Characteristics of 20th Century Music (An Introduction)

Read full article here: www.cmuse.org/characteristics-of-20th-century-musi… One of the most important developments in 20th Century classical music was the effective dissolving of tonality. The entire system of keys that had dominated the musical landscape since the late Renaissance was by many composers, ultimately dismissed in favor of what would become known as ‘serialism’. Serialism produced a revolution in musical history that has not been paralleled since. In many ways, it reflected the troubled times that Western Europe was facing with the advent of the First World War and then in 1939 the start of the Second World War. Music became increasingly angular, harsh, and difficult to hear, and even though the music of the late Romantic composers continued in the work of Elgar, Finzi, Britten, Howells, and Sibelius to name but a few, the path that 20th Century music was now following was radically different.

• #music
• #characteristics_of_20th_century_music
• #serialism
• #20th_music_introduction
• #polyrhythms
• #stravinsky
• #morton_feldman
• #michael_finissy
• #eliot_carter
• #brian_ferneyhough
• #mahler
• #tchaikovsky
• #bruckner
• #steve_reich