Chapter 32 - Early 20th Century Classical Tradition

Question 1

What is modernism?

Answer 1

Modernism is a class of artistic endeavors that reveres the past while seeking new and distinctive individual voices.

Question 2

Modernist works are usually compared to what?

Answer 2

Modernist works are ultimately compared to their predecessors

Question 3

Define post-tonal

Answer 3

Post-tonal is a category of composition that strays too far from common practice to be described as tonal.

Question 4

Many composers continued to use what as a path to a new voice?

Answer 4

Composers delved deeper into national traditions and nationalistic themes as a way to establish an individual voice.

Question 5

Birth and death dates: Gustav Mahler

Answer 5

1860-1911

Question 6

Mahler was a master of song for what kind of ensemble?

Answer 6

Mahler was a master of song for voice and orchestra

Question 7

List some traits of Mahler symphonies

Answer 7

• Stylistic contrasts (similar to Mozart)
• Large orchestra
• Vast scale of works (symphony as another world)
• Variety of colors in orchestra
• Varied instrumentation and texture (intimate vs. sublime)

Question 8

Although later suppressed, many of Mahler’s symphonies are ____________

Answer 8

Mahler’s symphonies are programmatic or contain extramusical associations

Question 9

After finding sucess with his tone poems in the late 19th century, Richard Strauss turned to what genre?

Answer 9

Strauss focused the second half of his career on opera

Question 10

Strauss’ operas were influenced mainly by which two composers?

Answer 10

Mozart and Wagner

Question 11

In what way was Strauss Wagner’s successor?

Answer 11

Strauss employed leitmotifs and keys associated with different characters. He also explored and pushed to the limit the inherent contrasts in tonality

Question 12

How did Strauss find his own place in modernism and influence future composers?

Answer 12

Strauss’s works fit tonality but expand it through the use of extreme chromaticism, and deep exploration of the contrast of consonance and dissonance as well as stylistic contrasts

Question 13

True or False: Mahler was a Wagnarian

Answer 13

True

Question 14

The music in Strauss’s Salome is highly chromatic and dissonant, but it’s effectiveness relies on what familiar expectation?

Answer 14

It still ultimately relies on the fact that the dissonance will resolve

Question 15

Who was the last great German Symphonist?

Answer 15

Mahler

Question 16

Birth and death dates: Debussy

Answer 16

1862-1918

Question 17

How did Debussy’s response to Wagnarian harmony differ from Strauss and Mahler?

Answer 17

While the Germans expanded the rhetorical intensity of the music, Debussy focused on the pleasurable and beautiful aspects

Question 18

Birth and death dates: Ravel

Answer 18

1875-1937

Question 19

Ravel and Debussy shared many similar traits techniques including drawing from earlier French music, use of exotic scales, etc. How did Ravel’s approach differ?

Answer 19

Ravel differed from Debussy in that his music can be more closely linked to tonal practices and the resolution of dissonance; it has more direction.

Question 20

What is Neoclassicism?

Answer 20

This is an artistic movement where composers revived, imitated or evoked pre-romantic era styles and genres of music

Question 21

The Neoclassical movement spans what time frame?

Answer 21

1910-1950s

Question 22

Each movement of Ravel’s tombeau de Couperin is dedicated to who?

Answer 22

Each movement is dedicated to a different friend of Ravel’s who died in WWI

Question 23

Ravel’s tombeau is inspired by what genre?

Answer 23

Baroque era French keyboard suites

Question 24

What modern elements can be found in Ravel’s neoclassical French keyboard suite, tombeau de Couperin?

Answer 24

The use of extended harmonies, harmonic planing, color chords, and the thwarting of traditional harmonies

Question 25

Birth and death dates: Rachmaninoff

Answer 25

1873-1943

Question 26

Rachmaninoff’s music is characterized by what?

Answer 26

It’s passionate and melodious quality

Question 27

Rather than focus on harmonic innovations like his contemporaries, how instead did Rachmaninoff find his own voice?

Answer 27

His innovations come from melodic ideas that sound both fresh and familiar, outdoing conventional elements in new ways

Question 28

Birth and death dates: Alexander Scriabin

Answer 28

1872-1915

Question 29

Define the Avante-Garde

Answer 29

This is a class of artists and their compositions that seek new original ideas and paths forward, throwing off and sometimes antagonizing the conventional practices.

Question 30

True or false: Like modernism, the avante-garde seeks to find new paths while remaining in context with the past

Answer 30

False: the avante-garde is marked by an irreverence for the past

Question 31

How did futurists take the avante-garde one step further?

Answer 31

Futurists believed that not only were compositional and artistic conventions outdated, but so were the pitches and instruments used themselves, creating machines to replace them

Question 32

What do the avante-garde and futurist reject and value?

Answer 32

They reject music of the past and value the sounds and listening experience of the moment