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Contemporary classical music
In the broadest sense, contemporary music is any music being
written in the present day. In the context of classical music the term
has been applied to music written in the last quarter century or so,
particularly works post-1975. There is debate over whether the term
should be used to apply to music in any style, or only to composers
writing avant-garde music, or only to "modernist" music. There is some
use of "Contemporary" as a synonym for "Modern", particularly in
academic settings. A more restrictive use applies the term only to
living composers and their works (perhaps only their recent works).
Since "contemporary" is a word that describes a time frame, rather thana style or a unifying idea, there are no universally agreed criteria
for making these distinctions.
History
In the early part of the 20th century contemporary music included
modernism, the twelve tone technique, atonality, futurism, primitivism,
constructivism, New Objectivity, unresolved and greater amounts of
dissonance, rhythmic complexity, nationalism, social and socialist
realism, and neoclassicism. In the fifties, contemporary music
generally meant serialism, in the sixties serialism, post-serialism,
indeterminacy, electronic music including computer music, mixed media,
performance art, and fluxus, and since then minimal music,
post-minimalism, New Simplicity, New Complexity, and all of the above.
Since the 1970s there has been increasing stylistic variety, with far
too many schools to name or label. However, in general, there are three
broad trends. The first is the continuation of modern avant-garde
traditions, including musical experimentalism. The second are schools
which sought to revitalize a tonal style based on previous common
practice. The third focuses on non-functional triadic harmony,
exemplified by composers working in the minimalist and related
traditions.
Contemporary music composition has been altered with growing force by
computers in composition, which allow for composers to listen to
renderings of their scores before performance, compose by layering
performed parts over each other and to disseminate scores over the
internet. It is far too soon to tell what the final result of this wave
of computerization will have as an effect on music.
All history is provisional, and contemporary history even more so,
because of the well known problems of dissemination and social power.
Who is "in" and who is "out" is often more important to who is known
than the music itself. In an era with perhaps as many as 40,000
composers of concert music in the United States alone, first
performances are difficult, and second performances even more so. The
lesson of obscure composers in the past becoming important later
applies doubly so to contemporary music, where it is likely that there
are "firsts" before the officially listed first, and works which will
be later admired as exemplars of style, which are as yet, unheralded in
their own time.
Movements in
contemporary music
Modernism
Many of the key figures of the high modern movement are alive,
or only recently deceased and there is also still an extremely active
core of composers, performers and listeners who continue to advance the
ideas and forms of Modernism. Elliott Carter is still active, for
example, as is Lukas Foss. While high modernist schools of composing,
such as serialism are no longer as rhetorically central, the
contemporary period is beginning the process of sorting through the
modern corpus, looking for works which will have repertory value.
Modernism is also present as surface or trope in works of a large range
of composers, as atonality has lost much of its ability to terrorize
listeners, and even film scores use sections of music clearly rooted in
modernist musical language. Active modernist composers include Harrison
Birtwistle, Alexander Goehr, Judith Weir, Thomas Adès,
Magnus Lindberg and Gunther Schuller.
Serialism
More specifically named "integral" or "compound" serialism, one of the
most important post-war movements, led by composers such as Pierre
Boulez, Bruno Maderna, Luigi Nono, and Karlheinz Stockhausen in Europe,
and by Milton Babbitt, Donald Martino, and Charles Wuorinen in America.
Compositions use an ordered set or several such sets, which may be the
basis for the whole composition. The term is also often used for
dodecaphony, or twelve-tone technique, which is alternatively regarded
as the model for integral serialism.
Post-modernism
Post-modernism is held to by many critics to be a strong influence in
contemporary classical music. While explanations of what post-modernism
is, and why it is influential vary widely, and responses to whether
post-modernism is "good" for music, or even a good in and of itself -
there is a wide agreement that instrumental concert music, and "art
music" has absorbed ideas and influences from the wider culture, and
that the results of these influences, for better and for worse, can be
detected in musical results. Examples include polystylism, bricolage
and collage, pop music references, the use of fragments, found sounds
and incorporated voices, the shift from increasingly chromatic surfaces
to more triadic ones, juxtaposition of genres, the use of new
instrumental combinations which take instruments from several different
cultures, and the combining of composition with video and other media
images. Key composers include the Scottish composer, James MacMillan
(who draws on sources as diverse as plainchant, South American
Liberation Theology and Polish avant-garde techniques of the 1960s),
the American Michael Torke (drawing on classical tradition, minimalism
and popular music) and Mark-Anthony Turnage from the UK (drawing from
jazz, English pastoralism and the avant-garde).
