| Abstract |
Weaving together history, theory, and analysis, the author provides an unusually enlightening introduction to music since 1900. He focuses with equal care on style and structure as he chronicles the evolution of music from the crumbling of tonality under Schoenberg to current developments in the work of composers such as George Rochberg and David Del Tredici. Comprehensive and well-balanced, this book brings to life both the stylistic evolution of the music and the new principles by which it is organized. It is an exceptionally rewarding book for students following a historical, theoretical, or combined approach to 20th-century music. Part One is a detailed introduction to the concepts, ideas, techniques, compositional materials, and analytical principles of the music--the language needed to perceive and understand such a diverse, and often difficult, legacy of musical innovation. Here, in chapters enriched by carefully selected musical examples, the author illuminates the ways in which composers revolutionized traditional tonality, harmony, rhythm, tone, texture, and orchestration. Twelve works--by composers ranging from Chopin, Liszt, and Wagner to Berio and Boulez--bring to life the sources of 20th-century structural and stylistic change. Throughout the book, he focuses on a number of influential compositions, examining 89 major works in depth as vivid representatives of the course of 20th-century music. Parts Two and Three are chronological accounts of 20th-century music, highlighting the developments that catalyzed new directions in composition and performance. Part Two, music before 1945, covers the avant-garde in Germany, Austria, France, and Russia; musical nationalism in Eastern Europe, Britain, Scandinavia, Spain, and the Americas; the neoclassicism of Strauss, Hindemith, Britten, Tippett, Stravinsky, and the group of French composers known as Les Six; and the unique experimental music of such American pioneers as Ives, Ruggles, Cowell, Cage, and Varèse. The flowering of music since 1945 is the focus of Part Three: the revival of atonality and serialism in works by Carter, Babbitt, Ligeti, Stockhausen, and Boulez, and the contrasting use of chance and indeterminacy in the music of Cage, Feldman, Wolff, Lutoslawski, and other European and American composers. Here, too, is electronic music, live and recorded; eclectics as diverse as Messiaen, Crumb, and Penderecki; and such current movements as minimalism and neoromanticism. Throughout, the author applies current theoretical concepts and analytical techniques to the music under discussion. He consistently demonstrates the relationship between structural principles and stylistic innovations. And he sets the history of modern music within the context of parallel cultural, artistic, and intellectual movements. Along with its large repertory of primary works, the book includes many additional musical examples, brief biographies of major composers, listings of their works, books and articles for further reading, and photographs and reproductions of art works. The book is keyed to the author's accompanying selection of scores, Music of the Twentieth Century: An Anthology. |
