Music of the 20th Century: Modernism, Jazz, and the Break from Tonality
Intermediate to Advanced
View all programsProgram Structure
Each stage builds directly on the previous, creating a coherent arc through the material.
Course Modules
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Module 1 — Late Romanticism into early Modernism. Debussy, Impressionism, and the dissolution of functional harmony.
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Module 2 — Stravinsky and the scandal of the new. The Rite of Spring in historical context.
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Module 3 — Schoenberg, Berg, Webern. The Second Viennese School and twelve-tone technique.
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Module 4 — Neoclassicism and the return to form. Stravinsky after 1920, Prokofiev, Hindemith.
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Module 5 — The birth of recorded music. How the phonograph changed composition, performance, and listening.
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Module 6 — Jazz origins through bebop. From New Orleans to Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.
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Module 7 — Post-WWII avant-garde. Messiaen, Boulez, Cage, and the question of total control versus chance.
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Module 8 — Minimalism, rock as cultural force, and late 20th-century crossovers. Final assessment.
The century when music split into parallel worlds
Before 1900, Western music had a shared tonal language even when composers disagreed about style. After 1910, that common language broke apart. Classical composers moved in opposite directions — some toward atonality, others toward neoclassicism, folk fusion, or minimalism. Meanwhile jazz developed an entirely independent harmonic tradition.
Atonality and what Schoenberg was trying to solve
The twelve-tone method was not invented to confuse listeners. Schoenberg saw it as a logical extension of the chromatic language Brahms and Wagner had already developed. Whether or not you find the result appealing, the structural logic is worth understanding on its own terms.
Jazz history as music history
The course treats jazz not as a footnote to classical modernism but as a parallel development with its own periodization: New Orleans, swing, bebop, cool, free jazz. Each phase involved real aesthetic arguments between real people with competing ideas about what music should do.
Recording technology as a historical force
The phonograph changed what music could be. For the first time in history, a performance could be preserved exactly and repeated. This single fact restructured how composers, performers, and audiences related to music.