Contemporary classical music
Encyclopedia
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
.
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 abdicating control, exploring indeterminacy or aleatoric 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
).
, 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. However, some more traditionally-based composers such as Dmitri Shostakovich
and Benjamin Britten
maintained a tonal style of composition despite the prominent serialist movement.
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
.
), performers, and listeners who continue to advance the ideas and forms of Modernism.
Serialism
is one of the most important post-war movements among the high modernist schools. Serialism, more specifically named "integral" or "compound" serialism, was led by composers such as Pierre Boulez
, Bruno Maderna
, Luigi Nono
, and Karlheinz Stockhausen
in Europe, and by Milton Babbitt
, Donald Martino
, and Charles Wuorinen
in the United States. Some of their compositions use an ordered set or several such sets, which may be the basis for the whole composition, while others use "unordered" sets for the same purpose. The term is also often used for dodecaphony, or twelve-tone technique
, which is alternatively regarded as the model for integral serialism.
Active modernist composers include Harrison Birtwistle
, Alexander Goehr
, Thomas Adès
, Magnus Lindberg
and Gunther Schuller
.
, Gérard Grisey
, Tristan Murail
, and Horaţiu Rădulescu
, "spectral music" implies the use of the spectrum
of a sound as a basis of composition.
A number of spectral composers are from Romania
; these include Iancu Dumitrescu
, Octav Nemescu, Ana-Maria Avram
, Costin, Calin Ioachimescu, and Corneliu Cezar. Other spectral composers include Philippe Hurel, Michael Levinas, and Phillippe Leroux, Joshua Fineberg
, and Julian Anderson
.
Musicians often associated with the term include: Scottish composer James MacMillan (who draws on sources as diverse as plainchant, South American 'liberation theology', Scottish folksongs, and Polish avant-garde techniques of the 1960s), the American Michael Torke
(drawing on European music of the early 19th century, minimalism, jazz, and popular music), and Mark-Anthony Turnage
from the UK (drawing from jazz, rock, Stravinsky, and Berg).
, while others make a sharp distinction. Polystylism
is the use of multiple style
s or techniques of music, sometimes within the same composition, and is seen as a postmodern characteristic. Polystylist composers include Luciano Berio
, William Bolcom
, Peter Maxwell Davies
, Sofia Gubaidulina
, Hans Werner Henze
, George Rochberg
, Frederic Rzewski
, Alfred Schnittke
, Frank Zappa
and John Zorn
.
—the use of historical materials, structures, styles, techniques, media, conceptual content, etc., whether by a single composer or those associated with a particular school, movement, or period—is evident to varying degrees in minimalism, post-minimalism, world-music, and other genres in which tonal traditions have been sustained or have undergone a significant revival in recent decades. Some post-minimalist works employ medieval and other genres associated with early music, such as the "Oi me lasso" and other laude
of Gavin Bryars
. Other composers have assimilated elements of medieval, renaissance, baroque, classical, or romantic styles in varying degrees, including Benjamin Bagby
, Thomas Binkley
, Easley Blackwood
, René Clemencic
, Joseph Dillon Ford
, Vladimir Godar
, Ladislav Kupkovič
, Winfried Michel
, George Rochberg
, Christopher Rouse and Jordi Savall
.
Peter Schickele
wrote works that parody many different styles of classical music and often draws upon specific works for its inspiration. They were mostly published as album
s under the name of P. D. Q. Bach
, a composer he invented and then pretended to have discovered among the children of J.S. Bach. Some of these works are published under his own name, however, such as Eine Kleine Nichtmusik a work which layers quotes from other classical music and many folk melodies over the top of a complete performance of Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
.
The historicist movement is closely related to the emergence of musicology and the Early Music Revival
. A number of historicist composers have been influenced by their intimate familiarity with the instrumental practices of earlier periods (Hendrik Bouman
, Grant Colburn
, Michael Talbot
, Alexandre Danilevsky
, Paulo Galvão
, Roman Turovsky-Savchuk
). The musical historicism
movement has also been stimulated by the formation of such international organizations as the Delian Society
and Vox Saeculorum
.
, John Corigliano
, George Rochberg
(in some of his works), David Del Tredici
, Ladislav Kupkovič
, Gian Carlo Menotti
, Krzysztof Penderecki
, Isang Yun
, Christopher Rouse, Lorenzo Ferrero
, and Ennio Morricone
. The case of Penderecki is notable in that the composer began his career with a firm preference for the avant-garde, and later underwent a radical change in favor of a more Romantic style (as seen in works such as the First Violin Concerto and the Symphony No. 2
.
. Many, such as Scott Johnson
, Steven Mackey
, and Tim Hodgkinson
, started out as rock musicians and only later moved into the realm of scored music. Other notable composers who draw on rock include Christopher Rouse, Marc Mellits
, Evan Ziporyn
, Julia Wolfe
, Michael Gordon
, David Lang
, Elliott Sharp
, John Zorn
, Steve Martland
, Anne LeBaron
, Paul Dresher
, Kitty Brazelton
, Rhys Chatham
, Glenn Branca
, Erkki-Sven Tüür
, Robert Paterson
, Annie Gosfield
, Randall Woolf
and Nick Didkovsky
. Many of these composers (Gordon, Lang, Mellits, Dresher, Wolfe, Ziporyn, Martland, Branca) are post-minimalist in orientation, but some (Didkovsky, Brazelton and Rouse) are very much not.
from Indonesia, Chinese traditional instruments, raga
s from Indian Classical music. There is also an exploration of eastern-European and non-Western tonalities, even in relatively traditionally structured works. This trend was present already in the 1920s and 1930s, for example in the music of Béla Bartók
, Henry Cowell
, Colin McPhee
, Alan Hovhaness
, and Lou Harrison
, and slightly later in the work of Olivier Messiaen
, Chou Wen-chung
, Halim El-Dabh
, and Peggy Glanville-Hicks
. The trend can be found also in the context of post-minimalist works, such as Janice Giteck
's and Evan Ziporyn
's Balinese-influenced works. Some composers have used traditional instruments from their own cultures, such as Tōru Takemitsu
, Minoru Miki
, Chen Yi
, Zhou Long
, or Julian Kytasty
. World music influence may also be found in the context of post-classic tonality, such as in the music of Bright Sheng
, or in the context of thoroughly modernist works by composers such as Claude Vivier
.
, who strives for the emotional volatility of late 19th-century Romanticism
and early 20th-century Expressionism
. Called Die neue Einfachheit in German, it has also been termed "New Romanticism", "New Subjectivity", "New Inwardness", "New Sensuality", "New Expressivity", and "New Tonality".
Styles found in other countries sometimes associated with the German New Simplicity movement include the so-called "Holy Minimalism" of the Pole Henryk Górecki
and the Estonian Arvo Pärt
(in their works after 1970), as well as Englishman John Tavener
, who unlike the New Simplicity composers have turned back to Medieval and Renaissance models, however, rather than to 19th-century romanticism for inspiration. Important representative works include Symphony No. 3 "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs"
(1976) by Górecki, Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten
(1977) by Pärt, and The Veil of the Temple (2002) by Tavener, "Silent Songs" (1977) by Valentin Silvestrov
.
, the Belgian musicologist Harry Halbreich
, and the British/Australian musicologist Richard Toop, who gave currency to the concept of a movement with his article "Four Facets of the New Complexity".
Though often atonal, highly abstract, and dissonant
in sound, the "New Complexity" is most readily characterized by the use of techniques which require complex musical notation
. This includes extended technique
s, microtonality, odd tunings
, highly disjunct melodic contour
, innovative timbre
s, complex polyrhythms, unconventional instrumentations
, abrupt changes in loudness and intensity, and so on. The diverse group of composers writing in this style includes Richard Barrett
, Brian Ferneyhough
, Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf
, James Dillon
, Michael Finnissy
, James Erber
, and Roger Redgate
.
Though not a New Complexity composer himself, the Progressivist (or Neological) composer Neil March
studied with Roger Redgate and his concept of "Polyfluidity" owes much to the influence of New Complexity.
has been expanding his symphony cycle, while John Adams
's On the Transmigration of Souls
, a choral work commemorating the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks
, won a Pulitzer Prize
. Steve Reich
has explored electronic opera (most notably in Three Tales) and Terry Riley
has been active in composing instrumental music and music theatre.
Many composers are expanding the resources of minimalist music to include rock and world instrumentation and rhythms, serialism, and many other techniques. Another notable characteristic is storytelling and emotional expression taking precedence over technique. Post-minimalism is also a movement in painting and sculpture that began in the late 1960s. (See lumpers/splitters)
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
.
, Morten Lauridsen
, Nico Muhly
, Arvo Pärt
, John Rutter
, Veljo Tormis
, Gabriel Jackson
, Paul Mealor
and Eric Whitacre
.
, Michael Colgrass
, Michael Daugherty
, David Del Tredici
, Karel Husa
, David Maslanka
, Olivier Messiaen
, Alfred Reed
, Joseph Schwantner
, Karlheinz Stockhausen
, Frank Ticheli, and Eric Whitacre
have composed notable works for concert band in recent years.
s such as Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey
(1968) and Eyes Wide Shut
(1999), both of which used concert music by György Ligeti
, and also in Kubrick's The Shining
(1980) which used music by both Ligeti and Krzysztof Penderecki
. Jean-Luc Godard
, in La Chinoise
(1967), Nicolas Roeg
in Walkabout
(1971), and the Brothers Quay
in In Absentia (2000) used music by Karlheinz Stockhausen
.
Modernism (music)
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.- Defining musical modernism :...
