Glossary

Experimental music	Many contemporary composers cannot be easily classified. In their search for originality, they will sometimes experiment and discover new possibilities but at other times return to certain practices of the past. When a composer returns to an old style, the music usually combines elements of the old with the new musical languages of the day. In every generation, a small group of composers will try new styles, techniques, forms, timbres, or concepts in order to develop a new approach to composition, new aesthetic notions, or a new language for expressing music. These composers are said to be in the avant-garde. Their pieces, being experimental, will have varying impacts. For some experimentalists, the musical outcomeof an experiment is far less significant than the process of the experiment itself. Such compositions were viewed as more important as musical ideas than as music. It is not unusual for pieces by an experimentalist to gain wide acceptance! as concepts and techniques are refined in his or her own subsequent compositions.



Avant-garde	Experimental composers who are in the forefront of musical developments and who are leaders in the development of new and unconventional musical styles. They experiment with untried techniques, forms, timbres, or concepts in developing new approaches to composition, new aesthetic notions, or a new language for expressing music.



New musical language	The music language of today is extremely different from the language common in the nineteenth century. For much contemporary music, new notations had to be devised to accomodate new sounds and new concepts. It is a language with which many people feel uncomfortable, perhaps because it is a language they haven't completely understood.



Impressionism	A style of music, exemplified in the works of Debussy, that avoids explicit statement and literal description, but instead emphasizes suggestion and atmosphere, evokes moods, and conveys impressions of images and feelings.



Neoclassicism	A style of modern composition that is based on established forms and structures of the past and particularly on the aesthetics and musical values of the classic era.



Atonal Music and Serialism	Atonal music is highly chromatic, dissonant music without traditional, functional chord progressions, modulations, and tuneful melodies. Dissonances stand alone, without the need to resolve to consonances as in traditional music. Serialism is a system created and refined by Schoenberg. Rows originally were comprised of all twelve tones of the chromatic scale. Serialism was created as an alternative to the major-minor tonal system, and it was a means for organizing the chaotic chromaticism prevalent in late nineteenth-century German romantic music and early twentieth-century atonal music. An extension of the 12-tone technique includes the serialization of note values, timbres, or dynamics.



Nationalism and Folk Music	Concert art music that reflects national or regional rather than universal characteristics. The music may describe something derived from the folk or popular traditions of a nation; its history, tales, or legends; its cultural characteristics; or a place that is important to the nation or region. Americanist music or American nationalism refers to composers who sought to develop a distinctively American musical style. They frequently would incorporate familiar patriotic, folk, or religious tunes, or at least fragments of these tunes, in their classical compositions.



Electronic Music	Although primitive electronic instruments existed in the first half of the twentieth century, electronic music as a medium did not appear until the 1950s. The impetus came from the development of magnetic tape recording. Technicians in Paris experimented with musique concrete, a name given to the technique of manipulating tape-recorded sounds from existing natural resources. Recorded sounds generated from musical instruments or voices could be altered by changing the speed of the tape, playing it backward, and cutting and splicing it. The altered sounds, perhaps combined with natural sounds, could then serve as sources for a composition. The next development in electronic music was sound-generating equipment and synthesizers in which the electronic sound generation was combined with sound modification. Composers could now control every detail: rhythm, dynamics, pitch organization, timbre, reverberation (echo), and even how a tone is begun and released !(attack and decay). What the composer created was immediately on tape, ready for any listener; no performer was necessary. A relatively recent development, which may dominate the field for generations to come, is computer-generated music. Here the composer plots desired sounds in numerical sequence, feeds them into a digital-to-analog converter, and records on tape. Important composers of electronic music were Edgard Varese, Milton Babbitt, Mario Davidovsky, and Morton Subotnik.



Chance Music	A compositional technique whereby a composer does not control all the details of a composition, allowing the performer to make creative choices through improvisation or other means of selecting sounds within the structure of the composition. John Cage was a major influencce in developing chance music.



Minimalism	A style of composition whose creator attempts to achieve the greatest effect from the least amount of material. It is typically based on many repetitions of simple patterns, creating slow, subtle changes in rhythm, chord movement, or other musical elements. Phillip Glass, a contemporary American composer, has been considered the leading exponent of minimalist music.



Traditional sounds	In the early part of the twentieth century, such neoclassicists as Stravinsky returned to practices of the past, yet their music was put in a context and a fresh musical language that made it sound like it belonged in the twentieth century. Other composers preferred a return to nineteenth-century romantic aesthetics, forms, and techniques. Composers may have adopted a traditional style because of their own comfort with accepted practices or perhaps from a desire to counter the complexities of other modern music by simplifying musical language. They were also probably motivated by a desire not to alienate audiences but rather to provide music that listeners would find accessible and enjoyable, and, of course, would pay to hear in concerts or on recordings.

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