-
Period: to
Sousa
Bandmaster known for marches. Wrote at least nine operettas, these were not very good but his marches were spectacular. Conducted the "President's Own" Marine Band. -
Period: to
Ives
One of the most innovative and original composers, one of the great American composers of the first half of the 20th century. His style traits involved polytonality, polyrhythms and polymeters. Used limited atonality. -
Period: to
Dett
Pianist who studied with Boulanger. Helped found the National Association of Negro Musicians. Wrote Cave of the Winds March and Two Step -
Period: to
Varese
French American composer: percussion music, one of the most important pioneers in the field. -
Period: to
Russolo
An Italian Futurist painter, composer, and builder of experimental musical instruments who wrote a creed or manifesto titled "The Art of Noises." -
Period: to
Price
Became the first black female composer to have a symphony performed by a major American orchestra: Symphony No. 1 in E minor -
Period: to
Boulanger
Taught practically all 20th Century American composers except Gershwin. Composer, but preferred to help other composers find their "voice." -
Period: to
Prokofiev
Russian composer: orchestral pieces, piano works, and film music. Known for the composition of "Peter and the Wolf." -
Period: to
Still
First Black American composer to have a symphony and opera performed by a major ensemble. First Black American to conduct a major symphony orchestra. Used chromatic harmony, had blues influence, and through-composed. -
Period: to
Cowell
Teacher of Cage's teacher. Was an American innovator who was drawn to non-Western music. A huge supporter of Ives, invented chance music and invented new techniques for playing the piano. Coined the term tone cluster: groups of adjacent notes that were sounded with the fist, palm, or forearm: highly dissonant. -
Period: to
Gershwin
American composer, wrote classical, concert hall music infused with jazz and pop music. Wrote for Broadway, film, and the concert hall. -
Period: to
Lorca
Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director involved with Salvador Dali. -
Period: to
Ellington
Major band leader in the swing era and then in the big band era. Composed hundreds of tunes, film scores, concertos, concert pieces, and works for the theater. -
Period: to
Copland
Composer, teacher, critic, conductor, and sponsor of concerts. Taught at Harvard, gave lectures, and conducted festivals in many American schools. Style is mostly tonal. Did write atonal music but it's not a popular part of his output. -
Radio Broadcasting began
-
Period: to
Carter
An American composer; influential as a teacher and as a composer for 50 years. Innovative treatment of rhythm and for. -
Period: to
Messiaen
Serialist French compooser and teacher. Known for incorporating bird songs into his music. Many of his works focus on religious subjects, including aspects of non-Western cultures and religions. -
Period: to
Cage
Innovated many modern compositional techniques, helped change the definition of music to "organized sound." -
Period: to
Holiday
One of the leading female jazz singers. She broke racial barriers by performing with white bands. Known for her renditions of blues songs. -
Period: to
Strayhorn
Composed "A Train." Collaborated with Ellington on songs for many years. -
Period: to
Babbitt
American composer, music theorist, and teacher interested in computer music. -
Period: to
Bernstein
Conductor, composer, teacher, pianist and lecturer. Most influential musician of the 20th century. Brought classical music to the public via various medias. -
The Harlem Renaissance
William Grant Still and Langston Hughes. There emerged a kind of cultural capital of African American arts, including literature, painting, and music. Lasted up until the depression in the 1930s, but provided a cultural movement well into the 1940s. -
Period: to
Ligeti
Active in electronic music and as a teacher, interested in clusters of sounds, orchestrally and chorally, his choral music is especially complex and beautiful -
Period: to
Boulez
The most important composer (and conductor) of the French avant-garde. -
Period: to
Berio
Leading modern Italian composer of the 20th century. Helped established the electronic studio in Milan which became a center of avant-garde activity. -
"Talkies" at the movies
-
Period: to
Stockhausen
German composer who made innovations in electronic music and all sorts of other types of experimental music -
The Dust Bowl
-
Electric guitar invented
-
AEG Magnetophon Tape Recorder
-
Peter and the Wolf
Programmatic orchestral piece that used a narrator. This commission was to create music to help cultivate musical taste in young children. This piece had five musical traits: classicism, individual harmonic language, rhythmic drive, lyrical expression and comedic elements. -
Stereo Sound
-
Period: to
World War 2
Large land and sea campaign that spanned across Europe, Africa, and Pacific Islands -
The Vocoder
First vocal synthesizer -
Period: to
Musique Concrete
Recorded natural sounds and manipulating the sound by tape-splicing it, mixing it, and superimposing the sounds one on top on another -
Period: to
Lansky
American composer, theorist, professor at Princeton, and critic. Pioneer in digital sound synthesis, embraced computer assisted composition and even wrote a computer opera. -
Period: to
Bebop
The new cool jazz. Fast tempos and dissonant solos -
Rock 'n' Roll
Blended musical styles of jump blues and honky-tonk with an edgy attitude to create a new genre of music -
Electronische Musik
Electronic Music developed in Germany, Cologne became the leading city for electronic music. The fusion of technology and acoustic music has created an entirely different aesthetic from all preceding music.
294 -
Period: to
Aleatoric Music
Chance music, a new concept of composition in which the composer left one or more musical elements in performance up to chance. Ives and Cowell laid the foundation -
Period: to
Indeterminate
Also music based on elements of chance, but could imply more directly three specified types of chance elements. The first being aleatoric music whereas the other two rely on the chance during music composition -
Period: to
Textural
Used sound blocks which were manipulated through musical means, functioned alongside non-tonal music with its broad sonic chunks, called sound masses. -
Period: to
Maximized Expressionism
Following the notions of maximalism, the final thrust of complexity in some works in the 60s and 70s as the highest level of maximalization of Expressionism. -
First computer invented
-
Space Age Begins
-
Period: to
Minimalism
A style of repetitive music, based on the notion that small units of musical material could be repeated with only slight variation over long periods of time. -
Berlin Wall
-
JTM45 Amplifier
-
Compact Cassette Tape
-
Martin Luther King assassinated
-
First Moon Landing
-
Neo-Romanticism
1970s to present. Sort of music that appeals to audiences who are hoping for music that they can understand and embrace -
Postmodernism
Aesthetic attitude developed in the late 70s that focused on uniting many past elements of music into a new eclectic style. -
Period: to
Neo-tonality
One can aurally perceive more complex chords and progressions so that as time progresses our perceptions become acclimated; what was once dissonant is not any longer over time. -
First personal computer
-
Elvis Presley dies
-
The Walkman
Portable personal music player -
Totalism
Describe music that developed particularly among composers working in NYC as a response to Minimalism -
Commercial Compact Disc
-
World Wide Web
-
Protools
First Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) created for Macintosh -
iPod
-
9/11 in USA
-
Soundcloud
-
Michael Jackson dies