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It should be noted that the closer we get to contemporary times, the more difficult it is to determine what categories comprise a useful taxonomy. In terms of the modern era, many sub-categories may be conisdered "varieties of modernist impulse" (besides the ones mentioned, below), such as post-Avant Garde, primitivism, experimentalism, expressionism, serialism, dodecaphony, New Simplicity and the New Complexity, European vs American minimalism, neo-romantic or late romantic, jazz (rock and roll, Ragtime, Dixieland, Swing, Be-Bop, Afro-Cuban, etc.), space-age or technology age, and so on.
As a practical matter, it is probably more useful to think in terms of style rather than time periods, due to both the overlap of composers working in different cultures, and changing styles within each composer's own body of work. Thus, a multiple of styles can occur within a time frame. In fact, the whole notion of categorization is in question:
Lloyd Rodgers used to describe this periodization as "the freight-train
theory of music history." Each period is analagous to a railroad car, all
lined up one afer the other in nice perfect little order. Real life isn't
like this. (David Gray Porter)
Eric Grunin:
'Modern' really needs to be broken down into:
1910-1945 (modernism),
1945-1985 (high modernism),
1985-current (minimalism).
Paul Attinello:
This is interesting, as it echoes (differently) the way I teach the basic arch of the century to my basic classes:
1913-1945 is early modernism,
1945-1968 high modernism, and
1968 to about 1997 is postmodernism.
(Post-1997? I think it's something else, and doesn't have a name yet.)
Stephen Shearon:
Under the influence of Morgan, I concentrate on the watershed provided
by war or military conflict, beginning with the French Revolution. In the
20th century,
1870/71-1914,
1914 (or '13)-1945,
1945-1968.
I too use 1968 as the divider between high modernism and postmodernism because it's the year of so many signal events in the cultural change of the era.
Jerry Kohl:
One thing that bothers me about this taxonomy is that the term
"modernism" is really quite general and may apply to a variety of
styles (e.g., Prokofiev, Schoenberg, Ives, Stravinsky, Hindemith,
Varèse, and Cowell can all plausibly fall under this umbrella),
whereas the term "minimalism" is a much narrower stylistic designator.
While "neoclassicism", "primitivism", "experimentalism", and
"serialism" (amongst others) are all generally regarded as varierties
of the modernist impulse, what are the corresponding varieties of
"minimalism" (not merely shades of difference, such as European vs
American minimalism)? There is also the issue of whether the minimalist
style (or styles) is really a spent force by 1985, having been at its
peak in the 1970s but, worst of all, minimalism is itself a modernist
subspecies, on a level with contemporaneous movements such as the New
Simplicity and the New Complexity.
"Modernism" doesn't mean anything anymore. This was almost 100 years ago
anyway. Ives, Schoenberg and Stravinsky are all 20th-Century Romantic
"19th-Century" figures. (Schoenberg especially so with his idea of a great
eon of pantonaity.) Their music is extended tonality, often extended to the
point of not being in a key, but their outlook is still late 19th-Century.
I'd put the end of the Romantic era as 1918 or 1919. (David Porter)
David Gray Porter:
The parallels between the 14th and 20th Centuries in musical
experimentation and "modernism" are substantial. The 14th Century had The
Plague; the 20th Century had wars and genocide and finally the threat of
total annihilation. Populations are driven down -- life becomes
precarious -- rapid experimentation and evolution in the arts is the result
of questioning the existing systems. The first time we evolved into the
style of The Renaissance -- something that was completely new and unforseen.
(The shift from modal to mensural notation and even just the change of the
pen nib design had a lot to do with it.) Something like that is happening
now.
Paul Attinello:
Although these are of course enormous questions, they are also entirely
normal ones. When I tell students my 'period' divisions, I also pull
out the usual disclaimer, that periodizations and historical generalities
always overlap with numerous exceptions, and that they are meant to give us
broad, 'block' understandings of time periods, not to operate as any kind of
physical law. Given the nature of art forms, that makes sense, I think.
And for anyone who dislikes periodizations for any reason, I usually point out: our minds tend to generalize anyway - any philosopher or psychologist can show that, quite easily. I would much rather have those generalizations consciously created and, as it were, 'out in the open' so that I can examine them - scholars and writers who claim that there are no periods, or who hate generalizations, usually have a lot of implicit generalizations strewn through their work, and implicitly affecting their judgements and choices.
As for composers who are intentionally reacting against a period/set of
trends? They exhibit completely normal human behavior; they fit easily
into social construction theories; and thereby they tend to become exceptions
that proves rules (i.e., a musical style or work constructed in rebellion
against a set of parameters is just as determined by those parameters
as is something constructed in line with them).
As for the other arts: large-scale trends do indeed happen at different
times in different media (and countries, etc.), and music is frequently
late in responding to given cultural stimuli. I just tell them that; I
wouldn't try to come up with some kind of Spenglerian explanation of it
(although I do like Spengler, nobody in their right mind would actually *believe* in his theories).
