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Scott Joplin (1868-1917)
An African-American composer who popularized ragtime and was considered "king of ragtime." He was the first African-American composer to win international fame. -
Charles Ives (1874-1954)
One of the most innovative and original composers of his time and is also part of America's great composers of the twentieth century. Most of his works weren't known until the 1950s. His stylistics traits of his music were polyrhythms, polymeters, polytonality, quotations of American tunes, and limited atonality. -
Robert Nathaniel Dett (1882-1943)
A pianist who studied with Natalie Boulanger as well as at Harvard and Columbia. He helped find the National Association of Negro Musicians (1919) -
Luigi Russolo (1885-1947)
An Italian composer, inventor, and painter who created his own instruments and a notation system for noise. He also identified six families of noises that were to be included in futurist orchestras. -
Florence Price (1887-1953)
The first black female composer to have a symphony, titled 'Symphony No.1 in E Minor', performed by a major American orchestra. She's also known as a music prodigy as she had her first piano recital at the age of 4 and had her first composition published when she was 11. She studied at the New England Conservatory of Music as a double major in organ and piano performance. After moving to Chicago, her career took off. Overall, her music took inspiration from African-American folk music. -
Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979)
A composer who taught almost all American composers and had a preference for helping composers find their "voice." -
Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)
A Russian composer that served as a Russian voice in Western culture. His compositions typically included orchestral pieces and film scores. Some of Prokofiev's musical traits were lyrical expression, rhythmic drive, neo-classicism, independent harmonic language, and comedic elements. -
William Grant Still (1895-1978)
A composer who was the first African-American composer to have a symphony and opera performed by a major ensemble. He was also the first black American to conduct a major symphony orchestra. He would compose music for jazz bands, dance orchestras, and films for the stage and concert hall. His works created a style which blended African-American idioms into European genres. -
Henry Cowell (1897-1965)
John Cage's teacher and an American innovator who was drawn to non-Western music. He invented chance music, invented new techniques for piano playing and supported Charles Ives. He coined the term "tone clusters." -
George Gershwin (1898-1937)
An American composer who composed classical, concert hall music with jazz and popular music mixed in. He also wrote for Broadway, film, and the concert hall. Some of his famous works were Porgy and Bess, Rhapsody in Blue, and Lady, Be Good. -
Duke Ellington (1899-1974)
A major band leader in the swing era who played piano in his groups. He's most famous for his jazz tunes, but his classical compositions were never popular. -
Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
The most popular American composer of the twentieth century who also worked as a teacher, critic, conductor, and sponsor of concerts. He composed a variety of genres such as operas, ballets, and concertos and his style was typically tonal. His style traits were vigorous, rhythmic and in mixed meters, exposed, clean and transparent, and filled with folk songs and idioms. -
Elliott Carter (1908-2012)
An American composer who was influential as a teacher and composer for fifty years. -
Billie Holiday (1915-1959)
One of the most famous female jazz singers who broke racial barriers by performing with white bands. -
Leonard Berstein (1918-1990)
A conductor, composer, teacher, pianist, lecturer, TV personality who created West Side Story. His music was known to be complex and this is what made West Side Story unique from others. -
Pierre Boulez (1925-2016)
An important conductor but still active as a composer who experimented with integral serialism as many composers at the time were obsessed with complexity. -
Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007)
A German composer who made innovations in electronic music as well as other kinds of experimental music. -
George Crumb (1929)
An American composer known for his anti-war sentiments during the Vietnam War. He made use of non-Western musical idioms and created a new spatial notation. He has not composed in a traditional genre. -
Period: to
The Twentieth Century
To briefly describe what the twentieth century had to offer in terms of music, there was not a single trend that would dominate or define this era. The music went through the most various and radical developments compared to previous time periods. Essentially, the musical characteristics and styles started by straying from traditional elements, only to return to being traditional once again. -
