The monograph analyzes the main genre-compositional principles of the foreign musical avant-garde of the mid-20th century: serialism, aleatorics, sonoristics, technical, stochastic music, instrumental theater. Parallels are drawn with modern trends in other types of arts. The study reveals the methodology for conducting an experiment to study the impact of avant-garde compositions on the audience. The selected set of verbal and non-verbal tests (semantic differential and psychodiagnostic color test of Lusher relations) is recommended to be used when studying the features of art perception.