21st-century classical music
Major eras of Western classical music | ||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Early music | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
Common practice period | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
New music | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
21st-century classical music is
Many elements of the
Overview
During the 20th century, composers started drawing on an ever wider range of sources for inspiration and developed a wide variety of techniques. Debussy became fascinated by the music of a Vietnamese theatre troupe and a Javanese gamelan ensemble, and composers were increasingly influenced by the musics of other cultures. Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School developed the dodecaphonic system and serialism. Varèse, Stockhausen, and Xenakis helped pioneer electronic music. Jazz and the popular music of the West became increasingly important—both as influences on art music and as genres of their own. La Monte Young experimented with performance art; John Cage applied the I Ching to his music; Reich and Glass developed minimalism. Music generally became more and more diverse in style as the century progressed.[1]
This trend has continued into the 21st century: in 2009
Styles and influence
Composers are influenced from around the world. For example, in 2002,
Other composers have also drawn upon diverse cultural and religious influences. For example,
Composers find inspiration from other sources, too. The music of John Luther Adams (an Alaskan environmentalist and no relation to the other John Adams discussed in this article) is informed by nature, especially that of his native Alaska. His Pulitzer Prize-winning symphony Become Ocean was inspired by climate change.[17] Frank's House by Andrew Norman tries to evoke the architecture of Frank Gehry's house in Santa Monica.[18]
Péter Eötvös employed a variety of timbres and sound-worlds within his music. Extended techniques such as over-pressure bowings coexist with lyrical folk songs and synthesized sounds.[19] He died in 2024.
Composers have even created
The music of Osvaldo Golijov often combines the classical, modern, and popular traditions within a single work juxtaposing contrasting styles—an important trend in the music of the 1960s onward.[20]
Genre developments
Opera
John Adams, George Benjamin, Osvaldo Golijov, Cristóbal Halffter (died 2021), James MacMillan, Einojuhani Rautavaara (died 2016), Kaija Saariaho (died 2023), Karlheinz Stockhausen (died 2007), and Judith Weir have all made important contributions in this field:
- Licht, Stockhausen's cycle of seven operas, begun in 1977, was completed in 2003 with the opera Sonntag aus Licht.
- Weir's opera epic poem, La Gerusalemme liberata, setting it in a modern Middle-East conflict which alludes to but never specifically mentions the Iraq War.[21]Weir's opera calls for props that could not be used practically in an opera house, such as a helicopter.
- Jewish-American passenger Leon Klinghoffer.[22]
- Saariaho's perfect fifths is applied to the melodic material, while troubadour songs are evoked in the patterns of repeating phrases and the melodic style of short phrases focussed around certain pitches. Thus, 12th- and 20th-century musical ideas are fused in a unique manner.[20]
- The Spanish composer Halffter wrote his second and third operas, Lazarus (2008) and Schachnovelle (2013), both for the Kiel Opera House.
- In 2023, Canadian composer Airat Ichmouratov, composed an opera Tha Man Who Laughs to a libretto in french by poet Bertrand Laverdure, adapted from an eponymous novel. Commissioned by Festival Classica, it was premiered on May 31, 2023, in Montreal, Canada[23][24][25]
- Golijov's Grammy-award winning Ainadamar (2005) is about the murder in 1936 of Spanish poet Federico García Lorca by the Fascists. The score combines computer music, musique concrète and modernist dissonance with elements from Flamenco music, Latin American popular music and Cuban rhythms.[20]
- Written on Skin by Benjamin, The Sacrifice by MacMillan and Rasputin by Rautavaara are other representative works.
- Animal Farm is a 2023 English-language opera by Russian composer Alexander Raskatov based on George Orwell's 1944 novella of the same name.
- Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Chamber opera is an important type of opera developed in the mid-twentieth century. They use smaller scale forces than regular operas. Examples from the 21st century include Pauline by Tobin Stokes (libretto by Margaret Atwood), The Corridor by Harrison Birtwistle, El Caballero de la triste figura by Tomás Marco and The Sound of a Voice by Philip Glass.
