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Ives
Ives was one of the most innovative American composers. His style is very polytonal, polyrhythmic, with notes of American art song. His music was made popular by his wife, after his death. -
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Luigi Russolo
Russolo was a Futurist Italian composer, artist, and built experimental musical instruments. He identified six families of noise in the in the Futurist style. These were grouped as roaring, whistling, whispering, screeching, animal noises, and noise produced by beating on surfaces. He wrote "The Art of Noises" to explain the way the families are different and their characteristics. -
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Price
Florence Price is one of the most infamous black, female composers. She had a prevalent career in Chicago and produced tons of works in her time. She was the first black woman to have a symphony performed by a major American orchestra; That composition being "Symphony No. 1 in E Minor". -
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Nadia Boulanger
Nadia Boulanger taught almost every great composer of the 20th century, besides Gershwin who she refused to let in her classes. She was the first female conductor to conduct many major American and European orchestras, including Philadelphia Orchestra and the London Philharmonic. She did compose a few pieces, but she enjoyed helping others find their own sounds and styles. -
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Prokofiev
Prokofiev composed many orchestras, film works, and concertos. His music was characterized by drive, lyrical expression, comedy, Neo-Classicism, and unique harmonic language. -
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William Grant Still
Still was one of the first popular black composers; He was the first Black American composer to have a symphony and opera performed by a major ensemble. He was also the first black American to conduct a major symphony orchestra (1936). He arranged music for various jazz bands, dance orchestras, and films. His style was a blend of spirituals, blues, and things like ballets, operas, and symphonies. -
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Cowell
Henry Cowell was a prestigious American innovator. He taught John Cage and drew inspiration from Ives. He drew inspiration heavily from non-Western music, which invented chance music, tone clusters, and new piano techniques. -
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Duke Ellington
Duke is a quintessential pillar of jazz and swing. He was born and raised in Washington D.C. When he began taking off he was living in New York City and became a band leader in the Cotton Club (an extremely famous and popular jazz club in Harlem). He was most famous for his jazz and recorded many swing pieces. -
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Aaron Copland
Copland was an American composer, conductor, and teacher. He composed a large variety of genres, but his progress was hindered because of his preoccupation with his teaching. The pieces he did produce varied widely in their styles and genres. These genres included operas, ballets, film scores, piano pieces, etc. His style is recognizable by mixed meters, exposed solos, open intervals, and bits of folk music. -
"The Unanswered Question"
Composed by Ives (but partially taken credit for by Bernstein)
This work was one of two parts, the other piece being "Central Park in the Dark". The piece has three distinctly contrasting groups of instruments with a call-and-response style. -
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John Cage
John Cage is one of the most innovative and creative composers of his time, but his objective was not to be unique. Cage's objective was to show the way that all music is just "organized sound". Cage developed the concept of aleatory and indeterminacy, both of which were elements that kept music up to chance, a "roll of the dice". -
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Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday was one of the top female jazz performers of her time. She was the first black woman to perform in many venues with white bands. She was extremely famous for her blues renditions of popular music. -
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Jazz
Jazz was and is a popular form of music, which became popular in the early 20th century, but it could be traced back to around 1890. It has many roots, but can be recognized as a blend of west African music and tradition, spirituals, blues, rock, and work songs. It has tons of variety in styles like swing, blues, ragtime, and bebop. -
Blues
Blues is a musical genre/style that stems from black tradition that uses blues notes, bent pitches, and a specific progression of chords. The primary harmonic structure of blues is I-IV-V in a variety of orders. The lyrics of blues often refer to hardship and pain. There is a variety of styles in blues: Vaudeville, city blues, country blues, delta blues, and down home blues. -
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Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural revolution that affected all of America, especially the black population. There was a large emergence of African American art, musical styles, and literature. -
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George Crumb
Crumb is an American composer who was well known for his anti-war sentiment, during the Vietnam war. His style can be characterized by non-Western musical idioms. -
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Post 1900's Era
The post 1900's era is a whirlwind of genres, styles, and composers. There were so many major world events that affected the entire course of history and the music was no different. There was no consistent musical style or most popular genre. Everything was in a time of flux. -
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Górecki
Henryk Górecki was an extremely popular composer in his time, so much so that other composers criticized him for his popularity. His style could be characterized by minimalism, Neo-tonality, tone clusters and symbolism. -
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World War II
World War II was one of the largest, deadliest wars in history. The was was fought between the Axis and Allied powers. -
"Appalachian Spring"
Appalachian Spring was a Copland ballet written for Marta Graham, the lead dancer for the ballet. The ballet portrays a pioneer celebration in spring in the hills of Pennsylvania in the 1800's. This was one of the ballets written based upon choreography. -
Birth Control Pill Invented
In 1950, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Gregory Pincus, and John Rock created the first birth control pills. The pills did not become widely available until the 1960s. -
"Adoration"
Written just two years before Price's death, "Adoration" displays the beautiful simplicity that she was able to elicit throughout her music. -
"4'33""
John Cage's 4'33" is a melody of complete silence. The original purpose was for cage to show how music can be simply described as "organized sound". -
Tod Machover
Machover is one of the most innovative and creative minds to influence music technology, today. His work explores the interaction between performers and computers. -
Modular Synthesizer
Developed by inventor Herald Bode, the modular synthesizer is a much more complicated version of how we recognize synthesizer in modern music. -
Mobile Phone Invented
Martin Cooper, the engineer from Motorola, developed the first hand-held phone that could connect over Bell's AMPS. Motorola launched the DynaTAC in 1984. -
Synthesizer Invented
Modern day synth is very similar to a keyboard format. It was developed by Robert Moog and is now used extremely widely in all music, today.