. However, the term may also be employed in a broader sense to refer to all post-1945 modern musical forms
Modernism (music)
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.- Defining musical modernism :...
.
Categorization
Generally "contemporary classical music" amounts to:- The modern forms of art musicArt musicArt music is an umbrella term used to refer to musical traditions implying advanced structural and theoretical considerations and a written musical tradition...
- The post-1945 modern formsModernism (music)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.- Defining musical modernism :...
of post-tonal music after the death of Anton WebernAnton WebernAnton Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known exponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of...
(including serial music, electroacoustic musicElectroacoustic musicElectroacoustic music originated in Western art music during its modern era following the incorporation of electric sound production into compositional practice. The initial developments in electroacoustic music composition during the mid-20th century are associated with the activities of composers...
, musique concrèteMusique concrèteMusique concrète is a form of electroacoustic music that utilises acousmatic sound as a compositional resource. The compositional material is not restricted to the inclusion of sounds derived from musical instruments or voices, nor to elements traditionally thought of as "musical"...
, experimental musicExperimental musicExperimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...
, atonal music, minimalist musicMinimalist musicMinimal 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....
, etc.) - the post-1975 forms of this music
(including post-modern music, Spectral musicSpectral musicSpectral music 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...
, post-minimalism, sound artSound artSound art is a diverse group of art practices that considers wide notions of sound, listening and hearing as its predominant focus. There are often distinct relationships forged between the visual and aural domains of art and perception by sound artists....
, etc.)
- The post-1945 modern forms
Background
At the beginning of the 20th century, composers of classical music were experimenting with an increasingly dissonantConsonance and dissonance
In music, a consonance is a harmony, chord, or interval considered stable, as opposed to a dissonance , which is considered to be unstable...
pitch language, which sometimes yielded atonal
Atonality
Atonality in its broadest sense describes music that lacks a tonal center, or key. Atonality in this sense usually describes compositions written from about 1908 to the present day where a hierarchy of pitches focusing on a single, central tone is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale...
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
Neoclassicism (music)
Neoclassicism in music was a twentieth-century trend, particularly current in the period between the two World Wars, in which composers sought to return to aesthetic precepts associated with the broadly defined concept of "classicism", namely order, balance, clarity, economy, and emotional restraint...
style, which sought to recapture the balanced forms and clearly perceptible thematic processes of earlier styles; see also New Objectivity
New Objectivity
The New Objectivity is a term used to characterize the attitude of public life in Weimar Germany as well as the art, literature, music, and architecture created to adapt to it...
and Social Realism
Social realism
Social Realism, also known as Socio-Realism, is an artistic movement, expressed in the visual and other realist arts, which depicts social and racial injustice, economic hardship, through unvarnished pictures of life's struggles; often depicting working class activities as heroic...
). 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
Serialism
In music, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of...
). At the same time, conversely, composers also experimented with means of abdicating control, exploring indeterminacy or aleatoric 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
Minimalism
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...
. Still other composers started exploring the theatrical potential of the musical performance (performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
, mixed media
Mixed media
Mixed media, in visual art, refers to an artwork in the making of which more than one medium has been employed.There is an important distinction between "mixed-media" artworks and "multimedia art". Mixed media tends to refer to a work of visual art that combines various traditionally distinct...
, fluxus
Fluxus
Fluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...
).
1945–75
To some extent, European and the US traditions diverged after World War II. Among the most influential composers in Europe were Pierre BoulezPierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...
, Luigi Nono
Luigi Nono
Luigi Nono was an Italian avant-garde composer of classical music and remains one of the most prominent composers of the 20th century.- Early years :Born in Venice, he was a member of a wealthy artistic family, and his grandfather was a notable painter...
, and Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
. The first and last were both pupils of Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...
. The dominant aesthetic at this time was integral or 'total' serialism
Serialism
In music, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of...
, which took the ideas of Anton Webern
Anton Webern
Anton Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known exponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of...
as a model and became increasingly focused on complexity. However, some more traditionally-based composers such as Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....
and Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
maintained a tonal style of composition despite the prominent serialist movement.
In America, composers like Milton Babbitt
Milton Babbitt
Milton Byron Babbitt was an American composer, music theorist, and teacher. He is particularly noted for his serial and electronic music.-Biography:...
, John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
, Elliott Carter
Elliott Carter
Elliott Cook Carter, Jr. is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer born and living in New York City. He studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1930s, and then returned to the United States. After a neoclassical phase, he went on to write atonal, rhythmically complex music...
, Henry Cowell
Henry Cowell
Henry Cowell was an American composer, music theorist, pianist, teacher, publisher, and impresario. His contribution to the world of music was summed up by Virgil Thomson, writing in the early 1950s:...
, Philip Glass
Philip Glass
Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...
, Steve Reich
Steve Reich
Stephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...
, George Rochberg
George Rochberg
George Rochberg was an American composer of contemporary classical music.-Life:Rochberg was born in Paterson, New Jersey. He attended the Mannes College of Music, where his teachers included George Szell and Hans Weisse, and the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Rosario Scalero and...
, and Roger Sessions
Roger Sessions
Roger Huntington Sessions was an American composer, critic, and teacher of music.-Life:Sessions was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a family that could trace its roots back to the American revolution. His mother, Ruth Huntington Sessions, was a direct descendent of Samuel Huntington, a signer of...
, formed their own ideas. Many of these composers represented a new methodology of experimental music
Experimental music
Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...
, which began to question fundamental notions of music such as notation
Musical notation
Music notation or musical notation is any system that represents aurally perceived music, through the use of written symbols.-History:...
, performance
Performance
A performance, in performing arts, generally comprises an event in which a performer or group of performers behave in a particular way for another group of people, the audience. Choral music and ballet are examples. Usually the performers participate in rehearsals beforehand. Afterwards audience...
, duration, and repetition, while others fashioned their own extensions of the twelve-tone
Twelve-tone technique
Twelve-tone technique is a method of musical composition devised by Arnold Schoenberg...
serialism of Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
.
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 avant-garde musicAvant-garde musicAvant-garde music is a term used to characterize music which is thought to be ahead of its time, i.e. containing innovative elements or fusing different genres....
al traditions and experimental musicExperimental musicExperimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...
. - The second are schools that seek to revitalize tonal style found in traditional western music.
Modernism
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 CarterElliott Carter
Elliott Cook Carter, Jr. is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer born and living in New York City. He studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1930s, and then returned to the United States. After a neoclassical phase, he went on to write atonal, rhythmically complex music...
), performers, and listeners who continue to advance the ideas and forms of Modernism.
Serialism
Serialism
In music, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of...
is one of the most important post-war movements among the high modernist schools. Serialism, more specifically named "integral" or "compound" serialism, was led by composers such as Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...
, Bruno Maderna
Bruno Maderna
Bruno Maderna was an Italian conductor and composer. For the last ten years of his life he lived in Germany and eventually became a citizen of that country.-Biography:...
, Luigi Nono
Luigi Nono
Luigi Nono was an Italian avant-garde composer of classical music and remains one of the most prominent composers of the 20th century.- Early years :Born in Venice, he was a member of a wealthy artistic family, and his grandfather was a notable painter...
, and Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
in Europe, and by Milton Babbitt
Milton Babbitt
Milton Byron Babbitt was an American composer, music theorist, and teacher. He is particularly noted for his serial and electronic music.-Biography:...
, Donald Martino
Donald Martino
Donald Martino was a Pulitzer Prize winning American composer.Born in Plainfield, New Jersey, Martino studied composition with Ernst Bacon, Roger Sessions, Milton Babbitt, and Luigi Dallapiccola...
, and Charles Wuorinen
Charles Wuorinen
Charles Peter Wuorinen is a prolific Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer born and living in New York City. His catalog of more than 250 compositions includes works for orchestra, opera, chamber music, as well as solo instrumental and vocal works...
in the United States. Some of their compositions use an ordered set or several such sets, which may be the basis for the whole composition, while others use "unordered" sets for the same purpose. The term is also often used for dodecaphony, or twelve-tone technique
Twelve-tone technique
Twelve-tone technique is a method of musical composition devised by Arnold Schoenberg...
, which is alternatively regarded as the model for integral serialism.
Active modernist composers include Harrison Birtwistle
Harrison Birtwistle
Sir Harrison Paul Birtwistle CH is a British contemporary composer.-Life:Birtwistle was born in Accrington, a mill town in Lancashire some 20 miles north of Manchester. His interest in music was encouraged by his mother, who bought him a clarinet when he was seven, and arranged for him to have...
, Alexander Goehr
Alexander Goehr
Alexander Goehr is an English composer and academic.Goehr was born in Berlin in 1932, the son of the conductor and Schoenberg pupil Walter Goehr. In his early twenties he emerged as a central figure in the Manchester School of post-war British composers. In 1955–56 he joined Oliver Messiaen's...
, Thomas Adès
Thomas Adès
Thomas Adès is a British composer, pianist and conductor.-Biography:Adès studied piano with Paul Berkowitz and later composition with Robert Saxton at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London...
, Magnus Lindberg
Magnus Lindberg
Magnus Lindberg is a Finnish composer and pianist. He is currently the composer-in-residence at the New York Philharmonic.-Education:...
and Gunther Schuller
Gunther Schuller
Gunther Schuller is an American composer, conductor, horn player, author, historian, and jazz musician.- Biography and works :...
.
Computer music
Between 1975 and 1990, a shift in the paradigm of computer technology had taken place, making electronic music systems affordable and widely accessible. The personal computer had become an essential component of the electronic musician’s equipment, entirely superseding analog synthesizers and fulfilling the traditional functions of the computer in music for composition and scoring, synthesis and sound processing, control over external synthesizers and other performance equipment, and the sampling of audio input.Spectral music
Epitomized by the works of such composers as Hugues DufourtHugues Dufourt
Hugues Dufourt is a French composer and philosopher associated with the Spectral school of composition. Born in Lyon on September 28 1943, Dufourt studied piano and composition at the Geneva Conservatory....
