Taking a Look at Twentieth Century Music

Music in these two cultural era's are so different to my ear, it's amazing their made with the same insturments. A large amount of the reasons for this, at least in my opinion, is that technology has become such a larger part of our lives in the twentieth century. Not just computers, but electricity tellephones and tellivision all really got their start in this period of time. Also; I feel the two world wars that were fought during the late "Early Romantic" and the early "Twentieth-Century" has had some effects on music as well. This becomes compleatly aware when you look at the music itself.

One of the pieces from the class that we discussed was Joffrey Ballet's version of the Rite of Spring. This particular peace was from the mid Twentieth Century, and when it was released, it was actually created as a ballet, but the actual music was so lavishly created, that it is rumored to have whipped the audience into a frenzy. This peace is actually expressed to be one of the most influential peaces of the 20th century. This is because of it's rich melody, and it's experimentation in stress and tone. Though I must say, the choreography in the Joffrey Ballet verision that we studied in class shakes me quite a bit. Just for the simple fact that in the third peace the girl just stands there in the middle, it's a little bit un-nearving. The rest is fine, just that one bit I suppose. Either way, this was Stravinsky's first famous piece, as his first two were not very popular.

Another Piece that we learned about would be Arnold Schonberg's playing of Pierrot Lunaire's poems. Specifically the 6th one, Madonna. Take no heed that it may sound like a popular pop singer, it is anything but. The opera-esque singing, and the gnashing of the violi...

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...10, technically into the period of "Twentieth Ceuntry" music. But, obviously due to the sound, it's not going to be said that it is the same kind of music as say Schonberg's music (or should I Say Poem), which was created just a mere two years later, on the eve of world war one.

In the end, both of these time periods are known for some very, very popular work. With some that are even remembered as the best work's ever. Some that have brought people of little exposure in the music world to household names, such as Stravinsky's piece. I honestly feel theese two era's of music has their names backwards, and I had to check three times that they wern't. And I still feel that sometimes the Twentieth Century music can be a bit jaring, but it is still very important music that plays an important roll in history, and was built from era's past too push the limits of music.