Stravinsky became famous for his bold and avant-garde compositions, sparking controversies and changing the way we think about music. But there’s more to him than just his groundbreaking work. Stravinsky’s life was full of fascinating stories and interesting facts that are just as captivating as his music.

In this post, we’ll explore 10 fun facts about Igor Stravinsky, uncovering tales of resilience, innovation, and his relentless pursuit of artistic truth. Let’s dive in!

1. His Father Was A Bass Opera Singer

Igor Stravinsky’s father, Fyodor Stravinsky, was a famous bass opera singer. From a young age, Igor was surrounded by music, often attending his father’s performances. These early experiences sparked his passion for music.

Fyodor taught Igor the importance of dedication, discipline, and commitment to excellence. Igor, in turn, became known for working long hours on his compositions.

Without Fyodor’s influence, Igor might not have developed the same love for music or pursued a career as a composer, which could have changed the course of musical history.

2. His Mentor Was Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov was one of the most famous Russian composers of his time. He became Stravinsky’s mentor when Igor was just 20 years old, playing a big role in shaping his career and development as a composer.

For nearly three years, Stravinsky took private lessons from Rimsky-Korsakov, who guided him through orchestration, harmony, and composition. This gave Stravinsky a strong foundation in music.

Related: Check out our post about the greatest Russian composers here.

3. He Lived Through Two Monumental Periods In History

Believe it or not, Igor Stravinsky lived through both World War I and II, and these events had a big impact on his music and career.

During World War I, Stravinsky was stranded in Switzerland. This time led him to experiment with Russian folklore in his music, as you can hear in pieces like Renard and Les Noces.

World War II brought a different change. In 1939, with Europe on the brink of war again, Stravinsky moved to the United States. There, his style evolved, now incorporating serialism and the 12-tone technique.

4. He Worked In Solitude

Stravinsky had unique working habits, especially his love for solitude. For him, working alone was a necessity for his creativity. He believed his best work happened when he was completely alone.

Stravinsky often chose quiet, secluded spots to compose, far from the hustle and bustle of the city. These peaceful settings helped him concentrate on his music.

However, his need for solitude didn’t mean he was antisocial. In fact, he had a vibrant social life and enjoyed spending time with other artists and intellectuals.

5. His Work Created A Riot

When Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring premiered at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in 1913, it caused quite a stir.

The ballet started with a high-bassoon melody, followed by complex rhythms and harsh dissonances. Vaslav Nijinsky’s choreography, performed by Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, was just as bold.

The audience was so shocked that loud arguments and physical fights broke out, drowning out the orchestra.

Despite this chaotic debut, The Rite of Spring is now seen as a groundbreaking work of modernism. It paved the way for musical innovations in the 20th century.

6. He Has Lived In Many Places

Igor Stravinsky was born in Russia in 1882 and started his musical journey in Saint Petersburg. In 1910, he moved to Paris, where he wrote The Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring.

During WWI, Stravinsky moved to Switzerland and returned to France after the war. As World War II began, he moved to the United States. He lived in Los Angeles for almost 30 years, where he continued composing; his homes there became cultural landmarks.

He also owned a house in Ustyluh, a remote Ukrainian village, with his first wife, Ekaterina Nossenko.

7. Stravinsky Was Also An Author

In addition to being a famous composer, Igor Stravinsky was also an accomplished writer. His first major book, Poetics of Music, was published in 1942. It started as lectures at Harvard University and explores topics like musical form and the role of composers.

Stravinsky also worked with Robert Craft on several books, such as Conversations with Igor Stravinsky and Memories and Commentaries. These books include interviews and give insight into Stravinsky’s creative process.

He also wrote an autobiography called Chroniques de ma vie, which shares details about his early life and experiences as a young composer.

8. Stravinsky’s Last Major Work Was Requiem Canticles

Igor Stravinsky’s Requiem Canticles is a great example of his creativity and deep musical knowledge in his later years. He composed it in 1966 when he was in his 80s.

This piece is a shorter requiem mass, lasting about 15 minutes. It doesn’t follow the traditional order of a requiem mass, making it quite unique compared to usual requiem settings.

Stravinsky passed away in April 1971, at the age of 88, from heart failure in New York City. Requiem Canticles was played at his funeral, highlighting the special connection he had with this music.

9. He Has A Hollywood Star

Interestingly, Igor Stravinsky is one of the few classical musicians with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His star, located at 6340 Hollywood Blvd., honors his big impact on 20th-century music and his work in radio.

Even though Stravinsky was born and trained in Russia, he spent a lot of time in the United States. He lived in Los Angeles from 1940 until he passed away in 1971.

While in LA, he worked on various projects, including film music, though none of these projects were completed. His time in Hollywood likely helped him earn that star on the Walk of Fame.

10. Stravinsky Has Received Many Awards

Stravinsky had a fantastic career and received several awards. In 1962, he won three Grammy Awards, including Best Classical Composition. He was also nominated for Best Classical Album in 1983.

In 1987, he was given the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 1999, he received the Grammy Hall of Fame Award, which honors recordings that have had a big impact.

Besides the Grammys, Stravinsky earned the Léonie Sonning Music Prize, Denmark’s top music award; the Wihuri Sibelius Prize; and the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal, among others!

Summing Up Our List Of Facts About Igor Stravinsky

As you’ve seen, Igor Stravinsky is a huge figure in classical music. His work changed how people think about music and helped start a new wave of modernism.

As we wrap up this look at Stravinsky’s life and achievements, it’s clear his legacy still inspires and influences music today. His journey is truly remarkable, and we hope you’ve enjoyed learning about his unique contributions to music.

The term “Impressionism” is borrowed from the painting style gaining influence in France during the late 1800s, first used to describe French painter Monet’s work Impression, Sunrise. Like the painters, Impressionist composers used contrasting tones, flowing rhythms, key changes, and instrumental effects to create an overall impression. 

This article will look at what is Impressionism in music and explore the history, hallmarks, and essential works of the Impressionist period. We will examine the theoretical and stylistic developments of the period and some of the Impressionist composers and their works. We hope you will find a new appreciation and understanding of impressionism’s lasting beauty and continuing influence in music.

When was Impressionist Music Popular?

Impressionist music took center stage during the early Modernism period, specifically from 1890 to the 1930s. 

Impressionism ushered in the modernist era in music, which began in 1890 and extended until 1975.

The Modernist period includes the following sub-eras:

• Impressionism 1890-1930
• Expressionism 1900-1930
• Neoclassicism 1920-1950
• Serialism 1920-1975

Important French composers like Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy pioneered the Impressionist era in late 19th century France.

Impressionism in music became popular around two decades after Impressionist art made its way into mainstream society. 

Where Claude Monet’s works began to gain recognition in 1872, Claude Debussy’s first acclaimed composition, Prélude à l’après-midi dun Faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a faun), was initially performed in 1894. 

Debussy’s symphonic piece clocks in at just under 12 minutes and feels more like a musical poem than the more structured classical forms from earlier periods.

What is Impressionist Music?

Impressionist music features the use of timbre to create “color” through harmonics, texture, orchestration, tempo, and rhythm.

Impressionist music typically used evocative titles, as in Debussy’s Reflets dans l’eau (Reflections on the water, 1905).

One of musical Impressionism’s most prominent features was the use of tensionless harmony.

In tensionless harmony, chordal dissonance is not resolved but is used as timbres to add color and movement to the music. These dissonant chords were often shifted parallel.

The timbre became the stylistic device of impressionism instead of concise themes or other traditional forms. 

New Musical Texture and Harmony

Impressionist music introduced new chord combinations and made use of ambiguous tonality and extended chords and harmonics.

Impressionist composers implemented the Romantic era’s newly minted modalities in fresh, creative ways.

They used exotic scales that included parallel motion and extra-musicality to create mood and convey mental imagery.

Imppresionist Tonality

Impressionism in music introduced a variety of linear and harmonic progressions that essentially weakened the function of traditional tonality.

These progressions may suspend central tonality or create a sense of tonal ambiguity, sometimes to the point that tonality is nonexistent. 

By the mid-20th century, Impressionism had helped to form a new definition of tonality in music.

For composer and music theorist George Perle, tonality was more than “a matter of ‘tone-centeredness,’ whether based on a ‘natural hierarchy of pitches derived from the overtone series or an ‘artificial’ pre compositional ordering of the pitch material; nor is it essentially connected to the kinds of pitch structures one finds in traditional diatonic music.” (Pitt)

Parallel Chords

Parallel chords are comprised of a sequence of chords using intervals that do not change as the chord moves.

For example, a major chord of C, E, and G would parallel a following chord of F, A and C, followed by another parallel chord of G, B, and D.

All chords include a major third between the one and three and a minor third between the third and fifth tones.

This movement is also known as parallel motion.

Harmony in Impressionist Music

Impressionist music makes extensive use of extended harmonies by introducing new tones into traditional three-tone chords.

Extended chords were first introduced during the Baroque period in Galant style.

Extended harmonies gained popularity during the Romantic period but remained rare in music compositions until the Impressionist period.

Extended chords are triadic chords that extend the chord by adding notes beyond the seventh.

The ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth chords are examples of extended chords. 

Extended chords were rare prior to the Romantic movement, and extended harmonies gained momentum during the Impressionist era in the early 20th century. 

A thirteenth chord is the farthest diatonic extension possible as all seven tones are represented in the chord. 

However, generally extended chords do not use all the notes contained within the traditional chord.

Important Galant Style Composers

We really can’t even talk about Impressionism in music without discussing the works of the two most influential Impressionist composers of the time – Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel.

Their interpretations of music revamped how composers and music theorists thought about music at the time.

Ravel and Debussy implemented rhythms, cadences, and tonality in wholly different ways than had been done before.

Their musical innovations opened up new doors to musical experimentation and have informed contemporary musicians to this day.

The works of Impressionist composers may well continue to influence musicians well into the future. 

Other influential Impressionist composers include Manuel de Falla, Jean Sibelius, and Lili Boulanger and a host of other composers that made significant contributions to the genre. 

