Final test

Question 1

Different types of music for the concert hall

Answer 1

Symphonic Poems, Symphonies, Program Music……. ?

Question 2

Ballet

Answer 2

Began to provide the main attraction for entire evenings of public entertainment in 1870s Paris. Peter Illyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) emerged as the preeminent ballet composer in the latter half of the 19th century

Question 3

en pointe

Answer 3

dancing on tips of toes

Question 4

prima ballerina

Answer 4

ballerina who the focus of the ballet was on

Question 5

Peter Illich Tchaikovsky

Answer 5

• (1840-1893)
• Emerged as the prominent ballet composer of the latter half of the 19th century.
• Known for his ballet Swan Lake (1876).

Question 6

Symphonic Poem

Answer 6

New name for what had been called the concert overture. Usually programmatic and only one movement. Written for the concert hall–not as san opening for a play or opera. Lizst, Richard Strauss– Also sprach Zarathustra, based on the philosophical treaty by Nietzche

Question 7

The Symphony after 1850

Answer 7

• The symphony enjoyed renewed vigor in the 2nd half of the 19th century.
• The growing size of the orchestra, the increasing number of civic orchestras and standing orchestra series, and the publicity of them helped reinforce the symphony’s standing as the largest. most ambitious, and most prestigious of all instrumental genres.
• Many prominent composers turned to symphonies at this time.
• Composers began drawing elements from other genres in order to take the symphony in a new direction. Examples include: hybrids with the concerto (Berlioz’s “Harold en Italie”), cantata (Mendelssohn’s “Lobgesang”), opera, and symphonic poem (the latter two examples were considered “ode-symphonie”).

Question 8

Johannes Brahms

Answer 8

• (1833-1897)
• From northern part of Germany (Hamburg) and chose to spend his adult life in Vienna.
• When 20 years of age Robert Schumann declared him to be the messiah of music, which also drew the attention of critics. It was a blessing and a curse.
• Deeply committed to building on and rejuvenating the works of great composers of the past such as Schumann, Beethoven, Mozart, Handel, Haydn, Bach, and even as far back as works by Palestrina.
• Had a slow, steady stream of orchestral works. His four symphonies were all very different, yet, all fell into the same symphonic tradition.
• Brahms also developed works in other genres such as Chamber Music, Piano Music, Songs, and Vocal Music.

Question 9

Gustav Mahler

Answer 9

-(1860-1911)
“a Matyr”-infatuation with death. Music director of Vienna Opera–converted to Catholicism to do so. Belated response to his works. Director of the Met and New York Philharmonic–at the same time! Symphoines: 1-4 Wunderhorn; 5-7 Middle–Period; no. 8 symphony of a Thousand; 9-10 and Das lied von der Erde. Song cycles: Des Knaben Wunderhorn, Lider eines fahrenden Gesellen, and Kindertotenlieder
o Bernstein was a heavy influence on him
o Harlem Renaissance

Question 10

The 20th Century—think about styles, textures, rhythm, melody, harmony, etc.

Answer 10

(not sure what he is looking for but maybe this?) Modernism came about. Avant Garde came bout. In music, this meant adandonment from form and tonality: expressionism, atonality, serial composition, aleatoric music.

Question 11

Modernism

Answer 11

the phenomenon that affected all forms of art in the 20th century. Not a style in and of itself; rather a belief that the new must be as different as possible from the old

Question 12

Avant-Garde

Answer 12

push the boundary of the status quo, is a hallmark of modernism

Question 13

Phonograph/recording/history of recording

Answer 13

Edison (1877) metal (later wax) eventually gave way to the shellac disc or 78. Enrque Caruso Became one of the first recoding superstars. Diversity of music that was recorded–creation of works that could not be performed live (the Beatles). With phonograph, a performance could be preserved/repeated ouside the presence of a performing musician. Phonograph was supplemented by other forms of media too: radio, T.V., tapes, CDs. Etc/
Music is more readily available to people than ever

