Early Twentieth Century Music

The early twentieth century began a time of experimentation and change in the types of music that were offered to the public. These changes resulted in what is viewed as "pop" music, or music that is less serious than the compositions of previous centuries. Many composers, as well as the general public, believed that all types of music had already been explored and used to their fullest extent. This belief led to a great deal of experimenting with different types of music including: surrealism, serialism, polytonality, aleatoric music, and dissonance. There were other types of experimentation such as sound-based composition, which was a type of compostion used by futurists and advocated the use of everyday sounds such as factory machines.
Another factor that influenced the type of music that was produced in the twentieth century was the type of technology that was created and offered to composers and listeners.
Serialism used the twelve-tone technique invented by Arnold Schoenberg. The
twelve-tone scale uses the chromatic scale in order to form a pattern that allows composers to turn numbers and words into a musical composition. Often, music created with serialism is extremely difficult to play because there is seemingly no pattern or order to the notes, and no recognizable melody.

Aleatoric music is music where some element of the compostition is left up to the performer. For example, the amount of repetition, or the rhythm of the piece. Origins of aleatoric music have been traced back to around the fifteenth century with the genre of the catholicon.

Polytonality is the use of several musical simultaneously. One of the first well-known uses of polytonality was in Igor Stravinsky's ballet, Petrushka. Another one of Stravinsky's ballets, Rite of Spring, popularized the use of bitonality. One of the most famous polytonal composers was Charles Ives, the son of a bandleader, who was one of the first American composers to be noted as having much international significance. Ives was actually in the insurance business, and only wrote music in his spare time. A great many of his compositions were extremely patriotic, including his piece Variations on "America", which is one of his most famous pieces of music.

With the invention of new technology in the early twentieth century, music became more widely available to the general public, and new types of music were heard more often, which allowed music that otherwise would have been less popular to gain a fan base. One such technology was the Gramophone, which was the most commonly used music listening apparatus in the first half of the twentieth century. The Gramophone was eventually replaced by technology such as walkmans, and compact disks.