Twentieth Century Modernism and Traditionalism

As one writer has put it, music of the 20th century is “Romanticism without brakes.” In other words, all of the modernist composers of the early 20th century saw their music as in a direct line from what had gone before. I have already touched on the “impressionism” of the music of Debussy and Ravel, and the overripe, late romanticism of Mahler, Rachmaninov, and Richard Strauss. Arnold Schoenberg developed his heavily chromatic, atonal (or as he preferred to call it, “pantonal”) music from that of Brahms, Wagner, and Mahler. His students, Alban Berg and Anton Webern, developed this style each in their individual way: Berg in a richer, more “romantic” vein, while Webern distilled his music to the brink of silence. In America, Charles Ives produced scores of great complexity, stacking the music of revival meetings, marching bands, and fiddle tunes on top of one another, while at other times writing disingenuous children’s songs and strict fugues. Stravinsky studied with Rimsky-Korsakov and at first wrote music in a late romantic Russian idiom, moving to a style of barbarism, then to neoclassicism, before finally embracing the atonal style of Schoenberg. Hungarian composer Béla Bartók “discovered” and studied the indigenous music of his country, and then proceeded to write piano, chamber, and orchestra music incorporating the dissonant harmonies, jagged melodies, and irregular pulse of Hungarian folk music.

By the mid-20th century numerous new -isms had come and gone, including expressionism, primitivism, and eventually neoclassicism and post-modernism. Experimentation became the rule of the day, leading to total serialism, musique concrète, electronic music, aleatory or chance music, and minimalism. Composers like Prokofiev and Copland started out being deliberately provocative, but later relaxed into a much more approachable style as they realized that concert audiences weren’t responding favorably to the “new music” of the day. Many composers of the mid- to late-century found their individual voice in a modern idiom while never wholly abandoning the music of the past, including Francis Poulenc in France, Dmitri Shostakovich in the Soviet Union, and Benjamin Britten in England.

Major Composers
Modernists

• Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) Orchestral music, piano music, chamber works, vocal works
• Charles Ives (1874-1954) Symphonies, orchestral music, sonatas, songs
• Béla Bartók (1881-1945) Orchestral music, piano concertos, string quartets, piano music
• Anton Webern (1883-1945) Orchestral works, chamber works, songs
• Alban Berg (1885-1935) Operas, orchestral music, chamber and piano music

Eclectics

• Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) Ballets, orchestral music, symphonies, choral works
• Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) Symphonies, concertos, ballets, chamber and piano music
• Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) Choral music, songs, piano music, chamber works
• Aaron Copland (1900-1990) Ballets, film music, songs
• Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) Symphonies, concertos, film music, chamber works
• Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) Operas, choral music, songs, orchestral music, chamber music