20th-century modernism (1900–1950)

In the early 20th century, composers questioned tonality, regular rhythm and inherited forms.

Around 1900 Romantic harmony was so loaded with chromaticism that tonality began to dissolve. Several paths opened, often at the same time, which makes the 20th century very diverse.

Schoenberg abandoned tonality (atonal music), then around 1921–1923 devised twelve-tone technique: a row of all twelve chromatic notes organises the whole work. Stravinsky caused a scandal in 1913 with The Rite of Spring, where rhythm becomes the main force: unpredictable accents and constantly changing metres.

Bartók travelled the countryside of Hungary and Romania with a phonograph to record peasant songs; from them he drew asymmetric rhythms and unusual modes. Others mixed keys (polytonality, in Milhaud) or returned to old forms with modern harmony (neoclassicism).

Jazz fascinated classical composers: Ravel, Stravinsky and Milhaud drew on it, and Gershwin brought jazz into the concert hall with Rhapsody in Blue (1924). In Brazil, Villa-Lobos married Bach and popular music; he also deeply renewed the guitar repertoire.

What characterises it

  • Dissonance set free: it no longer has to resolve
  • Atonality and twelve-tone technique (a row of twelve notes)
  • Irregular rhythms, changing or asymmetric metres (5/8, 7/8)
  • Polytonality: two keys at once
  • Chords in fourths, clusters, piano treated as percussion

Typical forms

  • Ballet
  • Short piano pieces
  • Teaching collections (Bartók’s Mikrokosmos)
  • Renewed concerto and symphony
  • Jazz rhapsody

Instruments

  • Piano (often percussive)
  • Orchestra with more percussion
  • Classical guitar (Villa-Lobos)

Composers

  • Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)
  • Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951)
  • Béla Bartók (1881–1945)
  • Alexandre Scriabine (1872–1915)
  • Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887–1959)
  • George Gershwin (1898–1937)

Listen and play