Modern

1900–1945: tonality was taken apart, and rhythm and form were reinvented.

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Between 1900 and 1945 music stopped sharing a single grammar. Schoenberg removed the tonic, Stravinsky removed the barline, and Ravel and Hindemith polished old forms for new use. Three roads argued, yet together they turned tonality from the only answer into one option.

The historical setting

Two world wars, the Russian Revolution, the Weimar Republic and fascism redrew Europe and pushed composers into exile and politics. Recording, radio and cinema brought music home; the 1913 riot at The Rite of Spring became the emblem of new music as a public event. Dada, the Bauhaus and jazz redrew art's boundaries. In 1945 the European centre shifted.

What you hear

Atonality gives up the tonic and functional harmony; Schoenberg wrote free atonal works from 1908, then organised twelve semitones into rows in the 1920s. Stravinsky and Bartók pull accents out of the grid with irregular bars, ostinatos and folk modes. Neoclassicism returns to concerto, suite and sonata with dry textures and clear lines. Jazz, dance halls and machine noise enter the hall; chromatic expansion no longer needs to resolve.

Genres and forms

Ballet becomes a laboratory: Stravinsky's Firebird and The Rite put Russian subjects and fractured rhythm on stage. Opera and music theatre absorb politics and expressionism; Berg's Wozzeck uses atonality for a common soldier. Symphony, quartet and sonata remain central but are compressed, collaged or renumbered. Film scores, radio plays and Gebrauchsmusik enter daily use.

Instruments and forces

The orchestra becomes a percussion machine: more drums, woodblocks, bells and piano enter, and Stravinsky groups instruments by colour rather than laying strings underneath. Pianos are prepared with screws, paper or metal; the prepared piano appears in the 1940s. Saxophone, vibraphone, ondes Martenot and theremin add colour; recording and radio become media of composition and distribution.

Representative composers

• Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) moved from free atonality to twelve-tone method, rewriting harmonic logic and teaching Berg and Webern.
• Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) detonated the rhythmic revolution with The Rite, turned to neoclassicism, then to serial technique.
• Béla Bartók (1881–1945) fused folk modes, irregular metres and percussive piano writing into a personal language.
• Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953) and Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) wrote irony, lyricism and symphonies under Soviet pressure, between official criticism and a private voice.

What to listen for

First ask whether home still exists: does the melody return to a tonic, does harmony resolve? Then count: do accents cycle in 2, 3, 5 or 7, does the bass repeat a cell? Finally listen to colour: is the piano treated as percussion, is the orchestra layered by timbre? Six examples sample percussive piano, Soviet irony, the mystic chord, twelve-tone pointillism, a neoclassical suite and free atonality.

China in the same years

In China the same years bring the 1911 revolution, the May Fourth Movement and the war with Japan. The National Conservatory opened in Shanghai in 1927; Huang Zi and Qing Zhu introduced European technique, and Xian Xinghai wrote the Yellow River Cantata in 1939. Shanghai film and jazz, Yan'an songs and traditional opera grew at once.

Sources

• Taruskin, Music in the Early Twentieth Century（Oxford, 2010），用于核对 1900–1945 的流派与作品年代
• Grove Music Online 的 Atonality、Twelve-note music、Neoclassicism 条目，用于交叉核对
• midi-lib v1.23 catalog 的时期与许可字段，用于实例核验

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.