Outlines:

1. Abstract Idioms
   
   
   1. Roger Sessions (1896–1985) employed serialism freely (see vignette in CHWM).
      
      
   2. Elliott Carter (b. 1908) experimented with metric modulation, in which the tempo changes proportionally as in some fifteenth-century music, for example, his First String Quartet.
      1. In the first quartet he uses the all-interval tetrachord, which can be paired to produce every possible interval (Example 22.8).
      2. Quartet No. 2 (NAWM 145) gives each instrumental part its own personality that interacts with the others.
         
         
2. The University as Patron (see etude, p. 562 in CHWM)
   
   
   1. Composers in the United States are not supported by the government, as many European composers are.
      
      
   2. University employment gives composers time to compose, access to performers, and a ready audience.
      
      
   3. University composers became isolated from the public but interacted with each other at symposia (see vignette in CHWM).
      
      
   4. Teachers at major universities were able to create local styles.
      1. Arnold Schoenberg taught at the University of California at Los Angeles from 1936 to 1951 and his students became champions of serialism (e.g., Sessions and Babbitt).
      2. Columbia and Princeton pioneered electronic music in their electronic studios.
      3. The University of Illinois, the University of Michigan, Stanford, and the Eastman School of Music each developed their own styles.
         
         
3. The Post-Webern Vogue
   
   
   1. In the 1950s, composers became fascinated with the works of Webern.
      
      
   2. Milton Babbitt (b. 1916) expanded on the twelve-tone system.
      1. He applied mathematical principles to tone rows.
      2. He was the first to apply serial principles to rhythm (Three Compositions for Piano, 1947).
         
         
4. New Sounds and Textures
   
   
   1. Conlon Nancarrow (1912–97) used the player piano to produce music that could not be performed by a human.
      
      
   2. Harry Partch (1901–1974) sought a new system inspired by non-Western musics.
      1. He used new instruments that could play forty-three notes per octave.
      2. He also used unusual instruments, such as physics bowls and marimba.
         
         
   3. Ben Johnston (b. 1926) composed microtonal music for specially tuned piano and for string quartet.
      
      
   4. George Crumb (b. 1929) creates unusual sounds from traditional instruments and also uses objects as instruments
      1. Ancient Voices of Children (1970) uses a toy piano, a musical saw, and instruments from Asia.
      2. Black Angels (1970), NAWM 146, derives special sound effects from a string quartet using electronic amplification and unusual bowing techniques.
         
         
   5. Electronic music
      1. Purely electronic music lacks the human element that audiences appreciate.
      2. The combination of prerecorded tape and live performer is more common.
         1. Philomel (1964), NAWM 147, by Milton Babbitt combines live voice and electronically altered pre-recorded voice.
         2. Voice and tape respond to each other
      3. Jacob Druckman produced dialogues between live performers and recorded electronic music at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Studio, including Animus I-IV.
         
         
5. Third Stream
   
   
   1. Combines jazz and European concert music
      
      
   2. Before 1950 many composers incorporated jazz elements into individual works.
      1. European-style composers such as Debussy, Stravinsky, and Milhaud used jazz rhythms, harmonies, or improvisation in some works.
      2. George Gershwin blended jazz and art music in Rhapsody in Blue (1924).
      3. Duke Ellington composed some symphonically inspired works as expansions of the jazz idiom (e.g., Black, Brown and Beige) (1933–43).
         
         
   3. In the 1950s some composers made a more deliberate attempt to merge jazz and European music.
      1. Gunther Schuller (b. 1925) called the combination of jazz and European music Third Stream.
         1. Example: Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee (1959), No. 3 Kleiner Blauteufel (Little Blue Devil) NAWM 148.
      2. Other composers used jazz or popular music as models (e.g., Milton Babbitt's All Set, 1957).
      3. Jazz pianist Anthony Davis (b. 1951) led a jazz ensemble based on improvisation that became the nucleus for his orchestra in the opera, X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X (1984), which combines modern jazz with Stravinskyesque composition.
         
         
6. John Cage and Indeterminacy
   
   
   1. Random techniques cause the listener to hear sounds individually, hearing each as it comes along rather than connecting them.
      
