# The Semantics/Definitions of the terms, 'Modern' and 'Contemporary' Music



## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

In the current thread, Beethoven vs. Cage, there appears to be different opinions as what kind of music falls variably under the umbrella of 'Modern' and 'Contemporary' Music. It was mentioned that there is an interesting discussion to be had here. I agree.

The use/misuse of these terms may be one of the reasons why there are disagreements between more conservative vs. less conservative listeners (for want of a better description). I am not a fan of much of the music starting generally in the 20th century, particularly music described as serialism, atonal or even avant-garde and experimental. On the other hand, I might like some of the music that has been described as tending towards tonalism. But, if I say that I don't like modern or contemporary music, I'm throwing everything out using (what appears to be) present usage.

So, what do people mean by the terms 'modern', contemporary, avant-garde, experimental, almost tonal or actual tonal and where do these categories and sub-categories fit? (Btw, it does occur to me that some of the music that is called tonal these days is somewhat different from pre-20th century tonal music, at least to my ears.)

I have no agenda here. I'm here to be educated- schooled if you like.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

I think contemporary music is defined more clearly than modern music. I see many people using the timeframe 1975-present for contemporary music. Some view it as music by living composers although by that standard Boulez's music would have been contemporary up through last year. Modern music is sometimes seen as starting with Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1894), but of course many composers generally not viewed as modern composed well past that date. I think it will be a bit difficult to get a good general definition for modern music.

Many on TC have said that when discussing music categories (modern, atonal, avant-garde, etc.) it's much better to give examples. If one wishes to say they don't enjoy modern music maybe they can say they don't like the music of composers such as Boulez, Varese, Stockhausen, Messiaen, etc.. That way others may not wonder if the discussion includes Glass, Sibelius, or Adams.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

mmsbls said:


> I think contemporary music is defined more clearly than modern music. I see many people using the timeframe 1975-present for contemporary music...


By that standard, very early Haydn, still unheard by the 9-year old Mozart, would have been considered "contemporary music" while Beethoven was busy writing his 5th Symphony.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

DaveM said:


> The use/misuse of these terms may be one of the reasons why there are disagreements between more conservative vs. less conservative listeners (for want of a better description). I am not a fan of much of the music starting generally in the 20th century, particularly music described as serialism, atonal or even avant-garde and experimental. On the other hand, I might like some of the music that has been described as tending towards tonalism. But, if I say that I don't like modern or contemporary music, I'm throwing everything out using (what appears to be) present usage.


Then you should say that you like _reactionary_ music.


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## Guest (Aug 3, 2017)

Most people have no problem distinguishing between Classical (the period) and classical (the genre). Why not capitalise if what is meant is Modern (the period, roughly, 1880-1950) and not modern (now, or within the last 20 years)?

Besides, the carelessness is not so much about definitions, but about the tendency of some to make sweeping statements about Modern or modern that begin and end with "I don't like...", or "Modern is all..." appearing to allow for no exceptions.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

People who complain about "modern music" (or who complain about people who don't like it) forget that most of the music of any age has always been forgettable and, at best, mediocre. All the blather is meaningless unless addressing specific works or specific composers.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

When I was collating the results of my composer polls I was faced with the problem of how to define "modern" music. In the end I settled for a purely chronological decision - a "modern" composer was anyone born from 1920 onwards, which in practice means anyone who reached adulthood during or after WW2. Of course this is just as arbitrary as any other cutoff point.
And yes, this means I don't consider Schoenberg, Debussy or Stravinsky as being "modern" composers. They were modern for their time, but the term's outlived its usefulness by now.
As for "contemporary", I tend to use that as mmsbls says, referring to the mid-1970s onward (slightly less than my lifetime, so it's contemporary with me). Ruling out some of the older contemporary music, I will say "new music" or "recent music" or "21st-century music".

I think it can also be useful to distinguish between "modern" as a chronological entity (however you define it) and "modernist" music as a subset of that. Again, each individual will have their own way of defining that, but it may help reduce some confusion.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

MacLeod said:


> Most people have no problem distinguishing between Classical (the period) and classical (the genre). Why not capitalise if what is meant is Modern (the period, roughly, 1880-1950) and not modern (now, or within the last 20 years)?
> 
> Besides, the carelessness is not so much about definitions, but about the tendency of some to make sweeping statements about Modern or modern that begin and end with "I don't like...", or "Modern is all..." appearing to allow for no exceptions.


