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Contemporary classical music
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Contemporary classical music can be understood as belonging to a period that started in the mid-1970s with the retreat of modernism. However, the term may also be employed in a broader sense to refer to the post-1945 modern forms of post-tonal music from the death of Anton Webern (including serial music, Concrete music, experimental music, etc.)
History
Background
At the beginning of the 20th century, composers of classical music were experimenting with an increasingly dissonant pitch language, which sometimes yielded atonal pieces.
Discussion
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Encyclopedia
Contemporary classical music can be understood as belonging to a period that started in the mid-1970s with the retreat of modernism. However, the term may also be employed in a broader sense to refer to the post-1945 modern forms of post-tonal music from the death of Anton Webern (including serial music, Concrete music, experimental music, etc.)
History
Background
At the beginning of the 20th century, composers of classical music were experimenting with an increasingly dissonant pitch language, which sometimes yielded atonal pieces. Following World War I, as a backlash against what they saw as the increasingly exaggerated gestures and formlessness of late Romanticism, certain composers adopted a neoclassic style, which sought to recapture the balanced forms and clearly perceptible thematic processes of earlier styles; see also New Objectivity and Social Realism). After World War II, modernist composers sought to achieve greater levels of control in their composition process (e.g., through the use of the twelve tone technique and later total serialism). At the same time, conversely, composers also experimented with means of abdicating control, exploring indeterminacy or aleatoric processes in smaller or larger degrees. Technological advances led to the birth of electronic music. Experimentation with tape loops and repetitive textures contributed to the advent of minimalism. Still other composers started exploring the theatrical potential of the musical performance (performance art, mixed media, fluxus).
Developments since the 1970s
Since the 1970s there has been increasing stylistic variety, with far too many schools to count, name or label. However, in general, there are two broad trends.
- The first is the continuation of modern avant-garde musical traditions, including experimental music,
- The second are schools which sought to revitalize a tonal style based on previous common practice.
Movements
Modernism
Many of the key figures of the high modern movement are alive, or only recently deceased, and there is also still an extremely active core of composers (e.g., Elliott Carter), performers, and listeners who continue to advance the ideas and forms of Modernism.
Serialism is one of the most important post-war movements among the high modernist schools. Serialism, more specifically named "integral" or "compound" serialism, was led by composers such as Pierre Boulez, Bruno Maderna, Luigi Nono, and Karlheinz Stockhausen in Europe, and by Milton Babbitt, Donald Martino, and Charles Wuorinen in America. Some of their compositions use an ordered set or several such sets, which may be the basis for the whole composition, while others use "unordered" sets for the same purpose. The term is also often used for dodecaphony, or twelve-tone technique, which is alternatively regarded as the model for integral serialism.
Active modernist composers include Harrison Birtwistle, Alexander Goehr, Thomas Adès, Magnus Lindberg and Gunther Schuller.
Post-modernism
Explanations of what post-modernism is, and why it is influential, vary widely, as do opinions regarding whether post-modernism is "good" for music (or even good per se). There is wide agreement that composers of instrumental concert music and "art music" have absorbed ideas from the wider culture and that these influences can be detected in their music. Examples include polystylism (juxtaposition of fragments of music of different genres and styles, collage, bricolage), the use of found sounds, recorded voices, the shift from increasingly chromatic surfaces to more triadic ones or the reverse, the use of new instrumental combinations, the use of instruments extraneous to the Western concert tradition or altogether non-Western instruments, and the combining of composition with video and other visual media.
Key figures include the Scottish composer James MacMillan (who draws on sources as diverse as plainchant, South American 'liberation theology', Scottish folksongs, and Polish avant-garde techniques of the 1960s (Johnson 2001)), the American Michael Torke (drawing on European music of the early nineteenth century, minimalism, jazz, and popular music (Chute 2001)), and Mark-Anthony Turnage from the UK (drawing from jazz, rock, Stravinsky, and Berg (Cross 2001)).
Minimalism and post-minimalism
The minimalist generation still has a prominent role in new composition. Philip Glass has been expanding his symphony cycle, while John Adams's On the Transmigration of Souls, a choral work commemorating the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks, won a Pulitzer Prize. Steve Reich has explored electronic opera (most notably in Three Tales) and Terry Riley has been active in composing instrumental music and music theatre. But beyond the minimalists themselves, the tropes of non-functional triadic harmony are now commonplace, even among composers who are not regarded as minimalists per se.
