"particular pieces may do nothing for us, and ... the composer himself may be at fault through the writing of uninspired or willful dissonances.” Aaron Copland in 1939 (A4, p. 197)
"Atonal music is essentially pessimistic. It is incapable of expressing joy or humor." Gian Carlo Menotti, as quoted by Bernard Holland (February 2, 2007) in Menotti’s obituary.
The quotations above both signal a greater tolerance of diverse styles coming into the second half of the 20th Century. Copland tells us that we are not compelled to like a piece of music just because it seems to follow current trends, and that dissonance for dissonance sake does not necessarily lead to good music. Menotti went further, suggesting that atonal music cannot express the full range of human emotions that many listeners look for in music, implying the ongoing, indispensable value of tonal music.
As we entered the oxymoronic era of “contemporary classical music,” the musical community therefore opened up to a much wider variety of styles and tonalities. The atonalism that had dominated the earlier half of the century, often quite dogmatically, was still valued as a toolset, but tonal music attained new respect. We saw in Chapter 11 that critics had come around to the romanticism of Rachmaninoff, and that composers, like Jerry Goldsmith (in the original Planet of the Apes), were creating weird, unsettling movie sound tracks with atonal techniques. Jazz became more diverse and sophisticated, with rhythm and blues giving birth to rock-and-roll, which in turn detonated a secondary boomlet in popular music. (It seems there are now more kinds of rock in music catalogues than in introductory Geology labs!) The romantic tradition continues to the present in, for example, the magnificent film scores of John Williams. And so the three kingdoms entered the contemporary era together, splitting into numerous new subkingdoms, and still with promiscuous intermarriage.
The word classical in this sense has nothing to do with any of the usual applications of the term, especially the part about having stood the test of time. What we really mean by contemporary classical is composers who continue to write in the forms, complexity, and sophistication we traditionally associate with classical music (as defined in Chapter 11). Which of them will stand the test of time may not be confirmed for another 100 years. For this reason, no composers of the recent past have been included in the top-200 composers listed so far. Some, like Philip Glass and John Adams have been nominated for the top-100, but are listed here with their contemporaries.
The era had other new influences, challenges and opportunities for composers. Electronically-generated sounds and recording technology created new tools for musical creativity, both for pop musicians and classical composers. More and more ethnic flavorings, including most prominently Country/Western, Latin American, and Caribbean, added to the musical spice rack. In the most recent decades, nearly every indigenous culture has been brought into the fusion.
Film scores and musical theater reflected all these trends, tool sets, and ethnicities, and the distinction between classical and pop remained as tenuous as ever. Today, almost anything goes. All genres, styles, and compositional techniques from the past constitute a tool-set vaster than ever before. You'll find in the list below, composers combining Bach-style counterpoint with modernist dissonance, and orchestral works featuring unusual solo instruments, such as tuba (John Williams), harmonica (Villa-Lobos), and didgeridoo (William Barton).
If there is one significant subgenre that stands out, it is minimalism, in which relatively simple thematic elements are presented and then subtly modified through endless (it seems) repetitions. Excellent examples are to be found in the works of the very first composer on the list below, John Adams.
Where will it all lead? There are those who, like their predecessors who declared the end of the symphony and the end of romanticism (multiple times), are now saying music has done all it can do and the end of anything new is in sight. All I can say is that as long as their are creative geniuses willing to infuse their work with their own unique personalities, it will not end. Geniuses will continue to envision what we ordinary people (or even AI) cannot imagine.
Speaking of geniuses, the population of Europe in 1800 was about 150,000,000. From that era we got one Beethoven and maybe a few others who approached his ability. The population of the Earth when I began this sentence was 8,201,852,223, and 8,201,852,300 as I finish it. Making an obvious assumption, we should have about 5400 Beethovens today. Not all of them have access to the education and opportunity needed to express their genius, but if even half of them did, where are they? There are other career choices for geniuses today: physics, film-making, etc., but there ought to be a few who went into music. They may be on the following list, or they may be excluded because they went into one of the many popular genres instead of classical.
The separation of these composers, active primarily after 1950, from the previous list of 20th century composers is arbitrary and indistinct, as many of them were active on both sides of that divide. Igor Stravinsky, for example, continued to work until the 1960's, but is best known for his music in the earlier part of the century. This is of course an open-ended list that will never finish. Even as I write these words, some bright-eyed young composer is having the first performance of one of his works. Other contemporary composers simply haven't come to the attention of the humble amateur writing this post. This list, however, will provide a sample of the types of music that is presently being written. Composers are listed, without prejudice or comment, in alphabetical order.
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