FINAL Flashcards
12-bar blues lyrical pattern
Most commonly, lyrics are in three lines, with the first two lines almost the same with slight differences in phrasing and interjections. “punch line”
12-tone composition
all 12 chromatic notes have equal importance, leading to “pantonal” or “atonal” composition as championed by Schoenberg
4’33”
“four minutes thirty-three seconds of silence”
John Cage American experimental composer
sounds of the environment
Alexander Nevsky (historic figure and film character)
invasion of Novgorod in the 13th century by the Teutonic Knights of the Holy Roman Empire and their defeat by Prince Alexander, known popularly as Alexander Nevsky
atonality, atonal
music that does not adhere to any system or key
avant garde
french “advanced guard” military term
art that is innovative or experimental
ballet d’action
ballet using gesture, dance, and instrumental music to tell a story
Ballets Russes
famous dance company
Beethoven’s shadow
Biss’ book, a meditation on the art of performing Beethoven’s piano sonatas
blues
African American fold genre
self accompanying singer
blues => jazz
call and response
second phase is heard as an echo of or a response to the tinitial phrase
chance music or aleatoric music
music composed or performed to some degree according to chance operation or spontaneous decision; term used to describe John Cage music
communism
left wing social political movement that dominated much of Eastern Europe and Asian in 20th century.
fascist principles
decadence
term introduced by critic in the mid 1880’s to criticize the fin de siecle culture of the rarefied, artificial, esoteric, exacting taste and an acceptance of perversity; subsequently a favorite term of totalitarian authorities for uncooperative artist
Emancipation of Dissonance
dissonance was now free as consonance, and as valid
ethnomusicology
study of music outside of the Western classical tradition using fieldwork methods originally found in anthropology
exoticism
genre rhythms, melodies, or instrumentation evoke non-Western European culture
Expressionism
a style of art that explores the unconscious, emotional drives, and wishes of which human subject is unaware. it may explore socially unacceptable impulses, things that are repressed (Freud). Style within the broader type of Modernism. A criticism of expressionist art is that it is unintelligible.
futurism
an early 20th century movement encompassing the work of Italian artist (futuristi), notably poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and painter Luigi Russolo, who called for an “art of noise” and invented devises to produce sonic representation of the flourished and almost immediately after the 1917 revolution and involved extended instrumental techniques; their approach influenced american ultra modernists such as Henry Cowell
Grundgestalt
German “basic shape”
Schoenbergs term for motivic complex that is the source for everything that flows
habanera
the name used outside to describe the Cuban contradance, names after Havana Cuba, all classes of society dance it.
Impressionism (in painting and in music)
in Impressionistic painting, one can see the brush strokes. Artist may leave blobs of pain on the canvas. It is representational - you can still tell what the painting depicts. it aims to capture the transitory visual impressions or feelings
inversion
turning the melody upside down
jazz
originated in African American committees in the South.
confluence of African and European music traditions that incorporated the outline of late 19th century popular music.
improve key role
maximalism
term applied to 20th century music making
implying radical intesificication of mean toward expressive ends/
minimalism
post WWII style of few pitches or pitch changes. extensive use of silence.
steady pulse
consonant harmony
gradual transformation
Modernism
19th/20th century
artist committed to find ways of reflection the historical present and momentum toward the future; revolt against late Romanticism and musical neutralism.
Nadia Boulanger
French composer, conductor, and teacher who taught many of the leading composers and musicians of the 20th century.
neoclassicism
20th century trend
composers sought out to return to aesthetic precepts associated with the broadly defined concept of “classicism”
Stravinsky and Hindemith
orientalism
musical depiction and representation of non European people. The representation of a “distant” culture as exotic
pantomime
acting without speaking
Peter Pears
was an English tenor. His career was closely associated with the composer Benjamin Britten, his personal and professional partner for nearly forty years.
phasing
minimalist technique in which two players begin together and slowly get out of sync to produce a kind of canon
Reich
populism
is a political doctrine that appeals to the interests and conceptions (such as fears) of the general people, especially contrasting those interests with the interests of the elite.
prepared piano
Cage altered piano to change timbre
primitivism
the belief that what is least cultivated by modern society (peasants, children, “savage”, raw emotions) is closet to truth. this is another, anti romantic point of view
propaganda
used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.
race records
They primarily contained race music, comprising a variety of African American musical genres including blues, jazz, and gospel music
retrograde
ordering backward of the row
retrograde inversion
backward and inverted
row
Twelve-tone technique orders the 12 notes of the chromatic scale
scenarist
Second Viennese School
is the group of composers that comprised Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils and close associates in early 20th century Vienna
Sergey Diaghilev
was a Russian art critic, patron, ballet impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes, from which many famous dancers and choreographers would arise.
Sergey Eisenstein
was a Soviet Russian film director and film theorist
Alexander Nevsky (1938)
serialism
s a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements.
Sprechstimme
expressionist vocal technique between singing and speaking
standard
Symbolism
a movement in poetry. this aims to depict the world beyond the senses, a high reality. Seeing symbols in all things. raven = death
synaesthesia (or synesthesia)
interchangeability of senses
tape loops
used to create repetitive, rhythmic musical patterns or dense layers of sound
the decadent elements of Strauss’s Salome (plot)
necrophilia girl
The Musical Museum
the idea that newly written work has to be enough like the old works to fit in, but never enough to be interesting
the occult
occult refers to “knowledge of the paranormal”
the principle of developing variation
developing variation is a formal technique in which the concepts of development and variation are united in that variations are produced through the development of existing material
total serialism
composition technique uses determined algorithms for duration, dynamics, register, pitch
WWII french avant garde
Totalitarianism
describes a political system in which the state holds total authority over the society and seeks to control all aspects of public and private life wherever possible.
Transcendentalism
igious and philosophical movement that was developed during the late 1820s and 1830
believe that society and its institutions—particularly organized religion and political parties—ultimately corrupt the purity of the individual.
