Music In The 1960's
After several decades of various composers in the like of Debussy, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky fearlessly challenging the establishment through their own thresholds for dissonances, the 1960’s saw a new, contrasting approach to rebelling against previously defined boundaries. Unlike the majority of movements found in Western Art music, this new movement did not immerge from the depths of European circles, but instead, in the United States. While there are several parallels that can be drawn between this new direction of seemingly simple, stripped-down music, and works from the late Romantic era by composers like Eric Satie, and later, John Cage, there is no definite route that traces this movement back to that period. Rather, these resemblances
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The need for dramatic and extravagant forms of expression started to disappear, while more and more artists began completely abandoning techniques associated with the previous Age of Enlightenment. This inescapable yearning for change was the product of a century’s worth of growth through industrialization and urbanization in the western world. As more and more discoveries and innovative research was made, people started embracing new ideologies of philosophers such as Darwin, Nietzsche and Marx, and questioning the boundaries and self-imposed limitations that came with the previous era. As such, the demand of an art industry that also rejected previous boundaries grew. Visual artists and Western music composers alike embarked on a journey of simultaneously distancing and re-establishing themselves. This meant stepping away from the great amounts of detail found in realism- moving into the realm of surrealism and expressionism for some, and plunging into the Avant-Garde territory of obscurity for others. (Auner 2013) Arnold Schoenberg, along with his pupil who formed the Second Viennese School and surrealism, is often falsely regarded as an advocate against harmony. In fact, his mission behind the emancipation of dissonance has everything to do with harmony, and broadening previously set boundaries of what is right and wrong. John Cage, who studied with Schoenberg, however, was far less
The need for dramatic and extravagant forms of expression started to disappear, while more and more artists began completely abandoning techniques associated with the previous Age of Enlightenment. This inescapable yearning for change was the product of a century’s worth of growth through industrialization and urbanization in the western world. As more and more discoveries and innovative research was made, people started embracing new ideologies of philosophers such as Darwin, Nietzsche and Marx, and questioning the boundaries and self-imposed limitations that came with the previous era. As such, the demand of an art industry that also rejected previous boundaries grew. Visual artists and Western music composers alike embarked on a journey of simultaneously distancing and re-establishing themselves. This meant stepping away from the great amounts of detail found in realism- moving into the realm of surrealism and expressionism for some, and plunging into the Avant-Garde territory of obscurity for others. (Auner 2013) Arnold Schoenberg, along with his pupil who formed the Second Viennese School and surrealism, is often falsely regarded as an advocate against harmony. In fact, his mission behind the emancipation of dissonance has everything to do with harmony, and broadening previously set boundaries of what is right and wrong. John Cage, who studied with Schoenberg, however, was far less