Ballet
Embrace is a ballet written in 2018 by the American composer Sarah Kirkland Snider and choreographed by the British choreographer George Williamson. Debra Craine of The Times wrote, "Embrace is an earnest and heartfelt gay coming-out tale, with dramatic music (from Sarah Kirkland Snider, played live) and a clearly defined choreographic journey from confusion and confrontation to acceptance and reconciliation."[26]
Song and choral music
Adams'
Golijov's La Pasión según San Marcos, Gubaidulina's Johannes-Passion, Tan Dun's Water Passion, and Wolfgang Rihm's Deus Passus were all composed for the Passion 2000 project, through which the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart commemorated the 250th anniversary of the death of J.S. Bach. Golijov, being a Jew and Latin American, offered a different perspective on the Passion: he drew on African-influenced traditions from Cuba and Brazil, flamenco and Baroque music to create a work that enacts the story as a ritual through voices, dance and movement.[20]
Henri Dutilleux's last works (died 2013) include Correspondances and Le temps l'horloge, both of which are song cycles.
Orchestral works
Arvo Pärt's Symphony No. 4, Los Angeles is the first of his symphonies to be written post-1976 and is the first of his pieces to focus on larger scale, instrumental tintinnabulation.[28]
Jennifer Higdon's blue cathedral, premièred in 2000, is a one-movement orchestral tone-poem and is ranked among the most widely performed works of the early 21st century. It was written in memory of her brother and features flute (her instrument) and clarinet (his instrument) in dialogue in their upper registers. The work evokes Debussy's more accessible form of modernism: parallel triads in strings and brass; changes in pitch set demarcating musical units, such as phrases, and providing a sense of harmonic progression; and Debussy's distinctive orchestral colour.[20]
Samuel Adler's compositions for orchestra from this century include: A Bridge to Understanding (2008), All Nature Plays (2009), Drifting on Winds and Currents (2010), and In the Spirit of Bach (2014).[29]
Composers have also written concertos in the 21st century. Oliver Knussen's Violin Concerto, Op. 30, written for Pinchas Zukerman, premièred in 2003.[31] Milky Ways is concerto for cor anglais and orchestra written in 2022 by the Finnish composer Outi Tarkiainen. The composer included a moment of blocking during which the solo performer rises, walks behind the orchestra, and exits through the stage door, all the while being followed by a spotlight while a string trio, offstage, plays.[32] There were also 4 violin concertos in 2021: Missy Mazzoli, James MacMillan, Unsuk Chin, and John Williams. Concertos for Orchestra have also been written: Walkabout: Concerto for Orchestra by Gabriela Lena Frank and one by André Previn both premiered in 2016. Christopher Rouse's Concerto for Orchestra was premiered in 2008. Jennifer Higdon (Oboe Concerto, Percussion Concerto both in 2005), Dieter Lehnhoff, Elliot Carter, Philip Glass, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Airat Ichmouratov, Thomas Adès, Magnus Lindberg, Hans Abrahamsen, Helen Grime, and many others continue to add concertos to the repertiore in the 21st century.
Chamber music
Elliott Carter (died 2012) has written a large body of music for chamber groups and soloist since 2000. These include Tintinnabulation for percussion sextet, Double Trio for trumpet, trombone, percussion, piano, violin and cello, a string trio, Hiyoku for two clarinets, as well as several new pieces in his Retracing and Figment series for soloists and Two Thoughts about the Piano. His Caténaires for solo piano (2006) evokes both the texture of the finale of Chopin's B♭ minor Sonata and 20th-century serialism.[20]
Stockhausen's last major work, the unfinished cycle of twenty-four compositions collectively titled Klang, is predominantly made up of chamber-music pieces.
Notable string quartets composed since 2000 include:
- the quartet by Hanspeter Kyburz
- the Sixth (2002), Seventh ("Espacio de silencio", 2007), Eighth ("Ausencias", 2013), and Ninth ("In memoriam Miguel de Cervantes", 2016) Quartets by Cristóbal Halffter
- two numbered quartets—the Fifth (2006) and Sixth (2009)—and Dum transisset I–IV (2007), Exordium (2008), and Silentium (2014) by Brian Ferneyhough
- the series of ten Naxos Quartets (2001–07) by Peter Maxwell Davies.
