Avant-Garde Classical Composers Essay

The avant-garde classical composers used different musical canvases as songs for remembrance. The combination of classical music with the unique and original elements of avant-garde has made a powerful impact on society. Composers used different music styles, music techniques, features, and elements of art to create unique songs expressing the feelings of the whole generation. Some musical pieces represent painful feelings, deep human emotions, and fearful experiences while others talk about very deep human drama, the impact of war on people’s lives, and horror effects of wars. Electroacoustic, programmatic, and experimental music have all provided a musical canvas for composers to express their thoughts and sentiments on war. The combination of languages, tones, words and phrases effectively collaborated with emotions, melodies, and voices, which resulted in wholeness, professionalism, and magic effects. Avant-garde techniques allowed composers to create a real picture of awful war events and establish the intimate relationships with the war experiences, human feelings and emotions. The avant-garde classical composers effectively used different musical canvases as songs for remembrance combining absolutely different tunes and melodies, instruments and tones, emotions, sounds, and feelings.

An avant-garde classical composer Arnold Schoenberg is one of those who effectively used different musical elements to create powerful emotional songs for remembrance. “A Survival from Warsaw” (1947) is about the persecution of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, a memorial to the victims of Holocaust. The composition represents great power and immense musical strength, complex issues and the effects of past traumas on human future. Schoenberg’s innovative approach, modern techniques, vivid poetry and imagination, men’s chorus and powerful orchestral responses create a unique music piece for remembrance. The composition represents dynamic speaking, intense emotional expressions, and dialogues but lacks of musical content, which grabs listeners’ attention and triggers curiosity. Schonberg involved different instruments, different perspectives, different orchestra choices, and different languages to effectively depict pain, cruelty, and suffrages from the past.

Benjamin Britten’s work “War Requiem” is another example of avant-garde classic work with unusual musical shapes, tones, and techniques written to commemorate the dead of World War II. It is considered an anti-war composition, a memorial to all War not just World War II. The composer used poems by Wilfred Owen that the author produced during World War I and combined them with Latin writings; opening orchestra passage, serious melody, the features of irony, emotional strength, and complicated ideas make “War Requiem” one of the most intensive, unusual works of that time. Britten wanted to emphasize the fear of evil war and its destructive effect on humanity.

“Black Angels” (1971), “an electric string quartet” composed by George Crumb is another fantastic job about the fight of good and evil, a protest against Vietnam. In his work, composer implemented a set of revolutionary musical techniques to address the musical expressional against the war and express a mixture of feelings against the war; Crumb gave absolutely different meaning to musical elements like rhythm, harmony, dynamics, melody, tonality, etc. When it comes to the use of instrument like violin, it triggers the listeners’ attention and increases anxiety. “Black Angel” is all about freedom; the composition does not have a form or specific rhythmic elements but rather represents unusual sounds and tunes. Violin often produces the sounds of crying or yelling, which makes powerful impact on the audience and adds new feelings and true emotions.

Steve Reich in his “Different Trains” used many symbols, phrases, words, sounds and places that he wanted to memorize in his composition. The song is about memory and loss, which consists with the three sections: the first is America before the war, the second is about Holocaust survivals and deaths, and the third is after the war experiences and memories. Produced in 1988, the song served like a memorial to Holocaust and World War II. From the beginning, Reich uses sounds of different trains to create so-called “symphony” of past events and human feelings; unusual sounds and combination of musical instruments create a real picture of past events, fears, and perceptions. Through the record speech, melodies, dynamic contrasts, and string instruments, the composer wanted to reflect his memories, tell about Holocaust experiences of survivals. Reich creates his own music philosophy, a new genre, in which he transforms words into music, depicts dynamic changes of the past, but at the same time reflects melodic harmony and balance. The composer effectively plays with melodies from the end to the beginning, combines speech intonations, adds sounds of steam engine whistle and sirens, samples pieces from his interviews, and accurately depicts social and political issues of that period.

The avant-garde classic composer John Adams “On the Transmigration of Souls” also uses different musical canvases as song for remembrance. Written to commemorate the terrorist attack 9/11, the composition represents a complicated, deeply-rooted feelings, fears, and emotions. The composer chose unusual musical direction and preferred “to focus on the loss and grief expressed by those who were left behind” (npr.org). Adams created so-called “musical bridge” between musical sounds and human emotions; the composition involves the three categories of text such as reading of victims’ names, the overall sounds of the city, and onstage chorus reading texts took from missing people’s signs. Adams created simple and direct composition with sudden musical elements and loud sounds to represent people’s shock, fear, and sudden loss of loved ones.

As seen, many composers managed to build a strong connection to original wars and tragic experiences. Steve Reich, Arnold Schoenberg, Benjamin Britten, George Crumb, John Adams, David del Tredeci and others talented composers produced a set of powerful songs for remembrance. Their pieces of art serve as a healing message for humanity.

Works Cited:

Huizenga, Tom. “John Adams’ Memory Space: ‘On the transmigration of Souls’.Accessed June 15 2018    https://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2011/09/10/140341459/john-adams-memory-space-on-the-transmigration-of-souls

The terms offer and acceptance. (2016, May 17). Retrieved from

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016.

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

freeessays.club (2016) The terms offer and acceptance [Online].
Available at:

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]
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