Many composers are expanding the resources of minimalist music to include rock and world instrumentation and rhythms, serialism, and many other techniques. Kyle Gann considers William Duckworth's Time Curve Preludes as the first "post-minimalism" piece, and labels John Adams as a "post-minimalist" composer, rather than as a minimalist. Gann defines "post-minimalism" as the search for greater harmonic and rhythmic complexity by composers such as Mikel Rouse and Glenn Branca. Another notable characteristic is storytelling and emotional expression taking precedence over technique. Post-minimalism is also a movement in painting and sculpture that began in the late 1960s. (See lumpers/splitters)
Polystylism (eclecticism)
Some authors equate polystylism with eclecticism, while others make a sharp distinction. Polystylism is the use of multiple styles or techniques of music, sometimes within the same composition, and is seen as a postmodern characteristic. Polystylist composers include Luciano Berio, William Bolcom, Peter Maxwell Davies, Sofia Gubaidulina, Roberto Carnevale, Hans Werner Henze, George Rochberg, Frederic Rzewski, Giovanni Sollima, Alfred Schnittke, Frank Zappa, and John Zorn.
New simplicity
A movement in Germany in the late seventies and early eighties, reacting with a variety of strategies to restore the subjective to composing. New Simplicity's best-known composer is Wolfgang Rihm, who strives for the emotional volatility of late 19th-century Romanticism and early 20th-century Expressionism. Called Die neue Einfachheit in German, it has also been termed "New Romanticism," "New Subjectivity," "New Inwardness," "New Sensuality," "New Expressivity," and "New Tonality."
Styles found in other countries sometimes associated with the German New Simplicity movement include the so-called "Holy Minimalism" of the Pole Henryk Górecki and the Estonian Arvo Pärt (in their works after 1970), as well as Englishman John Tavener, who unlike the New Simplicity composers have turned back to Medieval and Renaissance models, however, rather than to 19th-century romanticism for inspiration. Important representative works include Symphony No. 3 "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" (1976) by Górecki, Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten (1977) by Pärt, and The Veil of the Temple (2002) by Tavener, "Silent Songs" (1977) by Valentin Silvestrov.
"World music" influence
An increasing number of composers mix western and non-western instruments, including gamelan from Indonesia, Chinese traditional instruments, ragas from Indian Classical music. There is also an exploration of eastern-European and non-Western tonalities, even in relatively traditionally structured works. This trend was present already in the 1920s and 1930s, for example in the music of Béla Bartók, Henry Cowell, Colin McPhee, Alan Hovhaness, and Lou Harrison, and slightly later in the work of Olivier Messiaen, Chou Wen-chung, Halim El-Dabh, and Peggy Glanville-Hicks. The trend can be found also in the context of post-minimalist works, such as Janice Giteck's and Evan Ziporyn's Balinese-influenced works. Some composers have used traditional instruments from their own cultures, such as Toru Takemitsu, Minoru Miki, Chen Yi, Zhou Long, or Julian Kytasty. World music influence may also be found in the context of post-classic tonality, such as in the music of Bright Sheng, or in the context of thoroughly modernist works by composers such as Claude Vivier.
Art rock influence
Similarly, many composers have emerged since the 1980s who are heavily influenced by art rock. Many, such as Scott Johnson and Steven Mackey started out as rock musicians and only later moved into the realm of scored music. Other notable composers who draw on rock include Christopher Rouse, Annie Gosfield, Evan Ziporyn, Julia Wolfe, Michael Gordon, David Lang, Elliott Sharp, John Zorn, Steve Martland, Ben Johnston, Anne LeBaron, Paul Dresher, Kitty Brazelton, Rhys Chatham, Glenn Branca, Erkki-Sven Tüür, Robert Paterson and Nick Didkovsky. Many of these composers (Gordon, Lang, Dresher, Wolfe, Ziporyn, Martland, Branca) are post-minimalist in orientation, but some (Didkovsky, Brazelton and Rouse) are very much not.
Historicism
Musical historicism is evident to varying degrees in minimalism, post-minimalism, world-music, and other genres in which tonal traditions have been sustained or have undergone a significant revival in recent decades (Watkins, 440-42, 446-48). Some post-minimalist works employ medieval and other genres associated with early music, such as the "Oi me lasso" and other laude of Gavin Bryars. Other composers have assimilated elements of medieval, renaissance, baroque, classical, or romantic styles in varying degrees, including Benjamin Bagby, Thomas Binkley, Easley Blackwood, René Clemencic, Joseph Dillon Ford, Vladimir Godar, Ladislav Kupkovic, Winfried Michel, George Rochberg, Christopher Rouse and Jordi Savall.
