IMPRESSIONISM One of the earlier but concrete forms declaring the entry of 20th century music was known as impressionism. It is a French movement in the late 19th and early 20th century. In impressionism, the sounds of different chords overlapped lightly with each other to produce new subtle musical colors.

You Gotta Know These 20th-Century Composers

• Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971).
• Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951).
• Benjamin Britten (1913–1976).
• Aaron Copland “COPE”-lund (1900–1990).
• Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953).
• Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975).
• Béla Bartók (1881–1945).
• Charles Ives (1874–1954).

 A looser form of 20th century music development focused on nationalist composers and musical innovators who sought to combine modern techniques with folk materials.

RHYTHM: Complex, individual rhythms are used, and new rhythms and meters are common such as polyrhythms and polymeters. MELODY: Melodies are often fragmented, dissonant and experimental.

The nationalist movements of 19th- and early 20th-century art music drew on folk tunes and their styles, as well as folk dances and themes from folklore and village life, to develop distinctive repertories. Leaders in these movements included Bedrich Smetana and Dvořák for Czech music, Edvard…

List of art and design movements of the 20th century

• Abstract Expressionism.
• Art Deco.
• Bauhaus.
• colour-field painting.
• conceptual art.
• Constructivism.
• Cubism.
• Dada.

Debussy’s impressionist works typically “evoke a mood, feeling, atmosphere, or scene” by creating musical images through characteristic motifs, harmony, exotic scales (e.g., whole-tone and pentatonic scales), instrumental timbre, large unresolved chords (e.g., 9ths, 11ths, 13ths), parallel motion, ambiguous tonality.

The Impressionist composers were focused more on the individual sounds of each instrument, and they wrote in such a way as to highlight those particular tone colors. Highlighting each instrument also lead to a thin texture as few instruments were playing at any one time.

Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas. Expressionist artists sought to express meaning or emotional experience rather than physical reality.

Claude Debussy

Artists created vivid pictures, distorting colours and shapes to make unrealistic images that suggested strong emotions. Expressionist composers poured intense emotional expression into their music and explored the subconscious mind. Expressionist music often features: a high level of dissonance.

Musique concrète, (French: “concrete music”), experimental technique of musical composition using recorded sounds as raw material. The fundamental principle of musique concrète lies in the assemblage of various natural sounds recorded on tape (or, originally, on disks) to produce a montage of sound.

Musique concrète (meaning “concrete music”) is a genre of electroacoustic music that is made in part from acousmatic sound. It can feature sounds derived from recordings of musical instruments, voice, and the natural environment as well as those created using synthesizers and computer-based digital signal processing.

tape recorder

Electronic instrument

• Electronic music.
• Musical instrument.
• Electronic carillon.
• Electronic organ.
• Music synthesizer.
• MIDI.
• Ondes martenot.
• Theremin.

Electronic music has transformed the production and quality of music played today. In contrast to traditional music, electronic music allows for flexibility and creativity in the music production and play including voice modification and background beats.

Tenori-On

A music genre is a conventional category that identifies some pieces of music as belonging to a shared tradition or set of conventions. Music can be divided into genres in varying ways, such as into popular music and art music, or religious music and secular music.