humanities 17 Flashcards
one of the most gifted jazz musicians of the years immediately following the end of World War II. Talented from his teenage years, he pioneered the idea of improvisation in jazz, which in turn acted as a major influence for both later jazz musicians as well as the 1940s hipster subculture. Still, his addictions caught up with him, leaving the musician dead in his patroness’s hotel room at the age of 34.
Charlie “Bird” Parker
What subculture did Charlie Parker most heavily influence?
hipsters
Why was Charlie Parker’s musical style distinctive?
He made use of improvisations, movements on classic pieces that often seemed random.
Which musicians was influenced by Charlie Parker?
Miles Davis
famous trumpeter and composer and winner of nine Grammy Awards, ruled the world of jazz for many years.
Miles Davis
As a student of New York’s Julliard School of Music, Davis became famous for his improvisation, in which he composed music in the moment. Rather than playing with vibrato, or slight variations of one note or pitch, Davis preferred bebop - fast-paced, improvised harmonies and melodies.
In the ’50s, Davis released such works as Birth of the Cool, Porgy and Bess, and Kind of Blue, one of the best-selling jazz records of all time!
During the ’60s, Davis composed in the style of jazz fusion, a mixture of jazz and rock music. Bitches Brew, a Davis jazz-fusion album, earned the artist the cover of Rolling Stone.
In 1985 he released You’re Under Arrest which included jazz renditions of ’80s pop hits.
Davis won a 1986 Grammy for his album Tutu and a 1989 Grammy for his album Aura. He also received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Miles Davis died in 1991 at the age of 65.
For the success of which album was Davis featured on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine?
Bitches Brew
What is jazz fusion?
a blending of jazz and rock music
How did Davis’ trumpeting style set him apart other legendary trumpet players?
He played bebop which is fast-paced, incorporating improvised harmonies and melodies.
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was one of the great jazz musicians of the 20th century, known for his incredible skills as an improvisational trumpet player.
Dizzy Gillespie
Dizzy’s emotional melodies, performed at rapid tempos, required a mixture of pure talent, instinct, and intellect that few musicians since have been able to match. He was an instrumental figure in the style of jazz called bebop, characterized by a fast tempo and complex melodies. However, he was also active in Afro-Cuban jazz, the mixture of American jazz with Caribbean and Latin rhythms, instruments, and sounds. Unlike bebop, Afro-Cuban jazz is made for dancing. It’s not easy to transition back and forth between styles like that, but Dizzy Gillespie did. And he did it all with puffed cheeks and a bent trumpet.
What skill was Dizzy Gillespie famous for as a trumpet player?
His ability to improvise on the spot.
Dizzy Gillespie also played Afro-Cuban jazz. How does this type of jazz differ from bebop?
Afro-Cuban jazz is considered dance music.
Charlie Parker’s nickname was _____, while Louis Armstrong’s nickname was _____.
Bird; Satchmo
How did Charlie Parker influence jazz?
His syncopation and sense of movement greatly influenced jazz.
Where did Louis Armstrong first hear the trumpet and fall in love with music?
A reform school for boys
What popular band did Louis Armstrong knock out of the number one spot on the Billboard 100 with his hit Hello Dolly?
The Beatles
Which jazz musician adapted Shakespeare’s ‘Taming of the Shrew’ into the Broadway musical ‘Kiss Me Kate’?
Cole Porter
How does the background of Leonard Bernstein differ from that of Rogers and Hart or Cole Porter?
He had a background as a conductor of world-class orchestras.
Which of these works is credited to Leonard Bernstein?
West Side Story
Cole Porter’s ‘Kiss Me Kate’ was inspired by _____.
the Taming of the Shrew
Rodgers is known for his work with both _____ and _____.
Hart and Hammerstein
Which of these was the first Broadway hit musical written by Cole Porter?
Gay Divorce
What was Sondheim’s first major commercial success?
West Side STory
Why were Sondheim’s musicals so popular?
He was able to simply, yet effectively display a character’s emotions.
What characterizes Sondheim’s lyrics?
The conversational tone and flow
wrote the lyrics and music to Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber
Who wrote :A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
Into the Woods
Gypsy
Sweeney Todd
Stephen Sondheim
What was Rodger and Hammerstein’s first musical collaboration?
OKLAHOMA!
What was the working relationship between Rodgers and Hammerstein?
Rodgers was the composer while Hammerstein wrote the lyrics.
Why was OKLAHOMA! so influential in terms of Broadway musicals?
