# 20th Century Forks



## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Wikipedia says that classical music in the twentieth century is 'extremely varied': 

'There are lots of different “schools” (meaning: ways of thinking) as lots of composers had their own ideas about how to compose in ways that were different from what had been done before. A lot of these genres (types of music) had names ending in “ism”: there was serialism, Expressionism, Neoclassicism, Impressionism as well as jazz, world music (music from non-European cultures) and folksong and, later on electronic music and then Minimalism and even post-modernism.'

For someone like me who wants to get a basic cm education, this is scary. Can you help? I would love to know your views, or maybe your answer to any of the Seven Mystical Questions:

1. Do some 'isms' follow on from each other, or from the music of the 19th century?

2. Are some of the isms alive & well - or being developed - in the 21st century?

3. What is your favourite 'ism' and why?

4. Who is the 'top composer' for your favourite ism? 

5. Can 20th century classical music be summed up in any meaningful way, despite its diversity?

6. Has 20th century classical music 'had its day' or lost its appeal for the cognoscenti? Or is it still very popular?

7. Is there one / are there two or three composers who would be worthy poster boys/girls for twentieth century music? Conversely, are there 20th century composers who are really throwbacks to earlier styles? 

Links for your examples would be very welcome. :tiphat: Thanks in advance for any replies. 
And if there are none - well, at least I tried!


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## SimonNZ (Jul 12, 2012)

I'll try and give my subjective answer more fully tomorrow (with what little knowledge I have). But for now:

6. I've said it elsewhere, but will say it again: I sincerely believe that there is no other time in classical music I'd rather be living through than the one happening right now.

7. I think of the two composers who have had the most influence in recent times, the ones I'm constantly finding connections to in the work of others and whose ideas and influence is still felt as a work in progress even after their death are Messiaen and Takemitsu. They would be my "poster boys".


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

I can't answer all the questions but I would say that the "isms" can indeed to confusing and even listening to good example pieces to a beginner, such as myself, especially post-1940s or so. But a few composers' music stood out to me with styles that were as discernible as Mozart was different to Haydn, or Mendelssohn to Schumann. Namely, I would consider Bartok, Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff to be the greatest 20th century composers, and then another tier follows etc.

It might be nice if the diversity could be summed up nicely like previous periods but I think this diversity is the very defining feature of 20th century music; many love it, others hate it, but that could be said for earlier periods anyway.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

I don't really care about poster boys/girls, and I don't have favourite isms (music is music, that's it) or representative composers. The fun isn't in idolising sombody it's much more in discovering new things for me. I don't even categorise 20th century music I know by isms as it would seem a waste of time, some things aren't purely one ism anyway.

Music through the first half of the century often still linked to romanticism in some way, that more heroic style eventually gave way post-war to the more introspective style which is the hallmark of modern modernism. Then from the late 80s it became more varied and post modernist.


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## Cheyenne (Aug 6, 2012)

If you want a decent, simple to read overview through which you can immediately find some appealing composers, you could read _The Rest is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century_. That should help get everything a little more organized: a good starting point.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

I've had that as an ebook for a while, but I never bothered reading it, just listened to music instead and seemed to discover stuff perfectly fine.


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## Winterreisender (Jul 13, 2013)

_3. What is your favourite 'ism' and why?_
My favourite -isms are probably Neoclassicism and Sacred Minimalism. (Not sure how widespread the use of the latter term is, but it seems a nice way to describe composers such as Gorecki, Pärt and Tavener). Why do I like this music? Well I get the feeling that other -isms were leading music up a dead-end, at least as far as tonality is concerned. Once music has been taken to place where nothing is shocking anymore, the only way to progress is to look to the past for inspiration and start rebuilding what other composers have destroyed.

_4. Who is the 'top composer' for your favourite ism? _
When it becomes to Neoclassicism, I find Poulenc's instrumental music utterly delightful. Stravinsky also excels in this area. As for "Sacred Minimalism" I enjoy Gorecki and Tavener (although I can't really be doing with the early works of either of these composers).


