Popular and Serious: Modernism, the Avant-Garde, and Punk Essay

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Introduction

The 20th century was marked by the changes in the musical language that were aimed to challenge and reinterpret older categories of music. At the beginning of the century, modernism and the avant-garde were the most revolutionary musical movements, while later, with the development of punk and other popular music styles, the boundaries of art expanded to include the sociological dimension. Modernism, the avant-garde, and punk use similar techniques to appeal to the audience, but their target audience, aims, technological means, and social appeal are different. In contrast to serious music, popular music aims for a greater audience and touches the topics that concern the general public, using the widely available ways of music production and distribution.

Modernism, the avant-garde, and punk

Modernism emerged around the turn of the 20th century and aimed to strip away traditional aesthetics and create a new musical language that expressed the mood and artistic tendencies of the age. It developed new ways of approaching and organizing melodic, harmonic, sonic, and rhythmic aspects of music. Arnold Schoenberg, one of the most prominent modernist composers, created musical pieces that rejected the tonality and were described as “a methodical negation of all heretofore accepted musical rules […] and tonal systems” (cited in Auner 36). Anton Webern, following Schoenberg’s footsteps, wrote freely atonal pieces, containing almost no themes or motives in the traditional sense. His Op. 7 No. 1 (1910) presents four contrasting phrases related only by subtle association, breaking with the old tonal connections (Auner 51). Closely related to the larger artistic developments of that time, musical modernism strived to develop new ways of expression that revolutionized the existing musical language.

The avant-garde went further in the modernist critique of the traditional musical canon. It aimed to radically reinvent the musical language, criticizing existing artistic conventions and rejecting the status quo in favor of original elements. According to Weiss and Taruskin, in the avant-garde, “the content of art was mood and emotion pushed to irrationally wild and violent extremes” (426). One of the most prominent examples of the avant-garde was the Dada music that was based on the ideas of the Dadaists from right after World War II and included forms that poked fun at the whole musical establishment (Brill 59). They created experimental music, in which shocking the recipient was the dominant principle of artistic intent.

As new means of sound production and music, distribution was developed, popular music emerged that aimed to appeal to the public through both the content and new means of expression. The punk scene that first crystallized in England in the late 1970s started to produce music that connected the New York avant-garde art scene with the musical language of mainstream rock (Henry 30). The Sex Pistols, the first and most notorious punk band, established the underground rock aesthetics that used overt social and political implications combined with a distinct sound, which was intentionally non-commercial and amateur (Henry 30–31). Their music simultaneously created a link and distinguished popular and serious art, using revolutionary techniques and language to express the ideas that appealed to the general public.

Throughout the 20th century, the distinction between serious and popular music has become more profound as new technologies and new means of artistic expression developed. Radio broadcasting of music, which began in the 1920s, helped to spread popular songs to a huge audience, enabling a much larger population to hear songs performed by professional singers. Since the invention of television in the 1960s, it began to play an increasingly important role in the establishment of popular music. In the 1960s, the development of new recording technologies changed how music was produced and distributed. Under the traditional canon, music was played in concerts for a small audience of eager listeners. Now, it could be spread to a much wider audience, which mostly included members of the general public, and it has led to gradual changes in its social and cultural appeal.

Modernist and avant-garde composers created pieces that strived to reinvent the existing musical language but lacked an appeal to the audience. They were focused primarily on the unconventional expression of the artist’s ideas. For example, Nam June Paik’s piece “One for Violin Solo” (1962) is a musical number that uses no musical language at all. Over five minutes, Paik, standing in front of the audience, very slowly and intently lifts a violin and then smashes it with one blow on the table. After the long, drawn-out suspense, only one final sound is produced by the instrument. In this piece, the violin is used as a symbol of music in general that collides with public space. It is undoubtedly a revolutionary piece of art that has several layers of meaning, but it appeals to the viewers who can appreciate the artistic idea rather than the general audience that values traditional musical forms.

Punk music evolved from the Dada experiments and used many of the same revolutionary tactics employed by the members of the avant-garde movements. Among them were unusual fashions, the blurring of boundaries between art and everyday life, intentional provocation of the audience, use of untrained artists, and drastic reorganization of accepted performance styles (Henry 30). However, punk music also had a social appeal that distinguished it from the avant-garde experiments. The Sex Pistols created an underground rock aesthetics that was based on irony and pessimism characteristic of 1960s England (Henry 30). In their texts, they addressed the problems faced by the British society of that time: high unemployment rates, a steadily rising cost of living, and social inequality. Their music was loud, fast, repetitive, and almost unintelligible, but carried meaningful messages that appealed to the general public.

Conclusion

During the 20th century, there was a large increase in the variety of music, much of which was created in defiance of the traditional musical canon. Both modernism and the avant-garde strived to reinvent the existing musical language and strip away traditional aesthetics. However, they were primarily focused on artistic ideas that the general public found hard to understand and could not relate to. Punk music that emerged in the 1960s used the same revolutionary tactics along with the new music production and distribution means and the content that appealed to the masses. Simplifying the artistic means of serious art, punk contributed to the development of popular music that had not only artistic but also sociological value. It differed from serious art in its availability to the general audience and the expressed ideas that conveyed a social meaning.

Works Cited

Auner, Joseph. Music in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. W. W. Norton, 2013.

Brill, Dorothee. Shock and the Senseless in Dada and Fluxus. UPNE, 2010.

Henry, Tricia. “Punk and Avant-Garde Art.” Popular Music, vol. 17, no. 4, 1984, pp. 30–36.

Weiss, Piero, and Richard Taruskin. Music in the Western World. Cengage Learning, 2007.

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IvyPanda. 2022. "Popular and Serious: Modernism, the Avant-Garde, and Punk." February 26, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/popular-and-serious-modernism-the-avant-garde-and-punk/.

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