Polystylism
Polystylism is the use of multiple styles or techniques of music, and
is seen as a postmodern characteristic. Polystylist composers include
William Bolcom, Sofia Gubaidulina, George Rochberg, Frederic Rzewski,
Alfred Schnittke, Ezequiel Viñao and John Zorn.
Conceptualism
When Duchamp displayed a urinal in an art museum, he struck the most
visible blow for artistic conceptualism. Music conceptualism found a
champion in John Cage and, a bit later, in the composers associated
with the Fluxus movement. A conceptualist work is an act whose musical
importance draws from the frame, rather than the content of the work.
An example would be Alvin Singleton's 56 Blows, a work that has the
distinction of being mentioned in debate on the floor of the Senate.
Minimalism and
post-minimalism
The minimalist generation still has a prominent role in new
composition. Philip Glass has been expanding his symphony cycle, while
John Adams's On the Transmigration of Souls, a choral work
commemorating the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks won a
Pulitzer Prize. Steve Reich has explored electronic opera (most notably
in Three Tales) and Terry Riley has been active in composing
instrumental music and music theatre. But beyond the minimalists
themselves, the tropes of non-functional triadic harmony are now
commonplace, even among composers who are not regarded as minimalists
per se.
Many composers are expanding the resources of minimalist music to
include rock and world instrumentation and rhythms, serialism, and many
other techniques. Kyle Gann considers William Duckworth's Time Curve
Preludes as the first "post-minimalism" piece, and labels John Adams as
a "post-minimalist" composer, rather than as a minimalist. Gann defines
"post-minimalism" as the search for greater harmonic and rhythmic
complexity by composers such as Mikel Rouse and Glenn Branca. Another
notable characteristic is storytelling and emotional expression taking
precedence over technique. Post-minimalism is also [1] a movement in
painting and sculpture which began in the late 1960s. (See
lumpers/splitters)
Other composers sometimes referred to as "post-minimalist" include
Erkki-Sven Tüür, Peteris Vasks, Giya Kancheli, Arvo
Pärt, Gavin Bryars, Lepo Sumera, Valentin Silvestrov, Veljo
Tormis, Ingram Marshall, Kevin Volans, Daniel Lentz, Louis Andriessen,
Frederic Rzewski, and many composers associated with the Bang on a Can
collective.
Post-classic tonality
Other aspects of post-modernity can be seen in a "post-classic"
tonality that has advocates such as Michael Daugherty, Elena
Kats-Chernin and Tan Dun.
"World music" influence
An increasing number of composers mix western and non-western
instruments, including gamelan from Indonesia, Chinese traditional
instruments, ragas from Indian Classical music. There is also an
exploration of eastern-European and non-Western tonalities, even in
relatively traditionally structured works. This can be in the context
of post-minimalist works, such as Janice Giteck's and Evan Ziporyn's
Balinese-influenced works, bandura works by Julian Kytasty, or in the
context of post-classic tonality, such as in the music of Bright
Sheng,
or in the context of thoroughly modernist styled works.
Rock influence
Similarly, many composers have emerged since the 1980s who are heavily
influenced by rock. Many, such as Scott Johnson and Steven Mackey
started out as rock musicians and only later moved into the realm of
scored music. Other notable composers who draw on rock include Annie
Gosfield, Evan Ziporyn, Julia Wolfe, Michael Gordon, David Lang, John
Zorn, Steve Martland, Ben Johnston, Anne LeBaron, Kitty Brazelton,
Glenn Branca, and Nick Didkovsky. Many of these composers (Gordon,
Lang, Wolfe, Ziporyn, Martland, Branca) are post-minimalist in
orientation, but some (Didkovsky, Brazelton) are very much not.