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

starry said:


> I've had that as an ebook for a while, but I never bothered reading it, just listened to music instead and seemed to discover stuff perfectly fine.


Taggart had it out of the library, but it had to go back before I got on to it. I used to be such a reader, but now I'm getting lazy. Must get it out again, as a guide and motivator!


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

I've never known a lot about Twentieth Century forks -- but I've always had a thing for runcible spoons.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

For me the silliest label ever must be "post-modern." Could a terminology be any more devoid of meaning?

I suppose my favorite is spectralism wherein the tones and overtones themselves become the composition (to simplify), and minimalism may be my least favoite. But I'm with others' opinions. We could categorize until each piece has its own genre, and to no useful purpose.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

After the Romantic era ended in the late 19th century there were an explosion of different musical movements in the 20th century, some of the big name composers and which isms they are (realizing these categories are rough guidelines only and there is overlap):

Impressionism - Debussy, Takemitsu, Ravel

Neo-Classicism - Ravel, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Bartok

Neo-Romanticism - R Strauss, Mahler, Rachmaninoff, Sibelius, Shostakovich 

Serialism - Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Stravinsky

(sometimes terms like neo-Classicism, neo-Romanticism, and neo-Baroque are kind of grouped together)

After this we get into post wwII musical styles like electro acoustics, minimalism, spectralism, aleatoric and chance music, electronic, and other hodge podges of different styles. Some big names include Cage, Messiaen, Xenakis, Carter, Glass, and Ligeti. Not as much my area of expertise.

My favorite of these isms are neo-classicism and impressionism. The 20th century could be summed up as a time of great diversity, innovation and the mixing of different compositional styles.


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## Guest (Jan 15, 2014)

Hey Ingélou,

This is probably the best remark you're likely to get:



starry said:


> just listened to music instead and seemed to discover stuff perfectly fine.


Ross' book is unfortunately very skewed and very gossipy. If you want a balanced report that talks exclusively about music, then you want David Cope's _New Directions in Music._ There are a couple of other books with varying strengths, Paul Griffiths' _Modern Music and After,_ and Michael Nyman's _Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond._ And most textbooks just copy each other. You could get twenty college texts about modern music or with a 20th/21st century section and get only one story about the music. A friend of mine is a university professor in contemporary music, and I've had access to his extensive collection of texts, and that's what I've found.

Best is really to listen for yourself and make your own mind up about what's what. Just as you don't really have to know theory to enjoy listening to music, you also don't have to know anything about history to enjoy listening to music. Once you've listened to enough to no longer be a beginner, that's the time to start looking at the books. That's the time to learn theory and history. Because then you have a broad and intimate experience with the music itself and can understand what all the authors are talking about. Before then, not so much.

As for your questions, here are my answers:

1. Yes.
2. Yes.
3. Experimentalism (indeterminacy), because it most closely approximates how life happens.
4. John Cage
5. Yes.
6. No idea, though I would guess No and Yes. Every style or genre or -ism "has its day" among practitioners. And then the practitioners go on to something else. I don't know why people struggle with this notion so much. You can learn from your predecessors, but you don't want to simply duplicate them. Unless you're just in it for the money. Or are really nostalgic yourself. Otherwise, you want to go beyond. Among listeners, however, there really is no such thing as "had its day." We can listen to baroque with pleasure even though that era is long over.

7. No and yes. No, because a poster with only two or three would not capture the diversity at all well.

I would strongly urge you to stop asking questions like this and certainly to stop reading the responses to this thread. Instead, get out there and listen to some music, not in order to understand historical or ideological trends but for the reason music exists, to make your eardrums vibrate. Listen.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

some guy said:


> Hey Ingélou...
> 
> I would strongly urge you to stop asking questions like this and certainly to stop reading the responses to this thread...


I shall certainly not be following *this* advice, some guy; what, and miss a response as excellent and well-informed as yours? :tiphat:

Which I only got by asking the question in the first place... 