At his death in 2016, Davies also left an unfinished final String Quartet, Op. 338, of which only the first movement was completed.
The German composer Wolfgang Rihm extended his list of string quartets, first with the Twelfth Quartet (2001), the brief Fetzen 2 (2002), and a Quartettstudie (2003–04), then with a revised version of String Quartet No. 11 (2010) and the Thirteenth Quartet (2011), as well as another short work, In Verbundenheit (2014). Austrian Georg Friedrich Haas has written a Third ("In iij. Noct.", 2003) and Fourth String Quartet (2003), and the Hungarian composer György Kurtág has also extended his series of (unnumbered) works for this medium, with Six Moments Musicaux (1999–2005), Hommage à Jacob Obrecht (2004–2005), and—in collaboration with György Kurtág junior—Zwiegespräch for string quartet and electronics (1999–2006).
Concentricities is a piano trio by Graham Waterhouse composed in 2019 for clarinet, cello and piano.
Electronic music
Electronic, electroacoustic, and computer music, pioneered in the 20th century, continue to develop in the 21st century. One of the major figures in the early development of electronic music, Karlheinz Stockhausen, composed his last electronic works—Cosmic Pulses and eight further pieces derived from it—as hours 13 to 21 of his Klang cycle (2005–2007).
Mario Davidovsky has extended his series Synchronisms, which in live performance incorporate both acoustic instruments and electroacoustic sounds played from a tape. Other composers including Mason Bates, Jean-Claude Éloy, Rolf Gehlhaar, Jon Hassell, York Höller, Hanspeter Kyburz, Mesías Maiguashca, Philippe Manoury, and Gérard Pape are active is this field. Bates' The B-Sides is a symphony in five movements for electronica and orchestra and Hassell's music exploits unusual electronic manipulation of the trumpet sound.
Multimedia and music
Classical composers continue to write film music: Philip Glass (The Hours, Naqoyqatsi, and Notes on a Scandal), Michael Nyman (Everyday), John Williams (Harry Potter film series, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens) are some of the most notable.
Apart from film composers and Judith Weir, mentioned above, other composers have embraced the growing technological advances of the 21st century.
The work In Seven Days (2008), by Thomas Adès, was composed for a piano, an orchestra, and six video screens. The video segments were created by Tal Rosner, Adès's civil partner.[33] Polaris for orchestra and five video screens was released in 2011.[34]
In 2008, Tan Dun (best known for the score for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) was commissioned by Google to compose Internet Symphony No. 1—"Eroica" to be performed collaboratively by the YouTube Symphony Orchestra. This work used the internet to recruit orchestra members and the final result was compiled into a mashup video, which premiered worldwide on YouTube.[16]
Ludovico Einaudi is one other notable composer still working in the 21st century, blending classical, folk, pop, rock and world musics. Polystylism and musical eclecticism are therefore important. He came to prominence in 1996 with his piano album Le Onde and is still very popular in Britain and Italy.[35] His latest work is Elements, for piano, electronics and orchestra (2014), and he has written the film music for This Is England (2006) and its sequels (2010, 2011, and 2015), the trailer music for Black Swan (2010),[36] and the classical album Una Mattina (2004). His album, In a Time Lapse, was released on 21 January 2013, with US and Canadian supporting tours.[37]
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and music
Composers are starting to use artificial intelligence to create all or part of their music. Robert Laidlow's Silicon is for symphony orchestra and artificial intelligence. Likewise, his Post-Singularity Songs uses ChatGPT.[38]
Tod Machover, an American composer who uses AI in his works and his teaching, says the technology needs the human touch: “[it] is generating infinite music that isn’t actually composed by anybody, and that’s a terrible, scary, awful way of thinking about where music could go. I mean, really, it’s the worst kind of elevator music.” Machover heads the Opera of the Future group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab which focuses on the exploration of “concepts and techniques to help advance the future of musical composition, performance, learning, and expression”. Machover's City Symphonies uses AI to organise sounds from cities; these sounds have been crowdsourced.[39]
AIVA is an algorithmic composer using AI.[40]It is recognised by SACEM, the French professional association collecting payments of artists’ rights and distributing the rights to the original songwriters, composers, and music publishers. [41]
Composers
A 2019 survey by BBC Music Magazine created a list of 'greatest composers', based on the feedback of 174 living composers;[42] the living composers included on the list were Saariaho, Reich, Glass, Birtwistle and Sondheim.[43]
Other important composers include Eric Whitacre, Kaija Saariaho, Jennifer Higdon, Magnus Lindberg, Michael Finnissy, Michel van der Aa, Airat Ichmouratov and Nico Muhly.
