Musical Assignment

The musical styles that were used in the years before the 20 th century were similar and the
famous composers released songs with similar music styles for their audience. The similarities in
the styles defined the different eras in which the composed lived such as Baroque and Classical
periods (Burkholder 117). However, the end of the 20 th century saw a change in musical styles
used in the composition of music and although there were few composers that stayed true
canonical or classical compositions, most of the composers explored other musical styles
thereby leading to new forms of music. There were different kinds of variety of music as both
new music compositions differed from the predecessors and musical pieces that were produced
by same composers differed. However, there were various composers that stayed true to their
traditions and continued with the music theory techniques with which they were familiar.
In the article, “Museum Pieces: The Historicist Mainstream is the Music of the Last
Hundred Years” by J. Peter Burkholder, the main aim of the author is to similar trends that
diverse composers use with the aim of putting them in the same era to prove diversity in the era.
It is prudent that there is a challenge of getting a common trend in music when examining a
diverse collection of music. However, Burkholder posits that music that was composed in the
1900 puts great focus on the historicism (Burkholder 121). In this manner, Burkholder posits that
composers of the time copied the techniques that their predecessors used while at the same time

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aiming renewing their pieces. In this manner, the point which he tried to put across is that
composers of the 20 th century greatly emulated their predecessors and there is dismal originality
in their pieces of music.
The musical pieces which were composed by Mozart and Beethoven had great cultural
value and lasted long after the composers died. In this manner, the challenge that composers of
the 1900s had was to compose music that could create value to the audience and suits the
different purposes in the community such as public entertainment, ceremony, dancing, worship
or amateur music making. Burkholder acknowledges that although the sole aim of writing the
pieces of music were not for reverence, they had such a great value to an extent that they were
considered to be museum masterpieces and were almost divine (Burkholder 125). He goes
further ahead to suggest that contemporary composers imitate the sounds of dead composers.
This creates the similarity between art music to an art in the museum because it is music that was
done in the 1900s helped to guide the trends of modern composition during present times.
Furthermore, Burkholder reveals that most of the music pieces that were done in the 20 th
century were as a result of composers of the time trying to imitate museum music and recreate
the composition of the time. The diversity in the different styles of music in the historicist
mainstream resulted from the fact that the every artist sought to create their own solution to the
challenge of creating museum music (Burkholder 123). In this manner, it becomes evident that
all the composers had different goals of emulating the main composers that preceded them and
this resulted to the great diversity witnessed in their music pieces. The traditional composers’
main aims were to create music that educated the audience and not music that could have a
lasting value. It is the message that the music pieces disseminated which created the great
diversity as evident in their music pieces and the ability to recreate them in different forms.

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In responses, new composers sought to create music in traditional form but with different
messages to their audiences. Modern composers borrow the best musical styles and the most
important ingredients of traditional music but keeping the messages unique from one composer
to another. Some of the traditional techniques can be found in the works of composers such as
Rachmaninov although there are some composers such as Ives that began their personal styles to
free themselves from the traditional genres of music (Frisch 174). The likes of Ives are the
composers that formed the bulk of second half of the 20 th century music thereby stamping the
idea of the musical development where the new composers use traditional music to create their
own music thereby boosting their creativity. New composers led to the generation of a trend of
musicians who produced experimental pieces and a close examination of their musical types and
styles reveal the fact that they do not conform to Western type of music (Goehr 206). In this
manner, the experimental pieces are not part of the museum pieces regardless of the fact that
their recording and playing is done in concert halls.
The ideas of Johannes Brahms, Aaron Copland and John Cage are in part reactions to the
existence of the traditional canon of musical masterworks in various ways. First, their ideas
reveal the progressive stages that music has gone through and the developments that the music
industry has witnessed over time from the 20 th century (Cage 44). The artists reveal that in the
process of examining composition of contemporary music, it is clear that focus is mostly put on
techniques used in doing new music as opposed to European classical sounding that has been
copied from canonical music. Furthermore, it is clear that old musical techniques are refined in
new musical pieces to redefine the ‘museum’ of music (Goehr 207). All the artists also believe
that the formation of museum of music is based on the fact that the composers of contemporary
music borrow a lot from their predecessors. It means that having a better understanding of the

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20 th century music calls for careful examination of traditional music theory and not the new
experimental methods that 20 th century composers used.
Finally, the artists react to the existence of traditional canon of musical masterworks in
that they claim there is a need to acknowledge all the movements that came from creativity and
emulation. This is because there are various artists that still conform to the traditional methods of
composition hence produce music that suit the museum types of music. Additionally, the artists
have the view that most of composers managed to move away from the traditional methods by
using blended ideas to create abstract musical pieces. It follows that an examination of traditional
music requires an examination of various elements influencing music composed in the 20 th
century (Frisch 176). This calls for the understanding of influences that traditional composers
had in the industry to understand the progressive stages that music has taken over the year and
the influence of different traditional composers and how the traditional masterworks influence
the modern-day musical pieces.

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Works Cited

Burkholder, “Museum Pieces: The Historicist Mainstream in Music of the Last Hundred
Years,” 115-134
Cage, Silence “Communication,” 44-47
Frisch, Music in the Nineteenth Century Concert Culture and the “Great” Symphony, 174-178
Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works“After 1800: The Beethoven Paradigm,”
excerpts, 205-208