Thanks for the responses so far. I know it's difficult to single anything out of a diverse century, but I hope a few of you *will*, so that I'll have somewhere to start.

I might never post at all, and only listen; but for me the Forum is a place to encounter others with other points of view and other life experiences. Please keep your responses coming. :cheers:


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Ingélou said:


> 1. Do some 'isms' follow on from each other, or from the music of the 19th century?


Nothing arises out of a vacuum. They're all related, and they all follow from the music of the 19th century.



Ingélou said:


> 2. Are some of the isms alive & well - or being developed - in the 21st century?


Most of the trends of the 20th century have been at this point subsumed into each other, even when these were initially viewed as contradictory. It's not uncommon for a contemporary work to incorporate elements of both minimalism and expressionism, or serialism and impressionism. None of them are dead, but they're harder to recognize because the influence is pervasive and diluted.



Ingélou said:


> 3. What is your favourite 'ism' and why?


None. I like music of the 20th century in general. Although I suppose that contemporary Neoromanticism (Higdon, Corigliano) is less likely to appeal to me than other styles.



Ingélou said:


> 4. Who is the 'top composer' for your favourite ism?


My favorite composers of the 20th century are Mahler (Romanticism), Debussy (Impressionism), Stravinsky (Impressionism, Neoclassicism, Serialism), Schoenberg (Romanticism, Expressionism, Serialism), Messiaen (post-Impressionism), Bartok (Expressionism, post-Impressionism), and Takemitsu (Expressionism, post-Impressionism).

(The different styles of each composer are represented with separate links.)



Ingélou said:


> 5. Can 20th century classical music be summed up in any meaningful way, despite its diversity?


Post-tonal. Common practice tonality is no longer in effect, and composers had to find their own way.



Ingélou said:


> 6. Has 20th century classical music 'had its day' or lost its appeal for the cognoscenti? Or is it still very popular?


Even the "unpopular" composers are still played to this day. Many lesser populist composers have fallen by the wayside. I think it's just going to take time for some of the more difficult stuff to become accepted.



Ingélou said:


> 7. Is there one / are there two or three composers who would be worthy poster boys/girls for twentieth century music? Conversely, are there 20th century composers who are really throwbacks to earlier styles?


Stravinsky and Schoenberg carry the day for the first half of the 20th century, while the second half is harder to judge at this point, because it's very close to us...perhaps Messiaen and Cage.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Absolutely fabulous post, :angel: Mahlerian - thank you so much! :tiphat:


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

Ingélou, I have no favourite -ism. I listen to the composers I like. What -ism they are grouped into is irrelevant to me. Mahlerian's list of favourites is a _scant_ starting point, but I would imperatively _add_: Berg, Boulez, Carter, Dutilleux, Feldman, Hindemith, Ligeti, Lutosławski, Penderecki, Prokofiev, Schnittke, Shostakovich, Sibelius, Stockhausen, Varèse, Webern, Weill, Xenakis. I don't revere Cage like many others do. I feel that Xenakis was the man.


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## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

brotagonist said:


> Ingélou, I have no favourite -ism. I listen to the composers I like. What -ism they are grouped into is irrelevant to me. Mahlerian's list of favourites is a _scant_ starting point, but I would imperatively _add_: Berg, Boulez, Carter, Dutilleux, Feldman, Hindemith, Ligeti, Lutosławski, Penderecki, Prokofiev, Schnittke, Shostakovich, Sibelius, Stockhausen, Varèse, Webern, Weill, Xenakis. I don't revere Cage like many others do. I feel that Xenakis was the man.


The problem with Cage it is seems so many people revere the man over the music! I have yet to hear a masterpiece by the man.


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## Guest (Jan 15, 2014)

Well, be fair, he was a delightful human being.

As for the concept of "masterpiece," it is a nineteenth century concept, it had a brief time of hegemony until it was seriously questioned by creators. (And a lot of what we now call "masterpieces" were written before that concept had gotten any traction in the world of music.)

