20th Century

The 20th Century is the most richly diverse century in the history of Western music. In 1900 Romanticism, as the dominant musical genre, was virtually exhausted; pushed to the extreme with post-Wagnerian harmonic and chromatic experiments in the work of Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. A number of composers sought to find a way out of the impasse, but the most important three were Debussy, Schoenberg and Stravinsky each representing different aspects of the musical revolution to come: harmony, structure and rhythm. Debussy placed content over form; he was more interested in the vertical aspect of music, harmony. His particular style of tonal colouring was labelled 'Impressionism' (Debussy himself hated the term) and of all the new musical styles it was the one most easily assimilated. Schoenberg destroyed the notion of a stable tonality in his work of the 1900s paving the way for the creation of serialism, the dominant musical form at mid-century. Stravinsky, the most chameleon of the three composers revolutionised the concept of rhythm in art music in his Rite of Spring, before moving onto neo-classicism (music that looked back to the Baroque and Classical eras for inspiration) in the 1920s and ending his career with his own approach to Serialism. Running parallel to these innovations was the absorption of jazz into classical music in the 1920s and 30s. George Gershwin and later Leonard Bernstein fused the worlds of popular and classical music. The French were particularly influenced by jazz, as seen in the music of Poulenc, Honegger and Milhaud, members of 'Les Six'. In Germany Kurt Weill in collaboration with playwright Berthold Brecht, produced a fusion of cabaret and opera in The Threepenny Opera, again influenced by American music. After the Second World War a number of European composers that included Stockhausen and Boulez, used Webern's serial language as ground zero to erase all traces of Romanticism in their work. Equally revolutionary was their use of electronics (inspired by the music visionary Edgar Varèse) and the use of the recording studio (particularly that of Cologne Radio's) as another instrument. Much of this music however proved unpopular with the average concert-goer as well as a number of other composers. A reaction against serialism took place in the 1960s by American composers John Cage, LaMonte Young and Terry Riley. Most influential was Riley's In C, one of the first minimalist scores, which led in turn to the work of Steve Reich and Philip Glass and later John Adams. Although like Debussy before them, these composers do not like their work to be labeled in this way. By the end of the century classical music had fractured, irreparably into a myriad of different styles with composers picking what they wanted from previous generations; although atonality was on the decline. At the same time Romanticism refused to die, receiving a new lease life in the realm of film music.

Key Works (A selection): Bernstein: West Side Story, Cage: 4'33", Debussy: La mer, Prélude à l'apès-midi d'un faune, Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue, Porgy and Bess, Glass: Einstein on the Beach, Reich: Drumming, Schoenberg: 5 Pieces for Piano Op. 23, Pierrot Lunaire, Richard Strauss: Elektra, Salome, Stravinsky: Pulcinella, The Rite of Spring, Agon, Varese: Ionisation, Weill: The Threepenny Opera