Female composers
Roxanna Panufnik, in the aforementioned interview with the BBC, says:
Attitudes towards women composers have changed during the past few decades. Even after women started getting careers, it took a while before they could find work as composers, but we got there in the end, thanks to role models such as Judith Weir, Nicola Lefanu [sic], and Thea Musgrave. Hip young things like Tansy Davies and Emily Hall will exert a great influence on the new music scene in the next ten years.[44]
Important female composers working in the 21st century (not already mentioned in this article) include Elisabetta Brusa, Chaya Czernowin, Gabriela Lena Frank, Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian, Sophie Lacaze, Liza Lim, Meredith Monk, Onutė Narbutaitė, Olga Neuwirth, Doina Rotaru, Rebecca Saunders, Linda Catlin Smith, Joan Tower and Agata Zubel.
Important composers who have died
Several important composers active in the 20th century have died in the early part of the 21st century. These include: Konrad Boehmer, Pierre Boulez, Elliott Carter, Eötvös, Dutilleux, Maxwell Davies, Rautavaara, Stockhausen, and Tavener (already mentioned);
Performance of 21st-century music
During the earlier part of the 20th century, new music was sometimes written for and performed by closed circles of musicians: In 1918, Schoenberg founded the Society for Private Musical Performances in Vienna, a membership-only organization which deliberately kept out "sensation-seeking" members of the public, and, although similar societies that sprang up in New York at the same time tried to be more inviting to the general public, the International Composers' Guild founded by Varèse and championed by Carl Ruggles, was perceived as elitist.[45] In the latter half of the century, this started to change as composers again started to embrace a wider public.[citation needed]
In the 21st century, there are a number of musicians and groups whose primary purpose is the promotion of new music [clarification needed]:
- Pierre-Laurent Aimard, French pianist
- Alarm Will Sound, 20-member chamber orchestra
- Arditti Quartet, led by British violinist Irvine Arditti
- Asko | Schönberg, Dutch chamber orchestra based in Amsterdam
- Bang on a Can, an organization founded by American composers Julia Wolfe, David Lang and Michael Gordon
- Marco Blaauw, Dutch trumpet player
- Boston Modern Orchestra Project, led by Gil Rose
- Ensemble Musikfabrik, from Cologne
- Ensemble Modern, an international ensemble based in Frankfurt
- ensemble recherche, based in Freiburg
- The Esoterics, a vocal ensemble based in Seattle, Washington
- Judd Greenstein, an American composer and promoter of new music in New York
- Michael Gielen, Austrian conductor
- Peter Hannan, Canadian recorder player
- Oliver Knussen, British conductor
- Kronos Quartet, a string quartet with over 750 new works written for them
- International Contemporary Ensemble, or ICE, an ensemble that has premiered over 500 new works
- Claire Chase, American flautist, founder of ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble)
- Nicholas Isherwood, American-born bass singer
- Reinbert de Leeuw, Dutch conductor, pianist, and composer
- Christian Lindberg, Swedish trombonist
- London Sinfonietta, chamber orchestra
- Paul Méfano, French conductor and composer
- Les Percussions de Strasbourg, French percussion ensemble
- Ensemble 2e2m, French musical ensemble specializing in the interpretation of works of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
- Steven Schick, American percussionist
- Peter Serkin, American pianist
- Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Roe, pianists who regularly perform duets and works for two pianos
- Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic
- Michele Marelli, Italian clarinetist
- Ludovic Morlot, French conductor
- Esa-Pekka Salonen, Finnish conductor
- Robert Spano, American conductor
- Harry Sparnaay, Dutch bass clarinetist
- Tambuco, Mexican percussion ensemble
- Theatre of Voices, an international vocal ensemble based in Copenhagen
- Frances-Marie Uitti, American-born Dutch cellist
References
- ISBN 978-1-84115-475-6.