Major composers include:

Claude Debussy

French composer Claude Debussy (1862-1918) was one of the most influential composers of Impressionist music and remains so to this day.

Music artists, composers, and theorists continue to explore the magical fluidity and rhythmic experimentation that mark his works. “Prelude L’apres-midi D’un Faune” was his earliest acclaimed public work. 

Other major works by Debussy include the opera Thais, particularly the “Meditation” piece, the song “Reverie,” and the ever-popular “Claire de Lune.”

Maurice Ravel

French composer, pianist, and conductor Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) is second only to Debussy in popularity and lasting influence from the Impressionist era.

His most recognizable works include “Pavane Pour Une Infante Défunte” (“Pavane for a Dead Princess”), “Mirrors” (“Reflections”), and the ballet Daphne et Chloe, featuring the piece “Daybreak.”

Jean Sibelius

Like Debussy, Finnish composer and pianist Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) excelled at featuring each instrument for a moment to play a melody and then echoing that motif and in another instrument or voice. “13 Pieces For Piano, Op.76: 2. Etude” exemplifies Sibelius’ sweet style, and “Finlandia” showcases his flexibility and flowing Impressionism. Sibelius’ contribution to music is so pervasive, in the 21st century, we have a DAW software program named after the composer and musician.

Lili Boulanger

French female composer Lili Boulanger was the first woman to win the Prix de Rome prize for composition and Impressionist music’s most eminent female composers.

Boulanger’s “Nocturne” is an excellent example of how Impressionist composers played with harmony by using atonal chords to build tension before landing on a diatonic base then moving on harmonically.

Instrumentation

Many instruments used in Impressionism are commonly used today.

String instruments like violins and cellos often feature in Impressionist compositions. 

Impressionist music often showcases woodwind instruments, especially the flute. Brass instruments were kept in the background if used at all.

The Piano replaced the harpsichord, and compositions used them as foundational instruments in orchestral, chamber, and duet pieces.

Following on the Romantic leanings toward minimalism in instrumentation, duets gained more favor in Impressionist music, as the dichotomy between two feature instruments or voices could express emotion and evoke more poignant feelings than fuller, louder traditional orchestral arrangements. 

Chamber orchestras, quintets, quartets, and such were favored in Impressionist music.

Summary

This concludes our guide to Impressionism in music. We have learned about extended harmonies, ambiguous tonality, and parallel chords. 

We have covered some of the most beloved composers and enduring works of the Impressionist period.

We hope you have enjoyed learning more about Impressionism in music and exploring some of the era’s most essential works from this influential musical period.

This article will examine the neoclassicism era of music during the 20th century music era and explore how contemporary music expresses its influence today. We’ll explore the history of neoclassic music, review various musical theories and stylistic elements developed at the time, and learn about some noteworthy neoclassic composers.

We hope you’ll leave this article with a newfound appreciation of neoclassic music and what it means for musicians today.

When Was the Neoclassic Music Era?

After the expressionist period’s chaotic emotional dissonance, composers sought to reconcile music with traditional forms.

The 20-year interwar period from the end of World War I in 1918 to the beginning of World War II in 1939 provided a backdrop for this renewed call to order and traditional musical theories.

Neoclassicism was an effort to return to the basics, stripping away all that is superfluous.

Composers sought to create a purer form of music to express their ideas more clearly and with greater ease than before.

Neoclassical then refers to any compositional styles following this brief, especially between 1917 to 1930.

Many refer specifically to works by Igor Stravinsky, Paul Hindemith, Arthur Honegger or Dmitri Shostakovich.

These forms can be seen as reactions against tendencies present during late romanticism when musical composition became progressively complex; neoclassicism believes that it’s possible for art not only to imitate life but also to influence it.

What Was the Neoclassic Style in Music?

Musicians working during the neoclassical period often used formal compositional techniques that reflected a desire for order and control.

They also drew on past musical styles, including Baroque forms like fugues and techniques such as counterpoint to create their pieces.

Neoclassicism emerged as new ideas about how music should be composed gained a foothold throughout Europe.

But it is not enough simply to describe neoclassicism by its return to tradition or attention to traditional theories.

The “Second Viennese School” (though it did not follow Schoenberg’s dodecaphony) developed concurrently with neoclassicism but independently from it.

Arnold Schoenberg’s emersion from expressionism into neoclassicism led composers of the time to virtually abandon their musical experiments with chaos and dissonance and adopt the order, safety, and beauty of classical music theory once more.

In form and thematic technique, neoclassical music often drew inspiration from musical themes of the 18th century, though the inspiring canon belonged as frequently to the Baroque and even earlier periods like the Classical period.

Neoclassical composers such as Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Prokofiev consciously referenced Baroque models when writing music in the neoclassical style.

New Musical Forms in Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism branched out into two distinct stylistic elements, French and German.

The two branches each created unique musical forms and adaptations of classic and baroque musical forms and interpretations.

At this time, neoclassicism in music was more of a trend than a proper musical movement.

Neoclassical distinction refers to any style influenced by classical music, whether the performer offers updated arrangements of established works by other composers or attempts to weave “purer” elements from the baroque, classical, romantic, impressionistic, or later 20th century musical styles.

Neoclassical music examines how this style emerged during a “period between two wars” and evolved into an anti-establishment movement that challenged many traditional musical ideas.

It emphasizes its origins in Russia, with Igor Stravinsky as its most prominent proponent and touches on Germany, where Paul Hindemith took it up.

Neoclassicists were not necessarily attracted to specific aspects of music such as counterpoint or Baroque forms; instead, they sought freedom from the rigidity of form and structure prevalent at the time by drawing inspiration from the work of composers like Robert Schumann, Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt.

Neoclassical music attempted to create a new musical language that departed from traditional tonality by drawing upon non-Western scales and chromaticism.

Order in the Neoclassic Era

Neoclassical music of the 20th century emphasized orderliness and structure.

In addition, the music was often heavily influenced by early classical forms.

The end of World War I inspired a period where artists and composers sought new styles different from those that had become stale over time.

Musical forms such as baroque dances became popular again among many musical genres.

When examining neoclassicism in music, it is essential to explore the term itself – what does “neoclassical” mean?

Neoclassicism refers to a style or movement during a specific era (in this case, the 20th century).

However, some more particular elements are associated with neoclassical compositions, which include harmony based on tonal centers rather than modality and an emphasis on balanced triadic melodies.

Notable Composers of the Neoclassic Era

During the 20th century, the neoclassic era started in Europe and quickly spread worldwide to such countries as United States, Russia, etc.

It was a time when music embraced a Greek or Roman influence as composers attempted to break from traditional tonality by using non-Western scales.

Neoclassicism wasn’t about specific forms but rather freedom from artistic rigidity that was prevalent at this time.

Many notable neoclassical musicians like Igor Stravinsky and Paul Hindemith contributed to the development of a new musical language that used chromatic elements along with new musical arrangements to create modern interpretations of prior works.

Many other composers also developed new musical forms and used neoclassic aspects in their works during this period, for example:

Although his works included masterpieces that spanned many genres, Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev was known for his neoclassical music.

Maurice Ravel’s work is an example of neoclassical music that stemmed from impressionist influences.

During the neoclassic era, he was considered one of the best French composers.

Eventually called the “Dean of American music” by his peers, American composer Aaron Copland was a fledgling composer during the early neoclassic era.

The folk music of America primarily influenced his “populist” music.

Among the first American composers to gain international renown, Charles Ives wrote compositions inspired by hymns he heard as a child.

Though largely ignored during his early years as a composer, his later works were regarded as “American original” compositions.

The French-born composer Edgard Varèse spent most of his working years in the United States and was acclaimed as one of the more experimental composers.

Varèse called his style “organized sound,” a term that later caught on regarding musical styles that emphasize rhythm and timbre.

Instrumentation

In instrumentation, neoclassicism found a natural expression with instruments from the 18th century.

Wind instruments like the clarinet and brass horns often substituted for oboes, while string ensembles used lighter gauge strings to achieve period-appropriate texture as opposed to modern, thicker violin/viola strings that produce greater volume but sacrificed warmth.

This texture can be heard in Italian operatic works by Antonio Vivaldi, who employed flute and oboe instead of the traditional classical or baroque recorder in his operatic masterpiece “The Four Seasons.”

Instrumentation was also different from before as it included atonality which became more prominent after WWI ended when many artists felt that they needed to express themselves differently than what traditional tonal music had been offering up until then.

Electric keyboards and acoustic pianos played a significant role in neoclassic music, and strings featured prominently in neoclassic works, especially violin or viola with cellos doubling in bass parts.

Summary

Neoclassicism is a vital part of musical history because it reflected changing social values and political climates and how musicians wanted to share their views through artistry.

The neoclassical movement was a strong cultural force that changed Western art, literature, architecture, and society as a whole into something more individualistic than in earlier periods.

Now that you have learned more about neoclassicism in music, we hope that you can examine how different social values influenced artists at the time, why this period reflected changing political climates, and how composers tried to express their feelings about politics through their works by using various musical styles and instruments both new and old.

Instead of ethereal impressions of beauty in nature, expressionism focuses on the inner angst and fear lurking within the subconscious mind. Expressionism in music embraces jarring dissonance and radical distortion.

Expressionism was heavily influenced by expressionist art and protest movements of the time. Originating primarily in Germany and Austria, expressionist music’s freely displayed angst and turmoil attracted some of the 20th century’s most respected and diverse composers from the United States and around the world.

When Was the Expressionist Era?

While the expressionist era in music began in roughly 1900, the term “expressionist” was probably first applied to music in 1918 by Arnold Schoenberg, an expressionist painter, and composer.

The expressionist era held influence in the musical world until approximately 1930.

Like all good musical ages, expressionism was hugely influenced by preceding musical eras, especially modernism (1890-1975) and impressionism (1890-1930).

Expressionism was also a contrast to the earlier romantic and post-romantic periods of the 19th century.