From my vantage point, sweeping statements are more likely to be made if terms such as 'modern' are unclear. I've seen 'Modern music' used on this forum to refer to everything from 4 or 5 decades following the Romantic era to the entire period from the Romantic to the present. Perhaps if the terminology is clarified, statements won't be as broad.


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

Modern: 19th and 20th century
Modernist: 20th century
Post-modern: 1968 -
Contemporary: 1975(?) - (which is thus usually post-modern music but there are exceptions, e.g. Ferneyhough is modernist so basically regressive or retro...)


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Modern — Early-mid 20thc. (mmsbls' 1894 is a date often cited.)
Modernist — means something different, a style rather than an era. (See Nereffid's last paragraph ^ ^ ^) 
Contemporary — Now (I like MacLeod's last 20 years, but opinions will vary.)
Avant-garde — This is a moving target, anything on the cutting edge
Experimental — Outside standard techniques, technologies, and tunings?

What makes the music of the Modern Era different from nearly all earlier eras is its eclecticism. It is not unified by a single or dominant style. If you want to say you don't like modern music, you are probably throwing a brood of babies out with the bath water. I like Ken's advice: to get more specific and cite works or composers.

DaveM — Your impression that modern tonal, extended tonal, and freely triadic music (the kind only Neo-Riemannian theory can address) is different than earlier tonal music is correct. And there are a number of different strands of this modern tonalish music that would take some serious theory to disentangle. Way too big a topic for this thread.


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

EdwardBast said:


> What makes the music of the Modern Era different from nearly all earlier eras is its eclecticism. It is not unified by a single or dominant style.


I would say that in modernism art is not (yet) eclectic but that it contains all kind of different 'truths' that compete with each other. Only in post-modernism 'truth' is thrown out of the window so artists start to eclecticly mix all genres (from the past and from the present, from the high brow art tradition to cartoons and other 'low culture' ).


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

mmsbls said:


> I think contemporary music is defined more clearly than modern music. I see many people using the timeframe 1975-present for contemporary music. Some view it as music by living composers although by that standard Boulez's music would have been contemporary up through last year. Modern music is sometimes seen as starting with Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1894), but of course many composers generally not viewed as modern composed well past that date. I think it will be a bit difficult to get a good general definition for modern music.
> 
> Many on TC have said that when discussing music categories (modern, atonal, avant-garde, etc.) it's much better to give examples. If one wishes to say they don't enjoy modern music maybe they can say they don't like the music of composers such as Boulez, Varese, Stockhausen, Messiaen, etc.. That way others may not wonder if the discussion includes Glass, Sibelius, or Adams.


Yes, agreed on all counts. As I said in the other thread, the arbitrary 75 year intervals, 1675-1750 (Baroque), 1750-1825 (classical), 1825-1900 (romantic) and now perhaps 1900-1975 (why not?) modern and 1975-present (contemporary) roughly correspond to some actual key landmarks in western music history such as Debussy's l'apres-midi d'un faun of 1894, the death of J.S. Bach in 1750, the death of Beethoven in 1827, Stravinsky's l'Oiseau de feu in 1910, Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach in 1975, which is a landmark of minimalism, a major post-modernist genre, etc., etc.
But these categories at most can only signify a time period during which certain musical trends or features were most prevalent or prominent. They cannot necessarily be pinned on every significant piece of music that happens to fall within their dates.


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## Guest (Aug 3, 2017)

Agamemnon said:


> I would say that in *modernism *art is not (yet) eclectic but that it contains all kind of different 'truths' that compete with each other. Only in *post-modernism *'truth' is thrown out of the window so artists start to eclecticly mix all genres (from the past and from the present, from the high brow art tradition to cartoons and other 'low culture' ).


You quote Edward Bast, but he was careful to set aside 'modernism' (a style not an era) and he made no mention of post-modernism at all. He referred to the electicism of the Modern Era, by which I take him to mean both modern and contemporary - from early 20th C to today - and including avant-garde and experimental. That looks like an eclectic mix to me.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

KenOC said:


> People who complain about "modern music" (or who complain about people who don't like it) forget that most of the music of any age has always been forgettable and, at best, mediocre. All the blather is meaningless unless addressing specific works or specific composers.


