovakia as "Škoda lásky" ("A Waste of Love"), in Germany as the Rosamunde-Polka, and among the allied armies as the Beer Barrel Polka (as a song, known as "Roll out the Barrel"). In the United States, the "Eastern style" Polish urban polka remained popular until about 1965. Polka music rose in popularity in Chicago in the late 1940s after Walter ‘Li’l Wally’ Wallace Jagiello created "honky" polka by combining the Polish-American rural polka with elements of Polish folksong and krakowiak. A later, rock-influenced form is called "dyno" polka.^[46]

Rock and roll

Rock and roll developed from earlier musical forms including rhythm and blues, which had earlier been called race music, and country music.^[47] See also rock musical and rock opera.

Alternative rock

Progressive rock

Punk rock

	"Gloria: In Excelsis Deo / Gloria" song by Patti Smith, an example of early punk rock.
Problems playing this file? See media help.

World music

Notes

References