Irrtroductia ....
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An Overview of TwentiethCentury Compositional Styles
THE CENTURY OF PLURALITY:
TONAL, POST-TONAL, ATONAL, AND OTHER STYLES
The term tonality has been used in a variety of ways in twentieth-century music theory.
To clarify our usage of this term, we will define tonality as a system in which pitches
are organized hierarchically around a tonal center, or tonic. The tonal system prevalent
in what we know as the common-practice period is usually known as major-minor, or
functional tonality. In functional tonality, chords have a harmonic or tonal function,
whic;h we can de~ne as the relationship of a chord with the other chords in the key,
and especially its relationship with the tonic. We usually label the specific functions of
chords with Roman numerals. The b~sic harmonic functions are tonic, dominant, and
predominant, although chords can also have a prolongational function (most often by
providing an extension of another chord by means of passing or neighbor linear motion). In the music of some late-Romantic or post-Romantic composers such as Richard Wagner, Hugo Wolf, Anton Bruckner, Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Alexander
Skryabin, and others, we find a variety of harmonic and linear procedures that have the
effect of weakening functional tonality. These procedures may produce a suspension
of tonality or may create a sense of tonal ambiguity, even to the point that at times the
sense of tonality is completely lost.
Functional tonality (albeit extended in various ways) has continued to be an important harmonic system in the twentieth century. Much of the music by composers
such as Giacomo Puccini, Maurice Ravel, Manuel de Falla, Jean Sibelius, Sergei Rachmaninoff, George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Britten, or even Sergei Prokofiev or Dmitri Shostakovich, represents
the continuation of the tonal traditions inherited from the two previous centuries. Tonality, moreover, has also been kept alive by other twentieth-century idioms such as
musical comedy, film music, jazz, pop, and rock.
The progressive weakening (and eventual breakdown) of the tonal system in the
late-nineteenth century, however, led some early twentieth-century composers to look
2
INTRODUCTION
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tures pitch centricity, rn _t is ?oous
extensions We will study, however, post-tonal pitch
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. of Claude Debussy, Igor Stravms y, ela Bart6k, and
centricity as found 10 t e muSIC
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b aced radically new approaches to pitch organization. In the
Other composers em r
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music of Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern
early twentiet 11-cen&uryedto as the Second , Viennese School), we find that intervaJ.
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building blocks), as well as nontriadic sonorities and nonfunctl~nal Im_earrelationships,
replace the familiar triadic, functional structures. _Because this must~ normally does
not feature any kind of tonal center or pitch centric1ty, we can refer to 1t as atonal. We
should clarify, however, that this term should in no way be understood as defining the
absence of pitch organization. Quite to the contrary, what we call atonal music often
features sophisticated pitch relationships, as we will learn in Chapters 3 and 4. Inter~
vallic and motivic cells also play a significant role in much of the music by Debussy,
Stravinsky, and Bart6k.
In the early 1920s, Schoenberg (followed by Berg, Webern, and others) began to
use a new method of pitch organization that we know as the twelve-tone method, or
twelve-tone serialism. In general (and there are exceptions to this statement), serial
music, like the pre-serial atonal music of the Viennese School, tends to explicitly avoid
pitch centricity. Such new compositional approaches require new theoretical formulations and analytical means. In this book we will explore and learn appropriate methods
to understand atonal and serial music.
Elements other than pitch have also been used in innovative ways by numerous
twentieth-century composers. Melody, rhythm, meter, timbre, texture, dynamics, and
orchestration are some of the elements that composers such as Debussy, Stravinsky,
Bart~k, Prokofiev, and Webern, as well as Charles Ives, Edgard Varese , and Olivier
Messiaen used in strikingly new ways in the first half of the twentieth century. The
sec?nd half of_t~ecentury, moreover, features a fascinating diversity of serial and post•
serial compo sitional ~nd stylistic trends, which often place great emphasis on musical
~lements other than pitch, as we will study in the later chapters of this book. Some maJor ~o st-Worl_dWa~ II European composers are Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen,
Luciano
Lut os Jaws k.i, G yorgy
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· · Krzysztof Penderecki, and Sofia
. Beno
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opean mem ers of the younger generation of composers
me1u e agnus Lrndber K · ·
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Tho
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. g, aIJa aanaho, Oliver Knussen, George Benjamin, an
G masp es. n the United States, composers such as Roger Sessions Milton Babbitt,
eorge er1e, Donald Martino 0 Ch l
'
I d
theoretical scope of serial.