, Gérard Grisey
Gérard Grisey
Gérard Grisey was a French composer of contemporary music.-Biography:Gérard Grisey was born in Belfort, France on 17 June 1946. He studied at the Trossingen Conservatory in Germany from 1963 to 1965 before entering the Conservatoire de Paris...
, Tristan Murail
Tristan Murail
Tristan Murail is a French composer. His father, Gérard Murail, is a poet and his mother, Marie-Thérèse Barrois, a journalist. One of his brothers, Lorris Murail, and his younger sister Elvire Murail, aka Moka, also write, and his younger sister Marie-Aude Murail is a French children's writer...
, and Horaţiu Rădulescu
Horatiu Radulescu
Horaţiu Rădulescu was a Romanian-French composer, best known for the spectral technique of composition.-Biography:Rădulescu was born in Bucharest, where he studied the violin privately with Nina Alexandrescu, a pupil of Enescu, and later studied composition at the Bucharest Academy of Music ,...
, "spectral music" implies the use of the spectrum
Harmonic series (music)
Pitched musical instruments are often based on an approximate harmonic oscillator such as a string or a column of air, which oscillates at numerous frequencies simultaneously. At these resonant frequencies, waves travel in both directions along the string or air column, reinforcing and canceling...
of a sound as a basis of composition.
A number of spectral composers are from Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
; these include Iancu Dumitrescu
Iancu Dumitrescu
Iancu Dumitrescu is a Romanian avant-garde composer.- Life and works :Dumitrescu received a master's degree in composition in Bucharest; Alfred Mendelssohn was among his teachers...
, Octav Nemescu, Ana-Maria Avram
Ana-Maria Avram
Ana-Maria Avram is a Romanian composer affiliated with the spectral music style. She represents with Iancu Dumitrescu the Hyper-Spectral trend in contemporary avant-garde music....
, Costin, Calin Ioachimescu, and Corneliu Cezar. Other spectral composers include Philippe Hurel, Michael Levinas, and Phillippe Leroux, Joshua Fineberg
Joshua Fineberg
Joshua Fineberg is an American composer of contemporary classical music.-Biography:Joshua Fineberg was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He began his musical studies at the age of five...
, and Julian Anderson
Julian Anderson
Julian Anderson is a British composer and teacher of composition.-Biography:Anderson studied at Westminster School, then with John Lambert at the Royal College of Music, with Alexander Goehr at Cambridge University, privately with Tristan Murail in Paris, and on courses given by Olivier Messiaen,...
.
Post-modernism
The influence of postmodernism in music is vast, but the definition of what constitutes "postmodern music" is open to interpretation.Musicians often associated with the term include: Scottish composer James MacMillan (who draws on sources as diverse as plainchant, South American 'liberation theology', Scottish folksongs, and Polish avant-garde techniques of the 1960s), the American Michael Torke
Michael Torke
Michael Torke is an American composer who writes music influenced by jazz and minimalism. Sometimes described as a post-minimalist, his most postminimal piece is Four Proverbs, in which the syllable for each pitch is fixed and variations in the melody produce streams of nonsense words. Other works...
(drawing on European music of the early 19th century, minimalism, jazz, and popular music), and Mark-Anthony Turnage
Mark-Anthony Turnage
Mark-Anthony Turnage is a prolific English composer of classical music. His initial musical studies were with Oliver Knussen, John Lambert, and later with Gunther Schuller...
from the UK (drawing from jazz, rock, Stravinsky, and Berg).
Polystylism (eclecticism)
Some authors equate polystylism with eclecticismEclecticism
Eclecticism is a conceptual approach that does not hold rigidly to a single paradigm or set of assumptions, but instead draws upon multiple theories, styles, or ideas to gain complementary insights into a subject, or applies different theories in particular cases.It can sometimes seem inelegant or...
, while others make a sharp distinction. Polystylism
Polystylism
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...
is the use of multiple style
Music genre
A music genre is a categorical and typological construct that identifies musical sounds as belonging to a particular category and type of music that can be distinguished from other types of music...
s or techniques of music, sometimes within the same composition, and is seen as a postmodern characteristic. Polystylist composers include Luciano Berio
Luciano Berio
Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian composer. He is noted for his experimental work and also for his pioneering work in electronic music.-Biography:Berio was born at Oneglia Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (October 24, 1925 – May 27, 2003) was an Italian...
, William Bolcom
William Bolcom
William Elden Bolcom is an American composer and pianist. He has received the Pulitzer Prize, the National Medal of Arts, two Grammy Awards, the Detroit Music Award and was named 2007 Composer of the Year by Musical America. Bolcom taught composition at the University of Michigan from 1973–2008...
, Peter Maxwell Davies
Peter Maxwell Davies
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, CBE is an English composer and conductor and is currently Master of the Queen's Music.-Biography:...
, Sofia Gubaidulina
Sofia Gubaidulina
Sofia Asgatovna Gubaidulina, is a Russian composer of half Russian, half Tatar ethnicity.Gubaidulina's music is marked by the use of unusual instrumental combinations...
, Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze is a German composer of prodigious output best known for "his consistent cultivation of music for the theatre throughout his life"...
, George Rochberg
George Rochberg
George Rochberg was an American composer of contemporary classical music.-Life:Rochberg was born in Paterson, New Jersey. He attended the Mannes College of Music, where his teachers included George Szell and Hans Weisse, and the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Rosario Scalero and...
, Frederic Rzewski
Frederic Rzewski
Frederic Anthony Rzewski is an American composer and virtuoso pianist.- Biography :Rzewski began playing piano at age 5. He attended Phillips Academy, Harvard and Princeton, where his teachers included Randall Thompson, Roger Sessions, Walter Piston and Milton Babbitt...
, Alfred Schnittke
Alfred Schnittke
Alfred Schnittke ; November 24, 1934 – August 3, 1998) was a Russian and Soviet composer. Schnittke's early music shows the strong influence of Dmitri Shostakovich. He developed a polystylistic technique in works such as the epic First Symphony and First Concerto Grosso...
, Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...
and John Zorn
John Zorn
John Zorn is an American avant-garde composer, arranger, record producer, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist. Zorn is a prolific artist: he has hundreds of album credits as performer, composer, or producer...
.
Historicism
Musical historicismMusical historicism
Musical historicism signifies the use of historical materials, structures, styles, techniques, media, conceptual content, etc., whether by a single composer or those associated with a particular school, movement, or period...
—the use of historical materials, structures, styles, techniques, media, conceptual content, etc., whether by a single composer or those associated with a particular school, movement, or period—is evident to varying degrees in minimalism, post-minimalism, world-music, and other genres in which tonal traditions have been sustained or have undergone a significant revival in recent decades. Some post-minimalist works employ medieval and other genres associated with early music, such as the "Oi me lasso" and other laude
Laude
The lauda or lauda spirituale was the most important form of vernacular sacred song in Italy in the late medieval era and Renaissance. Laude remained popular into the nineteenth century....
of Gavin Bryars
Gavin Bryars
Richard Gavin Bryars is an English composer and double bassist. He has been active in, or has produced works in, a variety of styles of music, including jazz, free improvisation, minimalism, historicism, experimental music, avant-garde and neoclassicism.-Early life and career:Born in Goole, East...
. Other composers have assimilated elements of medieval, renaissance, baroque, classical, or romantic styles in varying degrees, including Benjamin Bagby
Benjamin Bagby
Benjamin Bagby is a singer, composer, harpist, and groundbreaking performer of medieval music. Educated at Oberlin College and the Schola Cantorum in Basel, Bagby founded the ensemble Sequentia with Barbara Thornton in 1977...
, Thomas Binkley
Thomas Binkley
Thomas Binkley was an American lutenist and early music scholar.Thomas Eden Binkley studied at the University of Illinois and the University of Munich . He taught at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel...
, Easley Blackwood
Easley Blackwood Jr.
Easley Blackwood, , is a professor of music, a concert pianist, a composer of music, some using unusual tunings, and the author of books on music theory, including his research into the properties of microtonal tunings and traditional harmony.Blackwood was born in Indianapolis, Indiana...
, René Clemencic
René Clemencic
René Clemencic is an Austrian composer, recorder player, harpsichordist, conductor and clavichord player.-Compositions:* Meraviglia 1969* Missa Mundi mass in Latin, for five voices and orchestra...
, Joseph Dillon Ford
Joseph Dillon Ford
Joseph Dillon Ford is an American composer, author, and educator.He holds undergraduate degrees in music and graduate degrees in both musicology and landscape architecture...
, Vladimir Godar
Vladimír Godár
Vladimír Godár is a Slovak composer who is active in the fields of contemporary classical music and film music. He is also known for his collaboration with the Czech violinist, singer and composer Iva Bittová. As an academic, he is a writer, editor and translator of books on historical music...
, Ladislav Kupkovič
Ladislav Kupkovic
Ladislav Karol Kupkovič is a Slovak composer and conductor.-Life:Kupkovič was born in Bratislava, and studied violin and conducting there, first at the conservatory, then at the Academy of Performing Arts. He played violin in the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra from 1960 to 1965, and then began to...
, Winfried Michel
Winfried Michel
Winfried Michel is a German recorder player, composer, and editor of music.Michel studied with Ingetraud Drescher, Nikolaus Delius, and Frans Brüggen. He is lecturer for the recorder at the Staatliche Hochschule Münster and at the Musikakademie Kassel...