During the expressionist period, many protests were taking place, with civil rights for people of color and women at the forefront of national debates in the United States.

In Germany and Austria, a young democracy was struggling to take hold.

The artificial prosperity eventually led to the collapse of American markets and preceded the Great Depression.

And World War I took place firmly in the center of the expressionist era.

Eager to express the intensity and emotion surrounding the fight for freedom and the world’s struggle to throw off the yoke of oppression, musicians and artists used chaotic, dissonant, and distorted artistic tools to express the angst of generations.

Style of Expressionism

In sharp contrast to impressionism’s watercolor softness and delicate innocence, expressionism represents the darker aspects of the human unconscious.

Psychologist, musicologist, and composer Theodor Adorno stated that “the depiction of fear lies at the center” of expressionist music, and so the “harmonious, affirmative element of art is banished.”

Dissonance is the crucial element of expressionist music, and consonant harmonies are nowhere to be found here.

We can think of expressionist music as a complement to expressionist paintings.

Think of Edvard Munch‘s iconic painting The Scream as a musical piece – that is, expressionist music.

If you were to draw the color and textures from distorted, nightmarish expressionist paintings and transpose them into increasingly dissonant chords and out-of-tune instrumentation, you would have expressionist music.

Serialist composer Alban Berg’s opera Wozzeck and Schoenberg’s Die Glückliche Hand provide ideal examples of expressionist compositions.

Considered one of the elemental and most influential expressionist works in music, Schoenberg worked on Die glückliche Hand from 1908 to 1913.

The music is highly atonal and accompanies a dramatic plot centered on the main character’s endless anguish.

The story begins with a man hunched in the middle of the stage, bearing a beast upon his back.

His wife has abandoned him for another, and the man is in complete despair.

The wife returns to the man, but he is in such pain he does not see her.

Believing she is still gone, the man goes to a forge and pounds out a masterpiece of steel, even as the older, more experienced blacksmiths show aggression towards him.

The wife returns, and having regained his confidence and power, the man sees her this time.

He implores his wife to stay, but instead, she rejects him, kicking a rock at him.

The final scene shows the man once again crouching in the center of the stage with the beast upon his back once again.

Expressionistic style in music often contrasts high-pitched vocals or instrumentation in slower tempos with hyper-active instrumental parts playing frantic runs, arpeggios, and staccato bursts in rhythms that play against, rather than with, the vocal melody.

New Musical Forms

In addition to a high level of dissonance, expressionist music often employs some common effects, usually in extremes:

• contrasting dynamics.
• changing textures.
• Melodic and harmonic distortion
• wild leaps in tempo, rhythm, and chord structure
• extreme pitch es and tonal changes
• absence of cadence

The new musical forms born of expressionist music were primarily based on the implementation of instrumental range and contrasts in textures, tempos, and tonality.

The emphasis in expressionist music is placed on atonality, and harmonious accompaniments or complementary tonal or textual expressions are discarded in favor of the more discordant patterns characteristic of expressionist music.

Dissonance in The Expressionist Era

In music, expressionism stems from German/Austrian influences and is closely linked to the second Viennese school and atonality.

Expressionism focuses on expressing more base and dissonant emotions, like anger, despair, and grief.

Expressionist music aims to fully express these darker and often extreme emotions through equally extreme, disruptive, and sometimes even violent music that aims to provoke unsettled, disturbing responses from listeners.

Some prime examples of expressionist music include:

• Elektra, Richard Strauss (1908)
• Fünf Orchesterstücke, Op. 16, Arnold Schönberg (1909)
• Symphony No. 2 ‘prélude à la nouvelle journée’, Matthijs Vermeulen (1920)
• Symphony No. 1, Kurt Weill (1921)
• Violin Concerto, Alban Berg (1935)
• Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 44, Sergei Prokofiev (1928) 

Important Expressionist Era Composers

Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and Alban Berg, the Second Viennese School members, are the three most visible figures in expressionist music.

In addition to these most visible composers, there are some standout expressionist composers of the era:

• Ernest Krenek (1900-1991) is most noted for the Unisono passage of his Second Symphony (1922), an early work that features a long unison passage for shrieking violins alone in the final movement.

• Often compared to other great German composers like Bach, Beethoven, and Wagner, Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) is considered the only composer of the 20th century to write music in every usable genre during his lifetime. “The Young Maiden” is one of his most renowned expressionist works.
• Russian-born composer, conductor, and pianist Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) is considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. Like Hindemith, Stravinsky was noted for his stylistic diversity. His work “Three Japanese Lyrics for Voice and Piano” (1913) is one of his most famous expressionist pieces. 

Instrumentation

Expressionist music used the same instrumentation as previous musical eras, but expressionism changed how composers and performers used them.

Common expressionist instruments include organ, wind instruments, string quartets, violins, piano, flute, and voice.

However, composers and performers took these instruments to extremes in tempo, octave, and range.

Instrumentation, tone, texture, and tempo were often deliberately mismatched.

Summary

Expressionist music played a significant role in changing musical expression and widening musical repertoire.

Today, listeners can hear the influence of expressionist music in heavy metal, death metal, and other progressive rock forms.

The influence of expressionist music has shifted a bit north from Germany and Austria.

Today, expressionist music genres like heavy metal and death metal are heavily influenced by Scandinavian songwriters, mainly from Norway and Sweden.

Expressionist music was a unique artistic expression in music history.

We hope that you’ve gained a new understanding of how expressionism uses particular themes and motifs from the subconscious to create intense emotional responses using music.

This article will examine the movement toward minimalism in music during the 20th-century music era and explore how music expresses its influence today.

We’ll explore the history of minimalism in music, various musical theories and stylistic elements developed at the time, and some critical minimalist composers. We hope you’ll leave with a new understanding and appreciation of the innovative dynamics and expansion of musical definitions the minimalist music movement contributed to the music world.

When was the Minimalism Era?

Minimalism in music gained a firm foothold in music history during the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s.

After the advent of the electric guitar raised the noise threshold and the ability of players to play more notes faster during the new contemporary period in the 1950s, the art world, in general, underwent a period of contrast and embraced reductive expressionism during this period.

The experimental techniques from the musical periods preceding the minimalist era helped spur composers to push the limits of the definition of music to create a whole new genre of music by definition.

Some of the preceding musical eras that helped promote minimalism in music include the following:

• Modernism (1890-1975)
• Impressionism (1890-1930)
• Expressionism (1900-1930)
• Neoclassicism (1920-1975)
• Serialism (1920-1975)
• Contemporary (1950-current)

Style of Minimalism

Michael Nyman may have first used the term “Minimalist” in The Spectator in 1968.

Nyman is an English pianist, librettist, musicologist, and composer of minimalist music upon whose work the Michael Nyman band was founded in 1976.

Nyman claimed to have found “a recipe for the successful minimal music happening from the entertainment presented by Charlotte Moorman and Nam June Paik at the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts).” (Nyman 1968, 519.)

However, self-proclaimed minimalist composer Tom Johnson claims to have been the first to use the term ‘minimalism’ in reference to music as music critic for The Village Voice.

Johnson describes minimalism as “any music that works with minimal materials“.

• pieces that use only a few notes
• pieces that use only a few words of text
• pieces written for minimal instruments, such as antique cymbals, bicycle wheels, or whiskey glasses
• pieces that sustain one basic electronic rumble for a long time.
• pieces made exclusively from recordings of rivers and streams.
• pieces that move in endless circles.
• pieces that set up an unmoving wall of saxophone sound.
• pieces that take a very long time to move gradually from one kind of music to another.
• pieces that permit all possible pitches, as long as they fall between C and D.
• pieces that slow the tempo down to two or three notes per minute.”

Today, minimalism in music is commonly recognized as a form of art music that limits the number of musical instruments in a composition or replaces traditional instrumentation with non-instrument sources as musical expressions.

Minimalist music typically features repetitive patterns, phrases, or beats, extended droning sounds, and consonant harmonies.

New Musical Forms

The minimalist movement introduced new elements and forms of music, some of which remain in vogue today.

The minimalist approach to music is marked by a non-narrative system that calls the listener to focus on the process or phases of the musical composition or score and promotes active listening rather than serving as a mere backdrop for other activities.

Two of these new musical reflections include phase music and process music.

Phase Music

Phase music is essentially considered a type of minimalist music, although some puritans consider this a category of its own.

In phase music, the defining feature is the play between unison and contrast of two musical instruments playing together but not necessarily in tandem.

The two instruments may begin playing in tempo together, but they gradually shift tempos until one plays after the other, creating a doubling or echo effect.

Eventually, the two instruments meet at the same tempo again, at which time they are again playing in sync with each other.

Composer Steve Reich popularized phase music by looping the same phrase on different playback devices simultaneously, creating what is known as tape music or electroacoustic phase music in 1964.

Soon after, around 1967, Reich and other composers began writing phase music for instruments, creating instrumental phase music.

Process Music

Process music is widely defined as music that arises from a process, whether audible or not.

The musical process can be defined as “a highly complex dynamic phenomenon involving audible structures that evolve in the course of the musical performance … 2nd order audible developments, i.e., audible developments within audible developments.” (Seibt, Johanna, 2004)

Process compositions often use symbols in notation that were not previously considered musical notation, such as plus, minus, and equal signs.

These symbols indicate unspecified transformations not delineated by the composer.

Instead, those sounds are left to the performers’ interpretation, leaving them open to interpretation and endlessly changeable.

Reich also came up with the term “process music” in his 1968 manifesto, “Music as a Gradual Process.”

While Reich wanted listeners to hear the process throughout his music, other composers, like John Cage and David Lang, experimented with non-auditory compositional techniques.

Silence in The Minimalist Era

In contrast to the musical periods preceding it, the minimalist era did not emphasize any scale patterns.

Instead, minimalist music focused on improvisation, non-instrumental sounds, non-choreographed sounds, or repetitive loops that followed a pattern but not necessarily a scale.

