20th-Century Music Vocabulary

Key vocabulary terms and composer profiles covering electronic, impressionist, expressionist, neoclassical, primitivist, minimalist, and nationalist movements of 20th-century music.

Musique Concrète

A form of electronic music that uses recorded environmental sounds (traffic, wind, barking dogs, etc.) as raw material.

Electronic Music

Music created with electronic or electromechanical instruments, digital devices, or circuitry-based technology.

Edgard Varèse

French-born composer (1883-1965) called the “Father of Electronic Music” and “Stratospheric Colossus of Sound,” known for emphasizing timbre and rhythm as “organized sound.”

Ionisation

Varèse composition celebrated for its innovative use of percussion and electronic sonorities.

Karlheinz Stockhausen

German electronic composer (1928-2007) famed for atonal, spatial works like Gruppen and Kontakte.

Gruppen

Stockhausen’s 1957 piece for three orchestras that explores moving sound through time and space.

Chance Music (Aleatoric Music)

Style in which elements are left to randomness so every performance sounds different.

John Cage

American composer (1912-1992) who pioneered chance music and invented the prepared piano.

Prepared Piano

Piano altered by inserting screws, wood, or paper between strings to produce new percussive sounds (invented by Cage).

4'33"

Cage’s silent composition where the performer remains quiet for four minutes and thirty-three seconds, letting ambient sounds become the music.

Impressionism (Music)

Style that suggests reality rather than depicts it, creating mood through timbre, whole-tone scales, and extended harmonies.

Whole-Tone Scale

Six-note scale built entirely of whole steps, common in Impressionist music.

Timbre

Tone color or quality of sound, achieved via orchestration, harmony, and texture.

Extended Chords

Ninths, elevenths, thirteenths, etc., used by Impressionists to enrich harmony.

Tonal Style

Music written around an organized key center.

Atonal Style

Music that avoids any fixed key center.

Virtuoso

A performer with exemplary technical skill and execution.

Claude Debussy

French composer (1862-1918) dubbed “Father of the Modern School of Composition,” author of La Mer and Claire de Lune.

La Mer

Debussy’s 1905 orchestral work depicting the sea through Impressionist techniques.

Maurice Ravel

French composer (1875-1937) whose works (e.g., Boléro) are innovative yet not atonal.

Boléro

Ravel’s 1928 orchestral piece built on a repeating melody and insistent rhythm.

Expressionism (Music)

Style revealing the composer’s inner emotions using atonality, twelve-tone rows, and extreme dynamics.

Twelve-Tone System

Compositional method ordering all 12 chromatic notes into a tone row to avoid tonal centers.

Dissonance

Quality of sound perceived as unstable or tense; used heavily in Expressionism.

Arnold Schoenberg

Austrian composer (1874-1951) who developed the twelve-tone technique; feared the number 13.

Pierrot Lunaire

Schoenberg’s expressionist song cycle noted for Sprechstimme and atonality.

Igor Stravinsky

Russian-born composer (1882-1971) famed for rhythmic innovation in ballets like The Firebird and The Rite of Spring.

The Firebird Suite

Stravinsky’s 1910 ballet score showcasing colorful orchestration and folk themes.

Primitivism (Music)

Style evoking primitive power with insistent rhythms, percussion, and raw energy.

Béla Bartók

Hungarian composer (1881-1945) blending folk elements with primitivist rhythms and changing meters.

Concerto for Orchestra

Bartók’s 1943 piece that treats each orchestral section in a virtuosic, soloistic manner.

Syncopation

Accentuation of off-beats, common in Bartók’s and other 20th-century works.

Changing Meter

Frequent shifts in time signature within a piece, used by Bartók for rhythmic vitality.

Neoclassicism (Music)

20th-century movement returning to classical forms with modern dissonances and diatonic scales.

Sergei Prokofiev

Ukrainian-born Russian composer (1891-1953) noted for progressive technique, wit, and works like Romeo and Juliet.

Romeo and Juliet (Ballet)

Prokofiev’s dramatic 1935-36 ballet score famous for the “Dance of the Knights.”

Les Six

Group of six French composers (Auric, Durey, Honegger, Milhaud, Poulenc, Tailleferre) reacting against Romanticism and Impressionism.

Francis Poulenc

Member of Les Six (1899-1963) known for elegant modernity and works like Concerto for Two Pianos.

Pacific 231

Arthur Honegger’s orchestral piece depicting a steam locomotive, emblematic of Les Six energy.

Avant-Garde

Artistic movement embracing experimental, radical ideas that break traditional rules.

George Gershwin

American crossover composer (1898-1937) blending jazz and classical styles; called “Father of American Jazz.”

Rhapsody in Blue

Gershwin’s 1924 work combining jazz rhythms with a classical concerto form.

Leonard Bernstein

American composer-conductor (1918-1990) best known for stage works like West Side Story and his belief in tonality as a universal language.

West Side Story

Bernstein’s 1957 musical updating Romeo and Juliet with jazz, Latin rhythms, and symphonic elements.

Philip Glass

American composer (b. 1937) associated with minimalism, using repetitive patterns that evolve slowly.

Einstein on the Beach

Glass’s 1976 minimalist opera featuring repetitive structures and non-narrative text.

Minimalism (Music)

Style using limited materials, steady pulse, and gradual transformational repetition (exemplified by Glass).

Modern Nationalism

20th-century trend combining modern techniques with folk materials to express national identity.

Organized Sound

Varèse’s concept that specific timbres and rhythms can be grouped to create new definitions of music.

Prepared Piano Screws

Objects inserted between piano strings to alter timbre in Cage’s prepared piano pieces.