Therefore:
Early modernism: Large changes in innovative ideas, an extended cluster
of experiments that parallel (and follow chronologically) experiments in
literature and the visual arts. Then that strange retrenchment, and the chaotic 'between-the-wars' period, which does not however actually return to pre-1913 values and systems; noting especially the disintegrating
hierarchy of values and expected centers of normative musical behavior...
High modernism: Like the 'High Renaissance', an extreme and polished
development of earlier trends; the experiments become especially specialized, and the casual splintering of styles that one sees in early modernism hardens into something much more carefully considered and rooted in ideas, but also much more problematic in a variety of ways. Popular musics become vastly more culturally powerful, and 'classical' styles try to respond, at first by trying to universalize values... but that doesn't work very well, of course. Which tends to lead to...
Postmodernism: From 1968, even many major high modernist composers are
disoriented or eager to change styles, in response to the cultural
changes centered on that year (this is paradigmatic to Dahlhaus' use of 1848 as
the shift from Romantic to post-Romantic, which I try to explain to them -
probably in vain, I talk a heck of a lot in those first two lectures).
Major resistance to the formal divisions of high modernism, by younger
composers (including many more women than formerly) who don't wish to restricted to serialism, or neo-romanticism, or chance, or rock'n'roll', or tonality or not, but start to blend them in a variety of ways.
All of this is understood in terms of my 'asymptotic graph' - telling
the students that from about Debussy/Wagner, certain structures such as
experimentation, hybridization of several kinds (cultural, historical,
conceptual), and other familiar modern tropes appear; but the big
changes in the century have to do with how *many* people are using those tropes, and how many people are paying attention to them. Thus the big upswing in these tropes after 1945 (actually about 1948-9!), and again from 1968
onwards.
After 1997: The impact of the Internet starts to create something
radically more conceptually 'imploded'; distinctions that have ruled much of the
century, even the postmodern period which tried to rebel against them,
are collapsing entirely and vanishing into history. Electronic
modification, hybridization, and the vast increase in access to/knowledge of software that enables such things start to make traditional musical skills (playing an instrument, notation) increasingly beside the point...
Anyway, that's a summary of what I throw at the them in a semester. Despite
the vast weight of concepts and cross-genre repertory, they love the course
- I think because I try to convey enthusiasm for a wide variety of musics,
which makes them feel both as though their own tastes are accepted, and
also that the twentieth century can be seen as a hugely fun circus of ideas.
Mitchell Brauner:
I was contemplating a response to the periodization of the 20th
century by rejecting the proposal of early modernism, high modernism,
etc., until I realized that I was in fact in general agreement.
However, I would not characterize the division of this period
(whatever we wind up calling it, because it certainly isn't modern
anymore). Rather, I pose some questions which to me (being the good
Renaissance scholar who winds up teaching 20th century music by
default) go to the heart of the dilemmas that composers faced in
creating the new styles of music throughout the period.
I think we do have to teach the period beginning with the generation
that includes Debussy, Mahler, R. Strauss, Puccini, etc., simply
because it helps contextualize the changes that occur in the first
two decades of the century. We are talking about the extension of
tonality, forms and genres in ways that would have been unimaginable
before 1850. We are also faced with the question of how to respond
to Wagner--pro or con. The Wagner question truly dominates musical
innovation in the last two or three decades of the 19th century, does
it not?
The next issue is the dissolution of traditional forms, genres and,
especially, tonality, culminating the works that have become the
hallmarks of modernist aesthetics on the eve of WW I, e.g., Pierrot
Lunaire and Sacre du Printemps. Between the wars, I believe, the
question posed is how to structure music (tonally and formally) after
having abandoned traditional tonality and formal principals. The
answer results in various kinds of structuralism, like neo-classicism
as it is applied to Stravinsky or 12-tone technique. This allows a
discussion of the structuralism of Bartók, but also the neo-tonal
theory of Hindemith. It also provides a context for the Soviet
response to what they viewed as formalism and other responses, such
as the continuation of the tonal, romantic tradition.
Post war, the juxtaposition of total serialism and aleatoric
composition is too obvious to pass up. However, the end of modernism
I think is not to be placed in 1968, which I believe to be too early.
If we remember that the 60s didn't begin, really, until 1963 or 1964,
and didn't end until 1972 or 1974 (though some insist it was the
death of Jimi Hendrix), then we have to look for something else other
than the political activity of 1968. 1968 may have marked a high
point of intensity in cultural and political activity, but it is
really the gradual demise of the hegemony academic serialism that
marks the end of the musical period. In other words, when the torch
is passed to a new generation in the mid to late 1970s that the rise
of a new style period (post-modernism?) truly can be defined.
Of course, none of this accounts for the continuation of the
performance of 18-19 century music and its domination over the
concert repertory, nor of the early music movement and its growth
throughout the 20th century. The above is of course primarily a
pedagogical construct, but the slightly different spin on virtually
the same periodization might be more in keeping with the
historiography preferred by others.
See: Informal Surveys
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