Period: to
Popular Music Styles of the Twentieth Century
The more common genres of this era include film scores, jazz, concertos, ballets, operas, musicals, ragtime, vernacular music, blues, bepop, sonatas and musical theater. Some of these styles were popular in earlier time periods as well such as ballets and operas. -
Symphony No.1 in E Minor (1932)
A symphony composed in 1932 by Florence Price and then performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on June 15, 1933. This was the first symphony composed by a black female composer to be performed by a major orchestra. This piece is influenced by Western symphonic and West African music styles. -
Porgy and Bess (1935)
The first opera to have an all black cast and was written to be an American folk opera. -
Peter and the Wolf (1936)
A programmatic orchestral piece that uses a narrator. It was composed by Sergei Prokofiev and was commissioned for the purpose of creating musical taste in children. -
World War II (1939-1945)
The deadliest war that was fought by the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, Japan) and the Allied Powers (Britain, United States, Soviet Union, France). It lasted a total of six years and more than 70 million people died as a result of this war. -
Musique Concrete (1940)
A technique developed by Pierre Schaeffer in which recorded natural sounds are manipulated by various means. -
Appalachian Spring (1944)
A ballet by Aaron Copland that shows a pioneer celebration in spring around a farmhouse in the Pennsylvania hills during the early 1800s. -
Paul Lansky (1944)
An American composer who's a pioneer in digital sound synthesis. He's also a theorist, professor at Princeton, and critic. He embrace computer assisted composition. -
"A Black Pierrot" From Songs of Separation (1949)
An art song from a song cycle with text by Langston Hughes and is echoes Arnold Schoenberg's "Pierrot Lunaire." It's about being rejected in love because of the color of the person's skin. -
Chance Music
Also referred to as aleatoric and indeterminate music, this type of music is all based on the concept of chance and was brought about by John Cage. To create chance music, a die is required and to put it simply, different elements of music (pitch, dynamics, meter) are assigned to the numbers on a die. Whichever number is facing up, that's what gets used and this continues until the piece is finished. -
Electronische Musik (1950)
Developed in German when Stockhausen worked in Schaeffer's studio. This kind of music uses electronic instruments and electronic music technology to be made. -
Textural Music (1950-1960)
Music that used sound masses and sound blocks. Gyorgy Ligeti and Krzysztof Penderecki made use of textural music in their pieces. -
Maximized Expressionism (1950)
Included integral serialism and had some works that reflected the most maximization of expressionism. -
4'33" (1952)
A piece composed by John Cage when he wanted to explore the role of silence. It consists of three movements of pure silence for a duration of 4 minutes and 33 seconds. The first performer to play this piece was pianist David Tudor. In John Cage's notes, the piece can last any length of time and can be performed by a variety of instrumentalists or a combination of them. -
The Civil Rights Movement (1954-1968)
A political movement against racial segregation and discrimination in the United States. -
Vietnam War (1954-1975)
A war fought between the communist government of North Vietnam against South Vietnam and the United States. -
West Side Story (1957)
Musical that's inspired by Shakespears' Romeo and Juliet. -
Minimalism (1960)
A style of repetitive music that could contain slight variations in repeating units of musical material. -
Postmodernism (1970)
An aesthetic attitude that united past musical elements into a new eclectic style. It can be considered the most inclusive of music. -
Neo-Romanticism (1970)
The label given to the kind of music that people may hope to embrace and understand. It still contains a good amount of Romantic musical elements while having more dissonance. -
Ancient Voices of Children (1970)
A song cycle of five songs and two instrumental interludes. It was based on the poems by Federico Garcia Lorca. -
Totalism (1980)
Developed amongst New York City composers as a response to minimalism. Totalist music follows the path of maximalism and a primary aim is complexity. -
The New Complexity (1980)
The music that falls under this label is abstract, microtonal, dissonant, and relies on extreme contrast. -
Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI (1983))
MIDI was adopted into synthesizers and allowed for computer interactions with synthesizers and sequences. -
Globalization (1990)
As a result of technologies, exchange of ideas globally was possible and music and cultural practices could be accessed from all over the world.
