To understand how electronic music changed the 20th century, first consider what it would have been like to be a composer living through the 19th century. You start out on your career with Beethoven and Schubert, who compose these magnificent pieces that are never performed. The premiere of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was a disaster: the audience booed. Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony wasn’t premiered until half a century after he died.
So you know you’re going to write these magnificent pieces that will not be performed in your lifetime. Those are the stakes at the beginning of the 19th century. But eventually, in the course of your career, you’ll hear Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony or hear Liszt play his E-flat Piano Concerto (since there were no recordings), and that will inspire you to write something even more beautiful than what you thought possible before. And then maybe — just maybe — one day someone will perform your piece, and people will have that same experience of hearing music they couldn’t have imagined before.
That was what it was like to be a composer in the 19th century. It was an incredibly romantic profession for incredibly romantic people, because being a composer meant working on something that might never be
Music of the 20th Century gave us the ability to live in a state of constant flux, it shattered our sense of quiet and made everything into an event.
In its earliest incarnation, music was a way of making noise to communicate over long distances. This was before there were any instruments: people just used their voices, which is why so much early music is based on the human voice.
This is also why early music was often religious: because worshipping a god was one of the few events that involved large numbers of people coming together. And if you’re going to have lots of people together in one place, it helps if they can sing in unison. The earliest religious music was thus probably a way of getting large groups to make a loud noise together.
The 20th century was the century of modern music. The modern era, in which we are still living, was defined by the emergence of new technologies for the production and recording of sound.
The 20th century was marked by its undeniable technological evolution. This evolution has impacted all areas of life, from transport to health and especially music. The changes that have occurred since the early 1900s are considerable and have marked a break with the past.
In this blog article, I will give you an overview of how technology has changed music over the last 100 years.
It is common knowledge that the 20th century was an age of technological and scientific innovation. The discovery of the radio, the invention of the automobile, and the advent of commercial aviation are only a few examples of such development. So great were these achievements that they transformed not only our daily lives, but also our way of thinking.
As a result of these revolutionary inventions, people’s lives began to change significantly. The radio made it possible for people to receive information from all over the world in their own homes; the car enabled them to travel freely; and airplanes shrunk distances between countries and continents. It stands to reason that this transformation in society was accompanied by a transformation in music as well.
The evolution of music from the very beginning of the 20th century up to its end can be divided into four main periods: (1) tonal music, (2) atonal music, (3) serialism, and (4) post-serialism. These four different stages give us an insight into how music evolved alongside humanity in a time when so much was constantly changing.
The 20th century was an era of major scientific, technological and social change. We also saw a transformation in music. It would be impossible to have such an abundance of musical styles and genres without the advancements in science, technology and society.
Music is not just about entertainment for us anymore. Music is our connection to the past, present and future. Music has become a part of our lives and it has adapted to our changing needs over the centuries. Music exists because we exist. It has become an essential part of human life.
We are a society that is constantly evolving; therefore, music must evolve as well. How can we expect a culture that has no exposure to electricity to comprehend electronic music?
A century ago, the music of the future was going to be loud, mechanized and chaotic. In 1913, composer-pianist Ferruccio Busoni wrote a short essay titled “Sketch Of A New Aesthetic Of Music.” “Our ears are accustomed to sounds produced by machines,” he wrote. “We have grown used to the shattering noise of cars and trams … and the roar of airplanes and cannon fire. These noises have made music’s quiet harmonies sound old-fashioned.”
He predicted that as technology progressed, composers would create a music that sounded like factory whistles and laughter from moving automobiles, with rhythms that would imitate the clatter of machinery. “The ‘heroic’ period of music will return,” he wrote, though not in the form of Beethoven’s symphonies. Instead it would be “a loud clamor – demonic, perhaps infernal.”
And so it came to pass: The 20th century brought us electronic instruments, amplification and electronic recording techniques. And it also brought us new kinds of musical noise – jazz, rock ‘n’ roll, rap and heavy metal among them – in which rhythm became as important as melody or harmony.
In the 19th century, music was considered as a form of art. It had been manipulated and molded into something that was appreciated by the masses. The 20th century brought a radical change in this perception. With the invention of recordings, it became possible to capture sounds and make them permanent. This was further enhanced by the invention of radios, which made music available to people at large. Music started being looked upon as a means of entertainment.
The 20th century also saw developments in technology that resulted in the invention of many musical instruments, some of which were capable of producing sounds never heard before. There was also an increase in experimentation with different forms and scales of music. All these factors combined to bring about a revolution in the field of music. The way people looked at music changed forever.
The most popular genre of music during the first half of the 20th century is Jazz. Its popularity increased largely due to radio broadcasts, which introduced jazz to many people across the world. Another popular genre is Blues which originated from southern United States from where it spread throughout America and Europe by around 1910s.
Electronic music also became popular during this time, especially after World War II when there was a need for new musical experiences among the masses who were suffering from trauma caused