Because it used the music to reveal the plot.
Which of these describes the plot of The King and I?
An English governess tutors the children of the King of Siam and opposes various Siamese traditions.
Who wrote
The King and I
Oklahoma!
The Sound of Music
Rodgers and Hammerstein
Why did medieval church music have such specific rules?
The church was full of God-fearing Christians who were devoted to serving God and not making him angry, and this of course included only making music that would align with this purpose.
Who were the troubadours?
Musicians and poets who sang about chivalry, courtly love, and travel.
When was the medieval period?
500-1450 A.D.
How were Gregorian chants sung?
In monophonic texture.
Gregorian chants were monophonic, meaning they were one melody without harmony, resulting in just one musical part.
Also known as plain chant and developed by Pope Gregory
What is organum?
Sacred music with two vocal parts.
Around the year 900, two vocal parts were allowed within the church. Organum contained two simple vocal parts.
Which period is known for motets using imitative polyphony?
Renaissance
How did Josquin des Prez affect the style of the Renaissance period?
He is known for using imitative voices and changing textures in his compositions. Josquin des Prez was one of the most important composers of the mid-Renaissance period, ca. 1500. Josquin changed textures within a song, meaning that not all the singers sang at the same time all of the time. Instead, there would be some times where there were two singers while other times, three or four singers would be singing. He also boosted the idea of imitative voices, with imitations happening between high and low voices.
How was the style of Guillaume de Machaut unique during the Medieval period?
He is known for motets with changing rhythms and integration of sacred and secular texts.
Guillaume de Machaut was a key composer of motets in the 1300s, and his efforts made great strides in reaching new musical ideas in the Renaissance. While most known for his masses, Machaut wrote many motets and influenced others. His motets stand out for their changing rhythms, longer lengths, and integration of sacred and secular texts.
In which musical period did motets begin being written?
Medieval
Which Counter-Reformation era composer was known for his masses and motets?
Palestrina
who wrote Ave Maria
Josquin
Leonin and his student Perotin, of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, are generally credited with composing the first significant _______ Church music
polyphony
contributions to the development of music has not gone unnoticed. She was finally declared a saint as of May 2012 after centuries of debate. Her visions and prophecies led to important musical works, such as the liturgically-based Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum and the morality play Ordo virtutum. Each pushed the limits of medieval music, using a large range of notes, multiple jumps between notes and expressive strings of notes per syllable called melismas. Her books Scivias, Liber vitae meritorum and Liber divinorum operum detail the visions she had from the year 1141 until the end of her life in 1179.
Hildegrad van Bingen
Which of the following was one of the most important instruments of the Renaissance?
Lute
Which of the following types of composition specifically allowed for improvisation?
Fantasia
How did dancing influence the music of the Renaissance?
Dances became increasingly intricate, thus requiring more intricate music.
What is a consort?
A small instrumental ensemble.
How are operas and oratorios similar?
Operas and oratorios have choirs, solo singers, and an orchestra. However, religious topics and simple stagings are the hallmarks of an oratorio.
What is an oratorio?
A dramatic musical work based on a religious theme.
An oratorio is a dramatic musical work based on a religious theme. Most were narratives that were taken from the Bible and arranged into musical prose.
Which of the following oratorios contains the Hallelujah chorus?
Handel’s Messiah
principal idea was that the primary purpose of the arts was to awaken the feelings of the soul.
doctrine of affections
Baroque period
What period began with the invention of opera in Florence, Italy. By combining music with theater, opera helped unleash the dramatic flair and expressive power that became popular in ____ music. Historians end the Baroque in 1750, with the death of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Baroque period
1600-1750
was one of the hipsters who started writing Baroque opera before it became universally cool. His opera L’Orfeo retells the story of Orpheus and Euridice. It’s a dramatic, experimental work that many consider the first great opera.
Baroque’s Claudio Monteverdi
In addition to the sacred music he wrote for the grand services at St. Mark’s, Monteverdi also wrote at least three operas, plus secular vocal pieces called madrigals.
was court composer for King Louis XIV, the powerful monarch who built the palace of Versailles and called himself the Sun-King. He wrote magnificent operas and ballets for the King’s court. He also invented a form called the French Overture, stately march-like music used to mark the King’s entrance at a performance. This was a bit like playing ‘Hail to the Chief’ for the president of the United States. His music was so famous that whenever Baroque composers wanted to evoke regal glory, they imitated his French overtures.
