Modernism (music)

Modernism in music is characterized by a desire for or belief in progress and science, surrealism, anti-romanticism, political advocacy, general intellectualism, and/or a breaking with tradition or common practice. Ezra Pound's modernist slogan, "Make it new," in music. Modern music is often thought to begin with, or just after, Debussy's impressionism, rising to rhetorical, if not commercial, dominance after World War Two, and then being gradually superseded by post-modern music.

History of modernism in music

Late 19th century origins

As with many other arts, the consciousness of modernity appeared before music which is now labelled "modernist". Mahler and Puccini both thought of themselves as modern composers and were concerned with their place in modern music. The end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century saw a host of harmonic, melodic and instrumental innovations in music, but in an effort to preserve and build upon the past, rather than radically alter it.

Related Topics:
19th century - 20th century

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The defining break with the Victorian and Romantic tradition was the alliance of music with the depiction of new subjects, removing old unities, and with an intent to push the audience forward. The rise of musical modernism can be tied to the rise of expressionism, primitivism and cubism in the arts, Freudian theory in philosophy and the range of other artistic and scientific ideas which flowered forth from 1890 through the beginning of the First World War. There was a conscious sense of seeing an analog between changes in music and changes in the other arts among the first wave of musical modernists.

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The transitional moment came with the introduction by Debussy and Ravel of an expanded chord vocabulary now labelled "impressionism", this movement in painting and music is generally regarded as transitional, because while the intent was aesthetic appeal, its means were a departure from the formal, some might say academic, norms which held in the arts. While initially controversial, Impressionism became widely acceptable very quickly in all but the most conservative of artistic circles. However, the precedent for a radical break with previous technique had been set.

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Another transitional force was the synthesis by Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler of the music of Wagner. By detaching Wagner's musical innovations from the setting of the musical drama, Strauss and Mahler excited a generation of composers eager to use the broader range of chromatic possibilities which their techniques offered.

Related Topics:
Richard Strauss - Gustav Mahler

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A third, and less carefully examined, road into musical modernism was the progressively more percussive use of the orchestra found in both Italian opera and in Russian concert music. While Rimsky-Korsakov is not generally thought of as a percursor to Modernism, some of his innovations were influential on the young Igor Stravinsky as well as other young Russians of the early 20th century. These included a use of exotic scales rarely seen in western music, as well as a brighter, colorful style of orchestration increasingly reliant on percussion for its effect.

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