Periods

Modern

about 1890 to 1975

The period in which a shared tonal language came apart. Some composers went to twelve-tone rows and serial method, some went back to older forms to write new things inside them, some took scales and rhythms out of the folk music of their own countries, and some admitted noise and electronic sound as material. It is not one line of development but several running at once, none of which conceded that another was the mainstream. Audiences had their ears retrained over the same hundred years.

The dates are a reading aid, not a boundary. Bach died writing counterpoint that Haydn's generation had already given up, and Rachmaninoff was writing romantic concertos while Webern wrote twelve-tone miniatures. Any two neighbouring periods overlap by decades.