Chapter 21 Flashcards
What is atonality?
the absence of a tonal centre
What did Schoenberg suggest calling atonal music?
pantonal
What is expressionism?
A broad artistic movement of the time that sought to give voice (expression) to the unconscious, to manifest humanity’s deepest and often darkest emotions.
How is expressionism linked to primitivism?
they both attempt to strip away civilized behavior and reveal the darkest recesses of human emotion.
What is the quintessential act of expressionism?
the scream, an utterance that is not a word, a product of civilization but rather an intense, spontaneous reaction to something that has caused pain or fear.
What style of singing was called for throughout Schoenberg’s “Pierrot lunaire”?
Sprechstimme
What is sprechstimme?
“speach voice”
Neither speech nor song, but a means of declamation somewhere between the two.
Vocalist must articulate specified pitches and rhythms
What was the most successful atonal work of the early 20th century?
Berg’s opera, “Wozzeck”
How was Berg’s Wozzeck structured according to act?
Act I: 5 character pieces (exposition)
Act II: Symphony in 5 movements (development)
Act III: Six inventions (catastrophe or denouement)
What is the technique of serial composition?
It’s based on the premise that an established unit of music - most often a row, or series, of 12 different pitches - can be varied repeatedly in such a way to prvide the structural basis for an entire work
a constant presence of a row in one guise or another
What is dodecaphony?
another name for twelve-tone serial composition.
What is twelve-tone serialism?
it uses as its basic unit a row of 12 different pitches drawn from the 12 pitches of the chromatic octave.
what were the three principal functions of the 12 tone row?
- to avoid creating the impression of a principal note which might suggest a “tonic” key area
- to unify the composition motivically
- to “emancipate” the dissonance, that is, to eradicate any distinction between consonance and dissonance.
What are the four basic forms any given row can be transposed to start on any of the 12 chromatic pitches in the diatonic scale?
- prime (P) is the basic form of the row
- Inversion (I) is the row played upside down: a rise of a major third in the prime form of the row becomes a fall of a major third; a fall of a minor second in the prime form becomes a rise of a minor second and so on\
- Retrograde (R) is the row played backwards
- Retrograde Inversion (RI) is the inverted form of the row’s retrograde.
How is the pitch class on which each form of the row begins on is designated?
it is designated by a number.