As for your having yet to hear a masterpiece by Cage, well, if you define masterpiece in such a way as to exclude all of his work, then it should be no surprise that you never hear any masterpieces in his oeuvre. And he would doubtless be fine with that. Regardless, he left behind an incredible body of work that continues to delight listeners and inspire other artists. With a track record like that, who needs masterpieces?

[You may be familiar with Feldman's remark: Down with masterpieces; up with art.)


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

Jobis said:


> The problem with Cage it is seems so many people revere the man over the music! I have yet to hear a masterpiece by the man.


I've only heard about 6-8 albums of his music. An indisputable classic is his _Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano_. For me, that pretty well sums him up. I feel he was too much into performance art and not enough into composing for me to take him seriously. That's the view of a listener, not a musician


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## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

some guy said:


> Well, be fair, he was a delightful human being.
> 
> As for the concept of "masterpiece," it is a nineteenth century concept, it had a brief time of hegemony until it was seriously questioned by creators. (And a lot of what we now call "masterpieces" were written before that concept had gotten any traction in the world of music.)
> 
> ...


I just meant that I haven't heard everything by him, and what I have heard didn't particularly impress me. Its not about scale or grandeur; I consider Schoenberg's op.19 a masterpiece in its own right, but well, not so with Cage (and here's the important part,) yet!


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## Guest (Jan 15, 2014)

Jobis said:


> yet!


Ah. Well, never mind, then.:lol: Carry on!:tiphat:


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Hi Ingélou,

I've posted these links before, but they may be useful to anyone who hasn't seen them:

"Classical Net" has a useful (i.e. short) list of "modern" composers of the last century, with names and recommended recordings of some of their works: http://www.classical.net/music/rep/lists/mod.php

Tom Service has a fuller guide to contemporary music, with write-ups on many of his favorite composers and links to representative works: http://www.theguardian.com/music/series/a-guide-to-contemporary-classical-music

If you plug any given composer into Youtube, you'll find other works by composers better and worse that are in one way or another similar--perhaps even inhabit the same "ism." However: it's when I find a work where there _isn't_ a link to something that sounds very similar that I know it's a keeper!

Happy exploring!


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Ingélou said:


> 1. Do some 'isms' follow on from each other, or from the music of the 19th century?


I don't know that much about music - I'm not an expert and don't mean to be taken for one - but I enjoy these questions, enjoy offering my thoughts and seeing what people have to say, so I'll butt in here as unapologetically as I can manage after this caveat.

My main interests are history and literature, and even in them I don't worry too much about the trail of meta- -isms. IMO, when the best authors and historians were doing their best work, they were usually actually writing stories or history books, not philosophizing about literature or history.

Sometimes I do get into the -isms, but I usually find that everything anyone could possible say is either too generalized/vague to be useful, or too specific to be useful, or wrong. All those artists who wrote manifestos should have stuck to painting instead of spewing fourth-rate philosophy, and (again, IMO) it's a big mistake to spend too much time worrying about what they manifestoed rather than enjoying their art.

I suspect that's true of music as well, and so I don't worry much about the -isms.

A great example right near the beginning of the trouble is Debussy. Someone labelled him an "impressionist" and the label stuck. Supposedly he didn't like the label but it stuck anyway. And it doesn't matter at all to me, because it doesn't tell me as much about his music as I learn in ten minutes of actually listening to _Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune_. After all, what does "impressionist" actually mean? It can be enjoyable to think about whether or in what sense "impressionist" might be a fitting label for that music, but that kind of thought really ought to remain "just for fun" since it can actually never be more than a semantic issue.

Of course for scholars who need to write monographs that is a wonderful situation, because they can go on at great length about -isms precisely because it's really nothing but BS. They can even work themselves up into astoundingly myopic rage and panic, as if the fate of billions hangs on whether we can distinguish between surrealism and magic realism. It's nonsense if you take it seriously, although I do sympathize with the unfortunate professor facing "publish or perish."

I'd be really surprised if something like that isn't also true of most or all of the -isms in 20th century music, so I'm not bothering to get really deep into them.



