Transcription
Hello, and welcome to Keep it Classical. My name is Dr. Matthew Nielsen, and today we're going to talk about the music of the second half of the 20th century. As in other videos previewing each period, we'll be discussing an overview of the period, some historical context, general characteristics, and what kind of listener would enjoy this period. Let's get started.
Many historians and musicologists will group all of the music of the 20th century into one giant catch-all of 20th-century music. While I think this works for some of the styles that will continue through the whole 20th century, I believe that there's a significant enough shift in artistic expression and ideas after the end of World War II that I have decided to use this as my division between these two larger periods of music. For the first half of the 20th century, I've decided to call it the Progressive Period, and for the second half of the 20th century, I've decided to refer to this as the Atomic Period. Again, no one else is going to call it that, and I have no delusion that it's going to magically catch on. So why call it the Atomic Period?
This period literally begins with the detonation of two atomic weapons over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. While ensuring the end of the Pacific Theater fight of World War II, it was a horrific prelude to a new world overshadowed by new and terrifying weapons of catastrophic destruction previously unknown to us. Combine that with a Cold War with the Soviet Union and a nuclear arms race, and if that wasn't enough, the Cuban Missile Crisis showed us just how close we came to mutually assured destruction. The second half of the 20th century could be described as a thin lacquer of stability over an imminent panic attack. Counterculture began as a response to the newly rigid rules and standards of behavior in the late 1940s and the 1950s. Government corruption, especially Watergate, along with the Vietnam War, an oil crisis, inflation, the AIDS epidemic, and conflict in the Middle East led to an unprecedented dissolution of people's trust in government and institutions in general. 9/11 would forever change how we balance security, safety, and our civil liberties. Additionally, the acceleration of scientific discovery and technological advancements spurred by the Cold War led to the age of space and the space race. The end of this epoch saw the invention of the internet and the advent of instant communication, leading to instant consumerism.
With that context in mind, it shouldn't be any wonder why composers chose to create works that embody this anxiety. Remember, artists reflect their environments in their works. Of this, painter Jackson Pollock said, "The modern artist is working with space and time and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating." He would go on to say, "New needs need new techniques, and the modern artists have found new ways and new means of making their statements. The modern painter cannot express this age—the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio—in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture."
In music, the divides that we saw during the Progressive Period divide and splinter further into numerous sub-genres. Every composer responds to this time period and the art that came before it differently, and we also see a huge amount of cross-pollination between different styles and genres. We'll see the advent of total serialism, aleatoric indeterminacy, nouveau dadaism, as well as the birth of electronic and synthesized music. One of the most memorable developments during this period is minimalism, both the American and European varieties. Speaking of this epoch, it sees Europe lose its hold as the center of this art form as more of it shifts away to other continents and countries. Many composers who had emigrated during World War II will now find new homes in new places. Many of these include composers who immigrated to the United States, including Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Bartók, and Schoenberg. Three of these ended up in Los Angeles of all places.
Speaking of Hollywood, during this period cinematic music continues to strengthen its footing in the world of classical music and in many ways becomes the largest vehicle for classical music, with moviegoers becoming its largest audience. As I stated during my video about the Progressive Period, I want to make one thing absolutely clear: atonal does not mean ugly. Let me say it again: atonal does not mean ugly. Just like the Progressive Period, there are many different diverging styles to discuss, but there are definitely a few overarching trends. In addition, you can find connection and overlap between some of these different styles. The Atomic Period had a new enthusiasm for originality but also for experimentalism. Several composers began to experiment with music based solely on timbre instead of pitches or harmony. Composers like John Cage began experimenting with the idea of the prepared piano, or altering the playing of a piano with various objects and with non-traditional techniques. [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music]
Serialism, which had seen its creation in the Progressive Period, got leveled up in the Atomic Period with the creation of total serialism. This is where not just the pitches are serialized, but where the rhythms, dynamics, and sometimes timbre and tempo are also serialized. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] um [Music]
Aleatoric, or chance music, is the idea that music is performed without any predetermination about how it will actually sound or be interpreted. This can apply to an indeterminacy regarding a composition's pitch, rhythm, instrumentation, timbral quality, duration, or even the number of performers. Aspects of this music continue to be incorporated in the music of today. [Music]
Nouveau dadaism is built on the same anti-art idea from the Progressive Period. The movement, which was noted as a rejection of logic and reason and the embrace of the absurd, satirical, and nonsensical, continues to be embraced and supercharged. This can be found in examples like Stockhausen's Helicopter Quartet. [Music]
One of the most interesting and surprisingly enduring musical styles was the idea that less is more: minimalism. Musical minimalism promotes the idea of paring down music. Sometimes this meant fewer motifs, fewer instruments, fewer lines, or shorter durations. Minimalism developed both in the United States and in Europe, but each developed relatively independently and isolated from the other on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain, and both carry their own distinct aspects and characteristics. [Music] [Applause]
A few styles, such as post-romanticism and post-impressionism, stick around in various forms. These styles always found a place in the concert hall, but these styles find a much larger venue in film music.
Who would this period appeal to? The short answer is: you. Now, for any of you saying, "Modern music is not for me," or "I'm not into esoteric avant-garde music," I would ask, "Have you watched the belt scene from *The Devil Wears Prada*?" This stuff—oh, okay, I see you. You think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select, I don't know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue; it's not turquoise; it's not lapis; it's actually cerulean. And you're also blindly unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns, and then I think it was Yves Saint Laurent, wasn't it, who showed cerulean military jackets? I think we need a jacket here. And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers. I'm going to filter down through the department stores and then trickle down, down into some tragic casual corner where you no doubt fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs, and it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're wearing a sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room from a pile of stuff. Miranda explains to Andy that she's not immune or sheltered from the world of high fashion because the clothes that she wears have absolutely been influenced and affected by their choices. The exact same thing happens in music. You're not immune or sheltered from the world of high art music. Popular music today has absolutely been influenced by it. Tone clusters and secondle music from Pandoretsky can be found in modern film scores all over the place. Looping tracks and samples that became popularized in the 1980s is very closely related to the minimalism that emerged decades earlier. Aleatoric music pioneered during this time period appears in a reimagined version of a song by Radiohead. We instructed, um, the players to not play at the same time. When there was a when there was a long note, the conductor would say, "When the guy next to you is playing, don't play. You know, as your note dies away, just look at your, you know, whoever's sitting next to you, let them swell in their note, and and you get these beautiful sort of waves. And just for a moment, you know, the individual player is hurt and then sinks back into, you know, the the, you know, the exactly what the form of if you stare at the ocean long enough, uh, that's exactly what it does in terms of um, back to the pointillism thing, it's basically it's it's if you really look at it, it just it's triangles that come in and out and seep in and out all the time, and they don't stop; they never know enough to stop."
All that is to say that you probably already listen to and appreciate other music that is influenced by these styles. So before you close off your mind to this epoch of music, consider that it's already part of what you're listening to, and that you're simply learning about its origins. Yes, I know that this epoch can be extremely polarizing, and in many ways, that's the goal of some of these composers. Their goal is to challenge and stretch their audiences, sometimes to the breaking point. But the stretching also causes us to grow and expand. Even if we don't care to listen to this music on a regular basis, that's all for now. Thank you so much for watching. If you like this video, consider watching my playlist about the Atomic Period or watching my playlist for complete beginners. In the meantime, keep it classical.