- ^ a b c Shave, Nick (October 2009). "The Shape of Sounds to Come". BBC Music Magazine. 18 (1). Andrew Davies: 26–32.
- ^ Coghlan, Alexandra (1 October 2012). "Does anyone like modern classical music?". The Independent. Archived from the original on 2 October 2012. Retrieved 11 November 2016.
- ^ Gagné 2012, p. 1.
- ^ Service, Tom (7 March 2003). "Shuffle and cut". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 27 October 2009. Retrieved 15 October 2009.
- ^ "Julian Anderson". Faber Music. Archived from the original on 14 January 2020. Retrieved 11 November 2016.
- ^ Service, Tom (18 June 2001). "She's got the funk". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 19 September 2020. Retrieved 15 October 2009.
- ^ Kjellberg, Samuel (21 January 2015). "A Tribute to Borbély, a Poet of Our Time". The Boston Musical Intelligencer. Archived from the original on 11 April 2021. Retrieved 15 November 2016.
- ^ "Agócs draws on Hungarian poetry for BMOP premiere – The Boston Globe". BostonGlobe.com. Archived from the original on 25 September 2020. Retrieved 15 November 2016.
- ^ Young, L., & Zazeela, M. (2015). "The Just Alap Raga Ensemble, Pandit Pran Nath 97th Birthday Memorial Tribute, Three Evening Concerts of Raga Darbari". MELA Foundation, New York.
- ^ Anon (27 December 1999). "Music for a New Millennium". BBC News. World Service: Education. Archived from the original on 12 November 2013. Retrieved 14 October 2009.
- ^ "James MacMillan: Biography". boosey.com. Archived from the original on 22 July 2022. Retrieved 15 November 2016.
- from the original on 12 November 2020. Retrieved 15 November 2016.
- ^ Sabbe, Herman (2001). "Boehmer, Konrad". In Sadie, Stanley; Tyrrell, John (eds.). The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 2 (second ed.). London: Macmillan Publishers.
- ^ "Roman Turovsky-Savchuk". deliansociety.org. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 20 November 2016.
- ^ a b "Tan Dun's YouTube Internet Symphony". gbtimes.com. Archived from the original on 15 August 2018. Retrieved 10 November 2016.
- ^ "ADVOCACY: Wilderness campaigner's obsession with 'place' led to symphony about climate change". eenews.net. Archived from the original on 26 October 2020. Retrieved 23 November 2016.
- ^ Boehm, Mike. "Composer Andrew Norman tries to evoke Gehry home in 'Frank's House'". latimes.com. Archived from the original on 27 November 2020. Retrieved 24 November 2016.
- ^ "Peter Eotvos (Composer, Conductor) – Short Biography". bach-cantatas.com. Archived from the original on 10 February 2020. Retrieved 23 November 2016.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-393-93711-4.
- ^ Jeffries, Stuart (1 December 2005). "Desert bloom". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 19 September 2020. Retrieved 14 October 2009.
- ^ Thorpe, Vanessa (19 October 2008). "I'm Blacklisted, Says Opera Maestro". The Observer. Archived from the original on 19 September 2020. Retrieved 17 October 2009.
- ^ Angers, Charles (25 April 2023). "Festival Classica: The Man Who Laughs, opera by Airat Ichmouratov and Bertrand Laverdure". myscena.org. Retrieved 29 September 2023.
