1. Introduction and Historical Context

Music, like the other arts, does not occur in a vacuum. Changes brought on by advances in science, and inventions resulting from these advances, affected composers, artists, dancers, poets, writers, and many others at the turn of the 20th century. Inventions from the late Romantic era had a great impact on economic and social life in the 20th century. These inventions included the light bulb, the telephone, the automobile, and the phonograph. Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877 and patented it in 1878. While researching means to improve the telegraph and telephone, Edison developed a way to record sound on tinfoil-coated cylinders. He would speak into a mouthpiece and the recording needle would indent a groove into the cylinder. The playing needle would then follow the groove, and the audio could be heard through a horn speaker (in the shape of a large cone). Edison improved his invention and formed the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company to market the invention. Edison’s phonograph had an especially great influence on the spread of music to larger audiences; he also advertised the device’s usefulness for dictation and letter writing, recording books for the blind, recording and archiving family members’ voices, music boxes, toys, and clocks that verbally announce the time with prerecorded voices. In 1917, such audio phonograph devices were purchased by the U.S. Army for $60 each and used to make troops feel closer to home during World War I. Listen at the website of the Library of Congress to a rare audio clip of Edison expressing his thanks to the troops for their service and sacrifice.

What defines 20th-century music? Clearly, the 20th century was a time of great upheaval in general, including in music. The sense of rapid change and innovation in music and art of this period is a reflection of the dramatic changes taking place in the world at large. On a political level, the 20th century was one of the bloodiest and most turbulent periods in history. While wars are a constant throughout all of human history, the global nature of 20th-century politics resulted in conflicts on a scale never before seen. World War II alone is widely regarded as the deadliest conflict in human history in terms of total deaths, partly due to advancements in technology such as machine guns, tanks, and eventually the atom bomb.

It’s no surprise that music of this period mirrored the urgency and turmoil in the world at large. For many composers, the raw emotion and sentimentality reflected in the music of the 19th century had grown tiresome, and so they began an attempt to push the musical language into new areas. Sometimes, this meant bending long-established musical rules to their very limits, and, in some cases, breaking them altogether. One of the by-products of this urgency was fragmentation. As composers rushed to find new ways of expressing themselves, different musical camps emerged, each with their own unique musical philosophies. We now categorize these musical approaches with fancy terms ending in “-ism,” such as “primitivism,” “minimalism,” “impressionism,” etc. We will discuss many of these individual movements and techniques as well as address what makes them unique, but before we do this, let’s first talk about those things that most (but not all) music of the 20th century has in common.

1.1 Melody

One of the ways in which composers deviated from the music of the 19th century was the way in which they constructed melodies. Gone were the singable, sweeping tunes of the Romantic era. In their place rose melodies with angular shapes, wide leaps, and unusual phrase structures. In some cases, melody lost its status as the most prominent feature of music altogether, with pieces that featured texture or rhythm above all else.

1.2 Harmony

The most obvious difference between 20th-century music and what preceded it is the level of harmonic dissonance. This is not a new phenomenon. The entire history of Western music can be viewed in terms of a slowly increasing acceptance of dissonance, from the hollow intervals of the Middle Ages all the way to the lush chords of the 19th century. However, in the 20th century the use of dissonance took off like a rocket ship. Some composers continued to push the tolerance level for dissonance in the context of standard tonal harmony. One example is through the use of polytonality, a technique in which two tonal centers are played at the same time. Some composers sought to wash their hands of the rules of the past and invented new systems of musical organization. Often, this resulted in music that lacked a tonal center, music that we now refer to as atonal. Some composers, such as Igor Stravinsky, would tried their hand at more than one compositional style.

1.3 Rhythm

In preceding centuries, music was typically relegated to logical, symmetrical phrases that fell squarely into strict meters. That all changed at the dawn of the 20th century. Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring famously undermined the audience’s expectation of the role of rhythm by abandoning strict and regular meter for rapidly changing time signatures. Instead of the steady familiar time signatures containing three or four beats, Stravinsky peppered in measures containing an odd number of beats such as five or seven. This created a sense of unease in the audience by removing something from the music that they had previously taken for granted: a steady and unwavering sense of meter. In America, the rhythmic innovations of ragtime and jazz influenced both Western art music and popular music from that time on. Especially important was the use of syncopation.

1.4 Texture and Timbre

As memorable melodies and traditional harmonies began to break down, some composers looked to new tonal colors through the use of new instruments such as synthesizers, instruments that electronically generate a wide variety of sounds. In other cases, traditional instruments were used in nontraditional ways. For example, John Cage famously composed piano pieces that called for objects such as coins and tacks to be placed on the strings to create unique effects.

1.5 The Role of Music

Music has had many roles throughout history. The music of Josquin helped enhance worship. The works of Haydn and Mozart reflected the leisurely life of the aristocracy. Opera served as a form of musical escapism in the daring and ambitious works of composers such as Wagner. In the 20th century, music began to move away from entertainment into the realm of high art.

Composers sought to challenge the listener to experience music in new ways and in some cases to reevaluate their fundamental notions of what music is. They began to rebel against the excessive emotionalism of the later Romantic composers. Near the beginning of the 20th century, two different styles emerged: the Impressionist style led by Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, and the atonal Expressionist style led by Arnold Schoenberg. Both styles attempted to move away from the tonal harmonies, scales, and melodies of the previous period. The impressionists chose to use new chords, scales, and colors while the expressionists developed a math-based twelve-tone system that attempted to completely destroy tonality.

This sense of revolution was not limited to music; it was also taking place throughout the art world. As we discuss the many “-isms” in music, we will see direct parallels with the visual arts.