An examination of the arts at the dawn of the 20th century reveals ideals, developments, and problems that would later have a defining impact on our culture. While still in the shadow of great master artists such as Gauguin, Manet, Monet, Munch, Cezanne, Degas, and Renoir, and composers Wagner, Rimsky-Korsakov, Brahms, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Puccini, and Rachmaninoff, the emerging avant-garde expressed the thoughts, subjects, techniques, and moods of that time. Artists such as Matisse, Picasso, and Kandinsky, and composers Schoenberg, Ives, Stravinsky, and Debussy were at the cutting edge of new progressive ideas emerging within the arts. Eventually they became the revolutionary figures that created the new languages that defined and set the course for the new century. visionary inventors of new technologies such as cinematic, photographic, and audio recording devices, and electronic musical instruments philosophized on the infinite possibilities for creating and recording images and sounds, sparking a renaissance that further expanded the boundaries of art and music. Throughout civilization the question, But is it art? has been argued by those opposed to innovation, among them Plato, who stated that any musical innovation is full of danger to the whole state and ought to be prohibited. For example, during the 1913 Paris premiere performance of Stravinsky's Rites of Spring, the audience jeered and hurled objects at the orchestra. Not unlike photography, which took more than a half-century to be taken seriously as a fine art, video spent years on the cultural fringe before reaching the museum gallery. Although Andy Warhol and Nam June Paik first used video in the 1960s, it was not until the 1970s and 1980s that video installations moved to the forefront of new expression in contemporary art, and artists such as Warhol, Paik, Bill Viola, Dara Birnbaum, Gary Hill, and others began creating large and compelling bodies of work. They are today's imagery revolutionaries and the progenitors of a wide range of new approaches made possible with computers in the creation of digital art. Today's avant-garde music has developed through the invention of new instruments and unique ways of creating and using sounds. It draws upon a tradition that dates back to 1898, when Thaddeus Cahill invented the Telharmonium, an electronic music synthesizer that generated music via telephone lines, and 1913, when the Italian Futurist Luigi Russolo published Art of Noises, a manifesto calling for the inclusion of the noises of everyday life into music. This concept spread further in the late 1930s with John Cage and the French musique concrete movement in the 1940s, which incorporated chance and manipulation of sounds into compositions. Current trends in today's avant-garde music have evolved in the last half of the 20th century through works by John Cage, Pierre Schaeffer, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Edgard Varese, and many others. These artists have opened up music to include all sounds, presenting us with new technologies that compose and transform sounds, therefore interacting with musical instruments in new ways. As Joel Chadabe, pioneer composer, historian, and President of the Electronic Music Foundation points out, today's music is about the integration of the sounds of the world around us into dynamic structures that allow for public interaction. In his words, The most important trend in music today, made possible entirely by electronic technology, is that ... it is moving closer to life. As with the 20th century, the cultural production at the dawn
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Jun 1, 2004
Mathew Forstater 
Open Access