Why music changed after 1900
For about 200 years Western music was mostly tonal: it had a home key, and chords pulled the ear back to the home note. By 1900 composers felt this system was worn out. New technology (records, radio, electronics), two world wars and contact with music from other cultures pushed them to try new sounds.
There was no single style. Instead, many '-isms' appeared side by side. We group them as modernism (about 1900–1960: breaking rules) and postmodernism (about 1960 on: mixing styles freely, popular and classical, old and new).
Impressionism and expressionism
Impressionism (Debussy, Ravel)
- Soft colours of sound rather than strong melodies.
- Whole-tone scale (all steps equal), pentatonic and old modes.
- Parallel chords that slide together; blurred harmony; harp, flute, muted strings.
Expressionism and atonality (Schoenberg, Berg, Webern)
- Shows strong inner feelings such as fear.
- Atonal: no home key; very dissonant (clashing) chords that never resolve.
- Wide leaps in the melody, sudden changes of loudness.
Serialism, neoclassicism and folk-based music
Serialism (twelve-tone music)
Schoenberg's method: put all 12 notes in a fixed order called a tone row. The piece uses the row and its changed forms: retrograde (backwards), inversion (upside down) and retrograde inversion. No note is more important than another. Later 'total serialism' also ordered rhythm and loudness.
Neoclassicism (Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Poulenc)
A reaction against huge late-Romantic music: smaller groups, clear old forms (sonata, suite, concerto), dry textures, but with spicy modern chords and jumpy rhythms.
Folk and national styles (Bartók, Kodály)
Bartók collected thousands of folk songs from villages of Central Europe. In pieces such as Hungarian Pictures (an orchestral set of five short folk-based scenes) he used folk melodies, modes, drones, irregular metres (5/8, 7/8, groups of 2+2+3), ostinato and colourful orchestration. Other composers built national voices: Copland (open American sound, wide intervals), Britten and Vaughan Williams (English), Shostakovich (sarcastic, dramatic), Messiaen (birdsong, special modes, complex rhythm).
Electronic, chance and minimalist music
- Electronic music: sound made or changed with tape, synthesisers and computers (Stockhausen, Varèse). Musique concrète uses recorded real sounds.
- Aleatoric (chance) music: some choices are left to chance or the performer (John Cage).
- Sound-mass / clusters: thick blocks of notes very close together (Ligeti, Penderecki).
- Minimalism (Riley, Reich, Glass, Adams): short repeated patterns, steady pulse, slow changes, often tonal again. Phasing: two players repeat the same pattern at slightly different speeds.
- Postmodernism and beyond: quoting older music, mixing jazz, rock, world music; 'holy minimalism' (Pärt, Tavener).
How to listen and describe: a checklist
In listening tests you are asked to name features and link them to a style. Use the elements:
- Melody: stepwise or wide leaps? Tone row?
- Harmony / tonality: tonal, modal, whole-tone, atonal, clusters?
- Rhythm / metre: regular pulse, irregular metre, changing time signatures, ostinato?
- Texture: thin or thick, layered loops?
- Timbre: unusual instruments, extended techniques, electronics?
- Structure: old form (neoclassical), gradual process (minimalism)?
Try it yourself
- Clap a pattern 1-2, 1-2, 1-2-3 (7 beats) ten times. Feel the uneven 'limp' of folk dance.
- With a friend, both clap 1-2-3-rest together; then one of you gets slightly faster. Hear the phasing.
- In the 3D, play each style and write one word that describes it.
Key formulas and definitions
- Tonal: home key; Atonal: no home key
- Whole-tone scale: 6 notes, every step = 2 semitones (C D E F♯ G♯ A♯)
- Tone row: all 12 notes once; forms: prime (P), retrograde (R), inversion (I), retrograde inversion (RI)
- Irregular metre: 5/8 = 2+3, 7/8 = 2+2+3; ostinato = repeated pattern
- Minimalism: repetition + steady pulse + gradual change (phasing, additive process)
- Modernism ≈ 1900–1960 (breaking rules); Postmodernism ≈ 1960 on (mixing styles)
Worked examples
1. You hear soft harp chords that slide in parallel, a flute melody with no clear home note and a dreamy mood. Which style?
Impressionism. Clues: soft colourful timbre (harp, flute), parallel chords, whole-tone or modal harmony with no strong home key, a blurred dreamy mood. Composer example: Debussy.
2. A tone row is C–B–G–A♭–E♭–C♯–D–B♭–F♯–F–E–A. Write the first four notes of its retrograde.
Retrograde = the row backwards. Start from the last note: A, E, F, F♯ ...
3. A dance tune has 7 quick beats in each bar, accented on beats 1, 3 and 5. How are the beats grouped and which composer used this a lot?
Accents on 1, 3, 5 give groups 2 + 2 + 3 = 7 (7/8 time). Bartók used such irregular folk metres from Central and Eastern Europe.
4. Give three features that tell you a piece is minimalist.
1) A short pattern repeats many times. 2) A steady, unchanging pulse. 3) Very slow, gradual changes (adding one note, phasing between parts). Often the harmony stays on a few simple chords for a long time.
Common mistakes
- Calling all modern music 'atonal'. Neoclassical, folk-based and minimalist music are often tonal or modal.
- Thinking serialism means random notes. A tone row is a strict fixed order of all 12 notes.
- Mixing up impressionism and expressionism. Impressionism is soft and hazy; expressionism is intense and dissonant.
- Saying minimalism 'never changes'. It changes slowly, and noticing those small changes is the point.