ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author explains music by three master composers from the second half of the twentieth century: the Italian Luciano Berio, the Hungarian György Ligeti, and the American George Crumb. He illustrates the wealth of compositional approaches in the decades after World War II and represents three general stylistic trends. Pitch reductions of the melodic-harmonic processes common to all instruments reveal the next compositional level of net-structures. The harmonic process is produced by constant chromatic fluctuation of melodic microstructures (short melodic patterns moving within a range no larger than a tritone). The essential principle of overlap is the use of common elements between quotations. In literal overlap, some elements at the end of one quotation intersect with some elements at the beginning of the next quotation. In a broader sense, overlap connects two quotations by using common elements that do not necessarily need to be at their beginning or end.