, George Rochberg
George Rochberg
George Rochberg was an American composer of contemporary classical music.-Life:Rochberg was born in Paterson, New Jersey. He attended the Mannes College of Music, where his teachers included George Szell and Hans Weisse, and the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Rosario Scalero and...
, Christopher Rouse and Jordi Savall
Jordi Savall
Jordi Savall i Bernadet is a Catalan viol player, conductor and composer. He has been one of the major figures in the field of Western early music since the 1970s, largely responsible for bringing the viol back to life on the stage...
.
Peter Schickele
Peter Schickele
Johann Peter Schickele is an American composer, musical educator, and parodist. He is best known for his comedy music albums featuring his music that he presents as music written by the fictional composer P. D. Q...
wrote works that parody many different styles of classical music and often draws upon specific works for its inspiration. They were mostly published as album
Album
An album is a collection of recordings, released as a single package on gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, or via digital distribution. The word derives from the Latin word for list .Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one half of the album...
s under the name of P. D. Q. Bach
P. D. Q. Bach
P. D. Q. Bach is a fictitious composer invented by musical satirist "Professor" Peter Schickele. In a gag that Schickele has developed over a five-decade-long career, he performs "discovered" works of this forgotten member of the Bach family...
, a composer he invented and then pretended to have discovered among the children of J.S. Bach. Some of these works are published under his own name, however, such as Eine Kleine Nichtmusik a work which layers quotes from other classical music and many folk melodies over the top of a complete performance of Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
Eine kleine Nachtmusik
The Serenade No. 13 for strings in G major, K. 525 was written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1787. The work is more commonly known by the title Eine kleine Nachtmusik. The German title means "a little serenade", though it is often rendered more literally but less accurately as "a little night music"...
.
The historicist movement is closely related to the emergence of musicology and the Early Music Revival
Early Music Revival
See Early music and Historically informed performance for a more detailed explanation of this topic.The general discussion of how to perform music from ancient or earlier times did not become an important subject of interest until the 19th century, when Europeans began looking to ancient culture...
. A number of historicist composers have been influenced by their intimate familiarity with the instrumental practices of earlier periods (Hendrik Bouman
Hendrik Bouman
Hendrik "Henk" Bouman is a Dutch harpsichordist, fortepianist, conductor and composer of music written in the baroque and classical idioms of the 17th & 18th Century.- Biography :...
, Grant Colburn
Grant Colburn
Grant Colburn is an American harpsichordist, pianist and composer.He studied harpsichord with Igor Kipnis.He is the author of five published collections of baroque and renaissance harpsichord music as well as music for recorder/flute with continuo and unaccompanied cello or viola da gamba, of...
, Michael Talbot
Michael Talbot (musicologist)
Michael Talbot is a British composer, musicologist and author.Talbot is a former Professor of Music at the University of Liverpool. An expert in Italian baroque music, Talbot has authored monographs on Antonio Vivaldi and Tommaso Albinoni, and is an editor of the scholarly journal "Studi Vivaldiani"...
, Alexandre Danilevsky
Alexandre Danilevsky
Alexandre Danilevsky is a Russian-French composer of classical music, lutenist, viola da gamba and vielle player, active in France ....
, Paulo Galvão
Paulo Galvão
Paulo Galvão - is a composer, lutenist, theorbist and guitarist, noted in particular for his compositions for 5-course baroque guitar published under the allonym "AdC"...
, Roman Turovsky-Savchuk
Roman Turovsky-Savchuk
Roman Turovsky-Savchuk is an American painter and lutenist-composer born in Ukraine.-Biography:Turovsky was born in Kiev, Ukraine in 1961, when it was part of the Soviet Union. He studied art from an early age under his father, the painter Mikhail Turovsky and at the Shevchenko State Art School...
). The musical historicism
Musical historicism
Musical historicism signifies the use of historical materials, structures, styles, techniques, media, conceptual content, etc., whether by a single composer or those associated with a particular school, movement, or period...
movement has also been stimulated by the formation of such international organizations as the Delian Society
Delian Society
The Delian Society, conceived by American composer Joseph Dillon Ford, was founded on 23 January 2004 as an international community of composers, performers, scholars, recording engineers, music publishers, and amateurs dedicated to the revitalization of the great tonal traditions in art music...
and Vox Saeculorum
Vox Saeculorum
Vox Sæculorum is an international society of contemporary composers writing in the Baroque style established in 2006. Vox Sæculorum was the primary focus of a feature length article on period baroque composition written by Grant Colburn and published in the Summer issue of Early Music America...
.
Neo-romanticism
The vocabulary of extended tonality, which flourished in the late 19th and very early 20th centuries, continues to be used throughout the contemporary period. It never has been considered shocking or controversial in the larger musical world—as has been demonstrated statistically for the United States, at least (Straus 1999, 322–29, et passim). Composers who have worked in the neoromantic vein after 1975 include John WilliamsJohn Williams
John Towner Williams is an American composer, conductor, and pianist. In a career spanning almost six decades, he has composed some of the most recognizable film scores in the history of motion pictures, including the Star Wars saga, Jaws, Superman, the Indiana Jones films, E.T...
, John Corigliano
John Corigliano
John Corigliano is an American composer of classical music and a teacher of music. He is a distinguished professor of music at Lehman College in the City University of New York.-Biography:...
, George Rochberg
George Rochberg
George Rochberg was an American composer of contemporary classical music.-Life:Rochberg was born in Paterson, New Jersey. He attended the Mannes College of Music, where his teachers included George Szell and Hans Weisse, and the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Rosario Scalero and...
(in some of his works), David Del Tredici
David Del Tredici
David Del Tredici, born March 16, 1937 in Cloverdale, California, is an American composer. According to Del Tredici's website, Aaron Copland said David Del Tredici "is that rare find among composers — a creator with a truly original gift...
, Ladislav Kupkovič
Ladislav Kupkovic
Ladislav Karol Kupkovič is a Slovak composer and conductor.-Life:Kupkovič was born in Bratislava, and studied violin and conducting there, first at the conservatory, then at the Academy of Performing Arts. He played violin in the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra from 1960 to 1965, and then began to...
, Gian Carlo Menotti
Gian Carlo Menotti
Gian Carlo Menotti was an Italian-American composer and librettist. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship. He wrote the classic Christmas opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, among about two dozen other operas intended to appeal to popular...
, Krzysztof Penderecki
Krzysztof Penderecki
Krzysztof Penderecki , born November 23, 1933 in Dębica) is a Polish composer and conductor. His 1960 avant-garde Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima for string orchestra brought him to international attention, and this success was followed by acclaim for his choral St. Luke Passion. Both these...
, Isang Yun
Isang Yun
Isang Yun was a Korean-German composer originally from Korea. According to his official publisher's Boosey & Hawkes biography of him, he was granted political asylum by West Germany, eventually becoming a naturalised German citizen, following his abduction and torture in 1967 by the South Korean...
, Christopher Rouse, Lorenzo Ferrero
Lorenzo Ferrero
Lorenzo Ferrero is a contemporary Italian composer with a predilection for opera, a librettist, author, and book editor. He started composing at an early age and wrote over a hundred compositions thus far, including twelve operas, three ballets, and numerous orchestral, chamber music, solo...
, and Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone, Grand Officer OMRI, , is an Italian composer and conductor, who wrote music to more than 500 motion pictures and television series, in a career lasting over 50 years. His scores have been included in over 20 award-winning films as well as several symphonic and choral pieces...
. The case of Penderecki is notable in that the composer began his career with a firm preference for the avant-garde, and later underwent a radical change in favor of a more Romantic style (as seen in works such as the First Violin Concerto and the Symphony No. 2
Symphony No. 2 (Penderecki)
Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki wrote his Symphony No. 2 during the winter of 1979–80. Sometimes referred to as the "Christmas Symphony" , neither the score nor the parts make any reference to this moniker.-Structure:The symphony, lasting 30–35 minutes, is in...
.
Art rock influence
Similarly, many composers have emerged since the 1980s who are heavily influenced by art rockArt rock
Art rock is a subgenre of rock music that originated in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, with influences from art, avant-garde, and classical music. The first usage of the term, according to Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, was in 1968. Influenced by the work of The Beatles, most notably their Sgt...
. Many, such as Scott Johnson
Scott Johnson (composer)
Scott Johnson is an American composer known for his pioneering use of recorded speech as musical melody. He was the recipient of a 2006 Guggenheim fellowship.- John Somebody :...
, Steven Mackey
Steven Mackey
Steven Mackey is an American composer, guitarist, and music educator.-Life:As a musician growing up listening to and performing vernacular American musics as well as classical music, Mackey's compositions are informed by rock and jazz, though in an avant-garde vein...
, and Tim Hodgkinson
Tim Hodgkinson
Tim Hodgkinson is an English experimental music composer and performer, principally on reeds and keyboards. He is best known as one of the core members of the British avant-rock group Henry Cow, which he formed with Fred Frith in 1968...
, started out as rock musicians and only later moved into the realm of scored music. Other notable composers who draw on rock include Christopher Rouse, Marc Mellits
Marc Mellits
Marc Mellits is an American composer and musician.Mellits was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He studied at the Eastman School of Music from 1984 to 1988, the Yale School of Music from 1989 to 1991, Cornell University from 1991 to 1996, and at Tanglewood in the summer of 1997...
, Evan Ziporyn
Evan Ziporyn
Evan Ziporyn is an American composer of post-minimalist music and music for Balinese gamelans. He plays the clarinet, bass clarinet, saxophone, and metallophone, borrowing from classical music, avant-garde, and jazz...