Minimalist music often leaves out any tonic or center key, favoring instead a kind of quiet chaos interpreted as a type of unstructured order.

Silence plays an essential part in minimalism music, building on the adage, “Music is not in the notes but in the silence between.”

Composers of the minimalist era often credit John Cage’s 1952 piece 4’33” as the pioneering work for the minimalist age, although it was created before the movement gained momentum.

The song contains three movements lasting a combined total of four minutes and 33 seconds. The composition has no notes and is completely silent.

Instead, the music lies in the sounds made by the audience during each movement.

This innovative work broke all the previous definitions of music and blasted the structures that had contained compositions up until then. 

Important Minimalism Era Composers

Composers of minimalist music broke down barriers that had previously defined music for all of music history.

Primarily seated in the United States and the United Kingdom, minimalist composers used new technologies to change how we perceive natural and man-made sounds.

The following composers are considered the most influential of the time:

• Steve Reich (1936 – current)
• Philip Glass (1937 – current)
• Terry Riley (1935 – current)
• La Monte Young (1935 – current)
• Michael Nyman (1944 – current)
• Tom Johnson (1939 – current)
• John Cage (1912 -1992)
• John Lewis (1920 -2001)

Instrumentation

Many instruments used in minimalist music have been used for centuries and are still used today.

Standard minimalist instruments include organ, wind instruments, string quartets, and, for some composers, entire traditional orchestras.

Modern-era instruments like saxophones, mallets, and various percussion instruments are often used in minimalist compositions.

Natural sounds like rivers, rain, thunder, wind, and insects are sometimes employed as instruments.

Man-made sounds from automobiles, trains, factories, machinery, and other synthetic sounds are often used as a basis for or complement minimalist works.

Digital effects are often used to change the sound of instruments or effects.

Adding reverb, chorus, or wave distortion was common, as was using skipping or looping to create a complete work.

Summary

Minimalism has played an important part in music history.

Its influence is still heard today in electronic dance music, rap and hip-hop beats and loops, and experimental music of the 21st century.

Listeners can hear minimalism’s influence in tracks from the Beach Boys and the Velvet Underground, and it has helped humans think of the sounds of nature as more musical.

And minimalism is the basis for modern art forms like ASMR and meditation music.

We hope that you’ve gained a new appreciation for minimalism in music and that you’ve enjoyed learning about minimal music’s history and continuing impact on music today.

In this post, we’ve created a timeline of some of the most influential classical composers in history. From Bach to Beethoven and Dufay to Webern, these composers have made major contributions to modern music and are often considered among the best.

Please note that some composers spanned multiple eras, so we’ve categorized them as best as we can, even though they might belong in more than one!

Medieval Era (500–1400)

The longest classical music era, the medieval period lasted from AD 500 to 1400.

Because it was so long, music historians split this time into three sub-periods: the early Medieval period (500–1150), the High Medieval period (1150–1300), and the Late Medieval period (1300–1400).

The typical style of music during this period was monophonic — a type of musical texture that involved a single melodic line with no harmony. However, toward the end of the Medieval era, polyphonic music began to be used more and more, which led to the Renaissance era.

Below are some of the notable composers from the medieval era:

• Stephen of Liège (850–920): Made significant contributions to the liturgical and musical traditions of the church, including the compilation of chant manuscripts.
• Fulbert of Chartres (c. 960–1028): Composed hymns and chants that enriched the liturgical music of his time.
• Peter Abelard (1079–1142): Composed beautiful hymns and liturgical music that influenced medieval musical traditions.
• Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179): Created many original and expressive pieces of sacred music that are still celebrated today.
• Léonin (c. 1155–1200): Known for developing polyphonic music, particularly through his work on the Magnus Liber Organi.
• Pérotin (1160–1238): Advanced the development of polyphonic music by creating intricate and innovative compositions for the Notre Dame Cathedral.
• Adam de la Halle (c. 1250–c. 1306): Famous for creating one of the earliest French operas, Le Jeu de Robin et Marion.
• Philippe de Vitry (1291–1361): Developed the Ars Nova style, which transformed rhythmic notation in music.
• Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300–1377): Renowned for writing the Messe de Nostre Dame, one of the earliest complete settings of the Mass by a single composer.
• Francesco Landini (c. 1335–1397): Celebrated for his beautiful and complex ballate, which were among the most popular forms of music in 14th-century Italy.

Renaissance Era (1400–1600)

The Renaissance music era, which spanned from AD 1400 to 1600, saw a big development in several different areas.

Composers had a lot more freedom in terms of form, harmony, instrumentation, and purpose of the music they were writing.

Below are some of the notable composers from the Renaissance era:

• Guillaume Dufay (1397–1474): Celebrated for his sacred and secular styles, as well as the motet Nuper rosarum flores.
• Johannes Ockeghem (c. 1410–1497): Known for his polyphonic compositions, especially the Missa Prolationum.
• Alexander Agricola (c. 1446–1506): A key figure in the Habsburg musical establishment.
• Josquin Des Prez (c. 1450–1521): Had a great influence on polyphonic vocal music, including masses and motets.
• Jean Mouton (1459–1522): Best known for his complex motets and masses.
• Pierre de la Rue (c. 1452–1518): Best known for his polyphonic mass Missa L’Homme Armé.
• Robert Fayrfax (1464–1521): Renowned for his exceptional choral works, particularly the mass Missa O quam glorifica.
• Francisco de Peñalosa (c. 1470–1528): Recognized for his intricate polyphonic works, particularly the motet O sacrum convivium.
• Robert Carver (c. 1490– c. 1547): Most famous for his elaborate choral works, especially the mass Missa Dum sacrum mysterium.
• Clément Janequin (c. 1485–1558): Best known for his innovative and descriptive chanson La guerre (The Battle).
• Francesco Canova da Milano (1497–1543): Famed for his expressive lute compositions, particularly Fantasia no. 33.
• Thomas Tallis (c. 1505–1585): Best known for his monumental choral work Spem in alium, a 40-part motet.
• Jacques Arcadelt (c. 1504–1568): Famous for his widely performed madrigal Il bianco e dolce cigno.
• Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c. 1525–1594): Celebrated for the Missa Papae Marcelli (Pope Marcellus Mass).
• Francisco Guerrero (1528–1599): Renowned for his sacred music, particularly the Missa de Beata Virgine.
• Orlando di Lasso (1532–1594): Best known for his motets, notably Tristis est anima mea.
• Francisco Soto de Langa (1534–1619): Best known for his sacred villancicos, particularly the renowned “Riu, riu, chiu.”
• Gioseffo Guami (1542–1611): Famed for his madrigals and instrumental canzonas, particularly the Canzone La Lucchesina.
• William Byrd (1539–1623): Became famous for his sacred music, especially the Ave Verum Corpus.
• François-Eustache Du Caurroy (1549–1609): Contributed to the era’s sacred music, particularly his motet Miserere mei Deus.

Baroque Era (1600–1750)

The Baroque era was from around AD 1600 to 1750, and a lot of changes were seen in the music being written during this time.

The music became a lot more dramatic with more use of dynamics and contrast with lots of musical ornamentation.

It also saw the birth of some new music forms, like opera, concertos, sonatas, oratorios, and more.

Below are some of the notable composers from the Baroque era:

• Hieronymus Praetorius (1560–1629): An organist renowned for his polyphonic choral works, especially his “Magnificat” settings.
• John Dowland (1563–1626): Best known for his melancholy lute songs, particularly “Flow, My Tears.”
• Manuel Cardoso (1566–1650): Well known for his sacred music, especially his “Requiem.”
• Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi (1567–1643): Played a crucial role in the transition from Renaissance to Baroque music, especially known for his innovative opera L’Orfeo.
• Thomas Simpson (1582–c. 1628): Known for his instrumental music, especially his collection of dance pieces in The Monthes.
• Petronio Franceschini (1651–1681): Known for his Sonata in D, which showcases the expressive qualities of Baroque music.
• Arcangelo Corelli (1653–1713): Famous for his Concerto Grossi, which set the standard for the concerto form.
• Henry Purcell (c. 1659–1695): Renowned for his opera Dido and Aeneas, which is celebrated as one of the greatest works of Baroque music.
• Alessandro Scarlatti (1660–1725): Developed the opera seria genre, particularly exemplified in his opera Griselda.
• Tomaso Albinoni (1671–1751): Best known for his Adagio in G Minor.
• Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (1678–1741): Famous for his violin concertos, especially The Four Seasons.
• Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767): Renowned for his prolific output and his influential Tafelmusik suites.
• Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764): Best known for the opera Hippolyte et Aricie, which established him as a leading figure in French Baroque opera.
• Giuseppe Matteo Alberti (1685–1751): Famed for his violin concertos, particularly the Concerto in D Major.
• George Frideric Handel (1685–1759): Famous for his oratorio Messiah, which includes the equally celebrated “Hallelujah” chorus.
• Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750): Celebrated for his masterpiece the Brandenburg Concertos.
• Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757): An extraordinary keyboardist known for his sonatas.
• Johann Friedrich Fasch (1688–1758): Admired for his intricate orchestral suites.
• Jean Jacques-Christophe Naudot (c. 1690–1762): Best known for his virtuosic flute concertos.
• Johann Adolph Hasse (1699–1783): Famed for his operas, particularly “Cleofide,” which exemplify the expressiveness of the Opera seria style.

Classical Era (1750–1820)

The Classical music era spanned from around 1750 to 1820 and was a time of great development in the music world.

Not only were some iconic instruments like the piano invented, but it also saw a return to more simplistic melodies that were memorable and very singable.

