20th-century music is defined by the sudden emergence of advanced technology for

recording and distributing music as well as dramatic innovations in musical forms and styles.
Because music was no longer limited to concerts, opera-houses, clubs, and domestic musicmaking, it became possible for music artists to quickly gain global recognition and influence.
Twentieth-century music brought new freedom and wide experimentation with new musical
styles and forms that challenged the accepted rules of music of earlier periods. Faster
modes of transportation allowed musicians and fans to travel more widely to perform or
listen. Amplification permitted giant concerts to be heard by those with the least expensive
tickets, and the inexpensive reproduction and transmission or broadcast of music gave rich
and poor alike nearly equal access to high-quality music performances.

Modernism
In the
early 20th century,
many composers,
including Rachmaninof, Richard
Strauss, Giacomo Puccini, and Edward Elgar, continued to work in forms and in a musical
language that derived from the 19th century. However, modernism in music became
increasingly prominent and important; among the most important modernists were
Alexander Scriabin, Claude Debussy, and post-Wagnerian composers such as Gustav
Mahler and
Richard
Strauss,
who
experimented
with
form,
tonality
and
orchestration. Busoni, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Schreker were already recognized before
1914 as modernists, and Ives was retrospectively also included in this category for his
challenges
to
the
uses
of
tonality. [1] Composers
such
as Ravel, Milhaud,
and Gershwin combined classical and jazz idioms.
Nationalism
Late-Romantic and modernist nationalism was found also in British, American, and LatinAmerican music of the early 20th cntury. Composers such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, Aaron
Copland, Carlos Chvez, and Heitor Villa-Lobos used folk themes collected by themselves or
others in many of their major compositions.
Microtonal music
In the early decades of the 20th century, composers such as Julin Carrillo, Mildred
Couper, Alois Hba, Charles Ives, Erwin Schulhof, Ivan Wyschnegradsky turned their
attention to quarter tones (24 equal intervals per octave), and other finer divisions. In the
middle of the century composers such as Harry Partch and Ben Johnston explored just
intonation. In the second half of the century, prominent composers employing microtonality
included Easley
Blackwood,
Jr., Wendy
Carlos, Adriaan
Fokker, Terry
Riley, Ezra
Sims, Karlheinz Stockhausen, La Monte Young, and Iannis Xenakis.
Neoclassicism
A dominant trend in music composed from 1923 to 1950 was neoclassicism, a reaction
against the exaggerated gestures and formlessness of late Romanticism which revived the
balanced forms and clearly perceptible thematic processes of earlier styles. There were
three distinct "schools" of neoclassicism, associated with Igor Stravinsky, Paul Hindemith,
and Arnold Schoenberg. Similar sympathies in the second half of the century are generally
subsumed under the heading "postmodernism".
Experimental music
A compositional tradition arose in the mid-20th centuryparticularly in North America
called "experimental music". Its most famous and influential exponent was John
Cage. According to Cage, "an experimental action is one the outcome of which is not

foreseen", and he was specifically interested in completed works that performed an

unpredictable action.
Minimalism
Minimalist music, involving a simplification of materials and intensive repetition of motives
began in the late 1950s with the composers Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass. Later,
minimalism was adapted to a more traditional symphonic setting by composers including
Reich, Glass, and John Adams. Minimalism was practiced heavily throughout the latter half of
the century and has carried over into the 21st century, as well as composers like Arvo
Prt, Henryk Grecki and John Tavener working in the holy minimalism variant. For more
examples see List of 20th-century classical composers.
Contemporary classical music
In the broadest sense, contemporary music is any music being written in the present day. In
the context of classical music the term is informally applied to music written in the last half
century or so, particularly works post-1960. Standard reference works do not consistently
follow this definition since it is a word that describes a movable time frame, rather than a
particular style or unifying idea.
Many composers working in the early 21st century were prominent figures in the 20th
century. Some younger composers such as Oliver Knussen, Thomas Ads, and Michael
Daugherty did not rise to prominence until late in the 20th century. For more examples
see List of 21st-century classical composers.
Electronic music
For centuries, instrumental music had either been created by singing, drawing a bow across
or plucking taught gut or metal strings (string instruments), constricting vibrating air
(woodwinds and brass) or hitting or stroking something (percussion). In the early twentieth
century, devices were invented that were capable of generating sound electronically,
without an initial mechanical source of vibration.
As early as the 1930s, composers such as Olivier Messiaen incorporated electronic
instruments into live performance. Recording technology was used to produce art music, as
well. The musique concrte of the late 1940s and 1950s was produced by editing together
natural and industrial sounds.
In the years following World War II, some composers were quick to adopt developing
electronic technology. Electronic music was embraced by composers such as Edgard Varse,
Karlheinz Stockhausen, Milton Babbitt, Pierre Boulez, Luigi Nono, Herbert Brn, and Iannis
Xenakis.
In the 1950s the film industry also began to make extensive use of electronic soundtracks.
From the late 1960s onward, much popular music was developed on synthesizers by
pioneering groups like Heaven 17, The Human League, Art of Noise, and New Order.
Folk music
Folk music, in the original sense of the term as coined in the 18th century by Johann
Gottfried Herder, is music produced by communal composition and possessing dignity,
though by the late 19th century the concept of folk had become a synonym for nation,
usually identified as peasants and rural artisans, as in the Merrie England movement and the
Irish and Scottish Gaelic Revivals of the 1880s. Folk music was normally shared and
performed by the entire community (not by a special class of expert or professional
performers, possibly excluding the idea of amateurs), and was transmitted by word of mouth
(oral tradition).
In addition, folk music was also borrowed by composers in other genres. Some of the work of
Aaron Copland clearly draws on American folk music.