' ~
ar es Wuorinen have expanded the technica an
ism, whtle other composers, such as John Cage, Elliott Carter,
s ·
An Overview of Twentieth-Century Compositional Styles
George Crumb, Morton Feldman, Pauline Oliveros, Joseph Schwantner, or Augusta
Read Thomas, have explored a variety of techniques and styles in their compositions.
In the final decades of the twentieth century we find numerous composers who
base their music on extensions of the concept of tonality or pitch centricity, in styles
that have often been called neotonal or neo-Romantic, in some cases featuring a clear
revitalization of traditional tonality. This rediscovery of tonality and its expressive
power in the late years of the century is patent in works by composers such as David
Del Tredici, George Rochberg, Joan Tower, Wolfgang Rihm, Christopher Rouse, Aaron
Jay Kernis, and Jennifer Higdon, or in recent works by Penderecki and Hans Werner
Henze. Another powerful stylistic trend in recent decades, which we usually label as
minimalism, has featured the adoption of much simpler compositional means than
most previous music in the twentieth century. Composers who have ·practiced the aesthetic of simplicity in one way or another include John Cage, Arvo Part, Louis Andriessen, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, John Adams, and Michael Torke.
THE STYLISTIC MOSAIC
We can think of the twentieth century, from the perspective of the history of musical styles and techniques, as a complex mosaic made up of many stylistic tiles. The
tiles have coexisted in the historical mosaic, often with a large degree of independence
among them, but also with numerous interconnections. We can identify some of the
tiles of the first decades of the century as tonal music, post-tonal pitch-centered music, atonal music, serialism, and neoclassical music. In the second half of the century,
some of the tiles are serialism, aleatory composition, sound mass, collage and quotation, minimalism, electronic and computer music, besides the still existing tiles from
the first half of the century (tonality, pitch centricity, atonality, neoclassicism, and so
on). Composers, however, have been free to switch between tiles, or even to stand on
more than one tile at a time. That is, the tiles of the mosaic are not exclusive; neither
are they necessarily contradictory. Stravinsky, for instance, touched on quite a few of
them (such as pitch centricity, neoclassicism, serialism) either successively or simultaneously. And so did Schoenberg (tonality, atonality, serialism, neoclassicism) as well as
many other composers (such as Lutoslawski, Penderecki, Stockhausen, Rochberg, Part,
or Andriessen, to name just a few).
In this book we will think of all the tiles as equally valid options, and we will
avoid the concept of a mainstream, dominant line (usually considered "progressive")
that implies other secondary or subordinate lines (often viewed as "conservative," or
also as marginal). From the perspective we have at the beginning of the twenty-first
century, moreover, the idea of "progressive" and "conservative" trends in twentiethcentury composition seems quite outdated, especially because what was once considered "conservative" by some (that is, writing tonal or pitch-centered music) is one of
the preferred options among many of the major present-day composers of various age
groups (from emerging composers to well-established masters), and some of the trends
traditionally referred to as "progressive" are of no interest at all to many of the leading
younger composers.
3
4
INTRODUCTION
The twentieth century may thus be one of the most complex, rich, and fragmented
periods in music history (similar in many ways, from this point of view, to the Renaissance, a period we can also think of as a mosaic of independent but interchangeable
and intersecting styles). The "common-practice period" was replaced, in the twentieth
century, by a "diverse-practices period." An in-depth study of all the styles and compositional techniques found in this period would require much more space than afforded
by a book that aims to cover the contents of a one-semester college course. We will thus
focus on the most significant aspects of twentieth-century composition, and we will
study representative pieces by representative and outstanding composers within each of
the stylistic and technical categories. Our main areas of study will be post-tonal pitch
centricity and composition with motivic and intervallic cells, neoclassicism, the theory
and analysis of atonal music, serialism, aspects of time, rhythm, and meter, and some
of the major developments in post-World War II composition, including aleatory music,
sound masses, borrowing from the past, neotonality, and minimalism.
Terms for Review
tonality
functional tonality
post-tonal music
pitch centricity
Second Viennese School
atonal music
twelve-tone method ;-or twelve-tone
serialism
post-serial music
neotonal or neo-Romantic music
minimalism