Baroque’s Jean-Baptiste Lully
was busy becoming one of the top names in English musical history. As a child, he was a choirboy in the Chapel Royal, a prestigious group that was basically King Charles II’s personal church choir. As an adult, he became Organist of the Chapel Royal. He also worked as the King’s court composer and the organist at Westminster Abbey. His vocal music is known for rendering the English language into natural, expressive musical rhythms. His most famous work is his tragic, mythical opera Dido and Aeneas.
Baroque’s Henry Purcell
a one-hit wonder, thanks to his famous Canon in D Major. This elegant piece with a repeating bass line has accompanied countless brides down the aisle.
Baroque’s Pachelbel
an Italian violinist and priest who taught music at a girls’ school in Venice. He wrote many of his works for his students to perform, including a cycle of violin concertos called The Four Seasons. These are four pieces for orchestra and solo violin. Each concerto uses imaginative musical effects to describe a different season of the year.
Baroque’s Vivaldi
a Baroque cosmopolitan: he was born in Germany, studied in Italy, and made a career in England. He was an expert organist, and he began his career as a church musician in Germany. However, he achieved fame when he moved to London to compose operas for the public, and commissions for royalty, including his Music for the Royal Fireworks. Today he is best known for his oratorios, a sacred choral genre he perfected during the later part of his life. The Hallelujah Chorus from his oratorio Messiah is one of the Baroque’s greatest hits.
Baroque’s Handel
Beethoven called him ‘the immortal god of harmony,’ but during his lifetime, He was more famous as an organist than as a composer. For much of his career, he was music director at the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, a job with little prestige and a huge workload.
He wrote organ music, orchestral music, vocal music and more: in fact, he composed in every Baroque genre except opera. If you’re looking for an intro to Baroque sound, you couldn’t do better than his late works: try the Goldberg Variations for harpsichord or the Mass in B Minor, a powerful sacred choral work written near the close of the Baroque. These pieces bring together an anthology of the greatest styles, forms, and techniques he had learned during his career as a Baroque composer.
Baroque’s Johann Sebastian Bach
When did the Baroque Period take place?
1600-1750
Which composer is known for rendering the English language into natural, expressive musical rhythms in his vocal music?
Purcell’s vocal music is known for rendering the English language into natural, expressive musical rhythms. His most famous work is his tragic, mythical opera Dido and Aeneas.
Which composer spent his career working for King Louis XIV in France?
Jean-Baptiste Lully
is similar to the prelude in that it is based on a small musical idea, but in a fugue, the focus is the counterpoint. The idea recurs throughout the piece in highly complex permutations heard in all of the musical parts.
fugue
required fast fingers and intricate musical detail, which was playable only by a master musician.
toccata
is when multiple independent melodic lines are woven together to create harmony.
a counterpoint
is probably the most well-known composer of fugues.
Bach
is like the bass line of a song; it was generally played by a low-pitched instrument and a keyboard instrument, such as the harpsichord. Adding a repeated low part and some simple chords, it was used to add melodic texture while holding the song together and allowing the higher-pitched parts to shine. Surprisingly, this is not far off of what many bass players do today,
basso continuo
A fugue is a piece of music that uses interwoven melodies based on a single musical idea. Fugues were most popular during the Baroque Period, ca. 1600-1750. They were based on an earlier idea from the Renaissance Period called imitative polyphony, where multiple singers would sing the same melody at different times. This is similar to a round, like ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat’ or ‘Frère Jacques.’ Fugues were written either as an independent piece or as part of a larger work.
fugues made famous by Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a master composer of the Baroque period who was known for his fugues. As an organist and church choirmaster, it’s no surprise that most of his fugues were written for organ, harpsichord, or chorus. Bach was a master of composing with inventive melodic and rhythmic contour. His subjects and countersubjects combine in ways not seen before the 17th century. He literally wrote the book on fugues and composed countless fugues during his lifetime. His ‘Little’ Fugue in G minor
was an era of exuberant, dramatic music that began with the invention of opera. Two composers who mastered opera and its musical styles were Antonio Vivaldi and Henry Purcell. The Italian Baroque composer, Antonio Vivaldi, worked in Venice and achieved fame in his native Italy and beyond. He composed concertos like The Four Seasons for Pio Ospedale della Pietà, a Venetian girls’ orphanage. He also composed many operas.
The most famous Baroque composer from England was Henry Purcell. Purcell grew up singing as a choirboy in the Chapel Royal. He was an organist who wrote Anglican sacred music, as well as stage music like his opera Dido and Aeneas.