Below are some of the notable composers from the Classical era:

• Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (1710–1784): The eldest son of Johann Sebastian Bach and famed for his inventive keyboard music, particularly his Fantasias.
• Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714–1788): The second son of Johann Sebastian Bach and known for his influential keyboard works, especially his Sonatas.
• Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck (1714–1787): Helped revitalize the opera genre with his Orfeo ed Euridice.
• Johann Georg Leopold Mozart (1719–1787): Famed for his violin textbook Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule, which shaped violin teaching for generations.
• Johann Ernst Bach II (1722–1777): Known for his church music, particularly his cantatas.
• Johann Gottlieb Goldberg (1727–1756): Inspired Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations, which were named after him.
• Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1806): Developed the symphony and string quartet, particularly through works like the London Symphonies.
• Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach (1732–1795): His symphonies and chamber music bridged the Baroque and Classical styles.
• Johann Christian Bach (1735–1782): Had a major influence on the classical style and operas, particularly Artaserse.
• Antonio Salieri (1750–1825): Known for his operas and for being a prominent musical figure in Vienna during his time.
• Muzio Clementi (1752–1832): Called the Father of the Pianoforte and celebrated for his piano sonatas.
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791): A prodigy famed for his numerous symphonies, operas, and concertos, such as The Magic Flute and Eine kleine Nachtmusik.
• Franz Xaver Sussmayr (1766–1803): He completed Mozart’s unfinished Requiem.
• Bedřich Diviš Weber (1766–1842): Founded the Prague Conservatory.
• Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827: Bridged the Classical and Romantic eras and was famed for his nine symphonies, particularly Symphony no. 9.
• Niccolo Paganini (1782–1840): A virtuosic violinist best known for his 24 Caprices.
• Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826): Established German Romantic opera with Der Freischütz.
• Gioachino Antonio Rossini (1792–1868): Also famed for his operas, especially The Barber of Seville and William Tell.
• Franz Peter Schubert (1797–1828): Made a significant impact with his lieder (art songs) and his “Unfinished Symphony.”
• Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti (1797–1848): Contributed greatly to the opera genre with works like Lucia di Lammermoor and L’elisir d’amore.

Romantic Era (1820–1900)

The Romantic era, spanning from around AD 1820 to 1900, was a time of emotional, expressive music.

Composers now wrote music to express feelings such as grief and love through extreme dynamic range, complex chord sequences, the use of rubato, and other musical devices.

It also saw the development of new forms such as tone poems, lieders, nocturnes, and rhapsodies, among others.

Below are some of the notable composers from the Romantic era:

• Vincenzo Bellini (1801–1835): Greatly influenced the bel canto opera style.
• Louis-Hector Berlioz (1803–1869): Famed for his orchestral work “Symphonie fantastique.”
• Johann Strauss I (1804–1849): Popularized the waltz with pieces like the “Radetzky March.”
• Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847): Contributed significantly to the Romantic era with pieces like the “Overture to a Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
• Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849): Revolutionized piano music with his nocturnes and etudes.
• Robert Alexander Schumann (1810–1856): Renowned for his piano concertos.
• Franz Liszt (1811–1886): Transformed piano performance with his compositions and the development of the symphonic poem.
• Wilhelm Richard Wagner (1813–1883): Redefined opera with his epic “Ring Cycle” and the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk (total artwork).
• Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (1813–1901): Dominated the opera scene with masterpieces like La Traviata and Aida.
• Charles-François Gounod (1818–1893): Fame for his operas, particularly Faust, and his religious music like “Ave Maria.”
• Jacques Offenbach (1819–1880): Significantly shaped the operetta genre with his work Orpheus in the Underworld.
• Clara Josephine Wieck Schumann (1819–1896): Elevated the role of the piano in Romantic music with her exceptional performances and compositions.
• César Franck (1822–1890): Contributed significantly to French music with his symphonic masterpiece Symphony in D Minor.
• Josef Anton Bruckner (1824–1896): Influenced symphonic music with his grand and complex symphonies, particularly his Symphony no. 7.
• Johann Strauss II (1825–1899): Became famous for his waltzes, including “The Blue Danube.”
• Johannes Brahms (1833–1897): Enriched the Romantic repertoire with his Hungarian Dances and Symphony no. 1.
• Eduard Strauss (1835–1916): Continued the family tradition of composing Viennese waltzes and polkas, such as “Bahn Frei!”
• Georges Bizet (1838–1875): Contributed to the opera genre, notably Carmen.
• Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (1839–1881): Contributed greatly to Russian music with his opera Boris Godunov and the suite Pictures at an Exhibition.
• Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893): Achieved worldwide fame with his ballets, like Swan Lake and The Nutcracker.
• Antonín Dvorak (1841–1904): Celebrated for his New World Symphony, which drew on European classical traditions and American folk music.
• Jules Massenet (1842–1912): Made a major impact on opera with his work Manon.
• Edvard Hagerup Grieg (1843–1907): Famous for his Peer Gynt suite, which includes the piece “In the Hall of the Mountain King.”
• Gabriel-Urbain Fauré (1845–1924): Highly regarded for his “Requiem.”
• Sir Edward William Elgar (1857–1934): Best known for his Enigma Variations and the Pomp and Circumstance marches.
• Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924): Achieved great fame with operas like La Bohème and Tosca.
• Gustav Mahler (1860–1911): Renowned for his expansive symphonies, such as Symphony no. 5.
• Achille-Claude Debussy (1862–1918): Known for his impressionist music, particularly the piece “Clair de Lune.”
• Richard Strauss (1864–1949): Made a significant contribution to orchestral music with his tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra.
• Jean Sibelius (1865–1957): Most famous for his symphonic poem Finlandia, which became a symbol of Finnish nationalism.
• Erik Satie (1866–1925): Recognized for his unique and minimalist piano pieces, particularly the Gymnopédies.
• Siegfried Wagner (1869–1930): Followed in his father Richard Wagner’s footsteps with works like the opera Der Bärenhäuter.
• Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin (1872–1915): Transformed classical music with his mystical compositions, particularly through Piano Sonata no. 5.
• Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958): Known for his orchestral work The Lark Ascending.
• Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff (1873–1943): Celebrated for his Piano Concerto no. 2, a staple of the piano repertoire.
• Gustav Theodore Holst (1874–1934): Famous for his orchestral suite The Planets, particularly the movement “Mars, the Bringer of War.”

20th-Century Era (1900–Present)

The 20th-century music period began around the 1900s and is considered to be the period we’re still in.

This is the time that composers began to escape the musical conventions from previous years. They branched off into many sub-movements, like impressionism, modernism, minimalism, and neoclassicism.

Below are some of the notable composers from the 20th-century era:

• Arnold Franz Walter Schoenberg (1874–1951): Revolutionized music with his development of the twelve-tone technique.
• Charles Edward Ives (1874–1954): Broke new ground with his innovative use of dissonance and polytonality.
• Joseph Maurice Ravel (1875–1937): Renowned for his exquisite orchestration, demonstrated in his piece Boléro.
• Béla Bartók (1881–1945): Integrated folk music elements into classical compositions, as epitomized by his Concerto for Orchestra.
• Artur Schnabel (1882–1951): Made significant contributions to classical music interpretation, particularly through his performances and recordings of Beethoven’s piano sonatas.
• Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971): His work The Rite of Spring redefined the possibilities of rhythm and dissonance in music.
• Zóltan Kodály (1882–1967): Made major contributions to music education and created influential works like Háry János Suite.
• Anton Webern (1883–1945): Advanced the twelve-tone technique with his highly structured pieces, such as Five Pieces for Orchestra.
• Alban Berg (1885–1935): Merged late Romanticism with modernist techniques.
• Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953): Noted for his vibrant and dynamic works, especially the ballet Romeo and Juliet.
• George Gershwin (1898–1937): Fused classical music with jazz, creating iconic pieces like Rhapsody in Blue.
• Francis Poulenc (1899–1963): Celebrated for the choral piece “Gloria,” among others.
• Maurice Durufle (1902–1986): Highly regarded for his beautiful “Requiem.”
• Sir Lennox Berkeley (1903–1989): Contributed to 20th-century music with his Symphony no. 1.
• Eduard Tubin (1905–1982): Noted for his symphonies and ballet music, especially Kratt.
• Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975): Created significant works under Soviet pressure, notably his Symphony no. 5.
• Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992): Celebrated for his spiritual and innovative music, especially the Turangalîla-Symphonie.
• Samuel Barber (1910–1981): Remembered for his emotionally powerful Adagio for Strings.
• William Howard Schuman (1910–1992): Made substantial contributions to modern music, particularly with his Symphony no. 3.
• Gian Carlo Menotti (1911–2007): Achieved fame with his opera Amahl and the Night Visitors.
• Jean Françaix (1912–1997): Known for his light-hearted and witty compositions, particularly the Divertissement.
• Benjamin Britten (1913–1976): Greatly influenced 20th-century music, particularly through his opera Peter Grimes.
• Bernd Alois Zimmermann (1918–1970): Known for his complex and diverse works, especially the opera Die Soldaten.
• Ernest Tomlinson (1924–2015): Celebrated for his light orchestral music, notably the Suite of English Folk Dances.
• Peter Lamb (1925–2013): Recognized for his contributions to wind band music, particularly Sonatina for Flute and Piano.
• Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928–2007): A pioneer in electronic music, with significant works like Gesang der Jünglinge.
• William Mathias (1934–1992): Admired for his choral and orchestral works, particularly Ave Rex.
• Arvo Pärt (1935–): Renowned for his minimalist and spiritual compositions, especially Spiegel im Spiegel.
• John Rutter (1945–): Highly esteemed for his choral music, with popular pieces like “Requiem.”

Summing Up The Classical Composers Timeline

As you can see, this timeline of classical music composers shows the evolution and progression of classical music over time.

Jumping on YouTube and exploring each of these composers’ music is a great way to see how the styles have changed throughout the years.

There are many composers we haven’t included on this list, but if you think we’ve missed someone, let us know, and we’ll add them.

The Early Medieval period was dominated by religious vocal music, with plainsong or Gregorian chant the best known examples of this. But, later on, the rise of secular music and music for the purposes of entertainment coincided with the development of musical instruments. While modern versions of some of these are still used by 21st Century musicians, others fell out of favour and might look rather strange to contemporary observers!

Instrumental Categories in Medieval Music

In this article we’ll take a look at the main instruments that were played in the Medieval period.

