Expressionism

Question 1

What was life like in continental Europe - particularly Vienna - in the 1920s?

Answer 1

• World War I - 1914-18
• Germany forced to pay reparations
• Austria split into separate states
• Hyper Inflation
• Rise of the Third Reich

Question 2

What was music like in the early 20th
Century?

Answer 2

• Romanticism
• Tension and Resolution
• Tonality
• Personality
• Standard Structural Forms like sonata

Question 3

What did composers want to avoid?

Answer 3

Traditional forms of beauty ie. tension and resolution

Question 4

The feeling was that traditional, tonal music was..

Answer 4

restrictive and unable to depict the emotions that composers were focusing on

Question 5

In the words of Theodore Adorno, what does expressionism do?

Answer 5

Focuses on the truthfulness of subjective feeling without illusions, disguises or euphemisms

Question 6

Expressionist music often features a high level of what?

Answer 6

dissonance

Question 7

What are there extreme contrasts of?

Answer 7

dynamics

Question 8

What can be constantly changing?

Answer 8

textures

Question 9

What can melodies and harmonies be described as?

Answer 9

‘distorted’

Question 10

What do their angular melodies have?

Answer 10

Wide leaps

Question 11

What piece of art is expressionism analogous to?

Answer 11

‘The Scream’