Musical Styles since 1945

Chance effects are incorporated into One (1950) by the abstract expressionist painter
Jackson Pollock. The artist dripped, poured & flung paint onto an enormous canvas
tacked to the floor.

1. Chance Music – composers choose pitches, tone

colors & rhythms by random methods, eg: throwing
coins, spinning dice. Performers can choose the
ordering of musical materials, play them in any desired
order.
Work : Sonatas & Interludes for Prepared Piano,1946-
1948
by John Cage
2-minute work, characterized by a gradual thickening of
texture & increase in rhythmic momentum

2. Increased Use of 12-tone system → serialism,

organize pitch, rhythm, dynamics & tone colors, totally
controlled & organized music.

Work: Semi- Simple Variations, 1956 by Milton Babbit

 Milton Babbit (b.1916)

3. Electronic Music – with ē development of tape

studios, synthesizers & computers, composers have
unlimited resources for ē production & control of sound.

Work: Poème électronique, 1958 by Edgard Varèse

Edgard Varèse (1883-1965)

4. Mixed Media – require performers to
function as both actors & sound producers,
to break down ē ritual surrounding
traditional concerts & to increase
communication between composer &
audience.

George Crumb
(b1929)

Work: Ancient Voices of Children, 1970 by George

Crumb

• For mezzo-soprano, boy soprano, oboe, mandolin,

harp, percussion & “electric piano”

• The mezzo –soprano sings a kind of fantastic vocalize

on purely phonetic sounds into an amplified piano,
producing a shimmering aura of echoes.

• The boy soprano singing offstage.

5. Minimalist Music – partly a reaction against ē complexity of

serialism & ē randomness of chance music. It’s characterized by
steady pulse, clear tonality & insistent repetition of short melodic
patterns. Its dynamic level, texture & harmony tent to stay constant
for long stretches of time.
 Philip Glass (b.1937)

Long seen as a father of Minimalism, the sculptor Ronald Bladen looks more
and more like something else entirely.
"What I am after is to create a drama out of a minimal experience." – Ronald
Bladen

Work: Einstein on the Beach, 1976 by Philip Glass

• Knee Play 1, from Einstein on the Beach, electric organ, chorus of

men & women, 2 female speaking voices.
 Einstein on the Beach (1976), has no real plot or character development, last almost for 5
hours without intermission. The spoken numerals 1, 2, 3… & solfège do, re, mi…
represent the rhythmic & melodic structure of the music. Musicians: a sound engineer, a
female vocalist, 2 electric organs, synthesizer bass, keyboards, 3 saxophones, flute,
clarinet, violin soloist dressed as Albert Einstein. Near the end of the opera, Einstein
plays the violin while the statistic of a nuclear disaster appear on the backdrop behind
him. (The opera’s title refers to Nevil Shute’s novel about nuclear destruction, called On
the Beach.)
 6. Musical Quotation- composers made extensive use of
quotations from earlier works, usually works of 18 & 19 cent.

Work: Concerto Grosso, 1985 by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich

• Written to commemorate Handel’s 300th bday.

• Each of its 5 movt uses thematic material drawn fr ē opening movt
of Handel’s Sonata for Violin & Continuo in D major.

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (b.1939)