The historicist movement is closely related to the emergence of musicology and the Early Music Revival. A number of historicist composers have been influenced by their intimate familiarity with the instrumental practices of earlier periods (Hendrik Bouman, Alexandre Danilevsky, Paulo Galvão, Roman Turovsky-Savchuk). The musical historicism movement has also been stimulated by the formation of such international organizations as the Delian Society and Vox Saeculorum (Colburn 36-45, 54-55).
Neo-romanticism
The vocabulary of extended tonality which flourished in the first years of the 20th century continues through the contemporary period, though it never has been considered shocking or controversial in the larger musical world—as has been demonstrated statistically for the United States, at least (Straus 1999, 322–29, et passim). Composers who have worked in the neoromantic vein after 1975 include John Corigliano, George Rochberg (in some of his works), David Del Tredici, Ladislav Kupkovic, Gian Carlo Menotti, Krzysztof Penderecki, Isang Yun, Christopher Rouse, and Lorenzo Ferrero.
Spectral music
Epitomized by the works of such composers as Hugues Dufourt, Gérard Grisey, Tristan Murail, and Horatiu Radulescu, "spectral music" implies the use of the spectrum of a sound as a basis of composition. Spectralism can thus be seen as a logical continuation of the works of Debussy, Varèse, Messiaen as well as any other composer concerned with the timbre of music. Spectral composition often concerns sound synthesis, the theoretical reconstruction of a physical sound; Fast Fourier Transform is frequently used to analyze the overtone series of a sound, and the material used for a musical piece derived from the data hence attained. Much of Kaija Saariaho's and the last few pieces of Claude Vivier's music are influenced by the spectralists.
In Romania an important spectralist trend developed since late 1960. Romanian spectral music asserts from traditional Romanian folk music roots. A number of spectral composers are from Romania; these include Iancu Dumitrescu, Octav Nemescu, Ana-Maria Avram, Costin, Calin Ioachimescu, and Corneliu Cezar. Other spectral composers include Philippe Hurel, Michael Levinas, and Phillippe Leroux, Joshua Fineberg, and Julian Anderson.
New complexity
"New Complexity" is a current within today's European contemporary avant-garde music scene, named in reaction to the New Simplicity. Among this diverse group are Richard Barrett, Brian Ferneyhough, James Dillon, Michael Finnissy, and James Erber.
Improvisation
Extended techniques
Composers often obtain unusual sounds or instrumental timbres through the use of non-traditional (or unconventional) instrumental techniques. Examples of extended techniques include bowing under the bridge of a string instrument or with two different bows, using key clicks on a wind instrument, blowing and overblowing into a wind instrument without a mouthpiece, or inserting object on top of the strings of a piano. Composers’ use of extended techniques is not specific to contemporary music (for instance, Berlioz’s use of col legno in his Symphonie Fantastique is an extended technique) and it transcends compositional schools and styles.
Twentieth-century exponents of extended techniques include Henry Cowell (use of fists and arms on the keyboard, playing inside the piano), John Cage (prepared piano), and George Crumb. The Kronos Quartet, which has been among the most active ensembles in promoting contemporary American works for string quartet, takes delight in music which stretches the manner in which sound can be drawn out of instruments.
European composers who make heavy use of extended techniques include Luigi Nono, Luciano Berio, Helmut Lachenmann, Salvatore Sciarrino, Heinz Holliger Carlo Forlivesi and Georgia Spiropoulos .
Conceptualism
When Duchamp displayed a urinal in an art museum, he struck the most visible blow for artistic conceptualism. Music conceptualism found a champion in John Cage and, a bit later, in the composers associated with the Fluxus movement. A conceptualist work is an act whose musical importance draws from the frame, rather than the content of the work. An example is Alvin Singleton's 56 Blows, a work based on a speech from the floor of the United States Senate.
Developments by medium
Orchestra
- Inclusion of new instruments (amplified instruments, rock/jazz instruments, synthesizers, computer, non-western instruments, pre-recorded parts, experimental custom-made instruments)
- Concertos for non-western instruments (Nancy Van de Vate)
- Inclusion of visuals
Opera
Notable composers of operas since 1975 include:
Chamber
Choral
At the turn of the century, Eric Whitacre, whose music combines tonal music with tone clusters and similar experimental techniques has received considerable attention. Other choral composers of note include Karl Jenkins, Arvo Pärt, John Rutter, Veljo Tormis, and Morten Lauridsen.
Concert band
The medium of the concert band has undergone a revival in recent years, with contributions by composers such as Mark Camphouse, Michael Colgrass, Michael Daugherty, David Del Tredici, Karel Husa, David Maslanka, Olivier Messiaen, Joseph Schwantner, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Frank Ticheli, and Eric Whitacre.
