Music in the 20th century and today
In the last hundred years, music has changed faster than ever. Recordings, radio, electricity and computers gave us brand new sounds, and many styles now live side by side.
In this lesson
New classical music
Claude Debussy (1862–1918) wrote music that sounds like colours and mist, with chords used for their beauty rather than their direction. Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) wrote music with strong, sharp rhythms. When his ballet The Rite of Spring was first shown in Paris in 1913, the first audience reacted so loudly that it became famous.
Jazz
Jazz grew in New Orleans, in the United States, in the early 1900s. It mixes blues, ragtime, marches and African rhythms, and its players make up music as they go, which is called improvisation. Louis Armstrong (1901–1971), a trumpet player and singer, became one of its greatest stars.
Recordings and radio
Before recordings, you could only hear music when someone played it near you. After the phonograph, and then radio, a singer in one city could be heard in thousands of homes. Listening to music at any time became normal.
Rock, electric guitars and synthesizers
In the 1950s, rock and roll mixed blues, country and gospel with a strong beat, and the electric guitar became its voice. In the 1960s, inventors such as Robert Moog built synthesizers, machines that make sounds with electricity. Today, a laptop can be a whole recording studio.
Hip-hop, pop and today
Hip-hop began in the Bronx, in New York City, in the 1970s, with DJs who played the rhythmic parts of records and rappers who spoke rhymes over them. Today pop, rock, classical, electronic and music from every country can all be found in the same place, on your phone.
Piano sound: Salamander Grand Piano by Alexander Holm (CC BY 3.0).