The Baroque period
was a composer from music’s Baroque period, which lasted from 1600 to 1750. He spent much of his career as a cantor of the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig and throughout his career, he composed music in many genres, including keyboard works and sacred choral pieces. The Baroque technique of counterpoint, or layering multiple melodies, helped make the pipe organ popular during the Baroque. He was an expert organist and composed many contrapuntal organ works including fugues, like the St. Anne Fugue, and chorale preludes, like Sleepers, Awake.
Johann Sebastian Bach
was a German composer from music’s Baroque period (1600-1750). After studying music in Germany and Italy, he made a career writing and producing Italian operas, like Rinaldo, in London. He also worked for English royalty, composing works, like Music for the Royal Fireworks. After Italian opera fell out of favor, he turned to oratorio, an unstaged choral genre for choir, soloists and orchestra. His most famous oratorio is Messiah, which includes the famous Hallelujah chorus.
George Frideric Handel
music wasn’t the only art form to find inspiration in Ancient Greece and Rome. In an artistic movement called neoclassicism (that means ‘new classicism’), painters, sculptors and architects were also finding inspiration in the forms and subjects of Greco-Roman culture.
The Classical Period
The classical period was in response to what?
The end of the Baroque period called Rococo, they believed it to be too frivolous.Turning away from the rococo style, neoclassical painters found inspiration in the art of Ancient Greece and Rome. They felt that Greco-Roman art supported moral values, like courage and patriotism, and that it was their duty to communicate these values, too. To neoclassical artists, realism and symmetry were rational, enlightened ways to communicate moral values in art.
Classical-era composers organized their music into orderly forms using repetition and contrast. One example is a popular genre from the Classical period called
sonata-allegro form.
Sonata-allegro form is a three-part structure used in instrumental music. It starts with a first section called the exposition, which introduces two contrasting themes, or melodies. Its second section is called the development, in which the two themes explore a musical landscape. The third section, the recapitulation, is a repeat of the exposition, with a few changes. These three sections give sonata-allegro form symmetry and order
Who wroteIdomeneo is based on an Ancient Greek myth about a king who must choose between sacrificing his son and saving his kingdom. Idomeneo’s readiness to put national welfare before his personal feelings resembles the sacrificial bravery of the Horatii brothers in David’s neoclassical painting.
Classical’s Mozart
During which period from the mid-18th century to the early 19th century, both music and art found inspiration in Ancient Greco-Roman culture. In the visual arts, this was called neoclassicism, and it was a reaction against an earlier, lighter style called rococo. Neoclassicism celebrated the Enlightenment values of morality and rationalism with forms and subjects influenced by Greco-Roman art. Jacques-Louis David’s Oath of the Horatii is a famous example. Neoclassicism’s concern for form also appears in Classical-era music, for example in the symmetry and order of sonata-allegro form. Classical-era operas like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Idomeneo and Don Giovanni reflect the rationalism and morality of neoclassicism.
Classical period
When did music’s Classical Period take place?
It lasted from the mid-18th century to the early 19th century.
How many sections are there in sonata-allegro form?
Three sections: exposition, development, and recapitulation.
How does Mozart’s Idomeneo display the moral values of neoclassicism?
In the king’s willingness to put the welfare of his country above his own feelings.
The Classical period also happened to produce three of music history’s most famous composers:
Franz Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven.
life and music helped inspire musical Romanticism, a style which dominated the mid-to-late 19th century. In Romanticism, composers use music to tell stories and communicate passionate emotion.
Beethoven
During the ________ period, which lasted from the mid-18th century to the early 19th century, there were four prominent genres of instrumental music. Each was structured in three or four movements. The symphony was a four-movement genre for orchestra, which usually opened with a sonata-allegro form movement. It also included a slow movement, a minuet and trio, and a fast closing movement. The concerto was a three-movement genre for orchestra and soloist. Domestic music genres included the string quartet, a four-movement genre for two violins, viola and cello, and the sonata, a three-movement genre for one or two instruments.
Classical
The third movement of a Classical symphony is faster than the slow movement and uses a form called ______ This form is based on a popular classical-era social dance called the minuet.
minuet and trio
The standard Classical-era symphony was written for an orchestra of wind and string instruments. It was composed in four movements:
a fast first movement in sonata-allegro form, a slow second movement, a mid-tempo minuet and trio, and a fast closing movement.
thinkers believed in class equality, and they thought that reason and natural human expression could bring about goodness and justice.
Enlightenment
There were two popular styles of Classical opera. Taken together, they’re a great illustration of the Enlightenment-era struggle between upper and lower classes.
