20th-century music

During the 20th century there was a huge increase in the variety of music that people had access to. Prior to the invention of mass market gramophone records (developed in 1892) and radio broadcasting (first commercially done ca. 1919–20), people mainly listened to music at live Classical music concerts or musical theatre shows, which were too expensive for many lower-income people; on early phonograph players (a technology invented in 1877 which was not mass-marketed until the mid-1890s); or by individuals performing music or singing songs on an amateur basis at home, using sheet music, which required the ability to sing, play, and read music. These were skills that tended to be limited to middle-class and upper-class individuals. With the mass-market availability of gramophone records and radio broadcasts, listeners could purchase recordings of, or listen on radio to recordings or live broadcasts of a huge variety of songs and musical pieces from around the globe. This enabled a much wider range of the population to listen to performances of Classical music symphonies and operas that they would not be able to hear live, either due to not being able to afford live-concert tickets or because such music was not performed in their region. Sound recording was also a major influence on the development of popular music genres, because it enabled recordings of songs and bands to be inexpensively and widely distributed nationwide or even, for some artists, worldwide. The development of relatively inexpensive reproduction of music via a succession of formats including vinyl records, compact cassettes, compact discs (introduced in 1983) and, by the mid-1990s, digital audio recordings, and the transmission or broadcast of audio recordings of music performances on radio, of video recordings or live performances on television, and by the 1990s, of audio and video recordings via the Internet, using file sharing of digital audio recordings, gave individuals from a wide range of socioeconomic classes access to a diverse selection of high-quality music performances by artists from around the world. The introduction of multitrack recording in 1955 and the use of mixing had a major influence on pop and rock music, because it enabled record producers to mix and overdub many layers of instrument tracks and vocals, creating new sounds that would not be possible in a live performance. The development of sound recording and audio engineering technologies and the ability to edit these recordings gave rise to new subgenres of classical music, including the Musique concrète (1949) and acousmatic (1955) schools of electronic composition. In the 1970s, African-American hip hop musicians began to use the record turntable as a musical instrument, creating rhythmic and percussive 'scratching' effects by manipulating a vinyl record on the turntable. In Beethoven's and Felix Mendelssohn's time in the 19th century, the orchestra was composed of a fairly standard core of instruments which was very rarely modified. As time progressed, and as the Romantic period saw changes in accepted modification with composers such as Berlioz and Mahler, the 20th century saw that instrumentation could practically be hand-picked by the composer. Saxophones were used in some 20th-century orchestra scores such as Vaughan Williams' Symphonies No.6 and 9 and William Walton's Belshazzar's Feast, and many other works as a member of the orchestral ensemble. Twentieth-century orchestras generally include a string section, woodwinds, brass instruments, percussion, piano, celeste, harp(s), with other instruments called for occasionally, such as electric guitar and electric bass. The 20th century saw dramatic innovations in musical forms and styles. Composers and songwriters explored new forms and sounds that challenged the previously accepted rules of music of earlier periods, such as the use of altered chords and extended chords in 1940s-era Bebop jazz. The development of powerful, loud guitar amplifiers and sound reinforcement systems in the 1960s and 1970s permitted bands to hold large concerts where even those with the least expensive tickets could hear the show. Composers and songwriters experimented with new musical styles, such as genre fusions (e.g., the late 1960s fusion of jazz and rock music to create jazz fusion). As well, composers and musicians used new electric, electronic, and digital instruments and musical devices. In the 1980s, some styles of music, such as electronic dance music genres such as house music were created largely with synthesizers and drum machines. Faster modes of transportation such as jet flight allowed musicians and fans to travel more widely to perform or hear shows, which increased the spread of musical styles. In the early 20th century, many composers, including Rachmaninoff, Richard Strauss, Giacomo Puccini, and Edward Elgar, continued to work in forms and in a musical language that derived from the 19th century. However, modernism in music became increasingly prominent and important; among the most important modernists were Alexander Scriabin, Claude Debussy, and post-Wagnerian composers such as Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss, who experimented with form, tonality and orchestration. Busoni, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Schreker were already recognized before 1914 as modernists, and Ives was retrospectively also included in this category for his challenges to the uses of tonality. Composers such as Ravel, Milhaud, and Gershwin combined classical and jazz idioms. Late-Romantic and modernist nationalism was found also in British, American, and Latin-American music of the early 20th century. Composers such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, Aaron Copland, Alberto Ginastera, Carlos Chávez, Silvestre Revueltas, and Heitor Villa-Lobos used folk themes collected by themselves or others in many of their major compositions. In the early decades of the 20th century, composers such as Julián Carrillo, Mildred Couper, Alois Hába, Charles Ives, Erwin Schulhoff, Ivan Wyschnegradsky turned their attention to quarter tones (24 equal intervals per octave), and other finer divisions. In the middle of the century composers such as Harry Partch and Ben Johnston explored just intonation. In the second half of the century, prominent composers employing microtonality included Easley Blackwood, Jr., Wendy Carlos, Adriaan Fokker, Terry Riley, Ezra Sims, Karlheinz Stockhausen, La Monte Young, and Iannis Xenakis.