21st century Polystylism

Polystylism (or musical eclecticism) is a growing trend in the 21st century. It combines elements of diverse musical genres and compositional techniques into a unified and coherent body of works. Composers will not necessarily employ their entire canon of style and technique in one single work, but rather the composers' body of works as a whole will reveal many different and diverse "styles". While anticipated by earlier trends that incorporated elements of folk music or Jazz into classical works, Polystylism started in the latter part of 20th century, but as more and more styles are embraced in the new century, the movement is becoming more important and diverse. Composers have often started their musical career in one discipline and have later migrated to, or embraced, other disciplines while retaining important elements from the old one. It should be noted here that a composer now labelled "Classical" may have started out in another discipline. Karl Jenkins, for example, started out as a Jazz musician, then moved to writing for TV advertisements, and is now becoming established as a major composer of large-scale choral works. His works The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace, Requiem and Stabat Mater are well-known and incoropate elements of the various styles he used in the past. Paul McCartney has made a similar move from Pop music: he started his main career as a member of The Beatles and has recently composed Standing Stone and Ecce Cor Meum. A specific label for John Zorn's music is difficult to choose: he started out as a performance artist and moved through various genres including Jazz, Hardcore punk, film music, and Classical, and often embraces Jewish musical styles. All of these diverse styles appear in his works.

Julian Anderson combines elements from many different musical genres and practices in his works. Elements of modernism, spectral music and electronic music are combined with elements of the folk music of Eastern Europe and the resulting works are often influenced by the modality of Indian ragas.
Tansy Davies writes music that fuses elements of Pop music and Classical music. Prince and Iannis Xenakis are both major influences.