Chapter 20: The Search for New Sounds (1890-1945)

Question 1

What does impressionism represent?

Answer 1

• One of the earliest attempts to explore fundamentally new approaches to music.
• First used to describe painters (Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Edgar Degas.

Question 2

How is musical impressionism form characterized?

Answer 2

• Form: avoids goal oriented structures. Flow from one movement to the next, building and receding in tension but without the sense of striving towards resolution. Structured less around harmony and thematic ideas than around masses of sound.

Question 3

How is musical impressionism harmony characterized?

Answer 3

• Use of 9th, 11th, and 13th chords
• Draw occasionally on nondiatonic scales creating the sound of East Asia

Question 4

What was voice leading like in impressionism?

Answer 4

• Individual voices move more or less independently of one another.
• Parallel 4ths, 5th, and octaves

Question 5

What is the rhythm of impressionism characterized by?

Answer 5

• Fluid
• Avoid any definited sense of meter
• Elusive sense of motion that at times moves forward and at times seems to hang in suspension

Question 6

What are some characteristics of the timbre of impressionist music?

Answer 6

• New sounds drawn out by piano and orchestra

Question 7

Who were some symbolist poets in France?

Answer 7

Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarme, Paul Verlaine, and Arthur Rimbaud

Question 8

What was the approach of symbolist poetry?

Answer 8

• In place of narrative a succesion of images.
• In place of description, symbols, allusions, suggestions.

Question 9

What is the octatonic scale?

Answer 9

• Alternates between half and whole steps
• Contains all possible intervals from minor 2nd to Major 7th
• Coloristic effect in 19th century music
• Symmetrical construction and strict alternation between half and whole steps

Question 10

What is a mystic chord?

Answer 10

Augmented and diminished fourths.

Question 11

What are quartal harmonies?

Answer 11

Chords built on the interval of a fourth rather than a third.

Question 12

What is primitivism?

Answer 12

Aka radical primitivism; Considered a positive, purifying force in all the arts.

• Rejection of the self-imposed, arbitrary conventions of Western culture.
• Source of beauty and strength
• Represented a stage of civilization unthreatened by decadence and self-consciousness.

Question 13

How was primitivism applied in music?

Answer 13

• Elevated rhythm
• Abandoned or altered concepts such as voice leading, triadic harmony, and the major and minor forms of the diatonic scale.