The Modern Era

Abstract

Abstract The Modern era began during the early years of the twentieth century when composers felt that the genres, tonalities, scorings, and notational symbols of the Romantic era could no longer satisfy their creative needs. Traditional genres were too confining for new ideas of expression, harmonic language based on functional tonality seemed to be exhausted, additional and unique colors were needed in scoring, and innovative elements of notation were required to manifest revolutionary concepts of communication. Consequently, dramatic changes affected virtually every element of music making. New genres ranged from stage productions that incorporated dance (e.g., Claude Debussy’s Le martyre de saint Sébastien) to vocal chamber music scored for a large ensemble of highly skilled soloists (e.g., Olivier Messiaen’s Cinq rechants for twelve singers). Experiments in new tonalities resulted in the dodecaphonic (twelve-tone) technique, pandiatonicism, bitonality, atonality, and divisions of the traditional chromatic scale into smaller units than half steps. Scorings for uncommon colors included wordless chorus as an orchestral instrument, sprechstimme, numerous percussion instruments, and electronic sounds and instruments. New notation consisted of a wide range of symbols to indicate such performance elements as variations in vibrato, speaking, singing in falsetto, producing the highest or lowest notes possible, yelling, hissing, and whispering. In addition, aleatoric performance became a feature of a number of Modern-era compositions. This is especially evident in passages of indeterminate rhythm within traditionally metered music.