Musical Characteristics

Impressionism

• Romantically subjective and programmatic
• High degree of refinement, delicacy and vagueness of form
• Neomodality
• Open chords
• Prominence of 9th chords and new chord structures
• Parallelism
• Whole-tone scale
• Free rhythms
• Wide spacing and extreme registers

Jazz

• Popular American instrumental and vocal art music
• Influenced all branches of serious composition
• Stems from combinations of African, Latin-American, African-American and European-American musical techniques
• Considered purely as an American style, yet many other countries have adopted it
• Includes:
  • Ragtime (West Indian rhythm and European forms)
  • Blues
  • Dixieland jazz
  • Swing
  • Boogie-woogie
  • Bop
  • Mixtures of all of these
• 1919 - Chicago established as capital of jazz and became home to such jazz greats as trumpeter Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong and pianist Jelly Roll Morton.

Expressionism

• German reaction to French impressionism
• Sought to express the subconscious
• Emotionally oriented
• Harshly dissonant and atonal

Neoclassicism

• A return to pre-Romantic ideals of objectivity and clarity of texture
• Includes the revival of contrapuntal textures and forms from the Renaissance and Baroque, while employing modern harmony, rhythm, tonality, melody and timbres

Minimalism

• Pulse or Tramps music
• A desire to have complete control over the music
• Composers wrote exactly what should be performed with some latitude in the number of repeats
• A reaction to serialism
• Static harmonies
• Slow harmonic rhythm
• Repeated rhythmic and melodic motifs
• Tonal or modal harmonic progressions
• Little or no chromaticism
• Influenced by African, Eastern and Jazz music

Other Styles found in the Twentieth Century

• Gebrauchsmusik
• Serialism
• Aleatoric Music
• Combinatoriality
• Musique Concrète
• Pointillism
• Neo-Romanticism
• Eclecticism
• Vaudville songs
• Modern Jazz (1950s-present)

Other Important Twentieth Century Music Events

• 1924 - The Julliard School opens in New York
• 1933 - Hammond organ introduced by Laurens Hammond
• 1936 - Electric guitars debut
• 1937 - The Glenn Miller Band debuts
• 1938 - Roy Acuff joins the Grand Ole Opry and brings national recognition to the radio program
• 1942 - Bing Crosby releases "White Christmas," from the film Holiday Inn (becomes the all-time top-selling song from a film)
• RCA Victor sprays gold over Glenn Miller's million-copy-seller Chattanooga Choo Choo, creating the first "gold record"
• Columbia Records introduces the first 33 1/3 LP (long playing) record allowing for 25-minutes of music per side
• 1949 - 45 rpm records are sold in the United States
• 1951 - The term "Rock 'n' Roll" was first used by disc jockey Alan Feed in order to introduce the Rhythm and Blues (R&B) style to white audiences
• 1956 - Elvis Presley emerges as one of the world's first rock stars
• 1958 - Billboard debuts the first Hot 100 Chart with Ricky Nelson's "Poor Little Fool" as the first No. 1 record
• 1959 - The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences sponsors the first Grammy Award ceremony for music recorded in 1958 and Frank Sinatra wins his first Grammy for Best Album - Come Dance with Me
• 1961 - Patsy Cline crosses over from country music to Pop with "I Fall to Pieces" and "Crazy"
• 1963 - The Beatles and Beatle mania hits the United Kingdom as the Rolling Stones emerge as the anti-Beatles, with an aggressive, blues-derived style
• 1964 - Folk musician Bob Dylan becomes popular with the social protest groups
• 1964 - The Beatles appear on the Ed Sullivan show and catapults them to stardom
• 1964 - The Grateful Dead emerge as  the counterculture group of the 1960s
• 1969 - Woodstock
• 1973 - Reggae music becomes popular with the release of the film The Harder They Come
• 1974 - Punk Rock becomes popular in England with Patti Smith's release of "Hey Joe"
• 1977 - The movie Saturday Night Fever starts a Disco craze
• 1977 - Elvis Presley dies at Graceland
• 1978 -Sony introduced the Walkman - first portable stereo
• 1979 - Rap music, an off-shoot of Pop music, leaves the streets of New York City for the international scene with the release of the Sugar Hill Gang's hit "Rapper's Delight"
• 1981 - MTV goes on the air running around-the-clock music videos
• 1982 - Michael Jackson's Thriller sells 25 million copies becoming the biggest-selling album in history
• 1983 - Compact Disc introduced with a recording length of 74-minutes, long enough to fit the entire recording of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 on one CD
• 1987 - the term "World Music" is coined to represent African, Latin American and other genres of international music
• 1988 - CDs outsell vinyl records for the first time
• 1991 - The grunge movement takes off with the Seattle band Nirvana leading the way
• 1992 - CDs surpass cassette tapes in sales
• 1994 - Woodstock's 25th Anniversary
• 1995 - The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame opens
• 1996 - Janet Jackson becomes the highest paid musician in history when she signs an $80-million deal with Virgin Records
• 1999 - the merger of two major recording labels, Universal and Polygram, causes upheaval in the recording industry as it is estimated that the new company, Universal Music Group, controls 25% of the worldwide music market
• 2001 - Naptser, the free internet music distribution giant, loses a court case which declares that they were illegally distributing copyrighted songs and are ordered to begin charging for the downloading of all copyrighted music

