Symphony of Sirens music module

6. Jazzed-up classical

One of the reasons it becomes increasingly difficult to pinpoint "modernist" trends in the 1920s is that some avant-garde composers become enamored of other thriving genres: jazz and popular theater.  Consider two brief examples:  Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959), who composed his Jazz Suite while in Paris, where he spent most of his time from 1923 onward.  You will have no problem detecting the jazz motifs in the prelude:

  

But notice how cleverly he manages not to be "co-opted": the suite never feels like a mere "arrangement" of jazz tunes.

The young Dmitri Shostakovich made his living composing for theater, including a setting of Mayakovsky's The Bedbug (1929). Listen to the first movement:

  

Notice his penchant for masterfully encouraging generic expectations, and then taking you slighlty off balance before returning to a comfortable phrase again.  And then stretching you a little further the next time around.

Shostakovich also playfully subverted the foxtrot in the third movement of his Jazz Suite.