One style was opera seria, an older variety of opera with plots that celebrated the power of the aristocracy’. The other was opera buffa, a new style with plots that questioned authority and featured everyday characters.
The plot of an opera seria usually concerns a noble protagonist who faces a tough moral decision. The characters are exalted types, like monarchs or Greek gods, and the settings are mythological or historical, with extravagant, high-budget stage sets
opera seria
One famous Classical-era opera seria is Orfeo ed Euridice, (that means Orpheus and Eurydice) composed in 1762 by the German composer Christoph Willibald von Gluck (1714-1787).
is the most famous of Classical era opera composers. His operas are known for powerful music and psychologically realistic characters. His best-known opera seria is his mythological masterwork Idomeneo, written in 1781.
Mozart
Set in the aftermath of the Trojan War, the story concerns Idomeneo, King of Crete. Idomeneo faces a terrible choice: he must sacrifice his son to the god Neptune, or his kingdom will be destroyed. Idomeneo contains the classic ingredients of opera seria: a mythological plot, a tough moral decision, and a powerful but benevolent monarch. Here’s a picture of the original star of Idomeneo, looking quite noble and idealistic.
To add a little comic relief, producers started to insert comic mini-operas called ________ between the acts of serious operas, like a halftime show in the middle of a football game.
intermezzos
Type of opera that composers were writing full-length comic operas for the middle-class market. This new genre was called _______, which is Italian for comic opera. Unlike opera seria, ______ featured modern, realistic settings, and everyday characters that the average middle-class listener could relate to.
opera buffa
Mozart was a master of opera buffa, and one of his best is the hilarious and moving Le nozze di Figaro (in English, The Marriage of Figaro) composed in 1786.
Another great opera buffa is Mozart’s Don Giovanni, composed in 1787. This show is a dark comedy about Don Juan, the legendary Spanish nobleman who traveled the countryside seducing women.
was one of the top composers of music’s Classical era, a stylistic period that lasted from the mid-18th century until the early 19th century. Classical-era music was orderly, accessible, and full of tuneful melodies. Many musicians consider his elegant yet powerful music to be the pinnacle of Classical style.
Mozart
Mozart’s opera buffa __________ (1787). Its protagonist, a Spanish nobleman named Don Giovanni, is a rich, charming, lying womanizer; think Don Draper from ‘Mad Men’. He exploits his aristocratic power throughout the show, even getting away with murder, at least (spoiler alert) until the final act, when a statue of his victim drags him literally down to hell. Despite being a ‘comic’ opera, the show raises big questions about the strain between social classes.
Mozart was brilliant at musical characterization. In this excerpt, Don Giovanni is trying to seduce an innocent peasant girl, and he’s so suave that it’s hard not to be charmed
Don Giovanni
example of a late Classical-era style called Sturm und Drang, which was popular both in literature and music. This German phrase means ‘storm and stress’, and you can certainly hear those qualities in this work, one of Mozart’s few symphonies in a minor key. Its famous opening features quiet, agitated string parts, interrupted by sudden bursts of sound from the full orchestra
Mozart’s Symphony no. 40 in G minor
music genre written for orchestra and a featured solo instrument.
concerto
Just like back-up singers in pop music help highlight a vocalist’s performance, a concerto with orchestra is a great way to show off an instrumental soloist. Mozart wrote concerti for many different solo instruments, but his piano concerti are particularly interesting because he wrote them to perform himself. Mozart’s piano concerti helped him earn a reputation as one of the top pianists in Classical-era Vienna.
All of Mozart’s 27 piano concerti are formatted in three movements: an opening fast movement, a slow second movement, and a fast finale. They tend to feature exciting dialogues between the orchestra and the piano, as well as plenty of opportunity for the piano soloist to show off technical skills and musical sensitivity.
Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 17 in G Major is a great example.
refers to an ensemble made up of two violins, one viola, and one cello.
string quartet
Haydn is known for them
Haydn composed 68 string quartets. He knew firsthand just how fun playing them could be because, on his days off, he played in a string quartet with his friend, the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
One of Haydn’s most entertaining pieces is his String Quartet Opus 33 no. 2, known as The Joke. In the work’s quirky final movement, Haydn repeatedly fakes-out the players and listeners by adding so many random pauses that we never know when it’s actually going to end. For the first amateurs who bought this piece, those wacky pauses would have been as fun as the Easter eggs in video games and the music still makes audiences laugh today!
was a composer from the music’s Classical period, which lasted from the mid-18th century to the early 19th century. He spent most of his career employed by the aristocratic Esterházy family. He wrote about 104 symphonies, or multimovement works for orchestra, including the Farewell Symphony and the Surprise Symphony. He wrote 68 string quartets, or pieces written for two violins, a viola, and a cello, including the Joke Quartet.
