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John Philip Sousa
John Phillip Sousa was an American composer who promoted the American wind-band tradition with his many marches (over 100). He conducted "The President's Own" Marine Band in 1880. -
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Gustav Mahler
Mahler was an Austrian composer and conductor who made important expansions to symphonies composing in a maximalist style. -
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Claude Debussy
Debussy was a French impressionist credited with composing the first modern orchestral work. He led the impressionist style using non-western scales and a general sense of vagueness in his compositions. -
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Richard Strauss
Strauss was a German composer known for his use of chromaticism and maximalist style in the post-romantic era. His famous works include his operas, such as Elektra (1903), and his tone poems, Don Juan (1889) for example. -
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Erik Satie
Erik Satie was a French composer and pianist. Although not an impressionist, he was a leader in new French aesthetics that would later lead to impressionism. Satie was the mentor of Les Six. -
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Arnold Schoenberg
Schoenberg was an Austrian-American composer who heavily influenced the expressionist movement and invented the 12-Tone Method. His most notable works include Five Orchestral Pieces, Op. 16 (1909), and opera Moses und Aron (1930). -
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Charles Ives
American composer Charles Ives was ahead of his time with his innovative style using polytonality, polyrhythms and polymeters, as well as his use of quotations of American tunes and hymns. He has limited use of atonality but helped develop the American style. Although many of his pieces were composed in the 1900s, they were never published until the 1950s by his wife. -
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Maurice Ravel
Ravel was a French impressionist composer credited with composing the first impressionist piano piece. His best-known work is his orchestral piece Belero (1928). -
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Igor Stravinsky
Stravinsky was a prolific Russian composer known for his many styles and use of complex rhythm, dissonance, and colorful instrumentation. His most well-known piece is The Rite of Spring (1913). -
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Robert Nathaniel Dett
Dett was a Canadian composer and pianist who helped found the National Association of Negro Musicians (1919). Notably, he studied with Natalie Boulanger. -
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Anton Von Webern
Anton Von Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor who studied under Arnold Schoenberg at the Second Viennese School. Webern often composed using the 12-tone method and was known for his musical brevity and clarity of texture. -
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Alban Berg
Alban Berg was an Austrian composer who was a student of Schoenberg at the Second Viennese School. His compositions were often atonal and used expressive language. -
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Luigi Russolo
Russolo was an Italian futurist painter, composer, and builder of experimental musical instruments. He identified six families of noises for the futurist orchestra which included roars, whistling, whispers, screeching, beating noises, as well as voices of animals and people. -
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Florence Price
Florence Price was the first black, female, American composer to have a symphony performed by a major American orchestra (Symphony No. 1 in E minor; 1932). Her musical style was influenced by Juba Folk dance and idioms of black spirituals. -
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Nadia Boulanger
Boulanger was a French composer and teacher who taught practically all 20th-century American composers except George Gershwin. Her goal was to help other composers find their voice after the passing of her daughter, Lili in 1918. -
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Louis Durey
Louis Durey was a French composer and Neo-classicist who was a part of the group Les Six. Although he instigated the first Les Six album, he is more well known for his compositions for the French Resistance during WWII. He wrote pieces with Vietnamese themes in the 1960s protesting the war. -
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Maximalism
German-speaking areas
Led by Strauss and Mahler, maximalism can be characterized by extreme chromaticism, extreme use of themes and motivic complexity, thick textures, and large ensembles sizes. -
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Impressionism
French
Led by Debussy, musical impressionism can be characterized by having a general sense of vagueness. In practice, composers used unresolved 7ths, 9ths, and dissonances as well as parallel movement. Instrumental tone and color gained importance. -
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Sergei Prokofiev
Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev was important as a Russian voice in western art music. Composing mostly in the neoclassical style, his most well-known work is "Peter and the Wolf" (1936). His musical style had many comedic elements as well as lyrical expression, rhythmic drive, and individual harmonic language. -
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Arthur Honegger
Arthur Honegger was a Swiss composer who was in the French group, Les Six. Honegger is known for his large compositional output in a vast array of mediums. -
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Darius Milhaud
French composer Darius Milhaud was friends with Erik Satie and a member of Les Six. His music can be defined by his use of polytonality and American Jazz in his concert music. -
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Germaine Tailleferre
French composer, pianist, and style icon, Germaine Tailleferre, was the only female member of Les Six. Also a Neoclassicist, Tailleferre composed many works for harp, chamber, symphonic, and voice. Her compositions were at first premiered on the French radio. -
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William Grant Still
Still was the first Black American composer to have a symphony and opera performed by a major ensemble as well as the first Black American composer to have a symphony and opera performed by a major ensemble. His musical style blended African American idioms into traditional European genres. His works were popular in the Harlem Renaissance (1923). -
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Henry Cowell
Cowell was an American composer and innovator drawn to non-western music. He was a supporter of Charles Ives and invented chance music as well as new techniques for playing the piano. He coined the term "tone cluster". -
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George Gershwin
Gershwin was an American Jewish composer who wrote classical, concert hall music with jazz and popular music influence. -
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Georges Auric