, Julia Wolfe
Julia Wolfe
Julia Wolfe is an American composer. She was born in Philadelphia, holds degrees from the University of Michigan, Princeton and Yale, and currently works in New York. Wolfe's music is rhythmically vigorous and often clangorously dissonant...
, Michael Gordon
Michael Gordon (composer)
Michael Gordon is an American composer and co-founder of the Bang on a Can festival and ensemble. His music is associated with the genres of totalism and post-minimalism.-Early life:...
, David Lang
David Lang (composer)
David Lang is an American composer living in New York City. He was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Music for The Little Match Girl Passion.-Biography:...
, Elliott Sharp
Elliott Sharp
Elliott Sharp is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, and performer.A central figure in the avant-garde and experimental music scene in New York City since the late 1970s, Sharp has released over eighty-five recordings ranging from blues, jazz, and orchestral music to noise, no wave rock,...
, John Zorn
John Zorn
John Zorn is an American avant-garde composer, arranger, record producer, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist. Zorn is a prolific artist: he has hundreds of album credits as performer, composer, or producer...
, Steve Martland
Steve Martland
Steve Martland is an English composer.-Life and Music :Martland was born in Liverpool, England and studied composition at Liverpool University and in the Netherlands with Louis Andriessen...
, Anne LeBaron
Anne LeBaron
Alice Anne LeBaron is an United States composer and harpist.-Biography:Anne LeBaron holds a B.A. in music from the University of Alabama , an M.A. in music from the State University of New York at Stony Brook , and a D.M.A. from Columbia University...
, Paul Dresher
Paul Dresher
Paul Joseph Dresher is an American composer. Dresher received his B.A. in music from the University of California, Berkeley and his M.A. in composition from the University of California, San Diego, where he studied with Robert Erickson, Roger Reynolds, Pauline Oliveros, and Bernard Rands.He also...
, Kitty Brazelton
Kitty Brazelton
Kitty Brazelton is an American vocalist, composer, flutist, and lead singer of the art-rock/alternative rock/avant-garde jazz band Dadadah. Brazelton is the daughter of pediatrician and author T. Berry Brazelton....
, Rhys Chatham
Rhys Chatham
Rhys Chatham is an American composer, guitarist, and trumpet player, primarily active in avant-garde and minimalist music. He is best known for his "guitar orchestra" compositions...
, Glenn Branca
Glenn Branca
Glenn Branca is an American avant-garde composer and guitarist known for his use of volume, alternative guitar tunings, repetition, droning, and the harmonic series. In 2008 he was awarded an unrestricted grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.-Beginnings: 1960s and early 1970s:Branca...
, Erkki-Sven Tüür
Erkki-Sven Tüür
Erkki-Sven Tüür is an Estonian composer.Tüür was born in Kärdla on the Estonian island of Hiiumaa. He studied flute and percussion at the Tallinn Music School from 1976 to 1980 and composition with Jaan Rääts at the Tallinn Academy of Music and privately with Lepo Sumera from 1980 to 1984...
, Robert Paterson
Robert Paterson (composer)
Robert Paterson is an American composer, percussionist and conductor.-Biography:Paterson studied composition with Christopher Rouse, Samuel Adler, Joseph Schwantner, Warren Benson and David Liptak at the Eastman School of Music, graduating in 1995. At Eastman, he was a double major and studied...
, Annie Gosfield
Annie Gosfield
Annie Gosfield is a New York composer who specializes in using detuned or out of tune samples and industrial noises. Her work often contains improvisation and frequently uses extended techniques and/or altered musical instruments...
, Randall Woolf
Randall Woolf
Randall Woolf is an American composer known for his diverse contemporary works, and in particular for his works based on children's literature and collaborative work with youth organizations. He studied composition privately with David Del Tredici and Joseph Maneri, and at Harvard, where he earned...
and Nick Didkovsky
Nick Didkovsky
Nick Didkovsky is a composer, guitarist, computer music programmer, and leader of the band Doctor Nerve. He is a former student of Christian Wolff, Pauline Oliveros and Gerald Shapiro....
. Many of these composers (Gordon, Lang, Mellits, Dresher, Wolfe, Ziporyn, Martland, Branca) are post-minimalist in orientation, but some (Didkovsky, Brazelton and Rouse) are very much not.
"World music" influence
Some composers mix western and non-western instruments, including gamelanGamelan
A gamelan is a musical ensemble from Indonesia, typically from the islands of Bali or Java, featuring a variety of instruments such as metallophones, xylophones, drums and gongs; bamboo flutes, bowed and plucked strings. Vocalists may also be included....
from Indonesia, Chinese traditional instruments, raga
Raga
A raga is one of the melodic modes used in Indian classical music.It is a series of five or more musical notes upon which a melody is made...
s from Indian Classical music. There is also an exploration of eastern-European and non-Western tonalities, even in relatively traditionally structured works. This trend was present already in the 1920s and 1930s, for example in the music of Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
, Henry Cowell
Henry Cowell
Henry Cowell was an American composer, music theorist, pianist, teacher, publisher, and impresario. His contribution to the world of music was summed up by Virgil Thomson, writing in the early 1950s:...
, Colin McPhee
Colin McPhee
Colin McPhee was a Canadian composer and musicologist. He is primarily known for being the first Western composer to make an ethnomusicological study of Bali, and for the quality of that work...
, Alan Hovhaness
Alan Hovhaness
Alan Hovhaness was an Armenian-American composer.His music is accessible to the lay listener and often evokes a mood of mystery or contemplation...
, and Lou Harrison
Lou Harrison
Lou Silver Harrison was an American composer. He was a student of Henry Cowell, Arnold Schoenberg, and K. P. H. Notoprojo Lou Silver Harrison (May 14, 1917 – February 2, 2003) was an American composer. He was a student of Henry Cowell, Arnold Schoenberg, and K. P. H. Notoprojo Lou Silver Harrison...
, and slightly later in the work of Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...
, Chou Wen-chung
Chou Wen-chung
Chou Wen-chung , Shandong, China) is a Chinese American composer of contemporary classical music. He emigrated in 1946 to the United States where he lives.-Life:...
, Halim El-Dabh
Halim El-Dabh
Halim Abdul Messieh El-Dabh is an Egyptian-born American composer, performer, ethnomusicologist, and educator, who has had a career spanning six decades...
, and Peggy Glanville-Hicks
Peggy Glanville-Hicks
Peggy Glanville-Hicks was an Australian composer.- Biography :Peggy Glanville-Hicks was born Melbourne in 1912. At age 15 she began studying composition with Fritz Hart in Melbourne...
. The trend can be found also in the context of post-minimalist works, such as Janice Giteck
Janice Giteck
-Biography:Giteck grew up in Hicksville, Long Island and moved to Arizona when she was twelve years old. She attended Mills College, completing her Master's in 1969 and studying under Darius Milhaud. She later studied under Olivier Messiaen, and following this she studied percussion with Daniel...
's and Evan Ziporyn
Evan Ziporyn
Evan Ziporyn is an American composer of post-minimalist music and music for Balinese gamelans. He plays the clarinet, bass clarinet, saxophone, and metallophone, borrowing from classical music, avant-garde, and jazz...
's Balinese-influenced works. Some composers have used traditional instruments from their own cultures, such as Tōru Takemitsu
Toru Takemitsu
was a Japanese composer and writer on aesthetics and music theory. Largely self-taught, Takemitsu possessed consummate skill in the subtle manipulation of instrumental and orchestral timbre...
, Minoru Miki
Minoru Miki
is a Japanese composer and artistic director, particularly known for his promotional activities in favour of Japanese traditional instruments and some of their performers....
, Chen Yi
Chen Yi (composer)
Chen Yi is a Chinese composer of contemporary classical music. She was the first Chinese woman to receive a Master of Arts in music composition from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. She is also a violinist....
, Zhou Long
Zhou Long
Zhou Long is a Pulitzer-prize-winning Chinese American composer.-Biography:Born into an artistic family, Zhou Long began studying piano from an early age. Due to the artistic restrictions implemented during the Cultural Revolution, he was forced to delay his piano studies and live on a state-run...
, or Julian Kytasty
Julian Kytasty
Julian Kytasty is a Ukrainian-American composer, singer, kobzar, bandurist, flute player and conductor. He was born January 23 1958 in Detroit, Michigan, in the family of refugees....
. World music influence may also be found in the context of post-classic tonality, such as in the music of Bright Sheng
Bright Sheng
Bright Sheng is a Chinese-American composer, conductor, and pianist. He has lived in the United States since 1982 and is on faculty at the University of Michigan. In 1999, the White House commissioned Sheng to compose a piece to honor the Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji at a state dinner hosted by...
, or in the context of thoroughly modernist works by composers such as Claude Vivier
Claude Vivier
-Biography:Born to unknown parents in Montreal, Vivier was adopted at the age of three by a poor French-Canadian family. From the age of thirteen, he attended boarding schools run by the Marist Brothers, a religious order that prepared young boys for a vocation in the priesthood. At the age of...
.
New Simplicity
A movement in Denmark (Den Nye Enkelhed) in the late nineteen-sixties and another in Germany in the late seventies and early eighties, the former attempting to create more objective, impersonal music, and the latter reacting with a variety of strategies to restore the subjective to composing, both sought to create music using simple textures. The German New Simplicity's best-known composer is Wolfgang RihmWolfgang Rihm
Wolfgang Rihm is a German composer.Rihm is Head of the Institute of Modern Music at the Karlsruhe Conservatory of Music and has been composer in residence at the Lucerne Festival and the Salzburg Festival...
