The Modern Era

1910 - 1960

• The early 20th century saw a time when technology was transforming the world, and so composers overturned musical conventions and found new, daring subjects and new ways of expressing them.

• A group led by Arnold Schoenberg decided that tonality (the logical order in which chords and harmonies fit together) was getting in the way, and abandoned it altogether. This abandoned the idea that music should be beautiful which led to suspicion with some of the older composers.

• Rachmaninov continued to compose in his rich, romantic style right up until the 1940s. Others, such as Sibelius, felt left behind and simply stopped composing.

• Successful composers were those who found a middle-ground. Richard Strauss started off in the 1890s in a romantic style but became one of the first major composers to switch to modernism.

• Igor Stravinsky, one of the most successful composers of the twentieth century, shocked and delighted audiences throughout his 70-year career with his driving 'mechanical' rhythms and new type of harmony that layered different chords.

• Folk music was a great source of inspiration for composers. See Vaughan Williams, Bartók and Messiaen

• Music was greatly influenced by the enormous political events which shook Europe in the middle of the twentieth century. Many composers and performers were sent to Nazi concentration camps because of their beliefs, religion or race and there were a lot of restrictions on the music that was created.

• Shostakovich, in particular, was persecuted by the Soviet regime when his music was thought to be too ‘modern’ or élitist, so meaning he was forced to write in two styles - symphonies for the authorities, and smaller works such as string quartets which were true to his own voice.

• In the same way that their European counterparts used folk music, American composers began to draw on their own native music - jazz.  See George Gershwin and Duke Ellington. Europeans such as Stravinsky and Ravel responded with music that also embraced jazz styles.

• The Holocaust, Hiroshima and World War II convinced many post-war composers that they needed to put the past behind them and find ever more progressive methods. See Pierre Boulez’s Structures (1951) and John Cage
• Modernism in music was about being radical and different. For the first time, musicians and audiences realised that music didn’t have to be confined to traditional ways of doing things.

Great works from the Modern era:

Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring, The Firebird
Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra
Strauss: Four Last Songs
Gershwin: Piano Concerto, Porgy and Bess
Bernstein: Candide
Copland: Appalachian Spring, Fanfare for the Common Man
Shostakovich: Symphony no.5, Piano Concerto no.2
Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet