GENERALITIES
The development of means of transportation made it possible for the world to be smaller, the catastrophes of wars and dictatorships increased, the danger of total destruction, the antagonisms between the areas of greatest wealth and poverty, the tensions between North and South, East and West.
Despite the growing spiritual and sentiment-destroying materialism, lately it seems that modern natural sciences (nuclear physics) also have new knowledge about spirit and matter that could still create a space to analyze and experience existence in a unitary way, which it is the condition for all culture, art or music.
EVOLUTION AND TRENDS
At the end of the century they appear in music with an epigonal character and as an anticipation of the irruption of modernity.
Impressionism. The essentially French trend, opened new horizons with subtle expressive force, a great sonority and a wide repercussion.
Expressionism. This predominantly German trend is based on the expression of the soul of the human being and goes beyond purely aesthetic barriers. Impressionism and Expressionism are, in terms of arts, representations of very subtle emotional expressions and consequences of a hyper-romantic posture.
Futurism. BALILLA PRATELL (1880-1955) advocated enthusiastically in her Futurist Manifestos for the inclusion of the noises of technique and industry in music. Also LUIGI RUSSOLO (1880-1955), with his L'arte dei rumori (1916), carried out experiments with noise (brutisimo), although the absence of musical quality did not lead him very far.
Neoclassicism. As a reaction against late romanticism, there is a return to classical aesthetics, the old genres and forms that are revived again.
POST-1950
After the silence of the 1930s and 1940s, around 1950 after the Second World War, a great interest in novelty emerged, which even led to a frequent expansion of the concept of music (indeterminacy, the Far East). Light music also acquires an unthinkable expression like jazz, pop and rock music, electronics and the media.
Serial music. The transfer of the technique of serialism to all parameters.
Electronic music. New technical possibilities make possible the appearance of a new type of music, and live electronics shows a new and spontaneous creativity.
Random. Chance introduces a new and varied fantasy into the rational music.
Post serial. He refines musical structures and manifestations as much as possible (composition with sounds) and acts in an innovative way in experimental musical theater.
New in simplicity. He reintroduces the subjective and direct expression of feeling (in scores of great complexity) while the minimal music of American origin cultivates a simplicity that aspires to meditation (Postmodernity).
The opening of borders and the presence of the most diverse music from all countries and cultures through travel and the media acted as strong stimuli in the 20th century.
MUSIC Musical modernity is contemporary with the first "isms", at the end of the 19th century (Strauss, Mahler) and the beginning of the 20th (Impressionists and Symbolists: Debussy, Ravel, Satie) and culminates in the period of the historical avant-gardes with atonality ( Schönberg, Weber, Berg), futurism (Russolo) and the new folklorism (Bartók, Stravinsky). After the Second World War, what is called the neo-avant-garde in music (experimentalism, post-serialism, minimalism, happening) appeared, revisionist movements that often sought precisely to distinguish themselves from the avant-garde.
The period of the late sixties and early seventies is known as the "crisis of the avant-gardes", and roughly coincides with the emergence in the world framework of the new popular music, rock, pop and jazz which, during this short period of time, will make several approximations between the various genres.
During the interwar period, art became radicalized and became even more provocative and subversive. Artists, in those days, often risked their necks, suffered exile and death and many of them were nomads, fleeing from one front to fall into another. Artists made art to shock society, to provoke power and with no intention of pleasing the bourgeois. And they succeeded. At the head of this journey was art, strongly politicized, and science.
Authors, movements and key moments:
1. We are at the end of the post-Romantic tradition with the publications Elektra (1909) and Salomé (1905) by R. Strauss. But as one of the great theorists and protagonists of the century, Leonard Bernstein, puts it, Charles Ives, with the play The Unanswered Question (1908).
2. From here, things get trickier, and this is where the true meaning of life lies. From those who completely ignore it to exploiting its possibilities to the limit. Initially, composers such as Debussy and Stravinsky did some of the following.
Shöenberg will be one of the first composers to embrace atonality and discover new techniques such as dodecaphonism.
Berg or Webern in this more expressive line of composition, exploring the possibilities of dodecaphonism.
4. After the Second World War, in 1945, compositional traditions continue to explore and stretch and strain their possibilities more and more: Serialism is a radical dodecaphonism: P. Boulez, O. Messiaen and I. Xenakis will be references. On the other hand, musicians like Ligeti or Stokhausen explore each of the elements of music separately. For example, in the work Atmospheres he completely abandons melody, rhythm and harmony, and focuses on working only with the timbre possibilities.
Finally, minimalism increases interest in the United States. J. Cage, Steve Reich or M.
Of course, many of these composers nurture each other, and the boundaries between schools are often blurred.
Alongside all this undoing of tonal music, popular music is gaining ground throughout the 20th century thanks to the advancement of technology, globalization, and many other factors.
Whenever we talk about avant-garde music, we should always keep in mind what it is that has inadvertently become a beacon for the advancement of music as a means of expressing all that we can never say in words.