Franz Joseph Haydn
Beethoven’s life and music helped inspire a musical trend called ___________, in which narrative, originality and emotion were all-important.
Romanticism
is a transitional figure between the Classical period, which lasted from the mid-18th century to the early 19th century, and the Romantic period, which lasted from about 1820-1910. His nine symphonies, or multi-movement works for orchestra, inspired Romantic composers to experiment with musical forms and expression. Three of his most famous symphonies are the Third Symphony (the Eroica), the Fifth Symphony, and the Ninth Symphony (the ‘Choral Symphony’).
Ludwig van Beethoven
Music of the 19th century, a period of time also called the ______ era, was remarkably different from the music that preceded it. The _________ era was all about making a big splash, overwhelming audiences with intensely emotional music that included extremes of every kind, including contrasting dynamic levels.
Romantic
Romantic composers loved a good story. In the past, opera had been the main musical story-telling genre. But in the Romantic era, some composers wanted to communicate with their audiences on a deeper level through instrumental music and began to focus on telling musical stories without a singer or lyrics. To successfully do this, composers needed to create highly emotional music to successfully convey the general moods and plot points of a story without having the benefit of lyrics.
were very focused on melody. Many of these melodies are so catchy that they are still popular today, such as the passionate and tear-jerking ‘Love Theme’ from Romeo and Juliet by Tchaikovsky, the sneaky and suspenseful ‘In The Hall of the Mountain King’ by Edvard Grieg, and Rossini’s exuberantly jaunty ‘William Tell Overture,’ to name a few.
Romantic composers
Romantic composers often pushed musical elements to the extreme to get the emotional impact they wanted, but one element that especially interested them was playing with the musical ________ or volume of the music
dynamics
In music, a loud sound is indicated by the term
forte
In music, a really loud sound is called
fortissimo
In music, a soft sound is indicated by the term
piano
In music, a really soft sound is
pianissimo
symbol tells a performer to play with great force.
sforzando
means to play loud then immediately soft.
fortepiano
which means suddenly.
subito
Subito piano, for example, means that performers should get suddenly soft.
Two hallmarks of Romantic era music are
highly emotional music and dynamic contrast. . Composers wanted to emotionally connect with their audiences through instrumental music, and were very focused on creating rich and memorable melodies to help them do this. They were also less interested in following strict musical forms than their predecessors, preferring looser structures that would allow them to contrast a variety of emotions within a single movement. One of the ways that composers made their music more emotional and dramatic was by using dynamic contrast. Composers took dynamic levels to the extreme, writing incredibly loud music, marked fortissississimo, and incredibly soft music, like pianissississimo. They also used surprise tactics for emotional effect, including sudden bursts of sound like the sforzando or instant drops in volume, marked subito piano. The Romantic orchestra also had a wider selection of standard orchestral instruments that were capable of producing varied sounds that increased both dynamic and emotional range.
is the term used to describe art music that was created with the intention to promote nationalism or help inspire patriotic sentiments. The 19th century, also know as the Romantic Era, was a turbulent political time in the Western world.
musical nationalism
three key ways that Romantic composers created nationalist music:
overtly political music, patriotic music, and national music.
was a Western cultural movement that began in the early 1800s as a reaction to the neoclassical love of reason and order that dominated the previous century. ______ were imaginative individuals who championed creativity and artistic freedom. The movement affected all forms of art, literature, and music in Europe, eventually spreading to the United States and other parts of the Western world.
Romanticisim
Some Romantic era composers, like __________ from Poland, wrote music that promoted nationalism by incorporating folk music. Many of Chopin’s piano pieces are written in the style of Polish folk tunes and dances, like the mazurka.
Frederic Chopin
was a European artistic movement that spanned the 19th century. Music of this era was exciting, passionate, and full of life, as were the composers who created it. This era championed individualism and innovation, and each composer wrote highly-acclaimed music in their preferred genres that is still popular with audiences today.
the Romantic era
best-known works include the Moonlight Sonata, Für Elise, Ode to Joy, and his Fifth Symphony, all of which he wrote after he began to suffer from severe tinnitus, a condition that eventually caused total deafness.