Georges Auric was a French composer and a part of the group Les Six. He was considered a Neo-classicist and composed film music as did many other composers of this time. As well as being a Music Journalist, Auric ran SACEM, the French Society of Authors, Composers, and Publishers of Music. -
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Francis Poulenc
French composer, Francis Poulenc, was a self-taught composer but studied with the teachers at the Paris Conservatory and was a part of Les Six. His musical style was Neo-classical and he mostly rejected atonality and Schoenberg's 12-tone method. -
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Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington, or Edward Kennedy Ellington, was a major bandleader in the swing era (1930s) and then in the big band era (1940s). He composed hundreds of tunes, film scores, concertos, concert pieces, and works for the theater. -
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Post-1900s Era: Musical Stylistic Traits
Art music past WWII is difficult to define due to its diversity in musical styles. In Post-1900s music, atonality and a general disregard for the previous rules of music became common. Composers often composed for film as well as their art music. New genres such as Jazz and Blues came into their own with roots in West African and Folk music. An American style in art music began to define itself often quoting from other pieces and incorporating Jazz and Blues into orchestra and musical theater. -
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Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland was an American composer, teacher, and conductor who taught at Harvard. Copland composed in an American style with most of his music being tonal. His music was inspired by the Old West and Mexican dance. -
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Musical Theater
With roots in European and French Operetta, is a type of dramatic and often comical musical theater. -
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The Second Viennese School
Based in Vienna, the Second Viennese School, comprised of Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils Alban Berg, Anton Webern, and others explored expressionism and atonality. -
The Unanswered Question
"The Unanswered Question" is an orchestral work by Charles Ives published in 1940 but composed in 1906. -
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Expressionism
German-speaking areas
Led by Schoenberg, expressionism focused on freeing music from tonality (atonality) and chord progression rules. -
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John Cage
Cage was an innovative American composer who defined music as "organized sound". He was known for his odd instrumentation and using sounds found in nature. He is also known for his chance music and his piece "4'33"". -
The Rite of Spring
Ballet composed by Igor Stravinsky -
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World War I
The war between the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey) and the Allies (France, Great Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan, and the United States). -
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Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday was one of the leading female jazz singers breaking racial barriers by performing with white bands. -
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Jazz
Ushered in after Rag Time, the musical genre of Jazz has roots in West African music and features call-and-response singing and encompases many styles of playing. Scat Singing can be heard by performers such as Louis Armstrong. New Orleans Jazz used smaller ensembles with multiple players improvising simultaneously. -
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Leonard Bernstein
Bernstein was an American composer, conductor, teacher, along with many other side professions. He is well known for his film and musical theater compositions. -
Les Six
A group of 5 French and 1 Swiss composers who, under the mentorship of Erik Satie and with spokespersons Jean Cocteau, composed ballets and pieces such as Les mariés de la tour Eiffel (1921) and L'Album des Six (1920). The group includes Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, and Germaine Tailleferre. Each continued to lead their own independent careers as composers developing their own voices. -
Public Radio
Lee De Forest was credited with the invention of the public broadcast radio. -
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Blues
Blues is an American genre of folk music based on a simple, repetitive, poetic-musical form. The Blues also has many subgenres such as "Office Party Blues". The texts often tell of hardships and love gone wrong. Notable Blues singers include Billie Holiday. -
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Musique Concrete
Took recordings of natural sounds and electronically manipulated them and superimposed it on another. -
12-Tone Method
The 12-Tone Method was developed by Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg. -
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Serialism
After Arnold Schoenberg went atonal, around 1907, he developed the 12-tone method giving birth to Serialism. -
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Pierre Boulez
French composer mostly known for his avant-garde compositions. -
Peter and The Wolf
Composed by Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev, "Peter and the Wolf" is a programmatic orchestral piece that highlights the different colors and tones of all the instruments. This piece was commissioned to help cultivate musical tatste in young children. -
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World War II
The second war involving the majority of the worlds country’s. The two opposing alliances were the Axis powers (Germany, Japan, and Italy) and the Allied powers (France, Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union). -
Appalachian Spring
An American ballet for Martha Graham composed by Aaron Copland. -
A Black Pierrot
"A Black Pierrot" From Song of Separation is an art song from a song Cycle. The text was from Langston Hughs but composed by William Grant Still. Thus piece echos Arnold Schoenberg's "Pierrot Lunaire". -
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Rock 'N' Roll
A Musical genre that blended the musical styles of jump blues and honky-tonk with an edgy attitude. Notable performers include, Chuck Berry, along with Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Fats Domino, and Jerry Lee Lewis. -
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Indeterminate
Music that is based on the element of chance. John Cage was most well-known for using this style. -
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Minimalism
Minimalism can be described as repetative music based on the notion that small units of musical material can be repeated with slight variation over long periods of time. -
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Postmoodernism
Postmodernism takes elements of past music and uses modern techniques to create a new eclectic style. -
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Globalization
Globalization is a direct result of technology and the immeditate exchange of musical ideas.