The 21st century is less than 2 years old so before making any predictions or offering any suggestions as to the future, if indeed predictions can be made at all, it will be necessary to look back over the 20th century and assess the enormous changes and multiplicity of styles that have influenced where we are now. It has been my great privilege to know personally a number of composers in the 20th century and to work with many others and I have been taught by an impressive array of teachers who knew some of the giants of the late 19th and early 20th century and passed on invaluable information second hand to me, so if anything this paper is based on personal experience rather than scholarly research. There are many more composers than I have time to discuss so I will also confine my paper to looking at styles rather than trying to cover the work of every composer thought to be an important figure.

The future is something we must all contribute to and you must make up your own minds as to what is going to happen next and indeed how you might influence that future, or not as the case may be. The future is in your hands, so make haste and do not waste time.

I am going to play quite a number of examples to help us navigate our way through the years. And here is the first example with music composed in the year 1901:
 

Example 1: Debussy - Sarabande from the suite Pour le Piano.  Kun Woo Paik (Piano)

Impressionism was to be the most important principle underpinning Debussy’s compositional style and although by this time the Second Viennese School (Schoenberg, Berg and Webern) was already established you can hear that this work is still very tonal using many dominant 9ths and 13ths and indeed Debussy’s work remained tonal (despite adventures using the black key pentatonic and whole tone scales) until his death in 1918.

By this time a move away from tonality was under way and we move across the Atlantic to hear what Henry Cowell in 1914 was writing in the USA. Cowell was a prolific composer and wrote many piano pieces, most of them quite short, in a variety of styles. Cowell’s pieces often exploit a new kind of sound or unusual combinations of rhythmic figures and some of his novel pianistic techniques provoked astonishment when first performed in public.
 

Example 2: Cowell - Advertisement (Fourth Encore to

In 1920 in Italy M Castelnuovo Tedesco whose work is characterised by extreme melodic fluency and refinement of the technical means of expression, was writing this:
 

Example 3: Castelnuovo Tedesco -Alghe. (Mariaclara Monetti-

And Cowell had progressed to this:
 

Example 4: Cowell - Aeolian Harp. (Composer - Piano)

Here is an experiment with sounds produced by playing directly on the strings inside the piano. This involves strumming the mid-range strings with the fingers of one hand while the other hand silently presses down chords on the keys.
 

Example 4a: Messiaen - Prelude: Un reflet dans le vent. (Michel Beroff - piano)

By now 20th century music was beginning to become more technically difficult and composers like Sorabji were writing music of extreme complexity.

By 1940 Sorabji was writing this:
 

Example 5: Sorabji - St Bertrand de Comminges:”He was laughing
in the tower”  (Donna Amato - Piano)

The first composer outside Germany and Austria to employ the twelve-tone technique effectively was the Italian Luigi Dallapiccola. Some of his music is dodecaphonic and there are some neoclassic tendencies, but he developed an interest in rhythmic configurations that can be simple as well as complex. He had a great flair for melodic writing and it was this gift that he employed to the dodecaphonic writing, working to equate row with theme in such a way that the series he chose for a given piece hearable.

In 1940 Dallapiccola was writing this
 

Example 6: Dallopiccola -Sonata Canonica: Largo. (Mariaclara
Monetti - Piano)

At this time there was a composer in Spain called Federico Mompou who developed an individual style of composition called primitivista, which has no bar divisions, key signatures or cadences and in 1940 Mompou was still writing this:
 

Example 7: Mompou - Prélude 10  (Stephen Hough - Piano)

In 1912 John Cage was born in the USA. This was the man who was to question and even threaten perhaps the post war European avant-garde. Boulez has been quoted as having said of Cage that he was refreshing but not very bright and that his freshness came from an absence of knowledge. He established himself as the pioneer of the prepared piano (his own invention), in which various objects are placed on or between the strings of a conventional instrument, thus changing it’s tone and sound. He was a tireless experimenter and musical nonconformist whose work is now very well known. However, Cage in 1946 was writing like this
 

Example 8a: Cage -V for prepared piano.  (Klára Körmendi - Piano)

And Boulez  (Cage’s critic) this:
 

Example 8b: Boulez - from First Sonata. Assez large, Rapide. (Claude Helffer - Piano)

Often mentioned in the same sentence as Boulez is Karlheinz Stockhausen, the German composer who studied in Paris. A man of tremendous intellect and industry he epitomises the composer as thinker and problem solver. His eleven Klavierstücke have come to seem the modern equivalent of such earlier masterpieces as Chopin’s preludes and Bach’s preludes and fugues.