Genre and Forms

• Plain-chant Musical
• Anthem
• Prelude
• Fugue
• Symphony
• Modern Concerto
• Sonata Form
• Song Cycle
• Chamber Music
• Variation
• Symphonic (or tone) poem
• Oratorio
• Operetta
• Sonata
• Mass
• Art Songs
• Etudes and Character Pieces
• Opera
  • Serious
  • Comic
  • Folk
• Movie sound tracks

Theorists, Treatises and Collections

• Guido Adler (1855-1941) Austrian musicologist - helped found the Vierteljahrsschrift für Musikwissenschaft (1884)
• Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)
  • Theory of Harmony (1948)
  • Style and Idea (1950)
  • Structural Functions of Harmony (1954)
• Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) - Poetics of Music (1947)
• Ernst Toch (1887-1964)
  • Meliodielebre (1923)
  • The Shaping Forces of Music (1946)
• Carl Orff (1895-1982) - Carmina Burana (1937)
• Paul Hindemith (1895-1963)
  • The Craft of Musical Composition (1945)
  • A Composers World (1952)
• Roger Sessions (1896-1985) - The Musical Experience of Composer, Performer,    Listener (1950)
• Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
  • What to listen for in Music (1939)
  • Our New Music (1941)
  • Music and Imagination (1952)

