Late 20th Century Music

Late 20th Century Music was an extension of the Early 20th Century. Lasting from 1950 to 2000, things such as films scores, music technology, genres, and music experimentation became more popular. Film scoring originally started in 1914 with The Oz Film Manufacturing Company sending their scores to Louis F. Gottschalk for their films, but didn't become widely popular until the 1950's. Scores beginning with Alex North's music for the play, A Streetcar Named Desire and Leonard Bernstein's music for the film, On the Waterfront. Since then, new advances in music and music technology expanded film scoring and it is on of the most profitable and popular businesses in Hollywood today.

Music technology was a key factor in advances for music. Multi-tracking, sound effects, and new ways of recording tracks are a just a few of the many new advances. An evolution from vinyl recorded were compact cassette tapes. The word cassette is French meaning "little box." Cassettes contain magnetic tape which is read by the wheels in the tape player. Philips was the first company to successfully make the first compact cassette tape in 1962. The only bad side to the cassette tape was that it did not have as good of quality as an 8-Track tape until the late 1970's. The compact cassette continued to improve in quality until the invention of the Compact Disc, or CD. The compact disc project began with Philips in 1970 with work on what was called the ALP (audio long play), an audio disc similar to vinyl records but with the use of lasers. The name "Compact Disc" was decided as the name to help sales with in mind of the success of the compact cassette. Philips' had a plan to have the CD be a 11.5cm diameter disc, but that idea had to be changed when their partner, Sony, insisted that the disc must hold all of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. The final CD product was released in 1980 and was 12 cm in diameter. After CD's, things such as the MP3 player, the Zune, and the Apple iPod were invented in the 2000's.

Not only did new advances in music technology lead a great change in music culture, distinctions in types of music became popular. Music genres were created to distinct one type of music from another by their sounds, rhythms, and time periods. Genres such as Jazz, Funk, Pop, Rock, Classical, Blues, Rhythm and Blues, Country, Punk, Metal, Acoustic, Reggie, and Alternative Rock are just some of the many music genres. Experimentation was also a big part in classifying these genres. Bands such as the Beatles, who experimented with asymmetrical patterns; The Beach Boys, who experimented with close vocal harmonies; Black Sabbath, who experimented with tuning down their guitars and using horror-inspired lyrics; and Led Zeppelin, who experimented with heavy guitar sounds and blues-rock styles. All of these bands lead a great movement of a new kind of music along with instrumental composers such as Aaron Copeland, who experimented with a new feel of instrumental music, and John Williams, who experimented with film scoring and soundtracks.

The Late 20th Century was the beginning of a new freedom of musical experimentation and new music technology. The music is different from the time periods before it in so many ways, that it's hard to describe them all. Music in this time period lead a movement that is a major part of our entertainment world today.

Early 20th Century Music

The Early 20th Century music period was that of great change. Music in the Romantic Period was very serious and as time changed, it became less serious. Romantic music appealed to the general audiences while the Early 20th Century music was composed to appel to cartoons, movies, and a more comical side of life. Also, new advances in technology such as the radio, recording devices, and camera made it easier for more people to hear the new styles of music. New styles included: comteporary classic, which didn't consist of a similar theme throughout the music; folk music, consisted of themes that appealed to the nation in which it was written for; alternative rock, indepentdent from common rock music with having variations of typical rock music; blues, vocal and instrumental music that evolved from African spiritial music; country, developed in the southern US and with roots of folk and blues; and jazz, includes blue notes, syncopation, swing, call and response, polyrhythms, and improvisation. These types of music deverged from the seriousness of Classical music into a new age of musical entertainment for all people.

A new style in particular became popular before the Romantic Period ended, but continued throughtout the Early 20th Century. His name is John Philip Sousa. This new style of music was called a march. A march is typically written in cut time starting with one key and then chaning over to a trio with a different, subdominant, key towards the middle of the march. One composer in particular is called the "March King." Born in 1854 in Washington DC, Sousa dedicated his life to composing marches. His first marches were to appeal to dancing and concert band settings. Then his marches moved towards being used in the military and for marching band. His marches are still very popluar and were the beginning of the change of appeal to music styles going into the 20th Century.

Besides new styles of music, new theory methods were invented. Things such as a tone row were new advances in theory. The theory is that a piece is composed where all 12 notes, octave to octave, all have equal importance. This same theory related to the compostition method of serialism. The creator of these theories, Arnold Schoenberg, believed in composing a piece of music based on numerical patterns. This method could be used in different ways such as using a random set of numbers and taking those numbers and corrilating them with the 12 notes of the tone row. With single digits directly corrisponding with the tone row, double or triple digits would be used to create chords. Another theory that developed in the Early 20th Century was poloytonality. Poloytonality was a new theory that was used to compose music with using more than one key and time signatures throughout the whole piece. Pieces would be composed having one line with one key signature and time signature and the others having something totally different. This created a unique kind of sound that was similar to many marching bands playing different music at the same time.

Overall, the music in the Early 20th Century set the foundation for the appeal of music that we see today. It changed from being formal and serious, to entertaining and fun.

The Romantic Period - Composers and How They Changed Music

The Romantic Period, known for its emotional music, lasted from 1815-1910. The music in the Romantic Period differed from the periods before it by adding more passion and expression in the music. Different composers such as Richard Wagner, experimented with new chords such as the Tristan chord. The Tristan chord consits of an augmented fourth, augmented sixth, and an augmented second above the root note. Wanger used this chord in his work Tristan und Isolde. Besides creating new chords, other composers, including Wanger, used the Cyclic form. Cyclic form is a method of composing pieces with multiple movements.
Claude Debussy was another composer who created and experimented with new things. He created the whole-tone and pentatonic scales. The whole-tone is a scales in any key consisting of 7 total notes with the scale raising a whole-step for each new note. This gave a dream-like feeling to the music. The pentatonic scale is a scale in any key consisting of the root, the second, third, fifth, sixth, and the octave. This type of scale, in my opinion, gives a happy-like feeling to the music because there are no half steps in the scale. However, there are minor pentatonic scales that are used from minor scales that can give the music a sad feeling.
One composer in particular who used expression in his music was Hector Berlioz. In one of his most famous works, Symphonie Fanstastique, he used a new idea in music called the idée fixe. This simply means obsession or fixed idea. The idée fixe he used was a simple melody, usually played by a flute or oboe, as a reminder of his beloved. In all movements of the piece, the melody would appear when the lover thought of his beloved. In the next to last movement, March to the Scaffold, the lover is being executed. On his way to the scaffold, you hear minor and major sounds. Minor symbolizing that death is near and major symbolizing that the townspeople are happy he is about to die. Right before he is hung, the executioner takes off the mask and you her the idée fixe. The lover has just realized that he beloved is the one about to kill him. This is just one example of how the music was used to express emotions.
The Romantic Period was a time of great composers and new advances in music. As you have read, many composers created new methods of music and put them into some of their major works. New types of scales and chords revolutionized the music of the time and gave a base for new musical experiments in the future. As a result, many pieces from this era are still very popular today.