Beethoven (Romantic era)
like a 19th-century Billy Joel who is best remembered as a prolific songwriter whose career was cut short by an early death from syphilis. His favorite genre was lieder, which just means ‘songs’ in German, but is used in classical music to refer to German songs from the Romantic period for the piano and voice.In addition to writing over 600 lieder, he also composed many instrumental works, including his famously ‘Unfinished Symphony’.
Franz Schubert (Romantic era)
was a piano virtuoso who showed off his skills on trans-European concert tours. A fabulous performer, he really knew how to work a crowd, incorporating flashy hand movements to dazzle his audiences and often tossing handkerchiefs and gloves to the crowd for fans to fight over. He was very popular, and started a craze nicknamed Lisztomania that swept Europe. As a composer, his music helped to form the New German School of music, which featured expanded musical forms and new harmonies. He also did a number of transcriptions, rewriting orchestral music so that it could be played on the piano.
Franz Liszt (Romantic era)
was very shy and hated to perform in public. Almost all of the music he wrote consists of short, one-movement works called character pieces that were created for home performance on the piano. Born and raised in Poland, he used his music to support nationalistic sentiments that were sweeping Europe by incorporating Polish folk tune idioms into his compositions, which can be heard in his mazurkas and polonaises.
Frederic Chopin (Romantic era)
is known mainly for his operas. Several of his more catchy opera songs can be heard today outside the opera house in commercials, movies, and other pop culture reference media. These include ‘La donna e mobile’ from Rigoletto and ‘the brindisi (drinking song)’ from La Traviata.
Like Chopin, he was also a nationalist. He used his opera music to help fuel the Risorgimento, an Italian political movement that sought to unify Italy. He played an important role in Italian nationalism. Even today, his chorus ‘Va pensiero’ from his opera Nabucco is often regarded as the unofficial national anthem of Italy.
Giuseppe Verdi (Romantic era)
dream was to become a piano virtuoso like Liszt, but those hopes were crushed by a permanent hand injury. After that, he focused on composition and started the New Journal of Music, a publication that critiqued new music, reviewed concerts, helped promote new composers, and revived interest in the music of older ones.
Robert Schumann (Romantic era)
was discovered by Robert Schumann, who became his mentor and guide. He was more traditional than most romantics and was deeply inspired by the music of the two previous eras, especially that of Bach and Mozart. He was his own harshest critic, destroying hundreds of works that he believed weren’t good enough to be performed. Brahms never married and is often hailed as the musical successor of Beethoven.
Johannes Brahms (Romantic era)
inextricably linked to the magical worlds he created for the ballet with music such as Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake. He has always been a crowd-pleasing favorite, and his music for The Nutcracker ballet is some of the most often-performed music in the world.
He was a master of orchestral music that extended beyond the ballet stage. Other notable works by _____ include the 1812 Overture, the ‘love theme’ from the Romeo and Juliet fantasy overture, and his ‘first piano concerto’.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Romantic era)
helped music transition from the Classical to the Romantic era.
Beethoven and Schubert Chopin loved the piano, Verdi excelled in operas, and Tchaikovsky is best remembered for his ballets. Music critics like Schumann challenged people to think about music in a new way, while touring virtuoso performers like Liszt helped to create the ‘rock star’ status of musicians that persists to this day. Others, like Brahms, helped to preserve the legacy of past composers by expanding musical innovations from previous eras.
also known as ‘the Figaro guy.’ If you know any of Rossini’s music, chances are that you know the famous ‘Figaro’ song from the opera The Barber of Seville or the overture to the opera William Tell.
Gioachino Rossini
Some of his most famous early operas include Tancredi and An Italian in Algiers, but perhaps his most famous of all was The Barber of Seville. This opera tells the story of Figaro, the barber who helps a wealthy count win the heart of a beautiful young girl named Rosina.
He specialized in the opera buffa, or comic opera style. He continued to have amazing success in this genre, and his sizable income was supplemented by a number of wealthy admirers who provided additional financial support
Gioachino Rossi Italian composer
What was Rossini’s last and most popular opera?
Guillaume Tell, better known as William Tell
was a violin virtuoso whose skills were so amazing that some people speculated that he had sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his flying fingers. Although he is best remembered as a performer, ________ also composed challenging pieces that he wrote to dazzle audiences on his concert tours.
Niccolo Paganini (Italian composer, Romantic era)
wrote symphonies, chamber music, and solo piano works but is best known as the father of German lieder. The word lieder literally means ‘songs’ in the German language, but when it is used in classical music, it specifically refers to a German art song for voice and piano.
