Contemporary Classical

A broad designation for composed art music written from the later twentieth century to the present, encompassing the generations that followed the postwar avant-garde. Contemporary classical is not a single style: it includes minimalism and post-minimalism, spectralism, the renewed tonality and large orchestral forms of composers such as *John Adams*, electronically extended chamber music, and works that absorb folk, popular and non-Western materials into notated scores. Its institutions are the symphony orchestra, the string quartet, the new-music ensemble, the opera house and the university, and its output circulates through commissions, festivals and recordings rather than through a commercial mainstream.