9. The late 20th century

9. The late 20th century.

The populism evident in the political radicalism of the 1960s in Europe and America shattered the inherited mid-century linkage of Modernism and progressive politics. As the political overtones of pre-1945 and 20th-century Modernism receded from memory and rock and commercial folk music took an oppositional, political significance in both west and east Europe, the moral edge of Modernism weakened, leaving composers free to become more eclectic. Modernism’s status at the end of the century stood in stark contrast to the expectations generated after both world wars. From the mid-1920s, Modernism was widely accepted as the defining aspect of 20th-century music and the century’s dominant musical signature. The legitimacy of its aesthetics and the significance of its genesis provided the foundation for the standard historical paradigm and narrative concerning 20th-century music: for example, the music of Strauss between 1912 and 1949 was, as Adorno argued, a vestigial phenomenon out of step with history. However, this would change, since from the mid-1970s Modernism was in retreat and pluralism came to characterize the evolution of 20th-century concert music. Deep concern for the health and survival of high art concert music in Europe and North America during the last decades of the century only helped diminish the interest in Modernism. The emergence of postmodernism and neo-romanticism in the last quarter of the century forced a revision of the accepted historical account. So-called conservative 20th-century music, dismissed as secondary and irrelevant in the postwar climate of opinion shaped by the views of Schoenberg, Adorno, Leibowitz, Babbitt and Boulez, began to return to the repertory and receive serious critical assessment. Copland, Barber, Britten and Shostakovich increasingly appear central to any musical characterization of the century. Modernism may end up as only one of many competing 20th-century trends and not the century’s dominant voice. However, even if Modernism and its repertory end up at the periphery, it has consistently framed the debate about the nature and future of high art musical composition.

Modernism’s failure vis-à-vis the other arts to gain wide acceptance (which has frequently been held responsible for the relative decline in the significance of all concert music during the last third of the century) can be linked to the dramatic shifts in musical culture resulting from technological advances. The 20th century witnessed the explosion of novel forms of sound reproduction and distribution and the creation of a mass market for recorded sound. A premium on familiarity and ease of listening took hold as a decline in older forms of music education escalated. The piano was replaced by the radio and gramophone as the central instruments of musical culture. The beneficiary of this was not Modernism, which depended on the capacity to follow sound, pitch changes and complex textures, but anti-Modernist popular music, ranging from the musical to the hit song, film music and, later, rock and popular music as well as the conservative tradition of musical composition. The defections from Modernism by prominent composers were often based on the very political grounds that argued on its behalf. Copland, like Weill and Eisler, cited his progressive political commitments when he turned from Modernism in the 1930s after realizing the gap between Modernism and the mass audience. After the 1960s, George Rochberg, Philip Glass, David del Tredici and Krzysztof Penderecki abandoned Modernism on account of its inability to secure a significant public. Although by the end of the century Modernism was in retreat, it continued in the work of American and European composers, particularly under the aegis of Boulez and IRCAM in Paris. Modernism’s range at the end of the century stretched from the conceptual music of Pauline Oliveros to the brilliant and original experimental synthesis of Japanese and Western Modernism in Toru Takemitsu’s work. Notable late 20th-century exponents include George Benjamin, Jacob Druckman, Brian Ferneyhough, George Perle, Wolfgang Rihm, Richard Wernick, Richard Wilson and Ralph Shapey.