Ingélou said:


> 2. Are some of the isms alive & well - or being developed - in the 21st century?


To me (IMO IMO IMHO), the most prominent feature of contemporary art music is the assault on anything that might be construed as a barrier between genres. We can dub it anti-ism-ism. If someone out there thinks that classical and hip hop and Yoruba drumming and ambient are separate genres, then someone else out there is making music that is all of those things at once, with a bit of bluegrass and tango in there as well.

It's bigger than music. People in all of history have done syncretism, but we - the cultural elite of global capitalism, the consumers of art music - live in a self-consciously _global_ culture, and we are pushing for more of it (perhaps because more of it is in our financial and political interest). We take pride in the diversity of cuisines we've sampled, no longer even just Japanese and Mexican and Italian but now Thai and Brazilian and Greek and Mongolian and Ethiopian....

We read not just French and German and Russian and even Czech novels, but Indian and Argentinian and Chinese and Israeli and Turkish and Nigerian and Afghan ....

And then we cram it all together, Koreans read about reading _Lolita_ in Tehran, Japanese authors assimilating Czech influences title their books things like "Norwegian Wood" alluding to English songs, and pretty soon it's just a global culture with the nationalities reduced to spicy labels.

Or with the food, someone makes a kimchi burrito, someone else makes sushi pizza, and no one even blinks at green tea ice cream.

As it is the defining cultural issue of our time, so with music as well. No sooner than some little subculture or composer or whatever becomes known to have something like a distinct style, and someone else comes along and sets it to a Cuban dance beat with Tuvan throat singing, an oud, and an electric cello.

I'm being a bit silly, but this really seems to me to be the most significant thing that has been going on since about 1968, and especially since 1991 or so. Musicians like John Zorn, Yo-Yo Ma, Gidon Kremer, Kronos Quartet, Herbie Hancock; labels like ECM and Nonesuch - they're not going to come back to anything like straight classical for long before they'll be exploring some new fusion.

To the degree that we're still clinging to the traditional boundaries of "classical music" or "jazz" or "pop" or "folk" or even "electroaccoustic music" or any other label, we're behind the times. There's nothing wrong with that, but it is what it is. The present belongs to Sculthorpe's _Kakadu_ and Harrison's _Double Concerto for Violin, Cello and Javanese Gamelan_ and Shahrokh Yadegari's _Green Memories_ and the Hilliard Ensemble and Jan Garbarek's _Officium_ and whatever Savina Yannatou is doing on _Songs of an Other_. You've got to take two or three or seventeen distinct traditions, and cram them together.

It's been at a more popular level too, since the Beatles and Shankar doing "Within You Without You" (which led to less famous works like Shankar's Sitar Concerto). But again, it seems to have really picked up in the late -80s and early -90s, such as with Michael Cretu / Enigma and continuing right up to Selena Gomez's "Come and Get It."

BTW, minimalism (Glass, Adams, Reich, Pärt, etc.) has been huge in the same years, and I don't want to downplay that, but I think global-eclectic-fusion is a broader trend that has had and will continue to have more lasting significance. They're not entirely separate of course - and after all my main point here is that there can be no "entirely" separate now - Glass's _Aguas da Amazonia_ and his work with Ravi Shankar or Foday Musa Suso.



Ingélou said:


> 3. What is your favourite 'ism' and why?


Given my lack of respect for labels I've never put a thought into this. I'm going to cheat a bit and say "jazz." In this case "jazz" is my word for musicians doing whatever they think sounds good at the time, with fierce contempt for anyone's ideas about any of it, and utter unconcern about almost anything else.



Ingélou said:


> 4. Who is the 'top composer' for your favourite ism?


_THE_ top? If Miles Davis counts....

But you'll probably insist that he's been dead for over two decades and you're only a little more likely to let me name him a "top composer." So if I need to stick to the kind of thing I was talking about before...

off the top of my head...

maybe Tan Dun. Maybe Golijov. I'm not actually that into them, though. Gimme a week to think about it. Maybe Piazzolla, although obviously that's a fairly limited example.



