Western classical music since 1910, including expressionism, neoclassicism, minimalism, serialism and experimental techniques, their distinctive harmony, rhythm and textures, and how twentieth and twenty-first century composers broke with earlier traditions.

What this dot point is asking

AQA wants you to know the main styles of Western art music after 1910 (expressionism, neoclassicism, minimalism, serialism and experimental music), recognise their distinctive harmony, rhythm and textures, and apply this to unfamiliar twentieth and twenty-first century extracts. This Area of Study is examined in Section A short questions and in Section B, where it is often paired in a comparison, so you need to hear the contrast between, say, dissonant expressionism and consonant, repetitive minimalism.

Expressionism and serialism

Expressionist music often has angular, disjunct melodies that leap widely, fragmented and irregular rhythms, extreme dynamic contrasts, and a fractured texture that mirrors anxiety, nightmare or psychological extremes. There is no sense of a key to anchor the ear. Serialism is a more systematic response to the same loss of tonality: the composer fixes an order of all twelve chromatic pitches (the tone row) and derives the whole piece from it, using the row forwards, backwards (retrograde), upside down (inversion) and both at once. The aim is that no note dominates as a tonic, so the music sounds atonal but is tightly organised underneath. In the exam, the giveaway for both is dissonance with no key centre.

Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism revisits the clear forms and textures of the Baroque and Classical periods (such as balanced phrases, dance movements and concerto grosso style) but reworks them with modern, often spiky harmony and rhythm. Stravinsky is the leading figure; his earlier ballet music also uses driving, irregular and frequently changing time signatures, pounding ostinato rhythms, dissonant chords built by stacking, and bold, percussive orchestration. The clue to neoclassicism is hearing an old form or texture dressed in unmistakably modern harmony.

Minimalism

Minimalist harmony is usually diatonic or modal and consonant, changing only slowly, which is why minimalism sounds calm and hypnotic compared with the dissonance of expressionism. The interest comes from process: a pattern is set going and then transformed gradually, so the listener hears the same material slowly reveal new shapes. Phasing, where two identical loops drift out of sync and create shifting composite patterns, is the most distinctive minimalist technique and a reliable thing to name in the exam.

Experimental music

Experimental composers explore brand-new sounds: the prepared piano (objects placed on or between the strings to alter the timbre), electronic and tape music, unusual or graphic notation, extended instrumental techniques, and chance or aleatoric music where some choices are left to performers or to randomness. John Cage is the best-known example. The unifying idea is to question what counts as music and to find new sounds and ways of organising them.