Themes for the study of 20th century music

1. One of the key aspects of Modernism in all the arts (music, visual art, architecture, literature) is abstraction.
   1. However, abstraction is more difficult to define in music than in other arts.
   2. What are the various ways in which composers and performers have made music more abstract during the 20th century?
   3. Is there also a countervailing tendency to make certain aspects of music more concrete?
2. By the close of the 20th century, concert music ("classical music") was no longer the only venue for serious music. Many would argue that concert music was only a shadow of its former self as far as cultural influence, and that popular music is now the most important venue for serious music.
   1. What evidence can we adduce for and against this view?
   2. Should we call into question the very notion of "popular" and "serious" musics?
3. Why does so much of the music of Modernism have an "audience problem" not found in contemporary developments in visual art? For example, a total abstractionist like Jackson Pollock may have been a challenging outsider figure at first, but today crowds flock to exhibits of his work. The same is not true of the music of Schoenberg, Stravinsky (with a few exceptions), Ives, or Messiaen.
4. The balance of power between Europe and the United States shifts decisively in the 20th century, militarily, economically, and culturally.
   1. In 1900, the notion of a serious American music not directly based on European models is in its infancy. By the last years of the 20th century, few would argue that Europe is still the unquestioned center of serious music.
   2. American popular music is now known all over the globe.
   3. So many European musicians took refuge in the US in the 1930s-1940s that American music became somewhat Europeanized.