Rzewski

Rzewski, another American composer, was born in 1933. His piece "Winnsboro Cotton-mill Blues, begins with a series of repeated bass notes that have a motoric feel. It sounds similar to a machine turing over and over. It has a strong rhythmic drive. As the work progresses so does the range and it moves to a higher register. Yet it always moves back to having a emphasis on the bass. About mid way through there is a very jazzy, improvisatory section, but then it returns back to the churning bass motion.

Adams

John Adams is an American minimalist composer. He wrote China Gates for the piano in 1977. He claims that the steady 8th notes throughout the piece represent "the steady rainfall of time." The form is in three parts, and is close to a palindrome.

Crumb

Crumb's music is influenced by a large array of previous composers. His music, like Debussy, prioritizes the actual sound and sonorities of music. It is almost all foreground and is easy to listen to. He wrote a lot of compositions based on symbols, like Messiaen. In his books of Makrokosmos, he wrote every 4th piece in a symbolic shape. In 1962 he wrote a set of 5 piano pieces. He uses many different techniques in these pieces, such as preparing some of the strings on the piano, strumming on some of the strings, and using a wide arrange of textures and registers on the piano.

Cage

Cage, 1912-1992, was an avant garde composer who studied with Cowell and Schoenberg. He also used many extended techniques, and furthered the development of the prepared piano. He, like other contemporaries of his, also explored music of chance.

Cowell

Henry Cowell, 1897-1965, was an American composer who did used many extended techniques on the piano. He wrote works like Aeolian Harp and the Banshee that required the performer to pluck and strum the strings. His music uses tone clusters, played by the hand or forearm, and relies greatly on overtones.

Berio

Berio is another italian composer, who did a lot of experimentation with electronic music. He wrote a series of Sequenzas for different instruments. Sequenza IV is written for piano. It also has a very thin texture. It uses a wide range and jumps around the keyboard.

Dallapiccola

Dallapiccola, an italian composer who lived from 1904-1975, was a serialist composer who was greatly influenced by the second Viennese school. His Quaderno Musicale di Annalibera is made up of 11 short movements. They almost have very thin textures. They begin in a very contemplative manner and have slow tempi.

Boulez

Boulez is a French composer who also studied with Messiaen. He composed a set of 12 Notations. His music has gone through many phases, based on serialism, new experimentations such as integrating improvisation in his music and giving the performer more freedoms, and electronic music.

Stockhausen

Stockhausen was a student of Messiaen, although he went in a much different musical direction. He explored electronic music and developed many new ways of notations music. His first four Klavierstucke remained very serial. His later ones began to use new techniques however. In no. 6 he made a tempo chart above the staff, no. 10 uses different angles of bars to represent accelerando and ritardando, and no.11 has 200 repetitions of the same chord. He also wrote pieces in an aleatorica style, which is based of chance. One of his works uses 19 bits of music that you play in any order you feel creating a different performance each time.

Messiaen

Messiaen has many very distinct influences in his music. One is his synastheticism. He is able to create many different musical colors based on this. His interest in color went even deeper. He was very interested in stain glass windows, and using the inspiration of their colors for his music. He tried to replicate bird songs in his music and in 1958 wrote a catalogue of birds. He is probably most famous for writing the Quartet for the end of time, written in 1940 in a concentration camp. For keyboard repertoire he is most known for his set of pieces entitled "Give my regards to Jesus." These were written not long after, in 1944. There are 20 small pieces each giving a different view of the birth of Jesus. Some of them are known for there very slow tempos that cause the listener to contemplate the music rather than feel it moving them in a certain direction.

Barber

Barber's Piano Sonata op. 26, composed in 1949, has a very improvisatory feel to it. This is likely due to his influence from jazz. It has a very thick texture with many different idea's emerging through it. He uses a wide range in the register to build intensity but comes back to a more central register when it pulls back.

Copland

Copland's Piano Variations consist of 20 variations. It was written in 1930 and is based off of Bach's c sharp minor fugue, book I. It can be identified by its sparse texture, the use of upward and downward motion on the piano and meter irregularity.