Franz Schubert (Romantic era)
His dream was to become a piano virtuoso, a technical and artistic master of a musical instrument. Unfortunately, a hand injury killed those dreams. Instead, he began a career as a music critic, founding an academic journal for new music called Die Neue Zeitschrift für Musik and also composed music, especially for the piano. His well-known 1835 work Carnaval consists of 21 short piano pieces.
Robert Schumann (Romantic era) His dream was to become a piano virtuoso, a technical and artistic master of a musical instrument. Unfortunately, a hand injury killed those dreams. Instead, he began a career as a music critic
He loved the fusion of theater and music, which led him to focus mostly on opera composition. He ascribed to an aesthetic theory called Gesamtkunstwerk, an idea that synthesizes poetry, scenery, costumes, music, and acting to create a unified work where drama is the main focus.
Richard Wagner (Romantic era)
Wagner wanted to make the music an integral part of the drama, which led him to invent the ______, theme music for characters, objects, places, or emotions.
leitmotif
Unlike most theme music, leitmotifs transform and change as the drama unfolds. Leitmotifs are cool because they give the audience additional information about the drama. For example, if a male character sings a female character’s leitmotif, the audience knows that the male character is thinking about the female character.
Wagner’s leitmotifs shine in his epic work
The Ring of the Nibelung. This 4-opera cycle takes about 15 hours to perform and follows the story of a magical ring and the gods, mortals, and mythical beings whose fates are influenced by the ring’s power. Think Lord of the Rings meets Viking goddess warriors, but with everyone singing. Wagner’s opera cycle has dozens of characters to keep track of, but his leitmotifs help the audience follow the complicated plot.
Why was Wagner’s music controversial?
because of his anti-Semitic views. Because of this, Wagner’s music is taboo in Israeli concert halls and opera houses.
best remembered for his rich ballet music, including Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, and, most famously of all, The Nutcracker. Some of his other well-known works include his Piano Concerto No. 1, the 1812 Overture, and the popular love theme from the orchestral work Romeo and Juliet.
Tchaikovsky
is characterized by a focus on subjective emotion and personal experience, national pride, and musical richness or flamboyance requiring virtuosic skill. Before this, music was often stiff and rigid - beautiful, but focused on achieving an almost academic perfection. The rules were strict.
Romantic music
By the Late-Romantic period, composers were obsessed with pushing the limits of music, and this is where we see the transition into __________, the music of the 20th century, characterized by freedom and experimentation with traditional rules of musical composition. So the late 19th century was an important transitional era, as composers rejected the constraints of the past and looked to create a new world in the new century.
Modernism
was one of the last great Romantic composers from this region, and his compositions represent the synthesis of a century of Austro-German Romantic music into something new and fresh. He wrote symphonies, compositions with several musical parts made to be played by large ensembles.
Gustav Mahler
Mahler’s symphonies were unique in that they were narrative, meaning they followed something of a storyline because they were based in emotional experiences. Mahler also creates this sense of narrative by using vocals as a major part of the performance.
Traditionally, this was only done in opera, and in those cases the voice was really the focus, separate from the orchestra. Mahler used voice as part of the symphony, as just another instrument. This was a significant change that represented the increasing focus on freedom and experimentation that would define later Modernist music.
a Late-Romantic French composer of the late 19th and early 20th century most associated with Impressionism. The Impressionists were painters who used color to capture the feeling of a passing moment in time, to capture an impression. He did a similar thing with music, although he never personally liked the term Impressionism. His compositions were created to evoke the impression of a mood, emotion, feeling, or atmosphere.
Claude Debussy
Just as Impressionists used layers of colors with rough textures, so did Debussy. The only difference is that he used layers of harmonies to build texture.
a Hungarian composer of the early 20th century and a major figure in the transition between Romantic and Modernist music. His signature was the use of elements from folk songs as parts of formal symphonies. Traditionally, folk music was considered to be something separate from the professional, high culture music played by orchestras. He began experimenting with the line between the two, bringing folk elements of Eastern Europe into his compositions.
Béla Bartók
Not only did this help Bartók create the academic discipline of ethnomusicology, the study of folk music, but the use of non-traditional time signatures, tempos, chords, keys, scales, and rhythms greatly impacted modernist music and helped define the 20th century as a period of experimentation. He wasn’t just playing around with the possibilities of accepted Western European music, he was actively using folk music of Eastern Europe to challenge accepted traditions, and that was a very modern idea.
