Musical Styles Since 1945

Musical Styles since 1945

Chance effects are incorporated into One (1950) by the abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollock. The artist dripped, poured & flung paint onto an enormous canvas tacked to the floor.

1. Chance Music – composers choose pitches, tone colors & rhythms by random methods, eg: throwing coins, spinning dice. Performers can choose the ordering of musical materials, play them in any desired order.Work : Sonatas & Interludes for Prepared Piano,1946-1948 by John Cage

2-minute work, characterized by a gradual thickening of texture & increase in rhythmic momentum

2. Increased Use of 12-tone system → serialism, organize pitch, rhythm, dynamics & tone colors, totally controlled & organized music.Work: Semi- Simple Variations, 1956 by Milton Babbit

Milton Babbit (b.1916)

3. Electronic Music – with ē development of tape studios, synthesizers & computers, composers have unlimited resources for ē production & control of sound.Work: Poème électronique, 1958 by Edgard Varèse

Edgard Varèse (1883-1965)

4. Mixed Media – require performers to function as both actors & sound producers, to break down ē ritual surrounding traditional concerts & to increase communication between composer & audience.

George Crumb (b1929)

Work: Ancient Voices of Children, 1970 by George Crumb For mezzo-soprano, boy soprano, oboe, mandolin, harp,

percussion & “electric piano” The mezzo –soprano sings a kind of fantastic vocalize on purely

phonetic sounds into an amplified piano, producing a shimmering aura of echoes.

The boy soprano singing offstage.

5. Minimalist Music – partly a reaction against ē complexity of serialism & ē randomness of chance music. It’s characterized by steady pulse, clear tonality & insistent repetition of short melodic

patterns. Its dynamic level, texture & harmony tent to stay constant for long stretches of time.

Philip Glass (b.1937)

Long seen as a father of Minimalism, the sculptor Ronald Bladen looks more and more like something else entirely.

"What I am after is to create a drama out of a minimal experience." – Ronald Bladen

Work: Einstein on the Beach, 1976 by Philip Glass Knee Play 1, from Einstein on the Beach, electric organ, chorus of

men & women, 2 female speaking voices.

Einstein on the Beach (1976), has no real plot or character development, last almost for 5 hours without intermission. The spoken numerals 1, 2, 3… & solfège do, re, mi…represent the rhythmic & melodic structure of the music. Musicians: a sound engineer, a

female vocalist, 2 electric organs, synthesizer bass, keyboards, 3 saxophones, flute, clarinet, violin soloist dressed as Albert Einstein. Near the end of the opera, Einstein plays the violin while the statistic of a nuclear disaster appear on the backdrop behind him. (The opera’s title refers to Nevil Shute’s novel about nuclear destruction, called On the Beach.)

6. Musical Quotation- composers made extensive use of quotations from earlier works, usually works of 18 & 19 cent.

Work: Concerto Grosso, 1985 by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich Written to commemorate Handel’s 300th bday. Each of its 5 movt uses thematic material drawn fr ē opening movt

of Handel’s Sonata for Violin & Continuo in D major.

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (b.1939)