Ingélou said:


> 5. Can 20th century classical music be summed up in any meaningful way, despite its diversity?


The drive to innovate. Its diversity stems from that.

That's up to '68, mostly.

Since '68 or so, which I was writing about earlier, that's actually in part a re-valuation of tradition. We haven't lost the ideal of innovation at all, but now we're much more conscious of traditions as contexts and sources. Things don't have to be "rebellions" anymore, they can be "explorations."



Ingélou said:


> 6. Has 20th century classical music 'had its day' or lost its appeal for the cognoscenti? Or is it still very popular?


IMO, it's as popular as it ever was, and more influential.



Ingélou said:


> 7. Is there one / are there two or three composers who would be worthy poster boys/girls for twentieth century music? Conversely, are there 20th century composers who are really throwbacks to earlier styles?


For 20th century (I'm thinking pre-1968-ish) music, I should concede to others' choice, Schoenberg and Stravinsky. If I get a third, it'd be Bartók; a fourth, Boulez. But really, I don't believe that. On the whole, those guys usually seem like late romantics to me (as if _Le Sacre du printemps_ is Debussy with a beat). It's all still tightly composer-controlled, it's all still bourgeois-audience-oriented, it's still mostly using instruments and notes and notation JS Bach would recognize.

For me it'd be guys like Cage and Stockhausen and Partch and Varèse and Nono. (Edit: What I meant here is, for guys like this, "tonal" was no longer even an issue. No longer could _anything at all_ be taken for granted about what music is.)

For post-1968.... Gunther Schuller, maybe. He's an early one, "third stream" (jazz-classical fusion). Really, jazz guys like Charles Mingus and Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock who refused to respect musical boundaries were key. More recently, Golijov is probably one of the best examples. He's hardly original in any way that would be respected by the old modernists; he basically just reworks various traditions (klezmer, tango, baroque opera) in ways that suit his purposes.

To me, the most traditional (for me this is not a bad word) major composers of the later 20th century are probably Shostakovich and Britten.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

:tiphat: Science..... w-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-wwww!

Very illuminating - I'll be mulling this over! I think you're dead right about syncretism. 
Fabulous. Thanks!


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

People always like to pigeon hole music into narrow styles. You see it so much in popular music now, and the end result is musicians end up contraining their creativity to write in a narrow way for some niche audience market. And those who's work that can't be categorised easily are more likely to be ignored even though they can often be more creative. And the typical thread you get on all kinds of music forums is 'I want a piece that sounds similar to...' which helps perpetuate this narrow approach.


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

Jobis said:


> The problem with Cage it is seems so many people revere the man over the music!


I think you misspelled 'revile'.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

Ingelou --

You're asking some of the right questions, but from too narrow a focus. 20th century music cannot be divorced from the other arts, sciences, and various zeitgeist and social forces. If you had to name three significant "forks" they would probably consist of the social and economic dislocations occasioned by WWI, the disruption of the cozy, regular Newtonian universe by relativity, quantum indeterminacy, and mathematical undecidability, and the social forces unloosed by the recovery from WWII. Note how the arts -- music, art, literature, poetry, theatre -- were all thrown into a turmoil by these, and in many cases their responses paralleled each other. To divorce or separate the various musical isms from those that fragmented art (Impressionism, cubism, surrealism, expressionism, abstract expressionism, pop, op, super-realism), theatre (expressionism, theatre of cruelty, Theatre of the absurd, Pinterism . . .), literature (stream of consciousness, surrealism), poetry (symbolism, erudite didacticism (Eliot, Pound...)), modern dance, etc. neglects how interrelated the mutual search for new ways of expression was. And they were all largely a response to how the world was falling apart in the first half of the twentieth century and how it tried to reconfigure itself during the second half.

