1945-1945: Sound Complexes In Classical Music

Classical music consisted of a variety of trends after the year 1945, which were distinct from classical music during prior periods. During the period after 1945, classical music included trends such as sound complexes, chance music, minimalism and post modernism. Sound complexes in classical music during this period can be described as a technique that was used to bring up a sense of exploration in new sonorities. This new technique included noises, unexpected new sounds squeezed out of old instruments and new music materials which were produced by electronics not instruments (Kerman, 360). Chance music can be characterized as a musical style where composers moved in the opposite direction, giving up some of their control over the elements of music and simply leaving them to chance. In other words, the results of using this technique of chance music would be a random sequence of events, where the composer would depend on a kind of controlled chaos throughout the musical piece. The musical style of minimalism can be described as a style which contains simple melodies, motives and harmonies repeated many times throughout the musical piece. The post modernism trend can be distinguished from the

Composers creating music with post modernism choose from modernist styles and many other styles from music history to achieve their goal; direct expression. For example, in Crumb’s “Hallelujah, I’m a Bum”, illustrates post modernism as Crumb, uses musical styles from the past not only from modernism, but from prior periods. Crumb emphasizes the early 1900,s when comedy was introduced to religious music, here is using the same technique, by emphasizing a drunken narrative throughout the piece. Another example of post-modernism is in “House of the Rising Sun”, where we hear an atonal interlude, which derives back from early modernism, where music was atonal lacking a central