, who strives for the emotional volatility of late 19th-century Romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
and early 20th-century Expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
. Called Die neue Einfachheit in German, it has also been termed "New Romanticism", "New Subjectivity", "New Inwardness", "New Sensuality", "New Expressivity", and "New Tonality".
Styles found in other countries sometimes associated with the German New Simplicity movement include the so-called "Holy Minimalism" of the Pole Henryk Górecki
Henryk Górecki
Henryk Mikołaj Górecki was a composer of contemporary classical music. He studied at the State Higher School of Music in Katowice between 1955 and 1960. In 1968, he joined the faculty and rose to provost before resigning in 1979. Górecki became a leading figure of the Polish avant-garde during...
and the Estonian Arvo Pärt
Arvo Pärt
Arvo Pärt is an Estonian classical composer and one of the most prominent living composers of sacred music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs his self-made compositional technique, tintinnabuli. His music also finds its inspiration and influence from...
(in their works after 1970), as well as Englishman John Tavener
John Tavener
Sir John Tavener is a British composer, best known for such religious, minimal works as "The Whale", and "Funeral Ikos"...
, who unlike the New Simplicity composers have turned back to Medieval and Renaissance models, however, rather than to 19th-century romanticism for inspiration. Important representative works include Symphony No. 3 "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs"
Symphony No. 3 (Górecki)
The Symphony No. 3, Op. 36, also known as the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs , is a symphony in three movements composed by Henryk Górecki in Katowice, Poland, between October and December 1976. The work is indicative of the transition between Górecki's dissonant earlier manner and his more tonal...
(1976) by Górecki, Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten
Cantus In Memoriam Benjamin Britten
Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten is a short canon in A minor, written in 1977 by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt for string orchestra and bell. The work is an early example of Pärt's tintinnabuli style, which he based on his reactions to early chant music...
(1977) by Pärt, and The Veil of the Temple (2002) by Tavener, "Silent Songs" (1977) by Valentin Silvestrov
Valentin Silvestrov
Valentyn Vasylyovych Sylvestrov is a Ukrainian pianist and composer of contemporary classical music.-Education:Sylvestrov began private music lessons at age 15...
.
New Complexity
New Complexity is a current within today's European contemporary avant-garde music scene, named in reaction to the New Simplicity. Amongst the candidates suggested for having coined the term are the composer Nigel OsborneNigel Osborne
Nigel Osborne MBE, FRCM is a British composer.He serves as Reid Professor of music at the University of Edinburgh and has been teaching at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover.He studied composition with Kenneth Leighton ,...
, the Belgian musicologist Harry Halbreich
Harry Halbreich
Harry Halbreich is a Belgian musicologist.He studied with Arthur Honegger and later with Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire. From 1970 to 1976 he was Lecturer in Musical Analysis at the Royal Conservatory in Mons...
, and the British/Australian musicologist Richard Toop, who gave currency to the concept of a movement with his article "Four Facets of the New Complexity".
Though often atonal, highly abstract, and dissonant
Consonance and dissonance
In music, a consonance is a harmony, chord, or interval considered stable, as opposed to a dissonance , which is considered to be unstable...
in sound, the "New Complexity" is most readily characterized by the use of techniques which require complex musical notation
Musical notation
Music notation or musical notation is any system that represents aurally perceived music, through the use of written symbols.-History:...
. This includes extended technique
Extended technique
Extended techniques are performance techniques used in music to describe unconventional, unorthodox, or non-traditional techniques of singing, or of playing musical instruments to obtain unusual sounds or instrumental timbres....
s, microtonality, odd tunings
Musical tuning
In music, there are two common meanings for tuning:* Tuning practice, the act of tuning an instrument or voice.* Tuning systems, the various systems of pitches used to tune an instrument, and their theoretical bases.-Tuning practice:...
, highly disjunct melodic contour
Melodic motion
Complex melodic motion is the quality of movement of a melody, including nearness or farness of successive pitches or notes in a melody. This may be described as conjunct or disjunct, stepwise or skipwise, respectively and involves the use of the complex number, i, in its calculation.Bruno Nettl ...
, innovative timbre
Timbre
In music, timbre is the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments, such as string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that determine the...
s, complex polyrhythms, unconventional instrumentations
Instrumentation (music)
In music, instrumentation refers to the particular combination of musical instruments employed in a composition, and to the properties of those instruments individually...
, abrupt changes in loudness and intensity, and so on. The diverse group of composers writing in this style includes Richard Barrett
Richard Barrett (composer)
Richard Barrett is a British composer.-Biography:Barrett began to study music seriously only after graduating in genetics and microbiology at University College London in 1980 . From then until 1983 he took private lessons with Peter Wiegold...
, Brian Ferneyhough
Brian Ferneyhough
Brian John Peter Ferneyhough is an English composer. His music is characterized by the extensive use of complex rhythmic tuplet notation which features in all his works...
, Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf
Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf
-Life:Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf was born in Mannheim, Germany, and studied composition with Brian Ferneyhough, Klaus Huber und Emanuel Nunes and music theory at the music academy in Freiburg, where he graduated in 1992. At the same time, he studied musicology, philosophy with Jürgen Habermas and...
, James Dillon
James Dillon (composer)
James Dillon, born October 29, 1950 in Glasgow, Scotland, is a Scottish composer often regarded as belonging to the New Complexity school. Dillon studied art and design, linguistics, piano, acoustics, Indian rhythm, mathematics and computer music, but is self-taught in composition.Honors include...
, Michael Finnissy
Michael Finnissy
Michael Finnissy is an English composer and pianist. His music is characterised by the range of extremes often found in his work; opposing binary structures are found commonly, often seen as juxtaposing textures, register and tempi...
, James Erber
James Erber
James Erber is a British composer of the New ComplexityBorn in London, Erber studied music at the universities of Sussex and Nottingham, and worked in music publishing from 1976 to 1979. His first work, Seguente for oboe and piano, appeared in 1976...
, and Roger Redgate
Roger Redgate
Roger Redgate is a British musician.He was born in Bolton, Lancashire. He graduated at the Royal College of Music, where he won prizes for composition, violin performance, harmony and counterpoint. A DAAD scholarship enabled him to study with Brian Ferneyhough and Klaus Huber in Freiburg...
.
Though not a New Complexity composer himself, the Progressivist (or Neological) composer Neil March
Neil March
-Life:He was born in Hemel Hempstead of Welsh and English parents. He studied music from a young age and played in various orchestras and ensembles before turning his back on the classical world in his late teens for the lure of the burgeoning Post-Punk scene....
studied with Roger Redgate and his concept of "Polyfluidity" owes much to the influence of New Complexity.
Minimalism and post-minimalism
The minimalist generation still has a prominent role in new composition. Philip GlassPhilip Glass
Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...
has been expanding his symphony cycle, while John Adams
John Coolidge Adams
John Coolidge Adams is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer with strong roots in minimalism. His best-known works include Short Ride in a Fast Machine , On the Transmigration of Souls , a choral piece commemorating the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks , and Shaker...
's On the Transmigration of Souls
On the Transmigration of Souls
On the Transmigration of Souls, for orchestra, chorus, children’s choir and pre-recorded tape is a composition by composer John Adams commissioned by The New York Philharmonic and Lincoln Center’s Great Performers shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks.Adams began writing the piece in...
, a choral work commemorating the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks
September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...
, won a Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
. Steve Reich
Steve Reich
Stephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...
has explored electronic opera (most notably in Three Tales) and Terry Riley
Terry Riley
Terrence Mitchell Riley, is an American composer intrinsically associated with the minimalist school of Western classical music and was a pioneer of the movement...
has been active in composing instrumental music and music theatre.
Many composers are expanding the resources of minimalist music to include rock and world instrumentation and rhythms, serialism, and many other techniques. Another notable characteristic is storytelling and emotional expression taking precedence over technique. Post-minimalism is also a movement in painting and sculpture that began in the late 1960s. (See lumpers/splitters)
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 overblowing 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, Berlioz’s use of col legnoCol legno
In music for bowed string instruments, col legno, or more precisely col legno battuto , is an instruction to strike the string with the stick of the bow, rather than by drawing the hair of the bow across the strings. This results in a quiet but eerie percussive sound.Col legno is used in the final...
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
Henry Cowell
Henry Cowell was an American composer, music theorist, pianist, teacher, publisher, and impresario. His contribution to the world of music was summed up by Virgil Thomson, writing in the early 1950s:...
(use of fists and arms on the keyboard, playing inside the piano), John Cage (prepared piano), and George Crumb
George Crumb
George Crumb is an American composer of contemporary classical music. He is noted as an explorer of unusual timbres, alternative forms of notation, and extended instrumental and vocal techniques. Examples include seagull effect for the cello , metallic vibrato for the piano George Crumb (born...
. The Kronos Quartet
Kronos Quartet
Kronos Quartet is a string quartet founded by violinist David Harrington in 1973 in Seattle, Washington. Since 1978, the quartet has been based in San Francisco, California. The longest-running combination of performers had Harrington and John Sherba on violin, Hank Dutt on viola, and Joan...
, 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
Luigi Nono
Luigi Nono was an Italian avant-garde composer of classical music and remains one of the most prominent composers of the 20th century.- Early years :Born in Venice, he was a member of a wealthy artistic family, and his grandfather was a notable painter...
, Luciano Berio
Luciano Berio
Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian composer. He is noted for his experimental work and also for his pioneering work in electronic music.-Biography:Berio was born at Oneglia Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (October 24, 1925 – May 27, 2003) was an Italian...
, Helmut Lachenmann
Helmut Lachenmann
Helmut Lachenmann is a German composer associated with musique concrète instrumentale.-Life and works:...
