It seems twentieth century music is majorly characterized by widespread panic to create a new sound for the new era. In addition to growing tired of the “excesses of Romanticism”, it was decided current society could not “live much longer by tradition” (Auner 2).
I found this fixation on “new” sound surprising and almost frivolous, considering the calendar is just a social construct. Even if the art world had exhausted Romanticism, the movement to change was prompted mostly by the year changing. Requiring a complete cultural reset seems unnatural and postured, as artists must consciously reinvent themselves instead of expressing themselves candidly.
Categorization, and unnecessary categorization at that, is prominent at the turn of the century in other areas as well. Along with placing such weight on the time period, the twentieth century saw a “maze of ‘-isms’”, or the sorting and labeling of artistic genres: Impressionism, Symbolism, Exoticism, Primitivism etc…(Auner 2). Artists agreed that a new direction was needed, but struggled to progress in a single, unified way. This excessive labeling of genres is another situation in which socially constructed categories create more self-inflicted disorder and frustration.
So, why do artists feel the need to sort and classify culture?
While I have argued that categorization can create pressure and make the artistic process less natural, I wonder if the prompt to create something fresh could be inspirational for some. Without the desire to create the next revolutionary cultural movement, society would not be so motivated to progress. In my opinion, it just makes more sense to label periods or styles in retrospect, and not before they have even developed.