- ^ Depelteau, Marianne (27 May 2023). "L'Homme qui rit est un opéra". exilecvm.ca (in French). Retrieved 29 September 2023.
- ^ Huss, Christophe (23 April 2023). "Le nouvel opéra selon Marc Boucher". ledevoir.com (in French). Retrieved 29 September 2023.
- ^ Craine, Debra (19 June 2018). "Dance review: Birmingham Royal Ballet at Sadler's Wells". The Times. Retrieved 30 July 2023.
- ^ "John Adams' Memory Space: 'On The Transmigration of Souls'". NPR.org. Archived from the original on 13 September 2020. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
- from the original on 20 May 2019. Retrieved 24 November 2016.
- ^ "Samuel Adler – Works for Orchestra on samuelhadler.com". Archived from the original on 22 September 2020. Retrieved 20 September 2018.
- ^ Faber Music Ltd. "Jonathan Harvey—Composer". Archived from the original on 5 May 2001. Retrieved 17 October 2009.
- ^ "Violin Concerto, Op. 30". www.kennedy-center.org. Archived from the original on 20 October 2020. Retrieved 24 November 2016.
- ^ Wise Music Classical (October 2023). "Nicholas Daniel to give UK Premier of Tarkiainen's Milky Way". nicholasdaniel.co.uk.
- ^ "San Francisco Symphony—ADÈS: In Seven Days". sfsymphony.org. Archived from the original on 9 March 2015. Retrieved 10 November 2016.
- ^ Fleshler, David. "The New World Symphony opens its new multimedia home". theclassicalreview.com. Archived from the original on 15 September 2020. Retrieved 23 November 2016.
- ^ "BT River of Music: Ludovico Einaudi interview for London 2012". Telegraph.co.uk. Archived from the original on 1 May 2017. Retrieved 20 June 2017.
- ^ "LUDOVICO EINAUDI – Evolution Promotion". Evolution Promotion. Archived from the original on 3 May 2017. Retrieved 20 June 2017.
- ^ "In a Time Lapse – Ludovico Einaudi | Release Info | AllMusic". AllMusic. Archived from the original on 19 September 2020. Retrieved 20 June 2017.
- ^ Melody, Chan (21 June 2023). "IS AI THE FUTURE OF CLASSICAL MUSIC?". Polyphony:the new voice of classical music.
- ^ Brodeur, Michael Andor (16 February 2023). "AI is taking music lessons. They're not going great". The Washington Post.
- ^ "AIVA the Artificial Intelligence composing Classical Music". 21 October 2016. Retrieved 21 October 2016.
- ^ "AIVA composer of Classical Music". Archived from the original on 21 December 2016. Retrieved 20 December 2016.
- ^ "JS Bach is the greatest composer of all time, say today's leading composers for BBC Music Magazine". BBC Music Magazine. 31 October 2019. Archived from the original on 9 October 2021. Retrieved 22 July 2022.
- ^ Parr, Freya (10 November 2021). "The best living composers". BBC Music Magazine. Archived from the original on 11 November 2021. Retrieved 22 July 2022.
- ^ Panufnik quoted in Shave 2009, p. 32.
- ^ Tommasini, Anthony (4 November 2016). "Just Why Does New Music Need Champions?". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 18 October 2018. Retrieved 11 November 2016.
Sources
- ISBN 978-0-393-91829-8.
- Gagné, Nicole V. (2012). Historical Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Classical Music. UK: ISBN 978-0-8108-6765-9.
- Metzer, David (2011). Musical Modernism at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge: ISBN 978-1-107-40280-5.
Further reading
- Beckerman, Michael; ISBN 978-1-80064-116-7.
- ISBN 978-0-486-82335-5.
- Clements, Andrew; ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 12 June 2020.
- Rutherford-Johnson, Tim (2017). Music after the Fall: Modern Composition and Culture since 1989. Berkeley: JSTOR 10.1525/j.ctv1xxxq7.
External links
- The Living Composers Project — A massive database of living composers