Premodernism Vs Post Modernism

Modernism is a controversial term. One could use modernism and mean a different set of ideas. That modernism has a broad meaning comes from the history of the term. While the term was already used in the fifth and sixth century, the term modernism became more prominent in the end of the nineteenth century and certainly in the early twentieth century (Sherry). While modernism on itself is not one idea, there are more terms with a connection to modernism. Examples of terms with a connection to modernism are premodernism and post-modernism. These three terms can be hard to distinguish from one another. One way to distinguish them would be to define them into different ages. This distinction then being that premodernism mostly was used before the

This thus makes it hard to give a definite timetable for the terms. Making that one looks for the meaning of the term, which is often more than just one definition. Modernism is either a new idea that provokes or has an original technique (Butler 4). Thus, music would be meant to be modernist once it changes from an earlier technique or provokes the old ideas. While modernism is the idea of something new, Ronald Schleifer notes modernism as “the felt need to rethink and redefine received conceptions of aesthetic modernism in the particularly American context of the rapid urbanization of the United States” (3). Schleifer means that modernism thus is only a feeling that everything should be redefined. Meaning that something did not necessary have to be a new idea, rather than that there was a need to have something new. As there was a common experience in early twentieth century that there were rapid changes, and that as a result of that the changes would need to have names. One of the changes during these rapid changes was the change from the jazz genre swing to

As bebop is a subgenre of jazz and started to appear during the thirties of the twentieth century. However, bebop became more prominent in the early forties. Yet, one can see the techniques that are used in the bebop as early as 1928. There are several differences between swing and bebop. Where musicians of swing were often in groups of fourteen or more, bebop stayed with a number of six musicians. Furthermore, bebop was more complex than swing, as Owens mentions “In particular, bebop rhythm sections, using varied on and off-beat chordal punctuations (known as comping) supplied by pianists and guitarists, and additional punctuations supplied by the drummer on drums and cymbals, were much more polyrhythmic than were swing rhythm sections” (4). Even though there are differences, there were still similarities between swing and bebop, as bebop musicians worked further on swing music. The similarities show that there were not that many changes to the genres, thus showing that the need to redefine was present in the rise of bebop. One of the artists who is part of the change from swing to bebop was Coleman