21st-century classical music is Western art music in the contemporary classical tradition that has been produced since the year 2000. A loose and ongoing period, 21st-century classical music is defined entirely by the calendar and does not refer to a musical style in the sense of Baroque or Romantic music.
Many elements of the previous century have been retained, including postmodernism, polystylism, and eclecticism, which seek to incorporate elements of all styles of music irrespective of whether these are "classical" or not—these efforts represent a slackening differentiation between the various musical genres. Important influences include rock, pop, jazz, and the dance traditions associated with these. The combination of classical music and multimedia is another notable practice in the 21st century; the Internet, alongside its related technology, are important resources in this respect. Attitudes towards female composers are also changing.
Overview
During the 20th century, composers started drawing on an ever wider range of sources for inspiration and developed a wide variety of techniques. Debussy became fascinated by the music of a Vietnamese theatre troupe and a Javanese gamelan ensemble, and composers were increasingly influenced by the musics of other cultures. Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School developed the dodecaphonic system and serialism. Varèse, Stockhausen, and Xenakis helped pioneer electronic music. Jazz and the popular music of the West became increasingly important—both as influences on art music and as genres of their own. La Monte Young experimented with performance art; John Cage applied the I Ching to his music; Reich and Glass developed minimalism. Music generally became more and more diverse in style as the century progressed.
This trend has continued into the 21st century: in 2009 BBC Music Magazine asked 10 composers, mostly British (John Adams, Julian Anderson, Henri Dutilleux, Brian Ferneyhough, Jonathan Harvey, James MacMillan, Michael Nyman, Roxanna Panufnik, Einojuhani Rautavaara, and John Tavener), to discuss the latest trends in western classical music. The consensus was that no particular style is favoured and that individuality is to be encouraged. The works of each of these composers represent different aspects of the music of this century, but these composers all came to the same basic conclusion: music is too diverse to categorise or limit. In his interview with the magazine, Dutilleux argued that "there is only good or bad music, whether serious or popular". The music of the 21st century is mostly post-modernist, drawing on many different styles and open to a great many influences. Yet it is still a struggle to encourage the public to listen to contemporary music.
Styles and influence
Post-modernism continues to exert an influence on composers in the 21st century. Styles developed in the 20th century, such as minimalism (Philip Glass, Michael Nyman, Steve Reich), postminimalism (Louis Andriessen, Gavin Bryars, John McGuire, Pauline Oliveros (died 2016), Julia Wolfe), New Complexity (James Dillon, Brian Ferneyhough), and New Simplicity (Wolfgang Rihm) continue to be developed.
Polystylism and musical eclecticism are growing trends in the 21st century. They combine elements of diverse musical genres and compositional techniques, often alien to the composers' own culture, into a unified and coherent body of works. Composers have often started their musical career in one discipline and have later migrated to or embraced others, while retaining important elements from the former discipline. In some cases, a composer now labelled "classical" may have started out in another discipline. For example, a specific label for John Zorn's music is difficult to choose: he started out as a performance artist and moved through various genres including jazz, hardcore punk, film music, and classical, and often embraces Jewish musical elements. All of these diverse styles appear in his works. Julian Anderson combines elements from many different musical genres and practices in his works. Elements of modernism, spectral music, and electronic music are combined with elements of the folk music of Eastern Europe and the resulting works are often influenced by the modality of Indian ragas. His large-scale Book of Hours for 20 players and live electronics premiered in 2005. Tansy Davies's music also fuses elements of pop and classical music. Prince and Iannis Xenakis are both major influences. Kati Agócs' work for chorus and orchestra The Debrecen Passion (2015) surrounds settings of poetry by Szilárd Borbély with mystical texts of Medieval Latin, Hungarian, and Georgian origin, as well as a Kabalistic prayer.