-
Isaac Albeniz
He was a Spanish composer and pianist that worked in the impressionist style. -
Gustav Mahler
He was an Austrian composer who made some orchestral works in the maximalist style. -
Claude Debussy
Inventor of musical impressionism, and influencer of more 20th century musical styles. -
Richard Strauss
Strauss was a composer of tone poems and some of the first modern operas, and his works epitomize the maximalist movement. -
Erik Satie
Not an impressionist himself, but his lead on new French aesthetics laid the foundation on which impressionism was built. -
Charles Ives
Ives was a composer who innovated atonality. He is credited as the most original composer of the 20th century, and worked virtually in isolation. -
Arnold Schoenberg
He was the father of 12 tone music, and taught other notable expressionists of the era, like Webern and Berg. -
Maurice Ravel
An extremely versatile French impressionist composer, Ravel was an innovator in pianistic style. -
Ottorino Respighi
An Italian composer who used impressionism in his work. -
Anton von Webern
A student of Schoenberg, like Berg, who was known for his clarity of texture and musical brevity in his works. He also wrote no operas. -
Alban Berg
A student of Schoenberg, Berg heavily used atonality in his works, as well as expressive language. -
Nadia Boulanger
She was an important teacher of composers of the 20th century; teaching most of the prominent American composers of the first half of the century. -
Period: to
Maximalism
A genre of music that was all about exploring the extremes of music. This style focused on expanding everything as far as it could; themes, size of ensembles, motives, and more. -
Period: to
Impressionism
Impressionism held onto musical elements while simultaneously tossing out the traditional rules for each element. Impressionism treated all chords as equal, and compositions of this style leaned everything to a sense of vagueness. Tempo, meter, and rhythm were constantly changing, and melody was not as structured as it had been in the past (though still important!) -
Germaine Tailleferre
A modest French composer who wrote beautiful music, Tailleferre was also in Les Six, a group of six famous French composers. -
Francis Poulenc
Another notable French composer in Les Six, Poulenc had an irreverent style in his works. He was also during the impressionist time period. -
Period: to
Expressionism
The most rebellious of the Post-Romanticism styles, Expressionism treated every note as an equal, and tonality was abolished. While traditional meter, timbre, and form were embraced, melody was optional and harmony was non-existent. Strong emotions, rather than structure, characterized this style. -
Period: to
Undisguised Avant-garde
This was a period in the rebellion against Romanticism in which composers like Satie and Faure, attempted to step out of the bubble of Romanticism and spoofing the Wagnerian style people knew at the time. -
Period: to
Neo-Classicism
This style became popular between the 1910's and 20's; ushering a revival of textures, topics, and forms from the past and combining them with more modern harmonies, tonalities, and timbres. -
Period: to
Primitivism
This Western art movement was more a visual art style, borrowing non-Western art subjects to be the muses. -
Period: to
Dadaism
A brief anti-art movement that came about after reacting to the bourgeois in Europe and against war. It helped open doors to more avant-garde and modernist thinking. -
Period: to
Non-tonal music
This stylistic approach started in the late Post-Romanticism period in the 1920's, and focused on other compositional elements instead of pitch.