Question 14

Music and the State

Answer 14

Instrumental music was susceptible to varied political interpretation (Nazi Germany)-Wagner and Beethoven. Soviet Union: censured nontraditional absolute music (particularly that which was too complex) because of its effect on average citizens-Marxist thought-Prokofiev and Shostakovich composers

Question 15

Music and Race

Answer 15

African-american artists increasingly brought races together through ragtime, jazz, and rock where many institutions were racially segregated

Question 16

Protest music

Answer 16

Three Movements

1. Labor Movement: 1910-1950–the music of unions
2. Civil rights: 1950-60s– James Brown, Bob Dylan et al.
3. Oppositions to Vietnam¬– mid 1960s to 70s

Question 17

Impressionism (in painting and in music)

Answer 17

a term first used in paint to designate style painters who short brush strokes instead of continuous lines to produce suggestion in an object. Color Takes precedence over line
• Monet, Manet, Renoir, Degas– Monet’s Impression: soliel levant (1872) defined the movement
o In Music, Claude Debussy (1862-1918) and Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) embodied the movement. Music is based on blurring of distinct harmonies, rhythms, and forms
o Makes use of color (timbre) more than any previous material

Question 18

Claude Debussy

Answer 18

His music parallels the themes of contemporary French poets: Mallarme, Verlaine, and Rimbaud.
All were symbolist poets interested in the sound of language for sound’s sake and were not constrained by syntax or logic. Debussy’s comparable approach in music in his Prelude a l’Apres-midi d’un faune (1894). Epitomizes the assault on traditional elements by composers between 19th and 20th centuries; however, it ends in E major, all chromatic and harmonic ambiguities aside.

Question 19

whole-tone

Answer 19

Each note is separated from its neighbors by the interval of a whole step. There are only two complementary whole tone scales, both six-note or hexatonic scales. Used by Debussy, Liszt, Berg

Question 20

octatonic

Answer 20

uses (alternating whole/half steps) utilized by Rimsky-Korsakov and Liszt, was furthered by Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, and Bartók

Question 21

pentatonic

Answer 21

musical scale or mode with five notes per octave. Universal used around the world. Debussy used in Violes.

Question 22

quartal harmony

Answer 22

Chords built on 4th rather than 3rds. Charles Ives, The Cage

Question 23

Béla Bartók

Answer 23

Nationalist for Hungary. set out collect folk songs by Hungarian peasants. Believed folk music was “pure.” Mikrokosmos, Book 6: incorporates the irregular meters of Eastern Europe.

Question 24

Charles Ives

Answer 24

• (1874-1954)
• True American origin.
• Well-rounded in music and many genres in his youth and wrote music as a part-time hobby.
• His father (George Ives) was his first teacher. He was a bandmaster in the Civil War and a musical eccentric in his own right who sometimes experimented with polytonality and quarter-tone tuning.
• Attended Yale and studied composition with Horatio Parker, a leading American composer of the time.
• After graduating from school Ives went into the insurance business and continued to write music in his spare time.
• Ives wrote 5 symphonies, 4 of them numbered, one was just titled “Holidays.”
• Ives also wrote some Piano and Chamber music such as “Three-Page Sonata” (for Piano).
• His programmatic music for orchestra also became well known. One example being “The Unanswered Question.”
• Ives collected and published his own volume of songs entitled 114 Songs. It was distributed to his friends free of charge.

Question 25

atonality

Answer 25

the absence of a tonal center, what Schoenberg called “emancipation of dissonance”

Question 26

Primitivism

Answer 26

Impetus beind Primitivism was rejection of self-imposed, arbitrary conventions of Western Culture. Source of both beauty and strength, representing stage of civilization unthreatened by decadence and self-consciousness. In painting–noted in the works of the fauves (wild beasts). Who used bold colors and simple lines. Musical primitivism elevated rhythm to unprecedented importance. Composers adbondoned voice leading, triadic harmonies, and maj/min forms of diatonic scales

Question 27

Igor Stravinsky

Answer 27

Explored primitivism early in his career, but explored other idoms too:
• Russian Period: Petrouchka, “The firebird” ballets
• Neoclassical period: After WWI–Octet, Concerto for Piano and winds, Symphony of Psalms
• Serialist Period: influenced by anton Webern and includes a ballet (Agon, 1957) and Requiem Canticles

Question 28

polytonality

Answer 28

Simultaneous juxtaposition of contrasting triads or keys. Sort of like having two keys at the same time in two lines of music.