Each "ism" was a response based on the personality and predilections of the composer(s) involved. Yes, you needed music to be brought up to the point where this fragmentation could occur (in the same way scientific thought needed to be brought to a point where either the end was in sight, or some significant monkey wrench could be thrown into the works) but the unleashing of these forces was historically unprecedented ( at least since the Renaissance). Impressionism, Expressionism (primarily driven by free atonality), structured (12-note, serialism), nostalgia (neo-classicism -- the eighteenth century through a cracked mirror), aleatory, minimalism, neo-romantic, electronic -- each has parallels somewhere in art/literature/theatre/poetry. And this wondrous diversity of expression, however it arose, is the thing that makes the 20th century an absolute gold mine of artistic expression. Dip into it anywhere, and if you don't like it, as Mark Twain said about New England weather, wait a minute.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

SimonNZ said:


> I think of the two composers who have had the most influence in recent times, the ones I'm constantly finding connections to in the work of others and whose ideas and influence is still felt as a work in progress even after their death are Messiaen and Takemitsu. They would be my "poster boys".


I concur--and I think that Messiaen in particular deserves to have a school named after him. May I suggest "Messianism"?

It sounds appropriate, somehow.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

I have had something on my mind about 20th century "isms" lately and I think this is a good thread to talk about it. Sorry, forgive me for not addressing any of the particular questions.

It has struck me that some of the "isms" do not denote the same kind of thing so they are hard to compare. For example, serialism is a word that describes a compositional process or technique. It's the compositional technique of putting notes and other various musical aspects in a particular order and using that order to manipulate the development of the composition. I've heard some people use the word "tonalism" before and I suppose (if we're talking about common practice tonality) this would also be describing a compositional process.

However, "Expressionism" for example does not denote a particular compositional process, instead it is descriptive of a certain musical aesthetic that, much like impressionism, has an aesthetic connection with the visual arts. 

Then there are things like Minimalism, which is both at different times. Sometimes minimalism refers to a musical process, one of repeating phrases with small changes over time that make up a slow evolution of the musical ideas. But sometimes I see minimalism used in a way that seems to define it in a broader way. As some vague return to "more tonal" elements in music. Used in this way it would be describing more a musical aesthetic.

Neo-classicalism is also somewhere in between. It is mostly descriptive of a sort of anti-Romantic musical aesthetic, so it has something in common with impressionism or expressionism in that way (both being descriptive of an aesthetic). But unlike impressionism or expressionism, neo-classicalism also implies some return to older musical forms and compositional processes, whereas impressionism has no particular form or process attached to it at all as far as I'm aware. 

I suppose that there are certain compositional processes that need to happen in order to achieve the musical aesthetic that expressionism or impressionism denotes but they aren't as specific as in serialism and the descriptors, I feel, are not describing the process but the sound.


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

violadude said:


> Then there are things like Minimalism, which is both at different times. Sometimes minimalism refers to a musical process, one of repeating phrases with small changes over time that make up a slow evolution of the musical ideas. But sometimes I see minimalism used in a way that seems to define it in a broader way. As some vague return to "more tonal" elements in music. Used in this way it would be describing more a musical aesthetic.


The latter usage seems to come from a desire to put Pärt, Górecki, and Tavener in the same school as Glass and Reich, which makes no sense to me.


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## Guest (Jan 16, 2014)

Minimalism was applied to music after it had been used to describe painting and architecture and literature.

That first usage had nothing at all to do with repetition or even with phase music. It was simply descriptive. Music stripped down to bare fundamentals. An opera with only four notes. A piece with only one pitch. A piece with no notated sounds. Pieces made up of long drones. Pieces made by setting up a microphone somewhere and turning on the recorder. (It's not quite this simple, but many of these pieces are made to sound as if it were this simple.) 

The earliest pieces to be called "minimal" were more static than anything else. Nothing much happens ("Piano piece, 1962/A vase of flowers/On(to) a piano), and it often happens for a long, long time. ("Draw a straight line and follow it.") Only later did the repetition stuff enter into it. And since that music got a lot more publicity, the idea that minimal means repetitious took hold. And it don't look like it's gonna let go any time soon, either. It's the bulldog theory of musical terminology.


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