Final Exam

Question 1

Impressionism

Answer 1

Late-nineteenth-century term derived from art, used for music that evokes moods and visual images through colorful harmony and instrumental timbre.

Question 2

Whole-tone scale

Answer 2

A scale consisting of only whole steps

Question 3

Octatonic scale

Answer 3

A scale that alternates whole and half steps

Question 4

Pentatonic scale

Answer 4

Five adjacent notes on the circle of fifths, the black keys on the piano.

Question 5

Modality

Answer 5

Twentieth-century composers broke away from the musical language of the predecessors and contemporaries while maintaining strong links to tradition.

Question 6

Modernism

Answer 6

Twentieth-century composers broke away from the musical language of the predecessors and contemporaries while maintaining strong links to tradition.

Question 7

Atonality

Answer 7

Terms for music that avoids establishing a central pitch or tonal center (such as the tonic in tonal music)

Question 8

Expressionism

Answer 8

Early-twentieth-century term derived from art, in which music avoids all traditional forms of “beauty” in order to express deep personal feelings through exaggerated gestures, angular melodies and extreme dissonance

Question 9

Sprechstimme

Answer 9

A vocal style developed by Arnold Schoenberg in which the performer approximates the written pitches in the gliding tones of speech, while following the notated rhythm.

Question 10

Twelve-tone method

Answer 10

A form of atonal music based on the systematic ordering of the twelve notes of the chromatic scale into a row that may be manipulated according to certain rules.

Question 11

Tetrochord

Answer 11

In twelve-tone theory, the first four, middle four, or last four notes in the row.

Question 12

Row/series

Answer 12

In twelve-tone music, an ordering of all twelve pitch-classes that is used to generate the musical content.

Question 13

Retrograde

Answer 13

backward statement of a previously heard melody, passage, or twelve-tone row.

Question 14

Retrograde inversion

Answer 14

Upside-down and backward statement of a melody or twelve-tone row.

Question 15

Avant-garde

Answer 15

Term for music (and art) that is iconoclastic, irreverent, antagonistic, and nihilistic, seeking to overthrow established aesthetics.

Question 16

Futurism

Answer 16

Twentieth-century movement that created music based on noise.

Question 17

Primitivism

Answer 17

Musical style that represents the primitive or elemental through pulsation, static repetition, unprepared and unresolved dissonance, dry timbres, and other techniques

Question 18

Neoclassicism

Answer 18

Trend in music from the 1910s to the 1950s in which composers revived, imitated, or evoked the styles, genres and forms of pre-romantic music, especially those of the eighteenth century.

Question 19

New Objectivity

Answer 19

Term coined in the 1920s to describe a kind of new realism in music, in reaction to the emotional intensity of the late romantics and the expressionism of Schoenberg and Berg.

Question 20

Gebrauchtsmusik

Answer 20

Term from the 1920s to describe music that was socially relevant and useful, especially music for amateurs, children or workers to play or sing.

Question 21

Socialist Realism

Answer 21

A doctrine of the Soviet Union, begun in the 1930s, in which all the arts were required to use a realistic approach (as opposed to an abstract or symbolic one) that portrayed socialism in a positive light. In music this meant use of simple, accessible language, centered on melody and patriotic subject matter.

Question 22

Socialist Realism

Answer 22

A doctrine of the Soviet Union, begun in the 1930s, in which all the arts were required to use a realistic approach (as opposed to an abstract or symbolic one) that portrayed socialism in a positive light. In music this meant use of simple, accessible language, centered on melody and patriotic subject matter.

Question 23

Fuging tune

Answer 23

Eighteenth-century American type of psalm or hymn tune that features a passage in free imitation, usually preceded and followed by homophonic sections.

Question 24

Tine Pan Alley

Answer 24

(1) Jocular name for a district in New York where numerous publishers specializing in popular songs were located from the 1880s through the 1950s. (2) Styles of American popular song from that era.

Question 25

Call and response

Answer 25

Alternation of short phrases between a leader and a group; used especially for music in the African-American tradition.

Question 26

Spirituals

Answer 26

African American type of religious song that originated among southern slaves and was passed down through oral tradition, with texts often based on stories or images from the Bible.

Question 27

12-bar blues

Answer 27

Standard formula for the blues, with a harmonic progression in which the first four-measure phrase is on the tonic, the second phrase begins on the subdominant and ends on the tonic and the third phrase starts on the dominant and returns on the tonic.

Question 28

Contrafact

Answer 28

In jazz, a new melody composed over a harmonic progression borrowed from another song.

Question 29

Prepared piano

Answer 29

An invention of John Cage in which various objects – such as pennies, bolts, screws, or pieces of wood, rubber, plastic, or slit bamboo – are inserted between the strings of a piano, resulting in complex percussive sounds when the piano is played from the keyboard.

Question 30

Chance music

Answer 30

An approach to composing music pioneered by John Cage, in which some of the decisions normally made by the composer are instead determined through random procedures, such as tossing coins.

Question 31

Indeterminacy

Answer 31

An approach to composition, pioneered by John Cage, in which the composer leaves certain aspects of the music unspecified, as distinct from chance.

Question 32

Minimalism

Answer 32

One of the leading musical styles of the late twentieth century, in which materials are reduced to a minimum and procedures simplified so that the musical content is immediately apparent, Often characterized by a constant pulse and many repetitions of simple rhythmic, melodic, or harmonic patterns.

Question 33

Micropolyphony

Answer 33

the use of many independent lines that cannot be heard independently but contribute to a larger sound process. (Ligeti)

Question 34

Pandiatonicism

Answer 34

use of all tones of a key at any given time, without regard to chords; emphasizes counterpoint over harmony