Unit 3 Reading J. Peter Burkholder Reading -twentieth century characterized by diversity and change in Western Art Music -variety of musical languages and techniques -no mainstream, central development linking diverse group of composers from this time period -yet there is mainstream of 20th century music, not in shared style but of shared concerns -music written for highly informed members of audience and to continue tradition of European art music -as well as to distinguish themselves stylistically from other composers -calls mainstream music historicist: meaning composers are writing music for a museum, which is what the concert hall has become in Sphor and Hummel’s period, music became for the mass market “long on style and polish but short of brains”(117) -earlier in Mozart’s era concert audience was for both connoisseurs and less knowledgable people -new mass audience in Sphor’s era more hostile to connoisseurship and the music performed did not engage musically intelligent -as a result, more serious musicians turned back to composers like Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn (considered the “geniuses of a great musical art”(117)) -the concept of a master and masterpiece was created concert entertainment in Mozart’s era and spectacle in Spohr’s became more of a lecture which required background study and concentration from the audience -musically literate audience, where music was more than entertainment and had to be understood -popular music was essentially eradicated from concert halls to other forms of venues “By the last quarter of the 19th century, the concert hall was primarily a museum for the display of works of art from previous generations, rather than a forum for the new” (117) -much of the music performed after mid-century was of the classic composers composers writing serious music were themselves audience members for classic music -study and emulation of composers from the previous centuries (118) -Viennese classic composers was revived and being played in concert halls Brahms’s generation signaled a period in which “composers began to study, admire, and emu- late the composers of the previous several centuries as well”