, Salvatore Sciarrino
Salvatore Sciarrino
Salvatore Sciarrino is an Italian composer of contemporary classical music.-Biography:In his youth, Sciarrino was attracted to the visual arts, but began experimenting with music when he was twelve. Though he had some lessons from Antonino Titone and Turi Belfiore, he is primarily self-taught as a...
, Heinz Holliger
Heinz Holliger
Heinz Holliger Heinz Holliger Heinz Holliger (born 21 May 1939 is a Swiss oboist, composer and conductor.-Biography:He was born in Langenthal, Switzerland, and began his musical education at the conservatories of Bern and Basel. He studied composition with Sándor Veress and Pierre Boulez...
, Carlo Forlivesi
Carlo Forlivesi
Carlo Forlivesi is an Italian composer, performer and researcher.Forlivesi was born in Faenza, Emilia-Romagna. He studied at Bologna Conservatory, Milan Conservatory and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia of Rome...
and Georgia Spiropoulos
Georgia Spiropoulos
Georgia Spiropoulos is a composer, who studied piano, harmony, counterpoint and fugue in Athens. At the same time she studied jazz piano and worked as an instrumentalist and arranger of Hellenic traditional music of oral transmission for ten years.Since 1996 she has lived in Paris and studied...
.
Orchestra
- Inclusion of new instruments (amplified instruments, rock/jazz instruments, synthesizers, computer, non-western instruments, pre-recorded parts, experimental custom-made instruments)
- Concertos for non-western instruments (Nancy Van de Vate)
- Inclusion of visuals
Opera
Notable composers of operas since 1975 include:- John Adams
- Thomas AdèsThomas AdèsThomas Adès is a British composer, pianist and conductor.-Biography:Adès studied piano with Paul Berkowitz and later composition with Robert Saxton at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London...
- Robert AshleyRobert AshleyRobert Ashley , is a contemporary American composer, best known for his operas and other theatrical works, many of which incorporate electronics and extended techniques. Along with Gordon Mumma, Ashley was also a major pioneer of audio synthesis.Ashley was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan...
- Luciano BerioLuciano BerioLuciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian composer. He is noted for his experimental work and also for his pioneering work in electronic music.-Biography:Berio was born at Oneglia Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (October 24, 1925 – May 27, 2003) was an Italian...
- Harrison BirtwistleHarrison BirtwistleSir Harrison Paul Birtwistle CH is a British contemporary composer.-Life:Birtwistle was born in Accrington, a mill town in Lancashire some 20 miles north of Manchester. His interest in music was encouraged by his mother, who bought him a clarinet when he was seven, and arranged for him to have...
- John CageJohn CageJohn Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
- Roberto CarnevaleRoberto CarnevaleRoberto Carnevale is an Italian composer, pianist and conductor.- Biography and career :Born in Catania, he started studying piano at the age of seven. He took a degree in Arts at the University of Catania and he attended the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena...
- Elliott CarterElliott CarterElliott Cook Carter, Jr. is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer born and living in New York City. He studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1930s, and then returned to the United States. After a neoclassical phase, he went on to write atonal, rhythmically complex music...
- Daniel CatánDaniel CatánDaniel Catán was a Mexican composer of Russian Sephardic Jewish descent known particularly for his operas and his creative friendship with the tenor Plácido Domingo.-Career:...
- Michael DaughertyMichael DaughertyMichael Kevin Daugherty is an American composer, pianist, and teacher. Influenced by popular culture, Romanticism, and Postmodernism, Daugherty is one of the most colorful and widely performed American concert music composers of his generation...
- Peter Maxwell DaviesPeter Maxwell DaviesSir Peter Maxwell Davies, CBE is an English composer and conductor and is currently Master of the Queen's Music.-Biography:...
- John EatonJohn Eaton (composer)John Charles Eaton is an American composer , MacArthur Fellow, is professor emeritus of composition at the University of Chicago John Charles Eaton (born 30 March 1935 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania) is an American composer (Anon. [n.d.]; Morgan 2001), MacArthur Fellow, is professor emeritus of...
- Brian FerneyhoughBrian FerneyhoughBrian John Peter Ferneyhough is an English composer. His music is characterized by the extensive use of complex rhythmic tuplet notation which features in all his works...
- Lorenzo FerreroLorenzo FerreroLorenzo Ferrero is a contemporary Italian composer with a predilection for opera, a librettist, author, and book editor. He started composing at an early age and wrote over a hundred compositions thus far, including twelve operas, three ballets, and numerous orchestral, chamber music, solo...
- Philip GlassPhilip GlassPhilip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...
- Elliot GoldenthalElliot GoldenthalElliot Goldenthal is an American composer of contemporary classical music. He was a student of Aaron Copland and John Corigliano, and is best known for his distinctive style and ability to blend various musical styles and techniques in original and inventive ways...
- Ricky Ian GordonRicky Ian GordonRicky Ian Gordon is an American composer of songs, stage musicals and opera. The death of his lover from AIDS inspired Dream True and Orpheus and Euridice...
- Hans Werner HenzeHans Werner HenzeHans Werner Henze is a German composer of prodigious output best known for "his consistent cultivation of music for the theatre throughout his life"...
- York HöllerYork HöllerYork Höller is a German composer and Professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik Köln.-Biography:Between 1963 and 1970 Höller studied at the Cologne Musikhochschule: composition with Joachim Blume and Bernd Alois Zimmermann, piano with Else Schmitz-Gohrand Alfons Kontarsky, and orchestral...
- André LaporteAndré LaporteAndré Laporte is a Belgian composer.-Biography:Laporte studied music with Edgard de Laet, Flor Peeters, and Marinus De Jong at the Lemmens Institute in Mechelen, and musicology and philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven from 1953 to 1957...
- György LigetiGyörgy LigetiGyörgy Sándor Ligeti was a composer of contemporary classical music. Born in a Hungarian Jewish family in Transylvania, Romania, he briefly lived in Hungary before becoming an Austrian citizen.-Early life:...
- Liza LimLiza LimLiza Lim is an Australian composer.Lim writes concert music as well as music theatre and has collaborated with artists on a number of installation and video projects...
- Richard MealeRichard MealeRichard Graham Meale, AM, MBE was an Australian composer of instrumental works and operas.-Biography:Meale was born in Sydney and studied piano with Winifred Burston at the NSW State Conservatorium of Music, as well as clarinet, harp, music history and theory, before studying at the University of...
- Olivier MessiaenOlivier MessiaenOlivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...
- Nico MuhlyNico MuhlyNico Muhly is a contemporary classical music composer, who has worked and recorded with classical and pop/rock musicians. He currently lives in the Lower East Side section of Manhattan in New York City.-Early years:...
- Olga NeuwirthOlga NeuwirthOlga Neuwirth is an Austrian composer.As a child at the age of seven, Neuwirth began lessons on trumpet. She later studied composition in Vienna at the Vienna Academy of Music and Performing Arts under Erich Urbanner, while studying at the Electroacoustic Institute...
- Luigi NonoLuigi NonoLuigi Nono was an Italian avant-garde composer of classical music and remains one of the most prominent composers of the 20th century.- Early years :Born in Venice, he was a member of a wealthy artistic family, and his grandfather was a notable painter...
- Per NørgårdPer NørgårdPer Nørgård is a Danish composer.-Biography:Nørgård studied with Vagn Holmboe at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, and subsequently with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. To begin with, he was strongly influenced by the Nordic styles of Jean Sibelius, Carl Nielsen and Vagn Holmboe...
- Michael NymanMichael NymanMichael Laurence Nyman, CBE is an English composer of minimalist music, pianist, librettist and musicologist, known for the many film scores he wrote during his lengthy collaboration with the filmmaker Peter Greenaway, and his multi-platinum soundtrack album to Jane Campion's The Piano...
- Einojuhani RautavaaraEinojuhani RautavaaraEinojuhani Rautavaara is a Finnish composer of contemporary classical music, and is one of the most notable Finnish composers after Jean Sibelius.-Life:...
- Kaija SaariahoKaija SaariahoKaija Saariaho is a Finnish composer.Kaija Saariaho studied composition in Helsinki, Freiburg and Paris, where she has lived since 1982. Her studies and research at IRCAM have had a major influence on her music and her characteristically luxuriant and mysterious textures are often created by...
- Aulis SallinenAulis SallinenAulis Sallinen is a Finnish contemporary classical music composer. He writes in a modern, though tonal and not experimental music style. He studied at the Sibelius Academy, where his teachers included Joonas Kokkonen...
- Howard ShoreHoward ShoreHoward Leslie Shore is a Canadian composer, notable for his film scores. He has composed the scores for over 80 films, most notably the scores for The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, for which he won three Academy Awards. He is also a consistent collaborator with director David Cronenberg,...
- Karlheinz StockhausenKarlheinz StockhausenKarlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
- Somtow Sucharitkul
- Josef Tal
- Judith WeirJudith WeirJudith Weir CBE, is a British composer.-Biography:Her music has been appreciated by audiences and critics alike. She trained with John Tavener while still at school and subsequently with Robin Holloway at King's College, Cambridge, graduating in 1976...
Choral
Notable choral composers include Karl JenkinsKarl Jenkins
-Other works:*Adiemus: Live — live versions of Adiemus music*Palladio *Eloise *Imagined Oceans *The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace...
, Morten Lauridsen
Morten Lauridsen
Morten Johannes Lauridsen is an American composer. He was composer-in-residence of the Los Angeles Master Chorale and has been a professor of composition at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music for more than 30 years.-Biography:Lauridsen was born February 27, 1943, in...
