If you don’t want to read much on the history of music, but want to feel the legendary “bridge” between the tonal and atonal music, Gustav Mahler‘s symphonies (their movements without the vocal parts) are the best.
Mahler is appreciated by both conservatives and progressivists: the composer is among very few to satisfy to opposing tastes.
His life was not full of tempestuous events: he produced one symphony once in approximately two-three years, thus spanning the “fin de siècle” period between 1887 and 1910.
His instrumental discoveries were and still are sources for cartoons and jokes like the ones above.
Nos. 1, 5, 6, 7, 9 and 10 (unfinished) are 100% instrumental and are the most powerful; especially 5, 6 and 7 when the composer was at the peak of his forces.
For clearer vision exclude vocal movements from: No. 2 (vocal movements are 4 and 6); No. 3 (voc. mvts 4, 5); No. 4 (voc. mvt 4); No. 8 (all the mvts contain vocal parts; the least characteristic of his works).
First published in the Levinarium Telegram Channel (now closed and deleted)