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Innovations In The Late 19th Century

Decent Essays

1. Describe some of the events and scientific discoveries that shook the late nineteenth century’s confidence in the idea of progress. What effect did these events have on music, literature, and the arts?

Despite the incredible advancements from the scientific world in the late nineteenth century, the rapidly developing industry had its dark side. Telephones, automobiles, and airplanes were in their early stages of development, and were all crashing into people's worlds at an a dangerously fast pace. Contrary to the welcomed progress of such periods as the Enlightenment, the overwhelming influx of new ideas was too much, and, as shown many times throughout history, the arts followed the thoughts of the time. Although this time, it was not the celebration of progress, but a look into the pessimistic side of it. Modernism. Feeling as though they could no longer put their faith in anything, artists turned away from science, religion, and the reliability of the human mind. Painters abandoned reality, writers shunned traditional structure, and musicians ignored logic. The faster the innovations of the early twentieth shot up, the more its weak foundations crumbled, and the arts left the structure completely.

2. Was early twentieth-century music responsive to public opinion? Was emotional expression to an audience important to early twentieth-century composers? Explain.

As art continued to drift away from reality in the twentieth century, it inevitably become detached from the ordinary public. Disregarding the conventional expectations of their audience, composers became increasingly experimental. Although to some this was a breath of fresh air from the heavy sentimentality of composers such as Tchaikovsky, many were driven away by the harsh separation of music from feeling. Compared to the romantic sounds from the era of the same name, Modernist music seemed cold and emotionless. One of the most influential composers of the time, Igor Stravinsky, was an outspoken advocate for this detachment, or “objectivity”, as it was called, of sentiment from music, and rejection of Romantic emotionality. Objectivity was the ideal, and this more mathematical approach to music led to some interesting new sounds. Some

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