Modernism in Music

I have seen really good research on here, my only concern is the key ideas for the presentation. As we are dealing with modern music, we have to know what the musician/ composers of that time defended and what were they trying to achieve.

I found this really small website, that give us the 4 characterisitics of the movemen, although it does not have any quotations, it gives a clear definition of them and helps us to research the key ideas of the movement.


Four Characteristics


1. The desire to “make it new.” No less than artists and writers, composers and musicians were fascinated by the possibilities of new, previously unheard of modes of expression, new techniques, and new aesthetic as well as cultural effects.


2. The infiltration of the popular. Jazz, kitsch, music hall, operetta, folk songs, nursery rhymes each played a part in helping modernism reconstruct the traditional esoteric “High Culture” musical genres on new modern terms. But if the Jazz of the twenties and thirties is inextricably associated with modernism we must remember too that Jazz has its own modernism. The greatest music of the twentieth century comes out of the horn (the alto saxophone) of Charlie Yardbird Parker.


3. The use of recording technology for production: Conlon Nancarrow and György Ligeti both have produced extraordinary music by composing directly with the means of keeping time and recording or archiving composition.


4. The performance as event. Ligeti’s Poème Symphonique uses 100 pyramid metronomes to produce one of the outstanding modernist works in twentieth century music.