Composers and Major Works

• Claude Debussy (1861-1918) 
  • Estampes (1903) suite
  • Images, I and II (1905, 1907) suites
• Erik Satie (1866-1925) Gymnopédies (1888)
• Scott Joplin (1868-1917) The Entertainer (1902) African-American pianist/composer
• Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) Prometheus: Poéme du Feu (1911)
• Ralph Vaughn Williams (1872-1958)
  • Fantasy on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910)
  • Festival Te Deum (1937)
• Sergei Rachmaninoff (1837-1943)
  • Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor (1909)
  • Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini (1934)
• Charles Ives (1874-1954)
  • Variations on America (1891)
  • Three Places in New England (1914)
  • Fourth Symphony (1916)
• Gustav Holst (1874-1934) The Planets (1916) orchestral suite
• Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)
  • Book of Hanging Gardens (1908) major use of dissonance
  • Pelleas und Melisande (1905) symphonic tone poem
  • Five Pieces for Orchestra (1909)
  • Pierrot Lunaire (1917) song cycle
  • Pierrot lunaire (1912)
  • Five Piano Pieces (1923)
• Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
  • Pavane for a Dead Princess (1899)
  • Shéhérazade (1904) song cycle
  • Daphnis et Chloé (1912)
  • Bolero (1928) ballet
• Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) The Three-Cornered Hat (1919)
• Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936) The Pines of Rome (1924) tone poem
• Ernest Bloch (1880-1959)
• Béla Bartók (1881-1945)
  • Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936)
  • Mikrocosmos (1939) 153 progressive piano pieces
  • Concerto for Orchestra (1943)
• Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
  • The Firebird (1910)
  • Rite of Spring - ballet
  • Petrouchka (1911) ballet
  • The Soldiers Tale (1919)
  • Symphony of Psalms
• Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967)
  • Psalmus hungaricus (1932) paraphrase of Psalm 55
  • Hary Janos (1927) suite
• Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937)
• Anton von Webern (1883-1945) Six Pieces for Orchestra (1909)
• Charles Griffes (1884-1920)
• Alban Berg (1885-1935)
  • Wozzek (1925)
  • Lulu (1935)
  • Violin Concerto (1935)
• Edgard Varèse (1885-1965)
  • Ionisation (1931)
  • Poème électronique (1958)
• Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959)
• Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959
• Jacques Ibert (1890-1962) Escales (1922))
• Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)
  • Classical Symphony (1918)
  • The Love for Three Oranges (1919)
  • Alexander Nevsky (1938) film score
• Darius Milhaud (1892-1974) The Creation of the World (1923)
• Arthur Honegger (1892-1955)
  • Le Roi David (1921) oratorio
  • 2nd Symphony [selection]
• Paul Hindemith (1895-1963)
  • Mathis der Maler (1934)
  • Ludus Tonalis (1943) piano
  • Well-Tempered Ragtime (1923)
• Carl Orff (1895-1982) Carmina Burana (1937) scenic oratorio
• William Grant Still (1895-1978) Afro-American Symphony (1931)
• Virgil Thomson (1896-1989) Four Saints in Three Acts (1928)
• Howard Hanson (1896-1981) Symphony No. 2 Romantic (1930)
• Henry Cowell (1898-1981) The Banshee (1925)
• Roy Harris (1898-1979)
• George Gershwin (1898-1937) Rhapsody in Blue (1924)
• Randall Thompson (1899-1984) Peaceable Kingdom (1936) 8 a cappella choruses
• Francis Poulenc (1899-1963)
  • Stabat Mater (1951)
  • Gloria (1961)
• Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (1899-1974)
  • "It Don't Mean a Thing, If It Ain't Got That Swing" (1932)
• Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
  • Rodeo (1942) ballet
  • Appalachian Spring (1944) ballet
• Otto Luening (1900-1996)
• Maurice Duruflé (1902-1986) Organ Suite [Selection]
• Sir William Walton (1902-1983) Belshazzar's Feast (1931) oratorio
• Aram Khachaturian (1903-1978)
• Dimitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) Symphony No. 5 (1937)
• Olivier Messiaen (1908 - 1992) Turangalîla-symphonie (1948)
• Elliott Carter (B. 1908)
  • String Quartet No. 1 (1951)
  • String Quartet No. 2 (1959) 
• Samuel Barber (1910-1981) Adagio for Strings (1936)
• Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000)
• John Cage (1912-1994)
• Norman Dello Joio (b. 1913)
• Benjamin Brittan (1913-1976)
  • Peter Grimes (1945) opera
  • War Requiem (1961)
• Milton Babbitt (b.1916) Philomel (1964)
• Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)
  • West Side Story (1957)
  • Chichester Psalms (1965) psalm settings in Hebrew
  • Candide (1982) opera
• Iannis Xenakis (1922-1991) Metastasis (1954)
• Daniel Pinkham (b. 1923) St. Mark Passion (1965)
• György Ligeti (b. 1923) Atmosphéres (1961)
• Luigi Nono (1924 - 1990)
• Luciano Berio (1925-2003)
• Pierre Boulez (b. 1925)
  • Structures Book 1 (1952)
  • The Hammer Without a Master (1954)
• Karlheinz Stockhausen (b. 1928)
  • Der Gesang der Jünglinge (1956)
  • Gruppen (1958)
• George Crumb (b. 1929) Ancient Voices of Children (1970)
• Donald Martino (b. 1931) Notturno (1974) chamber piece
• Michael Colgrass (b. 1932) Deja Vu for Percussion and Orchestra (1978)
• Krzysztof Penderecki (b. 1933) Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (1961) for 52 string instruments
• Harrison Birtwistle (b. 1934) Exody (1998)
• Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (b. 1934)
• Bernard Rands (b. 1934) Canti del Sol
• Roger Reynolds (b. 1934) Whispers Out of Time (1989)
• Alfred Schnittke (1934 -1998)
• Richard Wernick (b. 1934) Visions of Terror and Wonder (1977)
• Arvö Part (b. 1935)
• Terry Riley (b. 1935) In C (1963) orchestral
• Steve Reich (b. 1936)
  • Four Organs (1970)
  • Tehillim (1981) psalm setting in Hebrew
  • Different Trains (1988) uses taped voices
• David Del Tredici (b. 1937) In Memory of a Summer Day (1980)
• Philip Glass (b. 1937) Einstein on the Beach (1976)
• William Bolcom (b. 1938) 12 New Etudes for Piano (1988)
• John Corigliano (b. 1938) Symphony No. 1 (1990)
• John Harbison (b. 1938) The Flight Into Egypt (1987)
• Joan Tower (b. 1938)
• Charles Wuorinen (b. 1938) Time's Encomium (1970)
• Ellen Taafe Zwilich (b. 1939) Symphony No. 1 (1983)
• Stephen Albert (1941-1992) RiverRun (1985) symphony
• Joseph Schwantner (b. 1943) Aftertones of Infinity (1979)
• John Adams (b. 1947) Nixon in China (1987)
• Christopher Rouse (b. 1949) Trombone Concerto (1993)
• Ran Shulamit (b. 1949) Symphony (1991)
• Aaron Jay Kernis (b. 1960) String Quartet No. 2, "musica instrumentalis" (1998)
• Wynton Marsalis (b. 1961) Blood on the Fields (1997) oratorio on slavery and eight time Grammy award winning trumpet player in both jazz and classical genre
• Augusta Read Thomas (b. 1964) Orbital Beacons (1999)
• Melinda Wagner (b. 1965) Concerto for Flute, Strings and Percussion (1999)
• Lewis Spratlan (b. 1940) Life is a Dream (2000) opera

