Ten trends of the past 100 years

Chance music - composed using procedures of chance.

Conceptualism/experimentalism - music in which traditional musical materials are secondary to a specific concept, process, or ideal.

Electronic music - involves electronically produced or altered sound.

Exoticism/eclecticism - the embracing of rock, pop, and jazz, as well as non-Western musical influences.

Impressionism - a style most closely associated with Claude Debussy that favors coloristic "impressions" over strong melodic and rhythmic content.

Improvisation - music made up on the spot.

Minimalism - focuses on small blocks of musical material, often in repetitive patterns.

Neoclassicism - though often associated with middle-period Stravinsky, it spans the 20th century and refers to a return to the formal clarity of the past.

Neoromanticism - a current trend marking a return to the lushness and emotionalism of the Romantic era.

Serialism - tightly controlled ordering of musical elements, especially the 12-tone row.

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