StudySpace: The Enjoyment of Music: Essential Listening Edition

Key Points

• Early-twentieth-century artistic trends explored simplicity and abstraction (interest in non-Western arts, Dadaism, Cubism) and the world of dreams and the inner soul (Surrealism, Expressionism).
• Expressionism was the German response to French Impressionism; in music, composers such as Schoenberg and Webern explored new harmonic systems and the extreme registers of instruments.
• The Neoclassical movement sought to revive balance and objectivity in the arts by returning to formal structures of the past.
• Early-twentieth-century composers revitalized rhythm by increasing its complexity—using polyrhythm, polymeter, changing meters, or irregular meters.
• Melodic style was often "instrumental" in character.
• New concepts of harmony (polychords, polytonality, atonality) pressed music beyond the traditional systems of tonality, and led to the twelve-tone method (or serialism) devised by Arnold Schoenberg.
• Linear movement replaced vertical, chordal conceptions, and extreme dissonance became the norm.
• The early-twentieth-century orchestra grew smaller and focused on winds, percussion, and piano.

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