I feel almost the opposite of what you're suggesting here. That's to say I fear that the best music is being forgotten! And the mediocre is what remains in people's minds.

I've been listening to some Harbison. While thinking of all the excitement a thread here about Arvo Pärt caused.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

MacLeod said:


> You quote Edward Bast, but he was careful to set aside 'modernism' (a style not an era) and he made no mention of post-modernism at all. He referred to the electicism of the Modern Era, by which I take him to mean both modern and contemporary - from early 20th C to today - and including avant-garde and experimental. That looks like an eclectic mix to me.


I interpreted Agamemnon's comment to mean that modernist eclecticism took the form of composers swearing allegiance to their own styles, with everyone racing to the patent office to lay claim to their own -ism (think of Schoenberg heaping scorn on neoclassicism and Stravinsky trying--futilely--to resist serialism); whereas postmodern eclecticism is the kind in which different styles are to be found in a single composer, often in a single composition (think of Schittke's concerto grossos, where Baroque canons, Alberti basses, tone clusters, and tone rows all rub shoulders with each other).


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## Guest (Aug 3, 2017)

Eschbeg said:


> I interpreted Agamemnon's comment to mean


I'm not quite sure what I took their comment to mean. What I wanted to warn of was that while trying to come to some agreement about what we mean by 'modern', we should steer clear of confusing it with 'modernism'.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

MacLeod said:


> What I wanted to warn of was that while trying to come to some agreement about what we mean by 'modern', we should steer clear of confusing it with 'modernism'.


I'll second that.


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

Eschbeg said:


> I interpreted Agamemnon's comment to mean that modernist eclecticism took the form of composers swearing allegiance to their own styles, with everyone racing to the patent office to lay claim to their own -ism (think of Schoenberg heaping scorn on neoclassicism and Stravinsky trying--futilely--to resist serialism); whereas postmodern eclecticism is the kind in which different styles are to be found in a single composer, often in a single composition (think of Schittke's concerto grossos, where Baroque canons, Alberti basses, tone clusters, and tone rows all rub shoulders with each other).


Exactly! 

And yes, I took "Modern Era" for the modernist era (especially the first half of the 20th century) because then a lot of different -isms came about. You can say that therefore this era is eclectic but I don't agree with that: 'eclectic' means taking different styles together by one work or one artist. This was usually not done in the modernist (or modern) era.


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## Guest (Aug 3, 2017)

DaveM said:


> From my vantage point, sweeping statements are more likely to be made if terms such as 'modern' are unclear. I've seen 'Modern music' used on this forum to refer to everything from 4 or 5 decades following the Romantic era to the entire period from the Romantic to the present. Perhaps if the terminology is clarified, statements won't be as broad.


I don't think any amount of defining and clarity of terms made any difference to this thread, with an OP that asks what we hate about contemporary music. Somewhere in there is indeed a discussion of what was meant by contemporary, but no matter how narrowly or broadly interpreted, it didn't stop some responding with enthusiasm to the generalisation. For example, from four different posters:



> The random noise





> its lack of talent & professionalism.





> One thing that bothers me about a lot of distinguished contemporary composers is their alienation from vernacular song.





> It is not that I hate contemporary music but there is so much music by the greats of the past to listen to. There is only a limited amount of time.


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## Guest (Aug 3, 2017)

Agamemnon said:


> Exactly!
> 
> And yes, I took "Modern Era" for the modernist era (especially the first half of the 20th century) because then a lot of different -isms came about. You can say that therefore this era is eclectic but I don't agree with that: 'eclectic' means taking different styles together by one work or one artist. This was usually not done in the modernist (or modern) era.


So, may I request that you don't take Modern Era for the modernist era - that's expressly not what was meant - and 'eclectic' simply means



> Deriving ideas, style, or taste from a broad and diverse range of sources


No mention of the number of artists.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

DaveM said:


> So, what do people mean by the terms 'modern', contemporary, *avant-garde*, experimental, almost tonal or actual tonal


Of these, "avant-garde" is actually the one I find the most drained of meaning and/or the one that has been most misused. This is probably because I'm still clinging to the original sense of the term, but it seems to me that an avant-garde by definition is a rejection of some kind of "establishment," usually an actual institutional one. That's why it's puzzling to see the term applied to composers like George Crumb, Elliott Carter, Mario Davidovsky, Donald Martino, or David del Tredici--all of whom have won Pulitzer Prizes and some of whom held Ivy League professorships. If official prizes and cushy academic positions are not an "establishment," I don't know what is.