For the sake of clarity we’ll organise them into modern instrumental families – woodwind, brass, strings and percussion.

But it is worth noting that, at the time, instruments would have been divided into two broad groups:

• haut, meaning loud
• bas, meaning soft

In general, haut instruments were suitable for playing outdoors, and would have included many of the wind instruments mentioned here: shawms, sackbuts, trumpets and so on.

Meanwhile, instruments that were suitable for indoor chamber music – the recorder and most string instruments – would have been part of the bas category.

Because very few original instrument specimens survive from Medieval times, historians have had to piece together information about the kinds of instruments that were played by looking carefully at art, texts and written music.

Medieval Woodwind Instruments

Recorder

Today the Recorder is often considered the ideal starter-instrument for younger children.

They are now generally made from plastic, whereas Medieval recorders were wooden, but otherwise they remain essentially the same, with a beak-style mouthpiece and eight finger holes.

Flute

Unlike the metal instruments we see today, Medieval Flutes would have been made from wood.

They would have had simple holes to be covered by the fingers, rather than the more complex systems of key-work we see today.

Bagpipes

The loud, distinctive sound of the Bagpipes is now commonly associated with the Scottish Highlands, but the instrument has been played in countries around the world since ancient times.

Early Medieval bagpipes would have comprised a bag made from goat or sheep skin, plus a reed pipe, then in the 13th Century an extra drone pipe was added to provide a non-stop droning single note, above which the melody would sound.

Bagpipes could be played alone but were often paired with a Shawm (which we’ll look at shortly).

Simple Medieval bagpipes are sometimes known as Bladder Pipes.

Pipe and Tabor

The pipe was a simple woodwind instrument with just three holes.

It was designed to be played with just one hand, so that the other could play a tabor drum, a kind of portable snare drum, or another small percussion instrument.

Flageolet

A close relative of the recorder, the Flageolet was a whistle-like instrument that was popular with amateur musicians until they disappeared from use in the 19th Century.

They were very similar to recorders except they often had two thumbholes, while recorders just have one.

Shawm

The Shawm is a type of double-reed woodwind instrument and a predecessor of the modern day oboe.

It has a piercing, trumpet-like sound, so was typically used for outdoor performances.

Although it was used in medieval period it also was one of the most popular woodwind instrument of the renaissance era.

Medieval Brass Instruments

Trumpet

Early Trumpets did not have valves, so they could only play notes from the harmonic series.

They were used in pageants and fanfares, as well as in various military contexts, where their bright sound could convey messages across relatively large distances.

Also called Buisines, Medieval trumpets tended to be straighter and longer than their modern counterparts.

Sackbut

An early version of the trombone, the Sackbut’s pitch is altered via a telescopic slide.

It has a narrower bell than its modern counterpart.

Cornett

Not to be confused with the cornet (which is similar to the modern trumpet), the cornett or cornetto is a pipe-like instrument made from wood or ivory.

It has finger holes like a woodwind instrument, but a cup-style mouthpiece like other members of the brass family.

Medieval String Instruments

Lute

The Lute is a deep-bodied relative of the guitar that appears in various sizes.

During the Medieval period it would have been plucked with a quill (where modern players would use a plectrum) and its primary job would have been to provide improvised accompaniment for vocal music.

Gittern

The Gittern is a relative of the lute and the modern guitar.

It has a smaller, pear-shaped body compared to the lute, and its neck and body are made from a single piece of wood.

Types of gittern include the Guitarra Latina (Latin guitar) and the Guitarra Morisca (Moorish guitar).

Dulcimer

A member of the zither family, the dulcimer sits flat across the player’s lap, where horizontal metallic strings are hit with a pair of little hammers.

Although the dulcimer disappeared from use in Western classical music, modern versions of the instrument are still used in types of American folk music.

The psaltery or psalterium is a relative of the dulcimer that would ultimately evolve into the harpsichord.

Harp

The harp was a favourite instrument of travelling minstrel and troubadour musicians in the Medieval period.

For the sake of portability, it would have been less than half the size of the modern pedal harp that we might see in an orchestra today.

Hurdy Gurdy

The Hurdy Gurdy is a rather strange-looking mechanical cousin of the violin.

Primarily used to create drones, a wooden wheel is turned by a crank, which causes the strings to play a continuous note.

Meanwhile melodies can be played on a small keyboard.

An early version was called the Organistrum.

Two people were required to play it: one to crank the wheel, and one to alter the pitches.

Viol (Viola da Gamba)

The Viol, which was also called the Viola da Gamba, was an instrument that appeared towards the end of the Medieval period.

A type of bowed string instrument, they come in various sizes, but the most common member of the family is held between the legs and looks similar to a cello, though it has a wider neck and more strings.

Rebec

The Rebec is an ancestor of the violin.

It has a narrow, boat-shaped body and is played with a bow on the arm or under the chin.

It is related to the Rebab, an ancient string instrument from North Africa and the Middle East.

Medieval Keyboard instruments

Pipe organs

The organ was one of the few instruments that were allowed in churches and cathedrals, where vocal music dominated.

The positive organ was a smaller, relatively portable type of pipe organ.

Portative organ

The portative organ is a bit like a miniature version of the church organ.

A portable instrument, it is strapped to the performer, who operates a pair of bellows, which puts wind through a set of pipes.

With the other hand, he or she plays pitches on a small keyboard.

Harpsichord

The harpsichord was invented in the late Medieval period.

A relative of the piano, its strings are plucked with a trigger mechanism when keys are pressed on the keyboard.

Medieval Percussion

Timbrel

This is essentially a tambourine: a wooden frame drum with jangles or bells round the edges.

Naker

Sometimes called naqareh, nakers are a small relative of the kettle drum (or timpani), which were brought back to Europe during the Crusades.

Tabor

A portable snare drum played either with one hand or two drumsticks.

Elsewhere, bells and cymbals are also commonly seen in Medieval paintings.

Wrapping up on Medieval Instruments

So, that concludes our guide to the instruments of the Medieval period.

We hope you’ve enjoyed finding out about some instruments which have close relatives that we still use today – like the flute and the sackbut – as well as learning about some weird and wonderful items – like the hurdy gurdy – that are a little less familiar!

This period, a bridge between Medieval and Baroque times, saw composers break free from strictly church-focused music to embrace secular themes, championing the “art for art’s sake” philosophy.

That’s why, in this post, we’re going to take a look at 15 of the greatest Renaissance-era composers who helped champion this period of music. Read on!

1. John Dunstable

First on our list is Dunstable (sometimes spelled Dunstaple). He was an English composer whose music spans the transition from the Medieval era to the Renaissance period.

The biographical details we have are limited, although we know that he was an educated man who was also a well-regarded astrologer, astronomer, and mathematician.

As a composer, Dunstable wrote mostly religious music under the patronage of various noble households. His compositional style was highly influential, and many important composers from continental Europe, including Guillaume Dufay, were impacted by his work.

One of the distinguishing features of his writing is his use of thirds as an interval — previously considered a dissonance — and triadic harmony, comprising the three-note chords that underpin much of Western harmony today.

2. Guillame Du Fay

Next, we have Guillaume Du Fay (also sometimes written Dufay). He was a Franco-Flemish composer who was considered one of the most important and influential artists of his day.

Born in Brussels, he moved to Cambrai as a child, receiving musical training at the Cathedral there. He would later live in Rimini, Rome, and Savoy.

He wrote both religious music — including Masses, Magnificats, and hymns — and more than 70 secular chansons, where he put texts to the popular forms of the time, such as rondeau, virelai, and Italian ballate. He also wrote at least two books on music theory, although the contents of these do not survive.

Noted for his melodic and memorable melodies, one of his most famous works is the Nuper Rosarum Flores. This motet perfectly encapsulates the complex polyphonic style (music with multiple independent, interweaving parts), which is now popular. It is considered a masterpiece of its time.

3. Johannes Ockeghem

Born in 1497 in Saint-Ghislain, Belgium, Johannes Ockeghem was a chorister in Antwerp before joining the households of various French noblemen and royals.

He left behind a relatively small number of compositions, but his Masses, motets, and secular chansons that survive are praised for their balance of technical prowess and expressiveness. His later Masses are considered particularly innovative.

While previously the cantus firmus (a pre-existing melody that forms the basis of a polyphonic composition) would stay within the tenor part, Ockeghem shared it between the different voices to produce a texture that is impressively rich and complex.

He was, by all accounts, a generous and popular man; and his death was widely mourned by musicians, including Josquin, whom he influenced significantly (and we’ll discuss next).

4. Josquin Des Prez

Often referred to simply as Josquin Des Prez, this Franco-Flemish composer was so admired that numerous anonymous pieces were attributed to him to increase their value. However, it has since been discovered that many of these attributions were incorrect.

Still, the music that he did write — both religious and secular — remains popular and has been recorded extensively since the 20th century. He helped usher in a stripped-back, simpler style of polyphonic composition, with a focus on smooth movement in each individual part.

Significantly, his rise to prominence coincided with the invention of the printing press, and when the influential printer Ottaviano Petrucci produced a series of anthologies of motets, it was Josquin’s work that lay at the front of each one. One of Petrucci’s productions was Misse Josquin, the first-ever collection devoted to a single composer.

5. Thomas Tallis

Up next is Thomas Tallis, an English composer. He who worked as a chorister and organist before being appointed to the Royal Court. Here, he performed and composed for four successive monarchs: Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary Tudor, and Elizabeth I.

His job required great versatility, with each king or queen demanding very different compositional styles.

While working in the Chapel Royal, he taught William Byrd (1539–1623), who would also go on to be regarded as one of England’s greatest composers. In an unprecedented move, Elizabeth I gave the pair a 21-year monopoly on printing music and music paper in England from 1575.

6. Giovanni Pierluigi Da Palestrina

Next, we have Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, whose religious music was a hallmark of the late Renaissance style. He was known for his grand and complex choral polyphony with intricately interwoven parts.