Question 29

Henry Cowell

Answer 29

The Banshee
• Two performers (one keeps the damper pedal down)
• Instructions on score for how to sweep and pluck strings
• Banshee is “a woman of the inner world…who is charged with taking your sould in the Inner World when you die…..”

Question 30

Arnold Schoenberg

Answer 30

A tortured soul; never felt he fit anywhere. He believed he was extending the tradition of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. Searched for a new system of organizing music–created the twelve tone method.
Early works feature advanced chromaticism (Verklärte Nacht) and Chamber Symphony in E major
• Middle works are atonal. Pierrot lunaire, Erwartung, Five Orchestral Pieces
• Late works are serial (12 tone). NO single note given priority Moses und Aron, Piano Suite, op. 25
o Appointed to faculty of California Universities . Writing on music extremely influential
o Possible the most influential composer of the 20th century

Question 31

Expressionism

Answer 31

a movement seeking a voice to the unconscious to manifest humanity’s darkest emotions. The Scream in painting. Schoenberg in Pierrot Lunaire.

Question 32

Sprechstimme

Answer 32

Literally “speech-voice.”
-Style of singing to reinforce the surreal quality of text and music. It is neither speech nor song but a means of declamation between the two. Used in Pierrot Lunaire.

Question 33

Anton Webern

Answer 33

• (1883-1945)
• Music is very brief and concentrated.
• Utilized silence more effectively than any composer before him. Also, his works almost never called for a dynamic level more than piano.
• One of Arnold Schoenberg’s most prominent students/colleagues.
• Began exploring atonality at little after 1912.
• Was killed by an American sentry in WWII. Supposedly he was outside having a cigar after curfew.
• Principal works include his orchestral music (Passacaglia, op. 1 and Variations, op. 30). His Chamber Music (The Five Movements for String Quartet, op. 5, and Six Bagatelles, op. 9). And his Vocal Music (usually based on poems).

Question 34

Alban Berg

Answer 34

Wozzeck
o Alban Berg–by far the most successful atonal work of the 20th century. Uses traditional instrumental forms. (fugues, inventions, suites, sonata)
o Drawn from an existing play (Woyzeck) by Gerg Büchner, it details the mental deterioration of an army solider. Mistreated by everyone, he kills Marie, the mother of his son in the end.

Question 35

Second Viennesse School

Answer 35

Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. Their music was initially characterized by late-Romantic expanded tonality and later, following Schoenberg’s own evolution, a totally chromatic expressionism without firm tonal centre (often referred to as atonality) and later still, Schoenberg’s serial twelve-tone technique.

Question 36

Serialism

Answer 36

Schoenberg developed serial composition in the 1920s. based on unit of music, most often a row or series of 12 different pitches, and can varied to provide a structural basis for a work. Had 3 principles that went with it. 1.Avoid creating impression of a principal note 2. Unify composition through motives. 3. Eradicate any distinction between consonance and dissonance.

Question 37

matrix

Answer 37

Shows the 48 possibilities of one row.

Question 38

row

Answer 38

In theory 479,001,600 different rows are possible. In practice, composers pay careful attention to the construct of a row. There a 4 basic forms of any given row that can be transposed to start on any of the 12 chromatic pitches.

Question 39

pitch class

Answer 39

set of all pitches that are a whole number of octaves apart.

Question 40

retrograde (R)

Answer 40

row played backward

Question 41

inversion (I)

Answer 41

row played upside down

Question 42

retrograde inversion (RI)

Answer 42

The inverted form played backward

Question 43

Prime (P)

Answer 43

Basic form of row.