Tracing the Development of Extended Vocal Techniques in ...

approach to art music, however, many American composers set in motion the trend of
studying in European countries. Returning from their educational studies, the newly
cultured fixated on European musical conventions and traditions and filled late
nineteenth-century American concert halls with works modeled on Germanic, French and
Italianate practices or works composed by European masters.
Looking to its older European siblings as its role model, the adolescent country
could not develop its own musical identity because it was dependent on that of others. At
the turn of the twentieth century, however, global political powers grew unstable and
economics began to shift; composers of the American community redirected the
country’s musical perspective from Europe towards itself, seeing for the first time the
essence of its own identity. Embracing the individuality found in freedom of expression,
composers began producing a soundscape the world had never heard before.
In examining the experimental music on American soil, the influence of
advancing technologies, artistic movements, societal conflicts and significant
international composers created an environment conducive to the blossoming of EVTs.
While EVTs were not born of the American music scene, composers working in the
United States who rejected the musical conventions of past centuries and embraced the
musical freedoms of a young nation once musically unidentifiable created an atmosphere
of experimental sounds in which EVTs could successfully surface. The emergence of the
classification, however, would not have been possible had it not been for European
contributions including composers, artistic movements and the products of
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