Final Exam Musical Concepts Flashcards
What is a “Strophic” musical form?
A musical form in music in which one verse, or passage, structure is repeated over and over.
What is “Through Composed” music?
Music that is relatively continuous, non-section, or non-repetitive.
What is a “Lied/Art Song”?
Refers to a song performed in German by a solo singer with piano accompaniment. A German song that sets poetry to music, performed by a single vocalist and piano. The vocalist is the lieder and is responsible for expressing the song’s poetic nature is shared evenly between both musicians, creating a polyphonic interaction.
What is a “Character Piece (nocturne)”?
A short, lyrical work for solo piano: generally in a slower tempo and somewhat “dreamy” in character. Characterized by a broken chord pattern, in the left hand and highly embellished melody in the right. The melodies are highly lyrical (like operatic arias), and also highly ornamented.
What is a “Ragtime”?
A style of piano playing that flourished in the US between 1890 and WWI. Marked by “ragged” time, or the presence of a highly syncopated melody against a rhymically straightforward bass.
What is a “Blues” music?
Originated alongside Ragtime, in the years before and around 1900. Melodies are marked by raspy singing style; call and response between voice and instruments; “blue notes”. Improvisatory feel based on strong formal and harmonic scaffolding.
What is a “Tempo Rubato”?
A musical term referring to expressive and rhythmic freedom by a slight speeding up and then slowing down of the tempo of a piece at the discretion of the soloist or the conductor. It is an expressive shaping of music that is a part of phrasing.
What is a “Bel Canto”?
Describes the primary school of Italian vocal composition in the 19th century, as exemplified by the works of Gioachino Rossini and Giuseppe Verdi. It emphasizes the lyricism of the human voice.
What is “Impressionism”?
A self consciously “French” art which rejects the traditional genres and large-scale architectural forms of Beethoven, Mahler, Wagner etc. It criticizes German music not only for being too long, but overly ponderous and grandiose. Essentially it believes that German music emphasized the beauty of the outside world, rather than the torment of the world within.
Explain “Ballets Ruses”?
What is “Atonal Music”?
Music without triadic basis or a tonal center.
What is “Sprechstimme”?
A cross between speaking and singing in which the tone quality of speech is heightened and lower in pitch along with melodic contours indicated in the musical notation. Featured in Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire.
What is “Serialism”?
A technique in which the twelve pitches of Western chromatin scale are ordered in a series and used to generate the harmonic material for a piece of music. A subset of the broader category of atonal composition.
What is “Indeterminacy/Chance Music”?
The incorporation of elements of chance into the process of either the composition or realization (or both!) of a musical work.
What is “Minimalism”?
Emerging in the United Stated in the 1960s, minimalist works generally make use of simple melodic figures in cycles of repetition; it’s characterized by modularity, static harmonies, trance-like pulses, and an emphasis on audibility of structure.
