Contemporary Classical Music:

Periods of Western Art Music

EARLY
Medieval 500-1400
Renaissance 1400-1600
Baroque 1600-1760
COMMON PRACTICE
Baroque 1600-1760
Classical 1750-1830
Romantic 1815-1910
MODERN and CONTEMPORARY
20th Century 1900-2000
Contemporary 1975-present
21th Century 2000-present

Contemporary Classical Music can be understood as belonging to the period that started in the mid 1970s with the retreat
of modernism. However, the term may also be employed in a broader sense to refer to all post 1945, modern musical
forms.
CATEGORIZATION
Generally Contemporary Classical Music amounts to:
- The modern forms of ART MUSIC
* The post 1945 modern forms of post-tonal music after the death of Anton Webern (including serial music, electro
acoustic music, concrete music, experimental music, atonal music, minimalist music, etc.).
HISTORY
BACKGROUND:
At the beginning of the 20th century, composers of classical music were experimenting with an increasingly dissonant pitch
language, which sometimes yielded atonal pieces. Following World War I, as a backlash against what they saw as the
increasingly exaggerated gestures and formlessness of late Romanticism, certain composers adopted a neoclassic style, which
sought to recapture the balanced forms and clearly perceptible thematic processes of earlier styles; see also New Objectivity
and Social Realism. After World War II, modernist composers sought to achieve greater levels of control in their composition
process (e.g., through the use of the twelve tone technique and later total serialism). At the same time, conversely,
composers also experimented with means of abdication control, exploring indeterminacy or random processes in smaller or
larger degrees. Technological advances led to the birth of electronic music. Experimentation with tape loops and repetitive
textures contributed to the advent of minimalism. Still other composers started exploring the theatrical potential of the
musical performance (performance art, mixed media, fluxus).

1945-70:
To some extent, European and the US traditions diverged after World War II. Among the most influential composers in Europe
were Pierre Boulez, Luigi Nono, and Karlheinz Stockhausen. The first and last were both pupils of Olivier Messiaen. The
dominant aesthetic at this time was integral or 'total' serialism, which took the ideas of Anton Webern as a model and
became increasingly focused on complexity.
In America, composers like Milton Babbitt, John Cage, Elliott Carter, Henry Cowell, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, George Rochberg,
and Roger Sessions, formed their own ideas. Many of these composers represented a new methodology of experimental
music, which began to question fundamental notions of music such as notation, performance, duration, and repetition, while
others fashioned their own extensions of the twelve-tone serialism of Schoenberg.
Developments since the 1970s:
Since the 1970s there has been increasing stylistic variety, with far too many schools to count, name or label. However, in
general, there are two broad trends.
The first is the continuation of modern vanguard musical traditions and experimental music.
The second are schools that seek to revitalize tonal style found in traditional western music.
MOVEMENTS
- Modernism
Modernism in music is characterized by a desire for or belief in progress and science, surrealism, anti-
romanticism, political advocacy, general intellectualism, and/or a breaking with the past or common practice.
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 (e.g., Elliott Carter), performers, and listeners who continue to advance the ideas
and forms of Modernism.
- Electronic music (computer music)
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its
production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that
produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound producing devices include
the teleharmonium, Hammond organ, and the electric guitar. Purely electronic sound production can be achieved
using devices such as the Theremin, sound synthesizer, and computer.
- Spectral music
Spectral music (or spectralism) is a musical composition practice where compositional decisions are often informed by
the analysis of sound spectra. Computer based sound spectrum analysis using tools like DFT, FFT, and spectrograms.
The spectral approach focuses on manipulating the features identified through this analysis, interconnecting them,
and transforming them.
- Post-modernism
Postmodern music is either simply music of the postmodern era, or music that follows aesthetical and philosophical
trends of postmodernism. As the name suggests, the postmodernist movement formed partly in reaction to
modernism. Even so, postmodern music still does not primarily define itself in opposition to modernist music; this
label is applied instead by critics and theorists.
- Polystylism (eclecticism) (historicism; neo-romanticism; art rock influence; world music influence)
Polystylism is the use of multiple styles or techniques in literature, art, film, or, especially, music, and is
a postmodern characteristic.
Some prominent contemporary polystylist composers include Peter Maxwell Davies, Michael Colgrass, Lera
Auerbach, Sofia Gubaidulina, George Rochberg, Alfred Schnittke, Django Bates, Alexander Zhurbin, Lev
Zhurbin and John Zorn. However, Gubaidulina, among others, has rejected the term as not applicable to her
work. Polystylist composers from earlier in the twentieth century include Charles Ives and Eric Satie. Among literary
figures, James Joyce has been referred to as a polystylist.

- New Simplicity
New Simplicity (in German, die neue Einfachheit) was a stylistic tendency amongst some of the younger generation of
German composers in the late 1970s and early 1980s, reacting against not only the European vanguard of the 1950s
and 1960s, but also against the broader tendency toward objectivity found from the beginning of the twentieth
century. Alternative terms sometimes used for this movement are "inclusive composition", new subjectivity (neue
Subjektivitt), new inwardness (Neue Innigkeit), New Romanticism, New Sensuality, New Expressivity, New
Classicism, and New Tonality.
- New Complexity
In music, the New Complexity is a term dating from the 1980s, principally applied to composers seeking a "complex,
multi-layered interplay of evolutionary processes occurring simultaneously within every dimension of the musical
material"
- Minimalism and Post-minimalism
Minimal music is a style of music associated with the work of American composers La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve
Reich, and Philip Glass. It originated in the New York Downtown scene of the 1960s and was initially viewed as a form
of experimental music called the New York Hypnotic School. Prominent features of the style include consonant
harmony, steady pulse (if not immobile drones), stasis or gradual transformation, and often reiteration of
musical phrases or smaller units such as figures, motifs, and cells. It may include features such as additive process and
phase shifting. Minimal compositions that rely heavily on process techniques that follow strict rules are usually
described using the term process music.
Post-minimalism is an art term coined by Robert Pincus-Witten in 1971 used in various artistic fields for work which is
influenced by, or attempts to develop and go beyond, the aesthetic of minimalism. The expression is used specifically
in relation to music and the visual arts, but can refer to any field using minimalism as a critical reference point.
- Extended techniques

EXTENDED TECHNIQUES
Composers often obtain unusual sounds or instrumental timbres through the use of non-traditional (or unconventional)
instrumental techniques. Examples of extended techniques include bowing under the bridge of a string instrument or with
two different bows, using key clicks on a wind instrument, blowing and over blowing into a wind instrument without a
mouthpiece, or inserting object on top of the strings of a piano. Composers use of extended techniques is not specific to
contemporary music (for instance, Berliozs use of col legno in his Symphonie Fantastique is an extended technique) and it
transcends compositional schools and styles.
Exponents of extended techniques in the 20th century include Henry Cowell (use of fists and arms on the keyboard, playing
inside the piano), John Cage (prepared piano), and George Crumb. The Kronos Quartet, which has been among the most
active ensembles in promoting contemporary American works for string quartet, takes 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 Luigi Nono, Luciano Berio, Helmut Lachenmann,
Salvatore Sciarrino, Heinz Holliger, Carlo Forlivesi and Georgia Spiropoulos.