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## Omicron9 (Oct 13, 2016)

This is just me, but I think of "modern" as being 20th century. I think of "contemporary" as being of the moment; more specifically, living composers. 

In other words, this has nothing to do with -isms or schools or movements. It's more of a chronological categorization.

Again, that's just me.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Modernism heads in a certain direction, it is constructive. Postmodern points only to itself, destructive, the end-all. That is why Rihm and a few others are trying to move music back to to expanding constructivism. Postmodern composers are still trying to be original, but you can only react (riot) so much to a previous system, and when the system is dead you have to move on.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Phil loves classical said:


> Modernism heads in a certain direction, it is constructive. Postmodern points only to itself, destructive, the end-all.


On the other hand, the critic who did more than maybe anyone else to canonize modernism, Clement Greenberg, offered this definition of modernism that seems to say something like the reverse: "The essence of Modernism lies, as I see it, in the use of characteristic methods of a discipline to criticise the discipline itself... Modernism criticizes from the inside, through the procedures themselves of that which is being criticized."


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Eschbeg said:


> On the other hand, the critic who did more than maybe anyone else to canonize modernism, Clement Greenberg, offered this definition of modernism that seems to say something like the reverse: "The essence of Modernism lies, as I see it, in the use of characteristic methods of a discipline to criticise the discipline itself... Modernism criticizes from the inside, through the procedures themselves of that which is being criticized."


I believe he was referring to the traditional common practice which Modernism was criticizing, and trying to offer new directions on. I read another comment Modernism offers new directions from the old traditional procedures. Best by example, is Schoenberg was a Modern composer, while I believe Cage and Ferneyhough are PostModern. And Mahler and some others, even in the 20th Century were traditional common practice, although they had a hand in progressive tonality.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

This is never going to work if you get a queue of people each one saying: "This is how I define modern and this how I define contemporary". That is the route back to square one.

There's no mystery to this. 'Contemporary' in _contemporary_ music is being used in the same way it is used everywhere else as an adjective - unless it is specified as referring to something happening at the same time in another time/era (e.g. contemporary ideas in 1930s architecture). So: Bach and Handel were _contemporaries_ (of the baroque period), but are not writing contemporary music because the word used like that refers to now, to the present, to the experience of recent memory and practice and ideas.

_Modern_ is the more slippery term. In the history of ideas 'the modern period' can be justly described as 'From Descartes onward' or 'from the renaissance'. This always strikes people as odd. From our point in time it's going to appear odder and odder when we refer to the turn of the last century as the period of 'modern' music. The problem is that output diversified so much due to a breakdown in rules and style that it has defied an all-encompassing term; instead there are 'modern' composers being labelled or self-identifying with all manner of descriptions: neo-classical; atonal; neo-romantic; serialist; polystylist... Contemporary music may well incorporate parts of all of these influences.

Sometimes it's not possible to have neat little categories for everything and we have to be content with broad generalisations and then expanding upon them when necessary.

Using general terms is extremely handy.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

MacLeod said:


> 'modernism' (a style not an era)


I can't agree with this at all. Modernism, at least as characterized by its most (imo) articulate and insightful commentators, was an era encompassing numerous and often highly contrasting styles of music, literature, theater, the visual arts, architecture, and even home furnishings and jewelry and other things too (ed.: I should have mentioned industrial and graphic design). To me, the most consistent underlying principle of modernism is that it nearly always involved a clean and dramatic break with long-established conventions and traditions, many several centuries old, and often drew inspiration from or made reference to the new, post-industrial, technology-based society.

Great advances in technology is what made the 20th century profoundly different from all previous centuries of human society. Modernism was largely a reaction to and a reflection of that profound, jarring change. Therefore, it is no coincidence that modern art, including and maybe especially the most effective modern art, can be disturbing to some.


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

eugeneonagain said:


> _Modern_ is the more slippery term. In the history of ideas 'the modern period' can be justly described as 'From Descartes onward' or 'from the renaissance'.


