concerning the construction of modern tonality; or, how I'd like to bullshit this essay
Underlying the complexity of the surface of much twentieth-century music, composers since 1900 have invented new ways to provide formal structure to their works. Show how at least four composers we have studied from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries use formal structures that would not have been used by composers before 1900.
After romanticism all composers started ingesting heinous amounts of psychoactive chemicals. This lead to really fucked up atonal shit, for lack of a better term. Some composers, such Schoenberg and Messiaen, constructed excessively complex series of tones and chords in a rather futile effort to make their music sound like something. Others simply made sound and then slapped Very Meaningful titles on their works post-composition to somehow justify what they wrote, which often sounded akin to a legion of woodland creatures being fed to a ravenous synthesizer and then forcefully regurgitated (see: Krzysztof Penderecki). The only redeeming thing about what one might reasonably call "art music" in the last century has been minimalism and jazz. True facts.
*This isn't what I'm going to write for my music history essay; it's merely what I want to write. Honestly, it's not even how I feel; I like Messiaen.
After romanticism all composers started ingesting heinous amounts of psychoactive chemicals. This lead to really fucked up atonal shit, for lack of a better term. Some composers, such Schoenberg and Messiaen, constructed excessively complex series of tones and chords in a rather futile effort to make their music sound like something. Others simply made sound and then slapped Very Meaningful titles on their works post-composition to somehow justify what they wrote, which often sounded akin to a legion of woodland creatures being fed to a ravenous synthesizer and then forcefully regurgitated (see: Krzysztof Penderecki). The only redeeming thing about what one might reasonably call "art music" in the last century has been minimalism and jazz. True facts.
*This isn't what I'm going to write for my music history essay; it's merely what I want to write. Honestly, it's not even how I feel; I like Messiaen.