Hymnology

• Fred Pratt Green (1903-2000) "When in Our Music God is Glorified"
• Geoffrey Beaumont (1903-1970)
  • "Jazz Mass"
  • CHESTERTON
• 1905 - Worship Song (Garret Horder)
• 1906 - The English Hymnal (Dearmer, Vaughn Williams)
• Sydney Carter (b. 1915)
  • "Lord of the Dance"
  • "It Was on a Friday Morning"
• Erik Routley (1917-1982)
  • "All Who Love and Serve Your City"
  • "New Songs of Celebration Render"
• William J. Reynolds (b. 1920)
  • "People to People"
  • "Share His Love"
  • SULLIVAN
  • WASHBURN
  • A Survey of Christian Hymnody (1987 with Price)
  • Companion to Baptist Hymnal (1976)
• John W. Peterson (b. 1921-2006) "Surely Goodness and Mercy"
• 1922 - Hymn Society of America founded (now the Hymn Society in the united States and Canada)
• 1925 - Stamps-Baxter Music & Printing Co.
• Timothy Dudley-Smith (b. 1926) "Sing a New Song to the Lord"
• Fred Kaan (b. 1926) "God Who Spoke In the Beginning"
• Heinz Werner Zimmerman (b. 1930)
  • CARPENTER 1970
  • LITTLE FLOCK 1971
• 1935 - Methodist Hymnal (McCutchan)
• Brian Wren (b. 1936) "Thank You, God, For Water, Soil, and Air"
• 1937 - Our Hymnody (Methodist companion)
• 1940 - The Hymnal (Episcopal)
• 1940 - Broadman Hymnal (McKinney)
• 1941 - Lutheran Hymnal
• Terry W. York (b. 1949) "Worthy of Worship"
• 1949 - The Hymnal 1940 Companion
• 1950 - Hymns Ancient and Modern
• 1951 - BBC Hymnal
• 1956 - The Baptist Hymnal (Sims)
• 1961 - The Baptist Hymn Book (Martin, Sharpe)
• 1962 - The Baptist Hymn Book Companion
• 1964 - Hymns of Our Faith (Reynolds, Baptist Companion)
• 1965 - The Anglican Hymn Book (Pollard, Sheldon)
• 1971 - New Catholic Hymnal (Petti, Laycock)
• 1974 - Book of Worship for United States Armed Forces
• 1975 - Baptist Hymnal (Reynolds)
• 1976 - Companion to Baptist Hymnal (Reynolds)
• 1982 - Hymns for Today's Church (Baughen)
• 1991 - The Baptist Hymnal (Forbis)
• 1992 - The Handbook to the Baptist Hymnal (Adams, ed.)
• 1992 - Songs for Praise and Worship (Word Music | Integrity Music)
• 1997 - The Celebration Hymnal (Word Music | Integrity Music)
• 1999 - The Cyber Hymnal
• 2000 - More Songs for Praise and Worship (Word Music | Integrity Music)

Last Updated: Saturday, February 14, 2009