Settling the Score

Music has changed more in the 20th century than in any previous one: the gulf between 1800 (Beethoven's First Symphony, Haydn's The Seasons) and 1900 (Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius, Mahler's Fourth Symphony) is easier to bridge than that between 1900 and 1913 (Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring). Within ten years of Stravinsky's masterpiece, Arnold Schoenberg brought about another, even more revolutionary change. In less than a quarter of a century music had been radically transformed, and it has continued to evolve at an accelerating pace. Since the 1970s styles and isms have proliferated to an extent that even professional critics and music historians can barely keep up.