The Twentieth Century: Historical Background

1. The Twentieth Century: Historical Background

2. An Overview • Technology is reaching new heights • Radio, telephone, television, satellites, and computers alter personal and worldwide communication. • Travel revolutionized • Medical science conquered many infectious diseases & invented complex surgical procedures • Downsides = 2 World Wars, AIDS, starvation, destruction to the world’s environment

3. History and the Arts, 1900-1939 • 1900, U.S. and Europe in a period of unusual stability, peace and prosperity • Economic growth was strong, standard of living improving • Modernism began to affect all the arts: literature, painting, sculpture, architecture, and music • Modernism was a movement of self-conscious innovation; created works of experimentation and revolutionary force. • Composer rejected tonality, adopted new harmonic structures. • World War I shattered this sense of optimism - 40 million people died and 20 million were wounded • The period after the war was one of uncertainty and a gradual decline into new conflict • During the 1920’s , America had experienced a period of prosperity. This period would end with the Great Depression of 1929-1933, which caused widespread unemployment and hunger. • Women won the right to vote in 1920 • Prohibition created an entire counterculture of bootleg liquor and organized crime.

4. 1939-2000 • WWII broke out 21 years after the end of WWI. 30 million people died, cities suffered enormous and widespread damage. Irreplaceable works of art and buildings were destroyed, including those from the Middle Ages • The Soviet Union and the United States emerged as the dominant powers after the war. • Many scholars, artists, writers, composers, and performing musicians came from Europe to America during the post-war period. This made the U.S. the most prominent center of Western culture after the war. • 1945-1960: two musical trends. 1. A tendency toward intellectualization. Music became so organized, mathematical that many audiences turned away from classical music. 2. Radical experimentation. They put the compositional process into the hands of the performers, challenged audiences, experimented with sound (Conventional instruments were pushed to new limits, exotic instruments were introduced and new instruments were invented.)

5. 1939-2000 continued • Since the mid – 1960’s: Postmodernism – Literature art and music in the last few decades of the 20th century were in a period of severe self-examination. From the start of Postmodernism, everything was cast into doubt, including the worth and meaning of Western culture itself. • Music made a radical move away from the intellectualized compositions of the postwar period toward a new accessibility of style; composers began to address their audiences. • They borrowed ideas from rock music, expanded their frame of reference to include rhythms, timbres, and harmonies of other countries and made a conscious return to traditional tonality

6. General Characteristics of Twentieth-Century Music • More experimentation and diversity: Everything was called into question, including the tonal system upon which Western music had been based for centuries; the length of compositions (very short or very long); all types of sound were used, and the distinction between sound and noise was often erased.

7. The Replacement of Tonality • Tonality – the use of scales, chords and harmonies • Atonality – an attempt to “liberate” music from the traditional rules of composition. • Pentatonic scale – uses only five notes, usually in the following pattern: second, second, minor third, second, minor third • Whole-tone scale – a scale that has a whole step between each pitch, only has six notes • Octatonic scale – This scale has eight pitches within the octave, in a pattern of alternating whole and half steps • Sometimes used the modal systems: used before the establishment of tonality (basis of music in the Middle Ages) • Polytonality – Simultaneous sounding of two or more keys at once • Nontriadic harmony – harmony that is not based on the triad • Quartal chords – based on fourths instead of thirds

8. Melody • Melody became erratic, with wide leaps, irregular rhythms and unexpected notes. Phrase lengths changed constantly.

9. Rhythm • Composers began to adopt far more complex rhythms • Achieved this goal by constantly changing meters throughout the composition • They also adopted unusual meters such as 5/4 or 7/4, which gave an irregular beat to the music • They grouped the notes within a regular meter in an irregular way • Rhythmic freedom – performers were directed to play at his own speed, thus creating a series of overlapping rhythms in place of one steady pulse

10. Length • The length had been standardized before the 20th century. • Now, some pieces were no more than a few measures, lasting only seconds; others went on for hours

11. Tone color and Sound • Heightened awareness of tone color. • Greatly expanded playing techniques from instrumentalists: higher pitches, squawking, squeaking, unusual glissandos, bang their instruments or produce quarter tones – pitches between the half steps. • New electronic instrument were invented: telharmonium – and instrument that produces sound by means of electronic generators; theremin – an instrument that can make oscillating streams of sliding sounds • The production and control of musical sounds were revolutionized by the computer and the synthesizer • On the computer, pitch, dynamics, duration, timbre, spatial positioning can be controlled digitally • Synthesizers can generate and control sound. Almost any sound can be produced, changed, combined, and controlled on a single small keyboard. Can produce an array of artificial sounds