Postmodern classical music

Postmodern Classical music is a musical "style". This type of music contains characteristics of postmodern art—that is, art "after" modernism (see Modernism in Music). It favors eclecticism in musical form and musical genre, and often combines characteristics from different genres, or employs jump-cut sectionalization (such as blocks). It tends towards traditional harmonic practice while at the same time employing colorful orchestration and generally traditional serious forms. These forms usually include all the sonata-based forms such as symphony, as well as traditional choral forms in which language and the poetic is placed as the most important aspect of musical lyricism.

Postmodern classical musical style

While post-modern music comprised a change in the fundamental idea of what music is topically concerned with, present-day classical composers apply many of the lessons learned from the realism presented in art of nineteenth-century romanticism to combine expressive works which generally "tell a story" in modern, contemporary terms. Thus, a contemporary classical composer takes great delight in basing his music on extramusical art such as literature, poetry, the visual arts and cinema.Fact|date=September 2008

Postmodern classical techniques and their application

Just as the periods of Mozart and Stravinsky saw an interest in building upon common-practice harmonic and contrapuntal techniques,Fact|date=September 2008 so postmodern classicism seeks to enfold everything from ethnomusicology to total serialism to layered orchestrations and pop/world rhythms.Fact|date=September 2008 Any techniques associated with the eclecticism of modern music worldwide is subject to use within this style, including the most arcane and traditional. Elements from world music and even so-called popular music have also provided techniques and means of expressions within new eclectic styles.

Emergence of postmodern eclectic styles

It was inevitable with the ingrown cynicism of much intellectual and emotionally sterile academic music of the second half of the twentieth century, that there would come a time when "popular music" eventually found as much if not more seriousness than so-called "serious" music.Fact|date=September 2008 This is an outgrowth of the academic fascination with the way music looks upon the page, rather than what it sounds like.Fact|date=September 2008 Arnold Schoenberg makes plain his own stance regarding the visual nature of western musical tradition when he spent a few weeks after completing the composition of the Gurre-Lieder in 1911 avoiding music composition altogether, devoting himself to painting instead.Fact|date=September 2008 It is little wonder the atonalistsweasel-inline|date=September 2008 pride themselves more upon grace of line and oddness of tone in general, rather than plumbing the soul of nature for musical sounds as yet undiscovered.Fact|date=September 2008 While much good has come out of the experiments of the atonalists and serialists, it is the artist steeped in the maintaining of a rich, western music tradition which will contribute to the eventual hope of the art's advancement. One of the most notable uses of modernistic experimentation has been to create a music so detached from common mores of communication, that it has been found useful in expressing such ideals as insanity, detachment, self-absoption and abject cynicism.Fact|date=September 2008

A precursor to postmodern classicism would be found in the third-stream style of music of the 1970s and 80s, with such popular artists as Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman, and the band Pink Floyd.Fact|date=September 2008

Composers cited as important to postmodern classical music

Classical
*John Adams
*Béla Bartók
*Charles Ives
*Steve Reich
*George Rochberg
*Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji

Jazz/Rock/PopFact|date=September 2008
*The Beatles
*Grateful Dead
*Emerson, Lake and Palmer
*Brian Eno
*Pink Floyd
*Charlie Parker
*Jefferson Starship
*Phish
*Soundgarden
*The Who
*Widespread Panic
*Yes
*Frank Zappa

ee also

*20th century classical music
*Postmodern