Concise History of Western Music
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Chapter Index Chapter 1: Music in Ancient Greece and Early Christian Rome Chapter 2: Chant and Secular Song in the Middle Ages, 400Ð1450 Chapter 3: Polyphonic Music from Its Beginnings through the Thirteenth Century Chapter 4: French and Italian Music in the Fourteenth Century Chapter 5: England and Burgundian Lands in the Fifteenth Century: The Beginnings of an International Style Chapter 6: The Age of the Renaissance: Music of the Low Countries Chapter 7: The Age of the Renaissance: New Currents in the Sixteenth Century Chapter 8: Church Music of the Late Renaissance and Reformation Chapter 9: Church Music of the Late Renaissance and Reformation Chapter 10: Opera and Vocal Music in the Late Seventeenth Century Chapter 11: Instrumental Music in the Late Baroque Chapter 12: Music in the Early Eighteenth Century Chapter 13: The Early Classic Period: Opera and Instrumental Music in the Eighteenth Century Chapter 14: The Late Eighteenth Century: Haydn and Mozart Chapter 15: Ludwig van Beethoven Chapter 16: Romanticism and Nineteenth-Century Orchestral Music Chapter 17: Solo, Chamber, and Vocal Music in the Nineteenth Century Chapter 18: Opera, Music Drama, and Church Music in the Nineteenth Century Chapter 19: European Music from the 1870s to World War I Chapter 20: The European Mainstream in the Twentieth Century Chapter 21: Atonality, Serialism, and Recent Developments in Twentieth-Century Europe Chapter 22: The American Twentieth Century
 

Outlines:
  - Schoenberg and His Followers
  - Recent Developments
  Quiz
  Listening Guide
Chapter 21: Atonality, Serialism, and Recent Developments in Twentieth-Century Europe
Recent Developments
  1. New Timbres

    1. Unfamiliar sounds produced by conventional instruments
      1. Flutter-tongue on wind instruments
      2. String techniques include col legno (playing with the wood of the bow), harmonics, glissando.

    2. New instruments, including vibraphone, Ondes Martenot, and an expansion of the percussion section of the orchestra.

    3. Edgard Varèse (1883–1965) considered timbre more important than melody and harmony.
      1. Ionisation (1933) for a battery of conventional percussion instruments plus chains, anvils, and sirens
      2. Blocks and masses of sound are the basis for form.
      3. Déserts (1954) and Poème Électronique (1958) use electronic sounds (see Chapter 22).

  2. Electronic Resources

    1. Musique concrète of the late 1940s manipulated recorded sounds that were then combined on tape.

    2. Sounds generated by electronic instruments, such as Stockhausen's Gesang der Jünglinge (Song of the Youths, 1956), used both musique concrète and electronic sounds.

    3. New technology
      1. By the 1980s electronic keyboards combined with computers eliminated the need for tape splicing in the studio.
      2. Computers allowed the composer to control all aspects of the composition: pitch, timbre, dynamics, rhythm.
      3. MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) allowed composers to translate digitally encoded music directly into an instrument.
      4. Many works are intended for live performer with computer-generated music, or for the performer/composer to improvise using synthesizers.

  3. Influence of Electronic Music

    1. Electronic instruments inspired composers to find new timbres with traditional forces.

    2. Dispersing sounds throughout a hall by loudspeakers (e.g., Varèse's Poème Électronique) could be accomplished by separating groups of performers.

    3. The pitch continuum (an unbroken range of sound from the lowest to the highest audible frequencies, without distinguishing separate tones of fixed pitch)
      1. Sprechstimme only approximated pitch, and Varèse's sirens used a continuum of pitches.
      2. Krysztof Penderecki (b. 1933) uses the pitch continuum.
        1. Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (1960) calls for instruments to play without definite pitches.
        2. Players choose pitches within a range notated by the composer.
      3. György Ligeti (b. 1923) Atmosphères (1961)
        1. Begins with fifty-six muted strings with woodwinds, playing all the notes of the chromatic scale simultaneously, with instruments dropping out to leave smaller groups
        2. The next section employs two types of tone clusters.

  4. Indeterminacy

    1. Leaves at least one element to the performer's discretion

    2. The degree of freedom is programmed for each composition.
      1. Composers may give performers a selection of choices.
      2. In an "open" form, performers may choose for themselves or have their choices dictated by a device.

    3. Karlheinz Stockhausen (b. 1928) was influenced by John Cage (see Chapter 22).
      1. Klavierstück XI (Piano Piece No. 11, 1956) notates several short segments of music that are put together as the player's eyes see them.
      2. Opus 1970 is for four players and four loudspeakers.
        1. Players start and stop a prerecorded tape.
        2. Fragments of music by Beethoven and other composers ("quotations") combine. (For more on quotation, see Chapter 22.)

    4. Witold Lutos£awski (1913–1994) used indeterminacy selectively.
      1. He was also influenced by Bartók and serialism.
      2. Symphony No. 3 (1983) combines individual improvisation with harmonic blocks in sections (see CHWM, p. 537).

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