An important work on registering traditional tunes of the Balkanic region was that of Bla
Bartk since it is probably the first composer who was interested in recording audios as well
as analysing them from an ethnological point of view.
Bluegrass music
Bluegrass music is a form of American roots music, and a subgenre of country music.
Bluegrass was inspired by the music of Appalachia. It has mixed roots in Irish, Scottish,
Welsh, and English traditional music, and also later influenced by the music of AfricanAmericans through incorporation of jazz elements.
Opera
In the early years of the century Wagnerian chromatic harmony was extended by opera
composers such as Richard Strauss (Salome, 1905; Die Frau ohne Schatten, 1917), Claude
Debussy (Pellas et Mlisande, 1902), Giacomo Puccini (Madama Butterfly, 1904; Il trittico,
1918), Ferruccio Busoni (Doktor Faust, 1916, posthumously completed by his student Philipp
Jarnach), Bla Bartk (Bluebeard's Castle, 191117), and Hans Pfitzner (Palestrina, 1917).
Further extension of the chromatic language finally broke with tonality in the early operas of
Arnold Schoenberg (Erwartung, 1909; Die glckliche Hand, 1912) and his student Alban Berg
(Wozzeck, 1925), both of whom adopted twelve-tone technique for their later operas:
Schoenberg's Moses und Aron, and Bergs Lulu. Neither of these operas were completed in
their composers lifetimes, however, so that the first completed opera using the twelve-tone
technique was Karl V (1938) by Ernst Krenek.
Popular music
Popular music, sometimes abbreviated pop music (although the term "pop" is used in some
contexts as a more specific musical genre), is music belonging to any of a number of musical
styles that are broadly popular or intended for mass consumption and wide commercial
distributionin other words, music that forms part of popular culture.
Popular music includes Broadway tunes, ballads and singers such as Frank Sinatra.
Blues
Blues musicians such as Muddy Waters brought the Delta Blues, played mostly with acoustic
instruments, from the Mississippi delta north to cities like Chicago, where they used more
electric instruments to form the Chicago Blues.
Country Music
Country music, once known as Country and Western music, is a popular musical form
developed in the southern United States, with roots in traditional folk music, spirituals, and
the blues.
Disco
Disco is an up-tempo style of dance music that originated in the early 1970s, mainly from
funk, salsa, and soul music, popular originally with gay and black audiences in large U.S.
cities, and derives its name from the French word discothque.
Hip hop
Subgenres/periods of history in hip hop include: Old school hip hop, New school hip hop,
Gangsta rap, Underground hip hop, Alternative hip hop and Crunk/Snap music.
Jazz

Jazz has evolved into many sometimes contrasting subgenres including smooth jazz, Bebop,
Swing, Fusion, Dixieland and free jazz. Jazz was created out of a combination of the Blues,
Ragtime, African Spirituals and various ethnic music.
New-age Music
There are new-age compositions which sit equally comfortably in the world music category.
Polka
The polka, which first appeared in Prague in 1837, continued to be a popular form of dance
music through the 20th century, especially in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and areas of the
United States with a large population of central-European descent. A particularly well-known
20th-century example is Jaromr Vejvodas Modansk polka (1927), which became popular
during World War II in Czechoslovakia as "koda lsky" ("A Waste of Love"), in Germany as
the Rosamunde-Polka, and among the allied armies as the Beer Barrel Polka (as a song,
known as "Roll out the Barrel"). In the United States, the "Eastern style" Polish urban polka
remained popular until about 1965. Polka music rose in popularity in Chicago in the late
1940s after Walter Lil Wally Wallace Jagiello created "honky" polka by combining the PolishAmerican rural polka with elements of Polish folksong and krakowiak. A later, rock-influenced
form is called "dyno" polka.
Rock and roll
Rock and roll developed from earlier musical forms including rhythm and blues, which had
earlier been called race music, and country music.
Progressive Rock
Progressive rock, also known as prog rock or prog, is a rock music subgenre that originated
in the United Kingdom with further developments in Germany, Italy, and France, throughout
the mid-to-late 1960s and 1970s. It developed from psychedelic rock, and originated as an
attempt to give greater artistic weight and credibility to rock music.
Alternative Rock
Alternative rock (also called alternative music, alt-rock or simply alternative) is a genre of
rock music that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and
became widely popular by the 1990s. In this instance, the word "alternative" refers to the
genre's distinction from mainstream rock music, expressed primarily in a distorted guitar
sound, subversive and/or transgressive lyrics and generally a nonchalant, defiant attitude.
The term's original meaning was broader, referring to a generation of musicians unified by
their collective debt to either the musical style, or simply the independent, D.I.Y. ethos of
punk rock, which in the late 1970s laid the groundwork for alternative music.
Punk Rock
Punk rock (or simply punk) is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in
the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of
what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of
mainstream 1970s rock. Punk bands typically use short or fast-paced songs, with hard-edged
melodies and singing styles, stripped-down instrumentation, and often political, antiestablishment lyrics.
World Music
World music is a musical category encompassing many diferent styles of music from around
the world, including traditional music, neotraditional music, and music where more than one
cultural tradition intermingle. World music's inclusive nature and elasticity as a musical
category pose obstacles to a universal definition, but its ethic of interest in the culturally

exotic is encapsulated in Roots magazine's description of the genre as "local music from out
there". The term was popularized in the 1980s as a marketing category for non-Western
traditional music. Globalization has facilitated the expansion of world music's audiences and
scope.[citation needed] It has grown to include hybrid subgenres such as world fusion,
global fusion, ethnic fusion and worldbeat.

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