20th Century Music

Many musical changes happened during the 20th century. It was a time of deepening psycological awareness.
 Experimentation and new systems of writing music were attempted by avant-garde composers like Edgard Varèse and although none gained a foothold with the public, these techniques had a profound influence on many of the composers who were to follow. Twentieth century music has seen a great range of various movements, like post-romanticism, serialism and neo-classicism. All of these were practiced by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. Experimentation and new systems of writing music were attempted by avant-garde composers.

Since twentieth century composers weren't limited by the rules and restrictions of the classical period, they were free to write however they pleased. An example of work from the twentieth century is a ballet called "The Rite of Spring"  by Igor Stravinsky.  The Rite of Spring  debuted in May, 1913. It was one of his most famous works, but it was first met by harsh criticism and a riot even broke out simply because people weren't sure how to respond to those kinds of sounds. The audience was accustomed to the "grace" and "elegance" of traditional ballets like Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. There were people that liked Stravinsky's work and that's how the whole disagreement got started. Stravinsky was so taken aback by the audiences reaction that the actually fled the scene before the show was over.

Igor Stravonsky was noted for his stylistic diversity. After the first Russian phase, he turned to neoclassicism in the 1920's. Then in the 1950's he addopted serial procedures. Stravinsky's compositions of this period share traits with examples of his earlier output: rhythmic energy, the construction of extended melodic ideas out of a few two- or three-note cells, and clarity of form, of instrumentation, and of utterance.

There were more musical advances than Stravinsky's works alone. Amplification permitted giant concerts to be heard by those with the least expensive tickets, and the inexpensive reproduction and transmission or broadcast of music gave rich and poor alike nearly equal access to high quality music performances. In the early twentieth century, devices were invented that were capable of generating sound electronically, without an initial mechanical source of vibration. As more electronic technology matured, so did the music.