By 1954 Stockhausen was writing this:
 

Example 9: Stockhausen - Klavierstück IX  (Klára Körmendi - Piano)

But in the UK York Bowen was writing this:
 

Example 10: York Bowen - Toccata. (Stephen Hough - Piano)

And Boulez had progressed to this:
 

Example 11: Boulez -  formant 2 - tropes Texte - Parenthèse - Glose Commentaire (Claude Heffler - Piano)

But there was still a market for lighter and more approachable music and the spontaneous and unpretentious nature of Poulenc’s music has been widely celebrated. He was still writing this in 1959:
 

Example 12: Poulenc - Improvisation 15. Hommage à Edith Piaf. (Kun Woo Paik - piano)

And Mompou, who we have already talked about, this in 1960:
 

Example 13: Mompou - Carros de Galicia. (Stephen Hough - Piano)

Another serialist is Luciano Berio who also developed an interest in the possibilities of electronic music that in turn, helped display a fresh improvisatory approach to some of his music. He was also not averse to forays into tonality.

He wrote this in 1965:

 
Example 14: Berio - Sequenza IV. (David Arden - Piano)

Micheal Finnissy, a prolific composer whose work is often rooted in folk music, wrote this in1973
 

Example 15: Finnissy - Svatovac. (The composer - Piano)

Outside the European mainstream of Boulez, Berio and Stockhausen was Iannis Xenakis. A Romanian of Greek parents, his musicfinds its basis in abstract mathematical structures. It is music of many notes, clouds of notes he calls them, “stochastic” music, the word derived from the Greek to define observations of randomness. He was writing this in 1980
 

Example 16: Xenakis - Mists   (Klára Körmendi - Piano)

Sorabji (mentioned earlier) had progressed to this:
 

Example 17: Sorabji - Sutra sul nome dell’amico Alexis Sutra “Per il caro amico quasi Nipote - Alexis” (Donna Amato - Piano)

In the early 90s Ligeti, the most important Hungarian composer since Bartock was writing this:

 
Example 18: Ligeti - From Etudes Bk II Coloana infinit. (Fredrik Ullén - Piano)

And Finnissy this:
 

Example 19: Finnissy - My love is like a red red rose. (Composer - Piano)

And Berio this:
 

Example 20: Berio - Leaf.  (David Arden - Piano)

By 1993 Birtwistle, the most natural and individual voice to have emerged on the British scene since Tippett, he follows in the footsteps of Stravinsky, Webern, Messiaen and Varese,  was writing this:
 

Example 21: Birtwistle - Antiphonies for piano and orchestra.  (Joanna Macgregor - Piano, Radio Filharmonisch Orkest. Michael Gielen)

And by now we were all used to the sounds of minimalism, the movement started by John Adams with his work: Phrygian Gates. Here are another two examples:
The first is wholly comprised of repeated statements of a short, simple rhythmic fragment, and its sophistication and richness arises from the multiple superimpositions the composer employs.
 

Example 22: Steve Reich - Six Pianos (Piano Circus - Pianos)

And in the second the composer imposes no limitations on the tempo, dynamics, choice of instrumentation, number of performers or duration of the work; he leaves all these decisions in the hands of the players. In this recording they have used the following sounds: concert grand and upright piano, Rhodes piano, two harpsichords and vibraphone.
 

Example 23: Terry Riley -  In C. (Piano Circus - Pianos)

By now I hope you have heard enough to determine that things could develop in any way at all. We have had atonality, we have had tonality, we have had the two together, so it seems that, in the words of the American song, anything goes. Composers will continue to explore the piano as an instrument with endless possibilities and undoubtedly some which have yet to be found. Until this happens I wish to end with some pieces by Daryl Runswick whose background covers numerous styles and who also epitomises the role of the composer for me today. He is a pianist, singer, double bass player equally at home in jazz, pop music, serialism or romantic music. This piece brings together a few of these along with some electronic techniques and is “easy listening” while stimulating the intellect.
 

Examples 24a-e: Daryl Runswick - From Moto Interrotto:

1.  Like a romantic concerto
2.   Like serial music
4.   Lyrical:out of tempo/in tempo
9.   Intense
10. Dissolve