, Nico Muhly
Nico Muhly
Nico Muhly is a contemporary classical music composer, who has worked and recorded with classical and pop/rock musicians. He currently lives in the Lower East Side section of Manhattan in New York City.-Early years:...
, Arvo Pärt
Arvo Pärt
Arvo Pärt is an Estonian classical composer and one of the most prominent living composers of sacred music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs his self-made compositional technique, tintinnabuli. His music also finds its inspiration and influence from...
, John Rutter
John Rutter
John Milford Rutter CBE is a British composer, conductor, editor, arranger and record producer, mainly of choral music.-Biography:Born in London, Rutter was educated at Highgate School, where a fellow pupil was John Tavener. He read music at Clare College, Cambridge, where he was a member of the...
, Veljo Tormis
Veljo Tormis
Veljo Tormis is an Estonian composer, regarded to be one of the greatest living choral composers and one of the most important composers of the 20th century in Estonia. Internationally, his fame arises chiefly from his extensive body of choral music, which exceeds 500 individual choral songs, most...
, Gabriel Jackson
Gabriel Jackson
Gabriel Jackson is an American Hispanist, historian and journalist. He was born in New York. He is a leading authority on the Second Spanish Republic and the Spanish Civil War. Since his retirement he has lived in Barcelona, Spain....
, Paul Mealor
Paul Mealor
Paul Mealor is a Welsh composer. Described by the New York Times as "one of the most important composers to have emerged in Welsh choral music since William Mathias", Mealor’s motets, songs and cycles have been performed, broadcast and recorded by artists around the world.-Biography:Born in St...
and Eric Whitacre
Eric Whitacre
Eric Whitacre is an American composer, conductor and lecturer. He is one of the most popular and performed composers of his generation. In 2008, the all-Whitacre choral CD Cloudburst became an international best-seller, topping the classical charts and earning a Grammy nomination...
.
Concert band
Composers such as Mark CamphouseMark Camphouse
Mark Camphouse is an American composer and conductor who has written primarily for symphonic winds, but whose output also includes works for orchestra, choir and chamber brass....
, Michael Colgrass
Michael Colgrass
Michael Colgrass is an American-born Canadian musician, composer, and educator.His musical career began in Chicago as a jazz musician . He graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in percussion performance and composition, including studies with Darius Milhaud at the Aspen Festival...
, Michael Daugherty
Michael Daugherty
Michael Kevin Daugherty is an American composer, pianist, and teacher. Influenced by popular culture, Romanticism, and Postmodernism, Daugherty is one of the most colorful and widely performed American concert music composers of his generation...
, David Del Tredici
David Del Tredici
David Del Tredici, born March 16, 1937 in Cloverdale, California, is an American composer. According to Del Tredici's website, Aaron Copland said David Del Tredici "is that rare find among composers — a creator with a truly original gift...
, Karel Husa
Karel Husa
Karel Husa is a Czech-born classical composer and conductor, winner of the 1969 Pulitzer Prize and 1993 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Music Composition...
, David Maslanka
David Maslanka
David Maslanka is a U.S. composer who writes for a variety of genres, including works for choir, wind ensemble, chamber music and symphony orchestra....
, Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...
, Alfred Reed
Alfred Reed
Alfred Reed was one of North America's most prolific and frequently performed composers, with more than two hundred published works for concert band, wind ensemble, orchestra, chorus, and chamber ensemble to his name...
, Joseph Schwantner
Joseph Schwantner
Joseph C. Schwantner is a Pulitzer Prize winning American composer and educator and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was awarded the 1970 Charles Ives Prize....
, Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
, Frank Ticheli, and Eric Whitacre
Eric Whitacre
Eric Whitacre is an American composer, conductor and lecturer. He is one of the most popular and performed composers of his generation. In 2008, the all-Whitacre choral CD Cloudburst became an international best-seller, topping the classical charts and earning a Grammy nomination...
have composed notable works for concert band in recent years.
Cinema
Contemporary classical music can be heard in film scoreFilm score
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
s such as Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey
2001: A Space Odyssey (film)
2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, and co-written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, partially inspired by Clarke's short story The Sentinel...
(1968) and Eyes Wide Shut
Eyes Wide Shut
Eyes Wide Shut is a 1999 drama film based upon Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 novella Traumnovelle . The film was directed, produced and co-written by Stanley Kubrick, and was his last film. The story, set in and around New York City, follows the sexually-charged adventures of Dr...
(1999), both of which used concert music by György Ligeti
György Ligeti
György Sándor Ligeti was a composer of contemporary classical music. Born in a Hungarian Jewish family in Transylvania, Romania, he briefly lived in Hungary before becoming an Austrian citizen.-Early life:...
, and also in Kubrick's The Shining
The Shining (film)
The Shining is a 1980 psychological horror film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, co-written with novelist Diane Johnson, and starring Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, and Danny Lloyd. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King. A writer, Jack Torrance, takes a job as an...
(1980) which used music by both Ligeti and Krzysztof Penderecki
Krzysztof Penderecki
Krzysztof Penderecki , born November 23, 1933 in Dębica) is a Polish composer and conductor. His 1960 avant-garde Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima for string orchestra brought him to international attention, and this success was followed by acclaim for his choral St. Luke Passion. Both these...
. Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
, in La Chinoise
La Chinoise
La Chinoise is a 1967 French political film directed by Jean-Luc Godard about young revolutionaries in Paris.-Plot summary:La Chinoise is a loose adaptation, if not parody, of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 1872 novel, The Possessed...
(1967), Nicolas Roeg
Nicolas Roeg
Nicolas Jack Roeg, CBE, BSC is an English film director and cinematographer.-Life and career:Roeg was born in London, the son of Mabel Gertrude and Jack Nicolas Roeg...
in Walkabout
Walkabout (film)
Walkabout is a 1971 film set in Australia, directed by Nicolas Roeg and starring Jenny Agutter, Luc Roeg and David Gulpilil. Edward Bond wrote the screenplay, which is loosely based on the novel Walkabout by James Vance Marshall...
(1971), and the Brothers Quay
Brothers Quay
Stephen and Timothy Quay are American identical twin brothers better known as the Brothers Quay or Quay Brothers. They are influential stop-motion animators...
in In Absentia (2000) used music by Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
.
Contemporary music festivals
- Agora Festival, Paris, France
- Ars musicaArs musicaFounded in 1989, Ars Musica is an annual contemporary music international festival that takes place in Brussels during several weeks, usually in March. Nowadays, Ars musica is one of the biggest world festival for contemporary music...
, Brussels, Belgium - Avaton Music Festival, Limassol, Cyprus
- Bang on a Can MarathonBang on a CanBang on a Can is a multi-faceted classical music organization based in New York City. It was founded in 1987 by three American composers who remain its artistic directors: Julia Wolfe, David Lang, and Michael Gordon...
- Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music (Santa Cruz, CA)
- Dallas Festival of Modern Music
- Darmstädter Ferienkurse
- Donaueschingen FestivalDonaueschingen FestivalThe Donaueschingen Festival is a festival for new music that takes place every October in the small town of Donaueschingen...
- Gaudeamus FoundationGaudeamus FoundationThe Gaudeamus Foundation and Contemporary Music Center is a renowned center for contemporary music. The Gaudeamus Foundation organizes and promotes contemporary musical activities and concerts both in the Netherlands and abroad...
Music Week in Amsterdam - highSCORE Contemporary Music Festival Concerts are held in historical Pavia, 35 km south of Milan. Mid-July.
- Huddersfield Contemporary Music FestivalHuddersfield Contemporary Music FestivalThe Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival is held in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, England. It has a repertoire of cutting-edge jazz, orchestral, choral and electroacoustic performances, along with film, dance and music theatre...
- Lucerne FestivalLucerne Festival- History :The festival was founded in 1938 with a series of concerts in the gardens of Wagner's villa conducted by Arturo Toscanini, who had formed an orchestra with members of different orchestras and soloists for the concert...
- Other MindsOther MindsOther Minds is a San Francisco based private 501 not-for-profit organization, founded in 1992 by Charles Amirkhanian and Jim Newman...
- Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music FestivalPeninsula Arts Contemporary Music FestivalThe Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival is held in Plymouth, Devon, England. It has a program of leading-edge orchestral, operatic, jazz, and electroacoustic performances, along with film, and music theatre...
http://cmr.soc.plymouth.ac.uk/event.htm - Warsaw AutumnWarsaw AutumnWarsaw Autumn is the largest international Polish festival of contemporary music. Indeed, for many years, it was the only festival of its type in Central and Eastern Europe. It was founded in 1956 by two composers, Tadeusz Baird and Kazimierz Serocki, and officially established by the Head Board...
in Poland
External links
- Procembalo complete free catalog of Contemporary Harpsichord Music
- spnm - promoting new music, UK – UK-based organisation promoting new music and composers.
- BabelScores Promoting and Circulating Contemporary Music Scores
- Q2-New York Public Radio's internet radio station and blog for innovative and contemporary classical music.
- Scores by contemporary classical composers
- Art of the States
- Contemporary Classical, Internet radio
- Modern classical electronic fusion
- Common Tone podcast
- Modern and contemporary classical music
- The Living Composers Project
- Sibeliusmusic.com - Newly Created Scores Using the Sibelius Program
- Sussurro - Contemporary Brazilian Music
- Musmap.com - Contemporary Composers and Classical Performers
- Gateway to Contemporary Music Resources in France
- Contemporary composers interactive timeline, including, if available, photos and biographies (in French).
- Arizona Friends of Chamber Music commissioning program and composer pages
- New Music Blog - by critic Daniel S. Johnson.
- temp’óra - international network dedicated to the promotion of contemporary music. Data bases with thousands of links all over the world.