{
  "slug": "modernism",
  "name": "Modernism",
  "aliases": [
    "twentieth century classical",
    "serialism",
    "second viennese school",
    "avant-garde",
    "contemporary classical"
  ],
  "description": "Western art music after tonality stopped being compulsory. Atonality, serial method, noise admitted as material, and eventually silence — a century of composers deciding which inherited rule to stop obeying next.",
  "origin": {
    "place": "Vienna, Paris and New York",
    "year": 1908
  },
  "lineage": [
    {
      "genre": "romantic",
      "url": "https://waxonia.com/genre/romantic/",
      "inherited": "The chord that would not resolve, finally left unresolved. Schoenberg described his own atonality as the logical next step from Wagner and Mahler, and he was being descriptive rather than modest."
    },
    {
      "genre": "impressionism",
      "url": "https://waxonia.com/genre/impressionism/",
      "inherited": "The permission to treat sound as material. Once Debussy had shown a chord could exist for its colour rather than its function, the argument about whether it had to belong to a key was already half over."
    }
  ],
  "bpm": null,
  "updated": "2026-08-30",
  "url": "https://waxonia.com/genre/modernism/",
  "trackCount": 10,
  "curatedBy": [],
  "playlists": {},
  "tracks": [
    {
      "rank": 1,
      "trackKey": "igor-stravinsky--the-rite-of-spring",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/igor-stravinsky--the-rite-of-spring/",
      "title": "The Rite of Spring",
      "artist": "Igor Stravinsky",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/igor-stravinsky/",
      "year": 1913,
      "label": null,
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "The premiere ended in a riot, which has slightly obscured the fact that the rhythmic writing is still the most violent thing in the orchestral repertoire. Nothing has caught up.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Igor%20Stravinsky%20The%20Rite%20of%20Spring",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=dcwB67IoefA",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 2,
      "trackKey": "arnold-schoenberg--pierrot-lunaire",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/arnold-schoenberg--pierrot-lunaire/",
      "title": "Pierrot lunaire",
      "artist": "Arnold Schoenberg",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/arnold-schoenberg/",
      "year": 1912,
      "label": null,
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "Twenty-one poems delivered in Sprechstimme — neither spoken nor sung — over five players. Unsettling in a way that has not worn off in a century of trying.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Arnold%20Schoenberg%20Pierrot%20lunaire",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=U5xJTY2A8fY",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 3,
      "trackKey": "john-cage--433",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/john-cage--433/",
      "title": "4'33\"",
      "artist": "John Cage",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/john-cage/",
      "year": 1952,
      "label": null,
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "Four minutes and thirty-three seconds in which the performer plays nothing and the room becomes the piece. Endlessly mocked, and every field recording and ambient record since is standing on it.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/John%20Cage%204'33%22",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=JTEFKFiXSx4",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 4,
      "trackKey": "olivier-messiaen--quatuor-pour-la-fin-du-temps",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/olivier-messiaen--quatuor-pour-la-fin-du-temps/",
      "title": "Quatuor pour la fin du temps",
      "artist": "Olivier Messiaen",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/olivier-messiaen/",
      "year": 1941,
      "label": null,
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "Written and first performed in a prisoner-of-war camp, for the four instruments available. Birdsong, non-retrogradable rhythm, and an unembarrassed faith that the circumstances make impossible to patronise.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Olivier%20Messiaen%20Quatuor%20pour%20la%20fin%20du%20temps",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=QAQmZvxVffY",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 5,
      "trackKey": "alban-berg--wozzeck",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/alban-berg--wozzeck/",
      "title": "Wozzeck",
      "artist": "Alban Berg",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/alban-berg/",
      "year": 1922,
      "label": null,
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "Atonal opera about a soldier destroyed by poverty and humiliation, built on strict classical forms nobody in the audience can hear. Berg proved the new language could carry a story.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Alban%20Berg%20Wozzeck",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=1g6mql2l8-c",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 6,
      "trackKey": "bela-bartok--music-for-strings-percussion-and-celesta",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/bela-bartok--music-for-strings-percussion-and-celesta/",
      "title": "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta",
      "artist": "Béla Bartók",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/bela-bartok/",
      "year": 1936,
      "label": null,
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "A fugue that expands outwards in semitones from a single note, and a night-music slow movement of extraordinary strangeness. Folk research and mathematics, in the same piece.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/B%C3%A9la%20Bart%C3%B3k%20Music%20for%20Strings%2C%20Percussion%20and%20Celesta",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=-9LWHEf0VFo",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 7,
      "trackKey": "krzysztof-penderecki--threnody-to-the-victims-of-hiroshima",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/krzysztof-penderecki--threnody-to-the-victims-of-hiroshima/",
      "title": "Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima",
      "artist": "Krzysztof Penderecki",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/krzysztof-penderecki/",
      "year": 1960,
      "label": null,
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "Fifty-two strings playing clusters, glissandi and things not previously notated. Penderecki originally called it 8'37\" and gave it the title only after hearing what he had written.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Krzysztof%20Penderecki%20Threnody%20to%20the%20Victims%20of%20Hiroshima",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=p9xAjiZo7go",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 8,
      "trackKey": "dmitri-shostakovich--symphony-no-5",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/dmitri-shostakovich--symphony-no-5/",
      "title": "Symphony No. 5",
      "artist": "Dmitri Shostakovich",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/dmitri-shostakovich/",
      "year": 1937,
      "label": null,
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "Written under real threat of arrest and subtitled, by someone, a Soviet artist's reply to just criticism. Whether the triumphant ending is sincere is the most consequential unanswered question in music.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Dmitri%20Shostakovich%20Symphony%20No.%205",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=T1h1NJMKtnc",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 9,
      "trackKey": "iannis-xenakis--metastaseis",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/iannis-xenakis--metastaseis/",
      "title": "Metastaseis",
      "artist": "Iannis Xenakis",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/iannis-xenakis/",
      "year": 1954,
      "label": null,
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "Sixty-one players on sixty-one separate parts, the string glissandi drawn as the ruled surfaces Xenakis was designing with Le Corbusier at the time. Architecture, performed.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Iannis%20Xenakis%20Metastaseis",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=uaPVaPPDmVs",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 10,
      "trackKey": "luigi-russolo--risveglio-di-una-citta",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/luigi-russolo--risveglio-di-una-citta/",
      "title": "Risveglio di una città",
      "artist": "Luigi Russolo",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/luigi-russolo/",
      "year": 1913,
      "label": null,
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "Written for intonarumori — noise machines Russolo built himself — after a manifesto arguing that industrial noise was the only honest material left. Thirty-five years early, and completely correct.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Luigi%20Russolo%20Risveglio%20di%20una%20citt%C3%A0",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=sDXcRaOtVas",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}