Since I've read Hegel I think that modernity started around 100 AD because modernity is christianity... But because it was very hard to incorporate christian faith in the well established ancient culture it took the whole Middle Ages as a transition period to get to truly christian thus modern culture (Descartes)... and actually the christian revolution is still not over and every new century is more christian than the previous century... In music things even are more complicated (or maybe simpler) because we don't have compositions by Pythagoras or other ancients and don't know much about truly 'classical' music at all. But because the 18th century was some kinda neo-classical period - artists trying to imitate the ancients or (in music) to apply classical standards - we can say that modernity (christian culture) really started with Romanticism (19th century).

About contemporary music: I like the definition of it as the music by living composers. So if the composer is still alive then his music is contemporary.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Eschbeg said:


> Of these, "avant-garde" is actually the one I find the most drained of meaning and/or the one that has been most misused. This is probably because I'm still clinging to the original sense of the term, but it seems to me that an avant-garde by definition is a rejection of some kind of "establishment," usually an actual institutional one. That's why it's puzzling to see the term applied to composers like George Crumb, Elliott Carter, Mario Davidovsky, Donald Martino, or David del Tredici--all of whom have won Pulitzer Prizes and some of whom held Ivy League professorships. If official prizes and cushy academic positions are not an "establishment," I don't know what is.


I had the great pleasure of meeting both Mario Davidovsky and David del Tredici, two of the nicest, most good-natued and good-humored and unassuming (and brilliant) people you could ever meet. In fact, all of the composers you mention may be part of an "establishment" in terms of the honors and recognition they have received, but in terms of wealth, power, and control over major cultural institutions -- hardly.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Agamemnon said:


> Since I've read Hegel I think that modernity started around 100 AD because modernity is christianity... But because it was very hard to incorporate christian faith in the well established ancient culture it took the whole Middle Ages as a transition period to get to truly christian thus modern culture (Descartes)... and actually the christian revolution is still not over and every new century is more christian than the previous century... In music things even are more complicated (or maybe simpler) because we don't have compositions by Pythagoras or other ancients and don't know much about truly 'classical' music at all. But because the 18th century was some kinda neo-classical period - artists trying to imitate the ancients or (in music) to apply classical standards - we can say that modernity (christian culture) really started with Romanticism (19th century).
> 
> About contemporary music: I like the definition of it as the music by living composers. So if the composer is still alive then his music is contemporary.


Fair enough, but "modernism" can mean and has meant any number of things, which is why I think it convenient here to use the term for 20th-century modernism, or perhaps early- and mid-20th century modernism, as I have described it. And again, one can assign dates to the era without necessarily implying that the term applies with equal force to everything within those dates.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Agamemnon said:


> and actually the christian revolution is still not over and every new century is more christian than the previous century...


This is probably for another thread (or another forum) but the 'christian culture' as a unified thing is well and truly over. There are fragments that remain, but many of them were originally just subsumed by 'christian culture' in the first place.


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## Guest (Aug 3, 2017)

fluteman said:


> I can't agree with this at all. [etc...


You don't have to of course. I was referring to what Edward Bast had posted. I was not making the claim myself. However, since 'making a break from tradition' can happen (and does happen) in more than one period, it seems obvious that it can no longer be tied to a single era.

My background is literature. I know what 'Modernism' was and when it was (in my field). The word 'contemporary' is a red herring and need not trouble us - though as eugene says, if all we end up with as a queue of people saying - and insisting - on what these terms mean for themselves,we won't get far.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

MacLeod said:


> The word 'contemporary' is a red herring and need not trouble us - though as eugene says, if all we end up with as a queue of people saying - and insisting - on what these terms mean for themselves,we won't get far.


Someone here suggested "contemporary" means work by living artists, a common and I think reasonably workable definition. Another suggested applying it to works dating after 1975. That definition works well enough for me too. You might also call that the "post-modern" era. So I'm easy to convince! ;-) Where one gets into trouble is in trying to rigidly define qualitative characteristics of "contemporary" or "modern" music and then fighting over whether this or that piece of music qualifies. Better to define the time frame and then see if a lot, not necessarily all, of music in that time frame has certain common characteristics. That's what I tried to do in my post above for the "modern" era.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Phil loves classical said:


> I believe he was referring to the traditional common practice which Modernism was criticizing, and trying to offer new directions on.


