The decades from 1900 to 1920 saw important changes in the very language of music. Traditional tonal organization gave way to new forms of musical expression and many of the foundations of modern music were laid. Samson first explores tonal expansion in the music of such nineteenth-century composers as Liszt and Wagner and its reinterpretation in the music of Debussy, Busoni, Bartók, and Stravinsky. He then traces the atonal revolution, revealing the various paths taken by Schoenberg and his followers and describing their very different stylistic development.