This document provides an overview of various musical styles that emerged in the 20th century, including Impressionism, Expressionism, Primitivism, Neo-Classicism, and Avant Garde music. It discusses influential composers such as Debussy, Ravel, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartok, Prokofiev, and Gershwin. Impressionism aimed to suggest reality through the use of color, effects, and dissonance, while Expressionism expressed strong emotions through atonality. Primitivism and Neo-Classicism drew from folk elements and classical forms. Avant Garde music emphasized improvisation and unconventional performance.

1. MUSIC OF THE 20TH
CENTURY
P R E PA R E D B Y: J E T L E E C U M B E

2. TABLE OF CONTENTS

4. MUSIC OF THE 20TH CENTURY
20th century
Move
away
Classical
music
New style

5. New
Style
expressionis
m
Neo-
classicism
Avant garde
music
Modern
Nationalis
m
Impressionis
m
Musical
Genius

6. Claude
Debussy
Maurice
Ravel
Arnold
Schoenberg
Bela Bartok
Igor
Stravinsky
Sergei
Prokofieff
George
Gershwin

7. IMPRESSIONISM

8. Extensive
used of color
and effects
Vague
Melodies
Innovative
Chords
Mild
dissonances

9. Extended
Chords
Harmonies
Whole
tone
Chromatic
scale
Pentatonic
scales

10. Visual Imagery

11. Impressionism
was an attempt
not to depict
reality, but merely
to suggest it

13. CLAUDE DEBUSSY
1862 - 1918

14. •Most
important
of the 20th
Century

15. •Most
influential
of the 20th
Century

16. •Break the
traditional
rules

17. •String
Quartet

18. •Prelude to
the
Afternoon
of a Faun

19. •Pelleas et
Melisande

20. MAURICE RAVEL
1875 - 1937

21. •He was born
in France
with Basque
mother and
Swiss father

22. •Enter
Paris
Conservat
ory at the
Age 14

23. •Pavane for
a Dead
Princess

24. •Mirrors

25. •Water
Fountains

26. EXPRESSIONISM

27. Expressionism
revealed the composer’s
mind, instead of
presenting an
impression of the
environment.

28. It used atonality and
the twelve-tone scale,
lacking stable and
conventional
harmonies.

29. It served as a medium
for expressing strong
emotions, such as
anxiety, rage, and
alienation

30. ARNOLD
SCHOENBERG
(1874 - 1951)
•BORN IN
VIENNA,
AUSTRIA

31. ARNOLD
SCHOENBERG
(1874 - 1951)
He taught
himself
music
theory

32. ARNOLD
SCHOENBERG
(1874 - 1951)
Took
lesson in
counterpoint

33. ARNOLD
SCHOENBERG
(1874 - 1951)
Richard
Wagner
influenced
Schoenberg’s
work

34. ARNOLD
SCHOENBERG
(1874 - 1951)
This was
evidence by his
symphonic poem
or tone poem
Pelleas und
Melisande, Op 5
(1903)

35. ARNOLD
SCHOENBERG
(1874 - 1951)
1. Verklarte
Nacht, Three
Pieces for
Piano, op. 11

36. ARNOLD
SCHOENBERG
(1874 - 1951)
2. Pierrot Luniare
3. Gurreleider
4. Verklarte
Nacht
(Transfigured
Night, 1899)

37. ARNOLD
SCHOENBERG
(1874 - 1951)
Schoenberg’s
approximately
213 musical
compositions.

38. IGOR STRAVINSKY
(1882-1971)
Oranienbaum,
Russia on June
17, 1882

39. IGOR STRAVINSKY
(1882-1971)
first successful
masterpiece,
The Firebird
Suite (1910),
composed for
Diaghilev’s
Russian Ballet

40. IGOR STRAVINSKY
(1882-1971)
The Rite of
Spring (1913)
was another
outstanding
work.

41. IGOR STRAVINSKY
(1882-1971)
Stravinsky
adapted the
forms of the 18th
century with his
contemporary
style of writing.

42. IGOR STRAVINSKY
(1882-1971)
the ballet Petrouchka
(1911), featuring
shifting rhythms and
polytonality, a
signature device of
the composer.

43. IGOR STRAVINSKY
(1882-1971)
The Rake’s
Progress (1951),
a full-length
opera,

44. PRIMITIVISM

45. Primitivism unlike
Impressionism , uses
musical elements that
are well-defined and
clear

46. Primitivism music is
tonal, but the tonality is
not achieved through
expectation of
resolution, as in the
Common Practice
Period

47. But through
asserting of the one
note as more
important than
others.

48. New sounds are
synthesized from old
ones by juxtaposing two
simple events to create
a more complex new
events

49. Primitivism has links
to
Exoticism – use of
materials from other
culture

50. Nationalism – use of
materials
indigenous to
specific countries

51. Ethnicism – use
materials from
European ethnic
groups.

52. It eventually
evolved into
Neo-Classicism

53. BELA BARTOK
(1881-1945)
Nagyszentmiklos,
Hungary on March
25, 1881

54. BELA BARTOK
(1881-1945)
Piano lessons with
his mother and
later entered
Budapest Royal
Academy of Music
1899.

55. BELA BARTOK
(1881-1945)
Hewas inspired by
the performance of
Richard Strauss’s
Also Sprach
Zarathustra to write
his first nationalistic
poem, Kossuth in
1903

56. BELA BARTOK
(1881-1945)
As a neo-classicist,
primitivist, and
nationalist composer,
Bartok used
Hungarian folk
themes and rhythms.