Historicism
There are composers that have adopted historicist approach to
composition, employing a variety of styles of previous eras. Some
composers had occasional forays into this approach previously (Alfred
Schnittke), while others embraced it to varying degrees of exclusion of
other styles.
Some post-minimalist works, such as Gavin Bryars' "Oi me lasso" cycle
employ medievalism. Other composers embrace renaissance, baroque and
classical styles with varying degrees of purism (Fritz Kreisler, Robert
Casadesus, Jordi Savall, Rene Clemencic, Thomas Binkley, Benjamin
Bagby, Joseph Dillon Ford, Ladislav KupkoviÄÂ, Winfried Michel, the
several composers of the Delian Society, and the Vox Saeculorum group).
This movement is related to Early Music Revival and a number of
historicist composers are influenced by their intimate familiarity with
the instrumental practice of earlier eras (Alexandre Danilevsky, Paulo
Galvão, Roman Turovsky-Savchuk).
Historicism may also be combined with minimalism, post-minimalism, and
world-music.
Experimentalism
One important movement in contemporary music involves expanding the
range of gestures available to instrumentalists, for example the work
of George Crumb. The Kronos Quartet has been among the most active
ensembles in promoting contemporary American works for string quartet,
and they take delight in music which stretches the manner in which
sound can be drawn out of instruments.
European composers who make heavy use of extended techniques include
Helmut Lachenmann, Salvatore Sciarrino and Heinz Holliger.
Electronic music
Electronics are now part of mainstream music creation. Performances of
regular works often use midi synthesizers to back or replace regular
musicians. Looping, sampling, and (rarely) drum machines may also be
used. However the older idea of electronic music (musique
concrète, electroacoustics...) - as a search for pure sound
and an interaction with the hardware itself - continues to find a place
in composition, from commercially successful pieces to works targeted
at very narrow audiences. See, for example, the work of Michel Chion.
Neo-Romanticism
The resurgence of the vocabulary of extended tonality which flourished
in the first years of the 20th century continues in the contemporary
period, though it is no longer considered shocking or controversial as
such. Composers working in the neoromantic vein include John
Corigliano, George Rochberg (in some of his works after 1971), David
Del Tredici and Krzysztof Penderecki (after about 1975).
New Simplicity
A movement in Germany in the late seventies and early eighties,
reacting with a variety of strategies to restore the subjective to
composing. New Simplicity's best-known composer is Wolfgang Rihm, who
strives for the emotional volatility of late 19th-century Romanticism
and early 20th-century Expressionism. Called Die neue Einfachheit in
German, it has also been termed "New Romanticism," "New Subjectivity,"
"New Inwardness," "New Sensuality," "New Expressivity," and "New
Tonality."
Styles found in other countries sometimes associated with the German
New Simplicity movement include the so-called "Holy Minimalism" of the
Pole Henryk Górecki and the Estonian Arvo Pärt (in
their works after 1970), as well as Englishman John Tavener, who unlike
the New Simplicity composers have turned back to Medieval and
Renaissance models, however, rather than to 19th-century romanticism
for inspiration. Important representative works include Symphony No. 3
"Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" (1976) by Górecki, Cantus in
memoriam Benjamin Britten (1977) by Pärt, and The Veil of the
Temple (2002) by Tavener.
New Complexity
"New Complexity" is a current within today's European contemporary
avant-garde music scene, named in reaction to the New Simplicity. Among
this diverse group are Richard Barrett, Brian Ferneyhough, James Dillon
and Michael Finnissy.
Spectral Music
Epitomized by the works of Hugues Dufourt, Gérard Grisey,
Tristan Murail, and Horatiu Radulescu. Much of Kaija Saariaho's and the
last few pieces of Claude Vivier's music are influenced by the
spectralists.
Contemporary choral
music
At the turn of the century, Eric Whitacre has achieved considerable
attention by combining tonal music with tone clusters and similar
experimental techniques. Although it is too soon to discern trends in
the 21st century, the spirit of more practical music which dominated
the last decades of the 20th century seems to be continuing via the
works of Karl Jenkins, John Rutter, Kentaro Sato and Morten Lauridsen
amongst others.
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