That's not quite Greenberg's claim. He isn't saying modernism is a critique of prior eras, specifically; he's saying it's a critique of the actual enterprise of art: its techniques, its materials, its goals, regardless of era. He's saying modernism is a critique of what it means and/or what it accomplishes to put paint on a canvas. This is why some art historians place the origins of modernism in the 1840s - 1860s, to Courbet and Manet, whose paintings are often described as being "about" painting rather than being about the actual images their paintings depict. These works, so the argument goes, have far more interesting things to say about flatness, proportion, and brushstrokes than they do about landscapes, bowls of fruit, and nude women. It's basically art that takes itself as its subject matter, art "pointing to itself," as you said of postmodernism.

Not that we have to take Greenberg's definition of modernism seriously, but a lot of music historians have. It's for the same reasons as Greenberg that Theodor Adorno described Schoenberg's tone rows not just as a method for structuring music in the absence of tonality but as "commentaries" on the death of tonality. 12-tone music was "about" the dissolution of music's organizational principles in the same way that cubism was "about" the dissolution of representation in the 20th century. It's also why Adorno was so contemptuous of Stravinsky's neoclassical works, which not only resurrected older styles of music without any substantive "comment" on them but also seemed totally oblivious to the crisis of music's materials that any respectable twentieth century composer ought to have been concerned about.

Anyway, the most persuasive definition of modernism I've encountered-one, I admit, that has absolutely no chance of being commonly adopted due to its quirkiness-is that the term is more a style of criticism than a style of music and/or art. It's a set of assumptions and biases we bring to discussions of music rather than stylistic features of the music itself. For example, it is common to view 20th century music as a rejection of romanticism, even though from a historical perspective there is at least as much continuity as disruption between the two eras. To take just a few examples: Greenberg's notion of art turning inward to its own materials is at least as old as 1854, the year of Hansllick's _On the Beautiful in Music_, if not 1790, the year of Kant's _Critique of Judgment_. The 20th (and 21st) century preference to view music and art as separate from its political and social contexts comes right out of Schopenhauer. And the mystical inspiration behind Schoenberg's 12-tone music has always been among the most notorious open secrets of modernism. But if discussions on TC are any indication, it is still our preference to view the 20th century as fundamentally unromantic if not antiromantic. So according to this quirky understanding of modernism, what makes Schoenberg a modernist is not that he was a complete break from the past, but that we portray him as one because of our preferred way of telling the story of the 20th century. Again, I'll freely admit how impractical this definition of modernism is, but it still makes much more sense to me than the ones that try to unite Debussy, Ives, Bartok, and Webern under a common banner.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Agamemnon said:


> Exactly!
> 
> And yes, I took "Modern Era" for the modernist era (especially the first half of the 20th century) because then a lot of different -isms came about. You can say that therefore this era is eclectic but I don't agree with that: *'eclectic' means taking different styles together by one work or one artist. *This was usually not done in the modernist (or modern) era.


No, it doesn't. Eclectic is not some specialized musical term, it is a garden variety adjective. When applied to the music of an entire era, which was the context under discussion, it means a wide variety of different styles and vocabularies in play at the same time, as in Rachmaninoff, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Sibelius, Poulenc, Bartok, Webern, Vaughan-Williams, Prokofiev, Ravel, etc.


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## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

This thread only needs one reply: like anything else, those terms mean multiple things in different contexts


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Eschbeg said:


> That's not quite Greenberg's claim. He isn't saying modernism is a critique of prior eras, specifically; he's saying it's a critique of the actual enterprise of art: its techniques, its materials, its goals, regardless of era. He's saying modernism is a critique of what it means and/or what it accomplishes to put paint on a canvas. This is why some art historians place the origins of modernism in the 1840s - 1860s, to Courbet and Manet, whose paintings are often described as being "about" painting rather than being about the actual images their paintings depict. These works, so the argument goes, have far more interesting things to say about flatness, proportion, and brushstrokes than they do about landscapes, bowls of fruit, and nude women. It's basically art that takes itself as its subject matter, art "pointing to itself," as you said of postmodernism.
> 
> Not that we have to take Greenberg's definition of modernism seriously, but a lot of music historians have. *It's for the same reasons as Greenberg that Theodor Adorno described Schoenberg's tone rows not just as a method for structuring music in the absence of tonality but as "commentaries" on the death of tonality. *12-tone music was "about" the dissolution of music's organizational principles in the same way that cubism was "about" the dissolution of representation in the 20th century. It's also why Adorno was so contemptuous of Stravinsky's neoclassical works, which not only resurrected older styles of music without any substantive "comment" on them but also seemed totally oblivious to the crisis of music's materials that any respectable twentieth century composer ought to have been concerned about.
> 
> Anyway, the most persuasive definition of modernism I've encountered-one, I admit, that has absolutely no chance of being commonly adopted due to its quirkiness-is that the term is more a style of criticism than a style of music and/or art. It's a set of assumptions and biases we bring to discussions of music rather than stylistic features of the music itself. For example, it is common to view 20th century music as a rejection of romanticism, even though from a historical perspective there is at least as much continuity as disruption between the two eras. To take just a few examples: Greenberg's notion of art turning inward to its own materials is at least as old as 1854, the year of Hansllick's _On the Beautiful in Music_, if not 1790, the year of Kant's _Critique of Judgment_. The 20th (and 21st) century preference to view music and art as separate from its political and social contexts comes right out of Schopenhauer. And the mystical inspiration behind Schoenberg's 12-tone music has always been among the most notorious open secrets of modernism. But if discussions on TC are any indication, it is still our preference to view the 20th century as fundamentally unromantic if not antiromantic. So according to this quirky understanding of modernism, what makes Schoenberg a modernist is not that he was a complete break from the past, but that we portray him as one because of our preferred way of telling the story of the 20th century. Again, I'll freely admit how impractical this definition of modernism is, but it still makes much more sense to me than the ones that try to unite Debussy, Ives, Bartok, and Webern under a common banner.


Nicely done! ^ ^ ^

Alas for the commentators, tonality only died in their imaginations. It was in continuous use throughout the whole Modern Era and beyond.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Modern is a subset of contemporary. The latter has a wider time span cover the former. Exactly what that time span is, is a matter of opinion to some extent. Suffice to say the 1950's and 60's music of say John Cage is not modern in the sense used now, and at best might be "contemporary", if not excluded altogether. So the line in the sand is perhaps post 1970, giving a 50 year span for "contemporary".


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## Guest (Aug 4, 2017)

ArtMusic said:


> Modern is a subset of contemporary.


Not in my vocabulary it isn't - either for describing music or for more general use.



> 1 Living or occurring at the same time.
> 1.1 Dating from the same time.
> 2 Belonging to or occurring in the present.
> 2.1 Following modern ideas in style or design


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

MacLeod said:


> Not in my vocabulary it isn't - either for describing music or for more general use.


Right. And as soon as one tries to make the definition more narrow or specific, one runs into semantic debates and confusion. That's why it's probably better to pick specific dates, however arbitrary, and be done with it.


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## mathisdermaler (Mar 29, 2017)

For me:

Modern: ~1890-WWII

Contemporary: WWII-Present


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## Timothy (Jul 19, 2017)

It depends on which music you are talking about


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

_Definition of terms and rough approximations:_

-- avant-garde - the latest in cutting-edge new music and previously untried experiments; 
-- contemporary - the composer is still living and the style is not necessarily modern but could be modern; 
-- modern - can include contemporary or 20th and 21st century music, or composers who started in the 19th-century but continued to compose into the 20th; 
-- experimental - experimental for the time it was written, usually 20th or 21st century works; 
-- tonal - music before Schoenberg and his colleagues; 
-- atonal - music of the 2nd Viennese School (Schoenberg, Webern, Berg), its later branches and offshoots; composers whose techniques were influenced by them

The biggest confusion is between _contemporary_ and _modern_. If one goes as far back as after World War II and refers to that as "contemporary", that's over 70 years ago; but even going that far back in time could still be defined as "modern"; contemporary is generally thought of as a living composer or perhaps stretching it to composers who wrote works during one's lifetime, assuming that one is still alive. 

Sometimes it may be easier to go by composers than by trying to define the music by approximate years. I consider _modern_ as being far more wide ranging in time than _contemporary_. The strict definition of _contemporary_ is "belonging to or occurring in the present," and far too often it's not being used that way.

The word _modern_ is sometimes related to the present, but I prefer the definition of "a person who advocates or practices a departure from traditional styles or values," and that frees its use beyond a specific time period; and that could include a composer such as Debussy that I would no longer consider a contemporary composer.

_One man's opinion_.


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