Cinema
Contemporary classical music can be heard in film scores such as Tan Dun's original score for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Philip Glass's score for The Hours and Kundun, as well as his scores for Godfrey Reggio's Qatsi Trilogy of films: Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, and Naqoyqatsi; John Corigliano's original score/soundtrack for François Girard's film The Red Violin; Michael Nyman's scores for Peter Greenaway's films, Shigeru Kan-no's score for Der Rosarote Elefant or Zbigniew Preisner's scores for Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors. Other directors have used contemporary music in soundtracks. Stanley Kubrick, for example, in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999) used music by György Ligeti, and in The Shining (1980) music by both Ligeti and Krzysztof Penderecki. Both Jean-Luc Godard, in La Chinoise (1967), and Nicolas Roeg in Walkabout (1971) used music by Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Contemporary music festivals
Bibliography
- Botstein, Leon. "Modernism". Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed 28 April 2007). (Subscription access)
- Chute, James. 2001. "Torke, Michael." The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell. London: Macmillan.
- Colburn, Grant. 2007. "A New Baroque Revival." Early Music America 13, no. 2 (Summer): 36-45, 54-55.
- Cross, Jonathan. 2001. "Turnage, Mark-Anthony". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell. London: Macmillan.
- Danuser, Hermann. 1984. Die Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts: mit 108 Notenbeispielen, 130 Abbildungen und 2 Farbtafeln. Neues Handbuch der Musikwissenschaft 7. Laaber: Laaber-Verlag. ISBN 389007037x
- Dibelius, Ulrich. 1998. Moderne Musik Nach 1945. Munich: Piper Verlag. ISBN 3492040373 (pbk.)
- du Noyer, Paul (ed.). 2003. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music: From Rock, Pop, Jazz, Blue, and Hip-Hop to Classical, Folk, World, and More. London: Flame Tree. ISBN 9781904041702
- Duckworth, William. 1995. Talking Music: Conversations with John Cage, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, and Five Generations of American Experimental Composers. New York: Schirmer Books; London: Prentice-Hall International. ISBN 0028708237 Reprinted 1999, New York: Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-80893-5
- Du Noyer, Paul (ed.) (2003), "Contemporary" in The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music. Flame Tree, ISBN 1-9040-4170-1
- Gann, Kyle. 1997. American Music in the Twentieth Century. New York: Schirmer Books; London: Prentice Hall International. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning ISBN 002864655X.
- Griffiths, Paul. 1995. Modern Music And After: Directions Since 1945. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198165781 (cloth) ISBN 0198165110 (pbk.) Rev. ed. of: Modern Music: The Avant Garde Since 1945 (1981)
- Johnson, Stephen. 2001. "MacMillan, James (Loy)". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell. London: Macmillan.
- Manning, Peter. 2004. Electronic and Computer Music. Revised and expanded edition. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195144848 (cloth) ISBN 0195170857 (pbk.)
- Morgan, Robert P. 1991. Twentieth-century Music: A History of Musical Style in Modern Europe and America. New York: Norton. ISBN 039395272X
- Nyman, Michael. 1999. Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond. Second edition. Music in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521652979 ISBN 0521653835 (pbk.)
- Schwartz, Elliott, and Daniel Godfrey. 1993. Music Since 1945: Issues, Materials, and Literature. New York: Schirmer Books; Toronto: Maxwell Macmillan Canada; New York: Maxwell Macmillan International. ISBN 0028730402
- Schwartz, Elliott, and Barney Childs (eds.), with Jim Fox. 1998. Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music. Expanded edition. New York: Da Capo Press. ISBN 0306808196
- Smith Brindle, Reginald. 1987. The New Music: The Avant-Garde since 1945. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0193154714 (cloth) ISBN 0193154684 (pbk.)
- Straus, Joseph. N. 1999. "The Myth of Serial 'Tyranny' in the 1950s and 1960s." The Musical Quarterly 83, no. 3 (Autumn): 301–43.
- Watkins, Glenn. 1994. Pyramids at the Louvre: Music, Culture, and Collage from Stravinsky to the Postmodernists. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674740831
- Whittall, Arnold. 1999. Musical Composition in the Twentieth Century. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198166842 (cloth) ISBN 0198166834 (pbk.)
- Whittall, Arnold. 2003. Exploring Twentieth-Century Music: Tradition and Innovation. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521816424 (cloth) ISBN 0521016681 (pbk)
- Whittall, Arnold. "Neo-Classicism". Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed 30 April 2007). (Subscription access)
External links
- – UK-based organisation promoting new music and composers.
- (English version forthcoming)
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