# Atonal, Avant-Garde, and other Modern Music Classifications



## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Classical music encompasses everything from Renaissance (and earlier) through modern music including atonal and avant-garde music. There are classifications (Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Modern); nevertheless, the range of music under the general term "classical" is quite broad. Some people use the term "art music" defined in Wikipedia as "an umbrella term used to refer to musical traditions implying advanced structural and theoretical considerations and a written musical tradition. Art music is distinguished from folk and popular music. Clearly atonal and avant-garde would fall under "art music". Incidentally, I'm not sure where jazz fits into this "axiomatic triangle" of art, folk, and popular.

I'm interested in how different people think the various classifications (periods) of classical music are. In my (relatively uneducated) view, Renaissance differs significantly from Baroque, and Baroque differs significantly from Classical. Classical and Romantic are more closely related than any other classifications. Finally modern atonal and modern avant-garde differ perhaps the most from other classifications. I realize I have mixed up periods and classifications, but I don't know how else to refer to the specific music.

Another issue involves the present divergence of styles/classifications. Contemporary art music includes atonal, neo-Romantic, avant-garde, electronic, other (?) styles. To me these seem quite dissimilar. Has there ever been a period when one type of music (art, folk, popular) had such divergent styles? In some sense "modern music" is an umbrella term which includes all these styles. When we look back to the 1800's (roughly), we speak of Romantic music. When future people look back on the 1900's (again roughly), will they use one term (probably not "modern") or will they refer to several different styles/classifications?

I wouldn't be surprised if my use of some of the above terms is slightly inaccurate. Hopefully people will understand the general thrust of my questions.


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

The most passionate avant-garde admirer member here calls it "non-pop". You can do a search for "non-pop" to read other thoughts of his about "non-pop" music/sound effects etc. It's rather bemusing to me. 

I prefer to think of it as a period of "everything goes". You did raise a very interesting question regarding what the future might call this period. I'll leave it to the "non-pop" admirers to figure it out, but chances are they won't think it is at least a bit worth thinking about as much as you have.


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## jalex (Aug 21, 2011)

deletedn...


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> The most passionate avant-garde admirer member here calls it "non-pop". You can do a search for "non-pop" to read other thoughts of his about "non-pop" music/sound effects etc. It's rather bemusing to me.
> 
> I prefer to think of it as a period of "everything goes". You did raise a very interesting question regarding what the future might call this period. I'll leave it to the "non-pop" admirers to figure it out, but chances are they won't think it is at least a bit worth thinking about as much as you have.


I just now realized that I think of 'avant garde' as an interregnum in classical music. Much more so structurally than the existence-debatable interregnum between Baroque and Classical periods. Approximately a century ago Mahler, Reger and Schoenberg offered alternatives to the Romantic procedure; and I don't know if any concept 'won'. Rachmaninoff ignored them, and whatever Bartók ended up with doesn't sound like any of those guys.


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

I wrote a blog post about this a while ago... I basically abandoned old definitions and made up my own. Instead of a triangle of art, popular, and folk, I used a triangle of classical (separate definition from "art music"), jazz and film, and popular and folk based on whether or not the rules of each evolve and who is responsible for creating the music. Classical music uses rules which are meant to evolve and be broken and is composed by an individual, whereas jazz and film music have their own rules which don't really evolve, and popular and folk music have their own rules which do evolve, but pieces are created by more than one individual.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

This is an interesting topic, one which I've been mulling over quite a bit recently.

I was reading about this on a book on c20th classical music recently. Basically what it says, & I have thought this for ages, is the everything in it's time was "contemporary." Palestrina didn't think of himself as a "Renaissance" composer, he was just doing things relevant in his time, so he was "contemporary." Same with Beethoven in his time, same with any composer now. These periods/stylistic "eras" or whatever are just labels, and imprecise ones at that. Eg. Gesualdo was using chromatic harmonies either side of 1600, then Beethoven got into them in his late quartets, then later in the c19th, guys like R. Strauss, Wagner, Bruckner, Mahler, Schoenberg, etc. So does this make Gesualdo a "late romantic" composer, or the other guys a "Renaissance composer?" I see alot of correspondences/similarities of musics of different ages, so I don't care for these artificial distinctions.

As for what style people will look back on the period now as being defined by, I think it's just plurality, diversity. This is not new. I call Stravinsky a chameleon because he was like a leopard that changed it's spots. In a way, he defined the plurarlity of his times, reflected all the changes that had gone on in music throughout his long life. People stereotype guys like Barber as a "neo" romantic, but he was pretty diverse in what he did, belying that stereotype. A lot of European, esp. Romantic influences in his music for sure, but aspects of atonality, serialism & the "Americana" fad didn't pass him by either. Once I get more deeply into these guys' music, I begin to unravel/unpack what they did in a deeper/more detailed way. So once that occurs, labels like this become totally useless. I think member some guy has said this before, I kind of agree, to understand a style or whatever, all you basically need to do is listen to the music. Labelling it doesn't get me far at all.

I like Kopcharis' more "lateral thinking" way about all this. The boundaries are not rigid, and I think they never have been. I was listening to some Schrammel-musik from old Vienna, the popular music of Schubert's & Beethoven's time (early c19th) & could hear how this music is echoed in theirs & other composer's "serious" works. There are many examples like this. I'm just comfortable in "thinking outside the box," or maybe even not thinking too much at all. I don't really care what "period" music comes from, as long as I'm enjoying it & it engages me on some level/s. If anything, what I dislike strongly is pure rehash, I have no need for that, hence I usually stick to the "big names" within their own fields, be it whatever, but that's probably another issue...


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## regressivetransphobe (May 16, 2011)

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> The most passionate avant-garde admirer member here calls it "non-pop". You can do a search for "non-pop" to read other thoughts of his about "non-pop" music/sound effects etc. It's rather bemusing to me.
> 
> I prefer to think of it as a period of "everything goes". You did raise a very interesting question regarding what the future might call this period. I'll leave it to the "non-pop" admirers to figure it out, but chances are they won't think it is at least a bit worth thinking about as much as you have.


I know the fashionable thing is to equate experimentalism with its own sort of reverse-totalitarianism, but sheesh... Are anti-modernists evangelical, or what? I'd say it doesn't really matter how anyone here conducts their business on other sites.


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

regressivetransphobe said:


> I'd say it doesn't really matter how anyone here conducts their business on other sites.


I wasn't referring to other sites, but was referring to here at TC. "Non-pop".


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

regressivetransphobe said:


> ...Are anti-modernists evangelical, or what?...


Yeah, well "anti-modernists" or whoever (I like to called them "hard" conservatives), do like to control what others hear. Like I haven't gone to a concert by our flagship orchestras for like 20 years, the programming has become increasingly conservative to suit these people. What they think of as "good" or "acceptable" music is basically the war-horses between say 1800 & 1900. The "newest" things are played are strictly tokenistic and not "atonal" or "avant-garde" at all - eg. Arvo Part & Lutoslawski's things from decades ago (but not the "darker" things from the latter, his more "friendly" stuff). At concerts of other groups with more interesting programming that I ocassionally go to, maybe a quarter of these people leave during interval if something unfamiliar or esp. "modern" is going to be played in the second half. A friend of mine saw a number of these people walk out during Mahler's 9th symphony - I'm thinking f***, that was composed a hundred years ago! What's with these people, really?

So yes, these people do control what those in the "middle ground" - which is the vast majority of classical listeners - like to hear. This is a sad thing, but luckily there are smaller groups with more interesting programming that give "real" listeners a variety of things, not just the same things done to death all the time...


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