The biggest distinction between avant-garde and experimental music was how it relates to tradition. Other distinctions include subject matter, as well as having a superficial idea to avoid diving into serious subjects. Even though avant-garde and experimental music have many distinctions, experimental music and avant-garde music also have similarities due to experimental music being referred to as the "contemporary avant-garde" which is in relation to the electronic style of music being the forefront of many compositions in the 1960s and 1970s. In a historical sense, some musicologists use the term "avant-garde music" for the radical compositions that succeeded the death of
Anton Webern in 1945, but others disagree. For example, Ryan Minor writes that this period began with the work of
Richard Wagner, whereas
Edward Lowinsky cites
Josquin des Prez. The term may also be used to refer to any post-1945 tendency of
modernist music not definable as experimental music, though sometimes including a type of experimental music characterized by the rejection of tonality. a piece which instructs the performer(s) not to play their instrument(s) during its entire duration. The piece has been described as "not a musical 'work' in the normal sense, only an occasion for a Zen-like meditation". Although some modernist music is also avant-garde, a distinction can be made between the two categories. According to scholar
Larry Sitsky, because the purpose of avant-garde music is necessarily political, social, and cultural critique, so that it challenges social and artistic values by provoking or goading audiences, composers such as
Igor Stravinsky,
Richard Strauss,
Arnold Schoenberg,
Anton Webern,
George Antheil, and
Claude Debussy may reasonably be considered to have been avant-gardists in their early works (which were understood as provocative, whether or not the composers intended them that way), but Sitsky does not consider the label appropriate for their later music. A prominent feature of avant-garde music is to break through various rules and regulations of traditional culture, in order to transcend established creative principles and appreciation habits. Avant-garde music pursues novelty in musical form and style, insisting that art is above everything else; thus, it creates a transcendental and mysterious sound world. Hint, metaphor, symbol, association, imagery, synesthesia and perception are widely used in avant-garde music techniques to excavate the mystery of human heart and the flow of consciousness, so that many seemingly unrelated but essentially very important events interweave into multi-level structures and forms. ==Popular music==