      
   2. Audiences hear unintentional sounds as well as intentional ones.
      
      
   3. John Cage contextualized random sounds with Asian aesthetics and developed indeterminacy.
      1. 4�Œ33�Œ�Œ (Four Minutes and Thirty-three Seconds, 1952) directs the performer(s) to sit silently while noises from the hall or outside constitute the performance.
      2. He used the Chinese I Ching (Book of Changes) to determine the pitches of Music of Changes (1951).
         
         
   4. Cage's protegés included Morton Feldman (1926–1987) and Earle Brown (b. 1926).
      
      
7. Minimalism and the Influence of Asia
   
   
   1. In the 1960s composers found inspiration in the musical traditions of Asia.
      1. Indian ragas use changing patterns in controlled improvisation.
      2. Gamelan music of Java and Bali creates complex structures from repetition of simple rhythmic and melodic patterns.
         
         
   2. La Monte Young (b. 1935) was one of the minimalist pioneers, using improvisation with a synthesizer.
      
      
   3. Terry Riley (b. 1935) experimented with tape loops containing repetitions of short phrases, and then piling them up on each other.
      
      
   4. Steve Reich (b. 1936)
      1. Was inspired by experiments with tape loops to develop a quasi-canonic technique in which performers play slightly out of phase with each other.
      2. His Violin Phase (1967) uses phasing, juxtaposing a live violinist with a second one on tape, and in the revised version, four violins (1979) (CHWM, ex. 22.5).
         
         
   5. Philip Glass (b. 1937)
      1. Studied at the University of Chicago, the Juilliard School, and with Nadia Boulanger.
      2. In Paris he met and worked with Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar.
      3. In the mid-1960s he composed music that combined the rhythmic organization of Indian music with simple harmonic progressions and the amplification of rock music.
      4. Einstein on the Beach (Metropolitan Opera House, 1976)
         1. One-act, four-hour opera
         2. Non-narrative, sung to solfège syllables
         3. Orchestra includes electronic keyboards, woodwinds, and a solo violinist.
      5. His later works (e.g., The Voyage, 1992, which commemorated Columbus's trip to the New World) are more conventional in their arias and recitatives than his earlier stage works.
         
         
   6. John Adams (b. 1947)
      1. Phrygian Gates for piano, NAWM 149, represents early minimalism.
         1. Rapid repetitive figures based on modal scales are the basis for most of the work.
         2. The pitch range gradually expands and the number of notes to the bar increases.
         3. The piece goes through "gates," changing from one set of notes to another.
      2. Grand Pianola Music (1982) recalls music Adams heard during his youth in New Hampshire.
      3. Nixon in China (1987) was a very popular opera, using saxophones, traditional instruments, and relentless percussion with short, pulsating ideas, that constantly evolve.
         
         
8. The Mainstream
   
   
   1. The mainstream often included composers who used tonal centers in their works, if not functional tonality, because they wanted to appeal to a wide audience.
      
      
   2. Samuel Barber (1910–1981) composed with intense lyrical flow. His most popular work is Adagio for Strings (1936).
      
      
   3. Gian Carlo Menotti (b. 1911) composed operas in the tradition of Puccini and Mascagni, but with modern plots that audiences could identify with, such as The Telephone (1947) and The Saint of Bleecker Street (1954).
      
      
   4. Joan Tower (b. 1938) uses an eclectic or "inclusive" mix of approaches, such as her Amazon, composed for her contemporary-music ensemble, the Da Capo Players.
      
      
   5. Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (b. 1939) composes for particular instruments (e.g., Sonata for Violin and Piano) or for a special occasion (e.g., Symbolon, for the New York Philharmonic's tour of the Soviet Union in 1988).
      
      
   6. Post-modern styles
      1. Post-modern architecture turns away from the belief in a linear history and toward an inclusive attitude that admits the style of all epochs as the architect sees fit.
      2. The musical equivalent of architecture's post-modernism is the use of musical styles and quotations from all periods of music.
      3. George Rochberg (b. 1918) moved away from serialism and toward quotations of music by Mozart, Beethoven, and his own works.
         1. Nach Bach (1966) quotes from J.S. Bach's Partita No. 6 for keyboard (ex., CHWM, 22.6).
         2. Rochberg uses some Baroque principles combined with chromaticism.
      4. David Del Tredici
         1. In Memory of a Summer Day (1980) recalls Wagner and Verdi.
         2. Final Alice (1975) is deliberately tonal (see vignette in CHWM).