Modernism (music)

Lore & Background

Inherent within musical modernism is the conviction that music is not a static phenomenon defined by timeless truths and classical principles, but rather something intrinsically historical and developmental. While belief in musical progress or innovation is not new, such values are particularly important within modernist aesthetic stances. The operative word most associated with modernism is "innovation," and its leading feature is a "linguistic plurality"—no single musical language or modernist style ever became dominant.

This period of change and development in musical language occurred around the turn of the 20th century, involving diverse reactions that challenged and reinterpreted older musical categories, leading to new ways of organizing harmony, melody, sound, and rhythm. Authorities typically regard musical modernism as a historical era from about 1890 to 1930. Carl Dahlhaus described it as an obvious point of historical discontinuity, a "breakaway mood" symbolized by the opening bars of Richard Strauss's Don Juan, and suggested a stylistically open-ended modernist music extending from 1890 to 1910.

Eero Tarasti defined it in terms of the dissolution of traditional tonality and the search for new models in atonalism, polytonalism, or other altered tonalities. Daniel Albright proposed a definition as "a testing of the limits of aesthetic construction," presenting techniques such as Expressionism, Neoclassicism, and Futurism. Leon Botstein described it as a consequence of the conviction that musical expression must be adequate to the radical character of the age, reflecting progress in science, industry, mechanization, and nationalism.

Reader's Guide

Authorities typically regard musical modernism as a historical period or era extending from about 1890 to 1930, applying the term 'postmodernism' to the period after 1930. For musicologist Carl Dahlhaus, the purest form was over by 1910, but other historians consider modernism to end with one or the other of the two world wars.

Definitions vary: Dahlhaus describes it as an obvious point of historical discontinuity, while Eero Tarasti defines it in terms of the dissolution of traditional tonality. Daniel Albright proposes a definition as 'a testing of the limits of aesthetic construction,' and Leon Botstein sees it as a consequence of the conviction that musical expression must be adequate to the unique and radical character of the age. The term has occasionally been applied to popular music but without a very clear definition.