Born near Rome, Palestrina held musical roles in various chapels and churches, drawing early inspiration from Guillaume Dufay and Josquin des Prez, who worked in Italy.

His compositions significantly influenced Baroque composers, notably Johann Sebastian Bach. However, Palestrina’s personal life was marred by tragedy in the 1570s when the plague took his wife, brother, and two sons.

Palestrina’s legacy is anchored in his prolific output, with his most celebrated works epitomizing the essence of Renaissance polyphony. His “Pope Marcellus Mass” is particularly renowned, hailed for its clarity and balance in blending spiritual reverence with musical sophistication.

7. Orlande De Lassus

Together with Tomás Luis de Victoria and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Orlande de Lassus (sometimes called Orlando de Lasso) was one of the leading composers of the later Renaissance era.

He lived in various cities, including Milan, Rome, and Munich, which helped him develop a remarkable range and versatility: his songs included Italian madrigals, French chansons, and German lieder.

An incredibly prolific composer, he left behind over 2,000 compositions, many of which are characterized by a rich, polyphonic style. One of his notable works is “Prophetiae Sibyllarum,” a collection of 12 motets, each dedicated to a different sibyl from ancient mythology.

8. Tomás Luis De Victoria

Along with de Lassus and Palestrina, Tomás Luis de Victoria was one of the most famous composers of the Counter-Reformation (the resurgence of Catholicism, following the Protestant Reformation).

Not only was he a celebrated composer, but he also served as a priest, dedicating his entire compositional output to sacred music.

The Spaniard was also a proficient organist and featured the instrument prominently in many of his choral pieces in a way that anticipated the Baroque continuo.

Today, Victoria’s music, deeply spiritual and emotive, continues to be revered for its intricate melodic lines and profound expressivity.

9. Jacopo Peri

The Italian composer Jacopo Peri’s great claim to fame is that he is often called the inventor of opera, a fusion of theater, vocal, staging, and sometimes dance, which would become incredibly popular over the following centuries.

Peri, who sometimes goes by the pseudonym Il Zazzerino, wrote Dafne, which is considered the very first opera, at the end of the Renaissance era (around 1597). Sadly, the music is now mostly lost.

It was scored for harpsichord, lute, viol, archlute, and triple flute, making a much smaller ensemble than the ones used in later operas, such as the early Baroque works of Claudio Monteverdi.

A few years later, in 1600, he wrote Euridice, which is the first opera to have survived in its entirety.

10. Gregorio Allegri

Influenced heavily by Palestrina, Gregorio Allegri was another notable composer during this period. Like Palestrina, Allegri was also based in Rome, where he served as a priest and was a member of the prestigious Papal Choir that performed in the Sistine Chapel.

His most famous work is the Misiere, a setting of a psalm for two choirs — one of four voices and one of four. The piece had gradually become so popular that the Pope would not allow it to be performed outside of the Sistine Chapel to enhance the reputation of the choir.

In 1770, long after Allegri’s death, a 14-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart heard the Misiere twice on a visit to Rome with his father, before transcribing the piece accurately from memory and thus creating the first unauthorized copy of the work. The Misiere is now a popular favorite at choral concerts around the world.

11. Philippe Verdelot

French composer Philippe Verdelot played a significant role in the Renaissance era. Despite his French roots, he spent most of his adult life in Italy, becoming a significant figure in the Italian music scene.

One of the highlights of Verdelot’s career was his time as maestro di cappella at the Baptisterium San Giovanni in Florence, where he served from 1523 to 1525. This role marked him as a leading figure in the church’s musical activities.

Verdelot is best known for his contributions to the Italian madrigal, a form of secular vocal music composition. He was considered the most important composer in that genre before the mid-16th century.

12. Claude Le Jeune

Up next is Claude Le Jeune, a Franco-Flemish composer born in the mid-16th century, in Valenciennes, a city in present-day France. His music career spanned the Renaissance and early Baroque periods, making his compositions a blend of different musical styles.

Le Jeune was well-known for his work in musique mesurée, a style of composition where the length of the notes corresponded to the syllable length in French poetry. This style was quite groundbreaking at the time and made Le Jeune’s compositions distinct.

He spent much of his career in Paris, where he composed a variety of works including chansons, psalms, and instrumental music. His collection of Protestant psalms, called “Pseaumes en Vers Mesurez,” is widely regarded as one of his most significant works.

13. Antonio De Cabezón

Born in 1510 in Castrillo Matajudíos, Spain, Antonio de Cabezón was a prominent Spanish composer and organist. He was unique in that he was blind from childhood, yet his exceptional musical talent shone through from an early age.

Cabezón’s career took off when he became the organist for the royal chapel of Queen Isabella of Portugal. This position allowed him to showcase his skills on a grand stage.

His compositions mainly focused on keyboard music, including tientos, diferencias, and glosas. In 1557, Cabezón published a collection of his works titled Obras de Música. This collection, published posthumously by his son Hernando, is a testament to his life’s work and has become a significant resource for understanding Renaissance keyboard music.

14. Michael Praetorius

German composer, organist, and music theorist Michael Praetorius is particularly known for his contributions to the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods of music.

One of Praetorius’s most significant contributions to music is his extensive musical treatise Syntagma Musicum. This work, published in three volumes from 1614 to 1620, covers a wide range of topics, from contemporary musical practices to detailed descriptions of musical instruments.

As a composer, Praetorius was prolific. His compositions ranged from simple hymns for church congregations to more complex polychoral arrangements. His Musae Sioniae comprises hundreds of Lutheran chorale settings, while Terpsichore is a compilation of over 300 instrumental dances.

15. Thomas Morley

Closing this list is Thomas Morley, best known for his significant contributions to the Elizabethan era of music, primarily during the late Renaissance period.

Morley was a student of William Byrd, one of the most respected composers of the time. He later obtained the degree of Bachelor of Music from the University of Oxford.

In 1592, Morley became the organist at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London — a position that further cemented his reputation as a leading composer and performer of his time. He was also appointed as one of the Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, a prestigious group of musicians who served the royal household.

Aside from his work as a composer, Morley made a significant contribution to music theory with his treatise A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597). The book was designed as an instructional guide for those wishing to learn about music composition and remains a valuable resource for understanding the musical techniques of the period.

Summing Up Our List Of Great Renaissance Composers

That brings us to the end of our look at some of the most important composers of the Renaissance period.

We’ve gone from an Englishman to the Franco-Flemish composers who dominated the middle part of the era before finishing with the Italians who were at the forefront of the major stylistic developments towards the end of the 16th Century.

We hope you’ve enjoyed learning about the diverse selection of music that came out of the Renaissance period from these brilliant composers.

This genre is known for its blurred genre boundaries and influences from outside the classical realm. Key movements include serialism, minimalism, experimentalism, and spectral music.

In this article, we will explore these styles and look at some of the most notable pieces from influential 20th and 21st-century composers.

Serialism and the Continuation of Modernism

The modernist movement emerged in the 20th Century as a response to the epically grand music of the late Romantic period, as there was a feeling that almost everything that was possible had now been achieved within the structures and conventions of the Common Practice Era (which used a tonal system based on key centers and standard chord progressions, as well as structures like sonata form).

One of the most important strands of the modernist movement was serialism, which was pioneered by Arnold Schoenberg in the 1920s.

12-tone music, perhaps the most prominent form of serialism, takes a tone row made up of all 12 notes from the chromatic scale in a given order and then repeats and manipulates them in various structured ways.

Unlike in tonal music, all 12 notes are given more or less equal importance.

After the end of the Second World War in 1945, a number of composers continued expanding upon this approach.

However, rather than using fixed 12-tone rows, composers like Milton Babbitt, Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen applied the concepts of serialism – predetermined repeating patterns – to other elements of music like rhythm and dynamics.

This post-war strand of serialism is often associated with a movement in the arts around that time that is known as high modernism.

Often written with a highly methodical, almost mathematical approach, this tends to be rather dissonant and challenging music that continues to divide opinion.

Boulez’s piano piece Structures applies serialist concepts to various musical elements, including pitch and dynamics:

Experimental Music

In the mid-20th Century some composers began writing pieces that questioned the very definitions of music, art and composition.

One of the most famous examples of this is John Cage’s 4’33”, in which the performers do nothing except be present for four minutes and 33 seconds, meaning that the piece is actually composed of the sounds and atmosphere in the environment during that time.

Is this still music? If not, why not?

Cage also used indeterminacy in his music, meaning that some aspects of the piece are left open to chance or to the performer’s free choice.

The composer used the I Ching, an ancient Chinese text that uses chance to suggest answers to posed questions, as a decision making tool and compositional device.

He was the figurehead of a group known as the New York School, which also included the likes of Morton Feldman and Earle Brown, who also wrote aleatoric music (music of chance), as well as taking influence from surrealist and avant garde visual art:

Other composers experimented with non-standard notations, such as graphic scores, where the performer decides what to play based on a series of, say, lines, abstract images and geometric shapes, offering a huge amount of interpretative freedom.

Musique concrete, a style pioneered by Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen, utilised electronics to take recorded sounds – of instruments, the human voice or the natural environment, for example.

These raw materials would then be manipulated and turned into sort of musical collages.

Free improvisation is music that does not have rules or pre planned structure – often it uses no written material at all.

Whilst it may be connected to the worlds of free and avant garde jazz that developed in America in the 1960s, in its purest form ‘improv’ musicians generally try to actively avoid references to recognisable musical conventions or genres.

Computer Music and Spectralism

As music technology developed, composers began to use computers as part of their working process.

This might include having a computer algorithm generate an element of composition, use of synthesized sounds, or using a program to digitally manipulate acoustic sound waves.

Much of this work is based on the relationship between music and mathematics.

Spectralism developed as an approach in France in the 1970s, in which the acoustic properties of sound – or sound spectra – were analysed digitally and then used as the basis for composition.

This means that the harmonic series and microtones are used extensively.

An example occurs in spectral pioneer Gérard Grisey’s Partiels, where the spectrum of overtones (the frequencies that make up the note’s sound) of a single low trombone note is subsequently arranged for the rest of the ensemble.

