History (Modern)

History of Music 14C-20C – Modern (20C)

It was becoming more and more difficult for composers to create new and innovative music and retain the old conventions and established musical forms. So in their desire to be different (if not shocking), composers in the 20th century gave rise to changes of almost frightening proportions. The danger was that the baby would be thrown out with the bath water!

Schoenberg experimented with a totally new “twelve-tone” music system which owed nothing to previous conventions. John Cage’s “4′ 22″ was simply 4 minutes and 22 seconds of silence! Imagine the members of the orchestra sitting there gazing at a blank sheet of manuscript! Stockhausen was another musical pioneer of a form called “musique concrete” which used a fusion of music and electronics for the first time. Philip Glass also used electronics to create totally different sounds and ideas. Other composers created new sounds by altering conventional instruments in strange ways, or sometimes using non-musical objects as instruments.

Many composers like Frederick Delius, Benjamin Britten and Aaron Copland (USA), remained relatively conventional to the old orchestral and instrumental groupings. The Hungarian Bela Bartok was inspired by the folk melodies of his native land and continued the nationalist trends began by some late romantic composers. Bartok (along with Franz Liszt) is considered Hungary’s greatest composer.

Many new forms and harmonies appeared although older modal and pentatonic scales made a serious comeback along with the new twelve-tone systems. More and more chords had dissonant intervals such as major and minor 2nds, 7ths, 9ths, 11ths and 13ths. Rhythms and time signatures became far more complex and ‘polyrhythms’ (more than one rhythm at the same time) were used to delight or perplex the listener. Take a Quiz