57. BELA BARTOK
(1881-1945)
Bartok is most famous
for his Six String
Quartets (1908–1938).
It represents the
greatest achievement
of his creative life,
spanning a full 30 years
for their completion.

58. BELA BARTOK
(1881-1945)
The six works
combine difficult
and dissonant
music with
mysterious sounds

59. BELA BARTOK
(1881-1945)
The Concerto for
Orchestra (1943), a
five-movement work
composed late in
Bartok’s life, features
the exceptional talents
of its various soloists in
an intricately
constructed piece.

60. BELA BARTOK
(1881-1945)
The short and
popular Allegro
Barbaro (1911) for
solo piano is
punctuated with
swirling rhythms and
percussive chords

61. BELA BARTOK
(1881-1945)
Mikrokosmos (1926–
1939), a set of six
books containing
progressive technical
piano pieces,
introduced and
familiarized the piano
student with
contemporary harmony

62. NEO-CLASSICISM

63. Neo-classicism was a
moderating factor between
the emotional excesses of
the Romantic period and
the violent impulses of the
soul in expressionism.

64. SERGEI
PROKOFIEFF
(1891 - 1953)
Sergei Prokofieff is
regarded today as a
combination of neo-
classicist, nationalist,
and Avant garde
composer.

65. SERGEI
PROKOFIEFF
(1891 - 1953)
His style is uniquely
recognizable for its
progressive
technique, pulsating
rhythms, melodic
directness, and a
resolving dissonance

66. SERGEI
PROKOFIEFF
(1891 - 1953)
His early compositions
were branded as avant
garde and were not
approved of by his elders,
he continued to follow his
stylistic path as he fled to
other places for hopefully
better acceptance of his
creativity.

67. SERGEI
PROKOFIEFF
(1891 - 1953)
His contacts with
Diaghilev and
Stravinsky gave him the
chance to write music
for the ballet and opera,
notably the ballet
Romeo and Juliet and
the opera War and
Peace.

68. SERGEI
PROKOFIEFF
(1891 - 1953)
Much of Prokofieff’s
opera was left
unfinished, due in part
to resistance by the
performers themselves
to the seemingly
offensive musical
content

69. SERGEI
PROKOFIEFF
(1891 - 1953)
He became prolific
in writing
symphonies,
chamber music,
concerti, and solo
instrumental
music.

70. SERGEI
PROKOFIEFF
(1891 - 1953)
He also wrote Peter and
the Wolf, a lighthearted
orchestral work intended
for children, to appease
the continuing
government crackdown
on avant garde
composers at the time.

71. AVANT GARDE MUSIC

72. Closely associated with the
electronic music, the avant
garde movement dealt with
the parameters or the
dimension of the sound in
space.

73. Improvisation was a
necessity in this style,
for the musical scores
were not necessarily
followed as written.

74. For example, one could expect a
piece to be read by a performer
from left to right or vice versa. Or
the performer might turn the
score over, and go on dabbling
indefinitely in whatever order
before returning to the starting
point.

75. GEORGE
GERSHWIN
(1898–1937)
was born in
New York to
Russian Jewish
immigrants

76. GEORGE
GERSHWIN
(1898–1937)
His older brother
Ira was his
artistic
collaborator who
wrote the lyrics
of his songs.

77. GEORGE
GERSHWIN
(1898–1937)
His first song
was written in
1916 and his first
Broadway
musical La La
Lucille in 1919

78. GEORGE
GERSHWIN
(1898–1937)
From that time
on, Gershwin’s
name became a
fixture on
Broadway.

79. GEORGE
GERSHWIN
(1898–1937)
Rhapsody in
Blue (1924) An
American in
Paris (1928), His
opera Porgy and
Bess (1934)

80. GEORGE
GERSHWIN
(1898–1937)
Gershwin was more
fascinated with
classical music. He
was influenced by
Ravel, Stravinsky,
Berg, and
Schoenberg

81. GEORGE
GERSHWIN
(1898–1937)
as well as the group of
contemporary French
composers known as
“Les Six” that would
shape the character of
his major works - half
jazz and half classical.

82. GEORGE
GERSHWIN
(1898–1937)
Considered the
“Father of American
Jazz,” his “mixture of
the primitive and the
sophisticated” gave his
music an appeal that
has lasted long after
his death.

83. ACTIVITY #3 (IMPRESSIONISM –
AVANT GARDE MUSIC)
COMPOSER
S
MUSICAL
STYLE
COMPOSITION
/WORKS