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Second National Preventive Health Research Programme

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20th and 21st Centuries Music means as in other genres of music, choral music underwent a period of experimentation and development during the 20th century. While few well-known composers focused primarily on choral music, most significant composers of the early century wrote at least a small amount.

The early late-Romantic composers, such as Richard Strauss and Sergei Rachmaninoff, contributed to the genre, but it was Ralph Vaughan Williams who made one of the greatest contributions of this type, writing a new Mass in G harking back to the Renaissance style, but displaying the vibrancy of the new harmonic languages. Williams also arranged English and Scottish folk songs.  Arnold Schoenberg's Friede auf Erden represents the culmination of the late Romantic style, a tonal kaleidoscope whose tonal centres are constantly shifting (similar to his Verklärte Nacht for strings dating from the same period).

At around this time, at the tail end of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth, male voice Choirs attained a particular popularity amongst the coal miners of South Wales, with numerous Choirs being established at this time, such as the Treorchy Male Choir.  Although the mining communities which birthed these Choirs largely died out in the 1970s and 1980s with the decline of the Welsh coal industry, many of these Choirs have gone from strength to strength and are seen as a 'traditional' part of Welsh culture.

As the century progressed, modernist techniques found their expression in choral music, including serial compositions by Schoenberg, Anton von Webern, and Stravinsky; eclectic compositions by Charles Ives; dissonant counterpoint by Olivier Messiaen (Cinq Rechants) and Paul Hindemith (When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd).  Because of the difficulty of singing atonal music, these compositions are rarely performed today, although enjoyed by specialists.

More accessible styles found an enduring legacy in choral music.  Benjamin Britten wrote a number of well-known choral works, including the War Requiem, Five Flower Songs, and Rejoice in the Lamb. Francis Poulenc's Motets pour le temps de noël, Gloria, and Mass in G are often performed. A primitivist approach is represented by Carl Orff's widely performed Carmina Burana. In the United States, Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, and Randall Thompson wrote signature American pieces. In Eastern Europe, Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály wrote a small amount of choral music.

Post-World War II music took experimentation to its logical extreme. Sinfonia by Luciano Berio includes a chorus. Krzysztof Penderecki's St. Luke Passion includes choral shouting, clusters, and aleatoric techniques. Richard Felciano wrote for chorus and electronic tape.

Minimalism is represented by Arvo Pärt, whose Johannespassion and Magnificat have received regular performances.

Avant-garde techniques:

Black Spirituals came into greater prominence and arrangements of such spirituals became part of the standard choral repertoire. Notable composers and arrangers of choral music in this tradition include Jester Hairston and Moses Hogan.

During the mid 20th century, barbershop quartets began experimenting with combining larger ensembles together into choruses which sing barbershop music in 4 parts, often with staging, choreography and costumes. The first international barbershop chorus contest was held in 1953 and continues to this day, the most recent one being held in Denver, CO, with the Westminster Chorus winning the gold medal.

During the late 20th century, one of the major areas of growth in the choral movement has been in the areas of GLBT choruses. Starting around 1979, gay men's choruses were founded within a period of months in major U.S. cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Seattle and Dallas. Over the last quarter century the number of such groups, men's, women's and mixed, has exploded. GALA Choruses, an associative group, now has well-over 100 member choruses throughout the world.

At the turn of the century, choral music has received a small resurgence of interest due in no small part to a renewed emphasis and interest in multi-cultural music. Ethnomusicology often focuses on vocal music because of the unique combination of both text and music. Although it is too soon to discern trends in the 21st century, the spirit of more practical music which dominated the last decades of the 20th century, most notably represented by John Rutter, Karl Jenkins, and Morten Lauridsen, seems to be continuing in the works of composers like Eric Whitacre and Kentaro Sato.