This school of thought can be seen as a fascinating meeting of music and physics:

Minimalism

The minimalist movement emerged in the United States in the late 1950s.

Using minimal amounts of musical material, minimalist music takes repeating, interweaving fragments of melody to create hypnotic tapestries of sound, which tend to lack the peaks and troughs, the sense of tension and release, found in lots of other music.

Against the backdrop of dissonant, atonal modernism and serialism, Terry Riley’s In C, with its endless C major tonality, was quietly shocking.

It comprises 53 short musical phrases, which can be repeated an arbitrary number of times.

It is to be played by an indeterminate number of performers for an unspecified amount of time:

Often using electric instruments, reflecting technological advances of the day, and with a harmonic sound world that was generally consonant, composers like Phillip Glass and Steve Reich found huge commercial success:

In the 1980s and ‘90s music sprang up that was known as post-minimalism.

This is no longer ‘pure’ minimalism, but shares many characteristics with the genre.

It often takes on the influence of other styles of music, including non-western music and popular styles.

Current Composers of Contemporary Classical Music

The 20th Century saw music become more divergent than previous eras, with a more divergent range of styles and sound worlds emerging than ever before.

This trend has continued and, in fact, there are more subgenres and scenes than it is possible to cover in this article.

But to give you a sense of the stylistic breadth of contemporary classical music that continues to be written, here is a small selection of composers who are active in the field today:

• Arvo Part (b. 1935) – Estonian writer of religious-inspired ‘holy minimalism,’ which is influenced by Gregorian chant. He is one of the most frequently performed composers in the world.
• Rhys Chatham (b. 1952) – like a number of contemporary classical composers, Chatham has blurred genre lines by taking on the influence of punk rock and noise rock.
• Anna Meredith (b. 1978) – popular Scottish composer of electronic and acoustic works
• Harrison Birtwistle (b. 1934) – associated with the Manchester School, along with Peter Maxwell Davies and Alexander Goehr, who both also studied at the Royal Northern College of Music. Some of his pieces were considered rather shocking when broadcast in the 1990s.
• Steve Reich (b. 1936) – the minimalist pioneer remains incredibly popular. His work has been influenced by the Balinese gamelan tradition as well as by his Jewish heritage.

Summary

So, that concludes our guide to Contemporary Classical Music.

We’ve learned about an extremely varied selection of styles and scenes, from the uncompromising sounds of high modernism, to the quirky experimentalism of John Cage and his peers, the perhaps more approachable work of the minimalists, and the high-tech approach of spectralism.

We hope that you’ve enjoyed the journey, and that it might act as something of a springboard for you to find out about and listen to more weird and wonderful music from this period.

This article will investigate the different strands of the classical music of the 20th Century, the composers who contributed to them and some of their key pieces. We’ll take a look at impressionism, modernism and atonalism, electronic music and minimalism, and the influences that jazz and folk had upon classical music, as well the impact caused by war and political upheaval. We’ll also see that new and exciting classical music continues to be created in the 21st Century.

Transitioning from the Romantic Period

The 20th century period of music, as its name suggests, began around 1900.

It is the last of the six periods of classical music eras and comes after the romantic era that ended around 1910AD.

• Medieval era (500-1400AD)
• Renaissance era (1400-1600AD)
• Baroque era (1600-1750AD)
• Classical era (1730-1820AD)
• Romantic era (1800-1910AD)
• 20th Century era (1900-Present)

By the end of the Romantic period, classical music had reached something of a turning point, with many conventions and structures having essentially remained in place since the Baroque era of the 17th and 18th Centuries.

Composers began to reject these traditions in different ways in the 20th Century, creating a broad range of totally new and often radical music.

As a result, there is no regonizable unified sound to the music of this period, and it is, in general, much more stylistically divergent than the preceding eras of Western art music.

20th Century Movements

As we mentioned earlier, the 20th century isn’t made up of one style but actually several different movements that were popular with different composers and at different points throughout the 20th century.

Below, we’ll take a look at some of these movements and the composers that lead the way in developing them.

Impressionism

Impressionism was a movement in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries in both art and music, which focused on mood and atmosphere.

Orchestral works by the French composers Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy used timbre (more on timbre in music here), ambiguous tonality, and unusual scales to suggest color.

It was also intended to be charming and sensuous, in contrast to the heavy, deeply serious music made in the late Romantic period by German composers like Richard Wagner.

Debussy’s composition “La Mer” depicts the sea, although he actually rejected the impressionist label:

Impressionist painters like Claude Monet focused on portraying light and movement rather than realistically recreating the minute details of objects.

In a sort of parallel to this, Debussy and Ravel rejected the tension and release of traditional cadence-based harmony in favor of tonality that was often more static, remaining within a mode like the whole tone scale, for example, for extended periods.

Modernism and Atonalism

The Common Practice era (which used a tonal system based on key centers and standard chord progressions, as well as structures like sonata form) had been in place since the Baroque period, and by the 20th Century, there was a feeling that late Romantic composers like Wagner and Richard Strauss had done everything that could be done within this framework.

Lots of music composed in the 20th Century did away with these rules, and the modernist movement did so in a particularly extreme way, in keeping with its ethos of rejecting tradition and embracing individuality.

One of the key figures of the modernist movement was Arnold Shoenberg, who pioneered atonalism in the 1920s.

This rather dissonant-sounding music dispenses with traditional harmonic function and lacks a key center.

He also experimented with 12-tone music, which is based on a tone row made up of all 12 notes from the chromatic scale in a given order, with all 12 given more or less equal importance, and then manipulated in various structured ways.

Here is one of his piano pieces:

His students Alban Berg and Anton Webern developed this approach, which is sometimes referred to as serialism, and the three Austrian composers are collectively known as the Second Viennese School (with Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven being the First Viennese School).

Elsewhere, Russian composer Igor Stravinksy’s use of rhythm was highly innovative, utilizing frequently shifting time signatures.

This is particularly evident in his revolutionary ballet The Rite of Spring, which caused quite a stir when it was first performed in 1913:

War and Political Upheaval

With two World Wars, the 20th Century was a time of major social and political change, and it was inevitable that this would have an impact on the arts.

Working in Stalinist Russia, Dmitri Shostakovich was forced to scale back his modernism in favor of a more populist, Romantic-inspired style in his symphonic works that was acceptable to the authorities, yet remained highly creative, while his chamber works display more overtly modernist characteristics.

Perhaps partly in response to the trauma of the First World War, the interwar years saw a return to more ordered art in general, with a focus on structure and emotional restraint.

In music, this was manifested in Neoclassicism, a movement that took influence from the Classical period.

Stravinsky’s Pulcinella and Sergei Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony exemplify this as pieces that put a 20th Century twist on the stylings of 17th and 18th Century music.

Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem and Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima by Krzysztof Eugeniusz Penderecki are examples of pieces that reflect upon the horrors of the Second World War.

Jazz and Ethnic Folk Influences

Jazz, which was created by African Americans, was arguably the biggest musical development of the 20th Century.

The USA was now a force to be reckoned with in the world of classical composition for the first time, and a number of American composers looked towards the artform for inspiration, including Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland and George Gerswhin.

The latter’s Rhapsody in Blue begins with an instantly recognisable clarinet glissando and makes frequent use of the blues scale:

Non-American composers also took inspiration from jazz: Frenchman Darius Milhaud’s La Création du monde was inspired by the music he heard in Harlem, New York, while Englishman Malcolm Arnold composed a concerto for swing clarinettist Benny Goodman.

Composers also continued to incorporate their native folk music in their work, which was a tradition that began in the Romantic period.

Béla Bartók collected Hungarian folk tunes, which provided inspiration for his own work, while Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote an English Folk Song Suite.

Minimalism and Use of Electronics and Technology

Starting in the 1960s, the minimalist school focused on using minimal musical material and making use of repetitive patterns, loops and electronic techniques, reflecting technological advances of the day.

This music was generally more consonant-sounding and less overtly challenging than the modernist school, and composers like Phillip Glass and Steve Reich became incredibly popular:

Musique concrete also utilised electronics.

By taking recorded sounds – of instruments, the human voice or the natural environment, for example – composers like Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen would manipulate these raw materials and turn them into sort of musical collages.

Aleatoric Music and Experimentalism

As the 20th Century continued, people came up with various inventive ways of challenging the very meaning of composition.

Aleatoric music is music in which some element of the composition is left to chance.

Often this means that the performer gets to determine how part of the piece should be played, perhaps with a freely improvised section.

Henry Cowell’s Mosaic Quartet allows the players to play fragments of the music in various different sequences, meaning that the piece can sound different each time it is performed.

American composer John Cage used aleatoric elements in his music, in addition to a pioneering approach to instrumentation.

He made use of a prepared piano, which has objects placed on or between the strings to alter its sound, often making it more percussive.

Meanwhile, his 4’33” – in which the performers do nothing except be present for four minutes and 33 seconds, meaning that the piece is actually composed of the sounds and atmosphere in the environment – is one of the most famous and controversial works of the modern era.

Elsewhere, composers like Charles Ives made use of microtones.

These are notes that are smaller than the semitones we generally use.

We are not used to hearing them, so they sound dissonant and out of tune to our ears, but they actually require instruments to be tuned incredibly precisely.

Classical Music in the 21st Century

Important classical music continues to be made in the present day in a range of styles.

The internet has made music more accessible, making it easier for sub-genres to cross-pollinate and influence each other more easily.

Music and notation software have also revolutionised the ways in which we make music.

Film music has become incredibly popular as an artform, and composers like John Williams and Hans Zimmer have helped bring classical-influenced music to a wider audience.

Summary

So that concludes our look at the classical music of the 20th Century.

We have learned about impressionism, modernism, minimalism and aleatory, and about how war, politics and technology influenced music, as composers tore up the rules that were established in previous centuries.

We hope you’ve enjoyed learning about and listening to some of this radical and hugely varied music.