Jazz Influences on the 20th Century

The Influence of Jazz on Twentieth-Cantury Music Many people in today’s society don’t realize how much of an influence has been transpired throughout history overtime. We tend to overlook all the influences on today’s music and don’t actually appreciate history’s influences in our everyday lives. I would like to focus on the twentieth-century and how the visual arts influenced the time period. Hopefully this essay can spread knowledge and awareness on how much history has to do with influences in today’s music. In the 20th century, there were several American and European composers who were highly interested in the jazz industry. Composers have been using parts of native music for centuries. Some of the most popular names such as Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Bach, developed some of the most popular tunes of their time. In the earlier stages of the 20th century composers began to compose music that attempted to fuze together both Jazz and classical music. Igor Stravinsky , Maurice Ravel, and Darius Milhaud were just a sum of the most notable. America had a few of its own successful composers as well such as, Aaron Copland ,George Gershwin , Gunther Schuller, and Leonard Bernstein also arrived through the inspiration of Jazz music. Most of the Jazz scene began to develop in New Orleans, other major cities such as St.Louis, Memphis, and Chicago had their own style. Once New Orleans was sold through the Louisiana Purchase, the city had a higher standard of living with their dancing, wine drinking, food and love for music. The overall background circulating around New Orleans was the gateway to the beginning of Jazz. They created music with unique sounds that offered the society a new perspective on music. Americas very own composer Gershwin, composed one of the worlds most pronounced pieces of jazz called "Rhapsody in Blue". Another composer ,Aaron Copland, composed his own piano concerto that was Jazz-influenced. The song "Prelude, Fugue and Riffs",