Key Terms, Ideas and Prompts Flashcards
SYMBOLISM
Oblique/abstract forms of expression (metaphor, allusion) - ambiguous
EXPRESSIONISM
- Aesthetic associated with the 2nd Viennese School
- Intuitive composition, reflective of the unconscious inner psyche
- Free from convention and tradition
SERIALISM/DODECOPHONY/12-TONE COMPOSITION
- System wherein all tones have equal prominence in musical construction
- All 12 tones must be played before a tone can be heard again
- In a set order and transformed by inversions and/or retrogrades
NATIONALISM
- Group with shared ethnicity/racial experience (not a political entity)
- ‘Imagined sense of belonging via essentialist constructions of self hood’
NOSTALGIA
- Longing for a previous time or place
- Can be for non-existent place or unexperienced
- Mourning of the past (pre-industrial simplicity)
KITSCH
- In poor taste due to excessive garishness (tacky)
- Decorative objects considered by many people to be ugly, without style
- Sometimes appreciated ironically
ARTISTIC SYNTHESIS
- Sum of artistic perspectives to create something new
- Reconciling artistic and aesthetic viewpoints
DADA
- WW1 artistic movement reaction to the horrors of war
- Anti-Art/Anti-Aesthetic/Anti-Rationalism (satire, nonsense)
- Seeking to destroy traditional values (Anti-Bourgeoise), radically left-wing
SURREALISM
- Post WW1 artistic movement
- Expression of absolute reality, uniting the conscious and unconscious mind
- Juxtaposing the fantastic and the grotesque
ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM
- Unconscious, expressive/emotional art
- Abstract and spontaneous, gestural
PERFORMANCE ART
Art that is created through the actions of the artist/spectators
PRIMITIVISM
- The simple and unsophisticated - often viewed with pity/derision as antithesis of progress
- Idealisation of an imagined pure, ‘authentic’ primordial human culture (nostalgia, exoticism, pre-individualism)
NEOCLASSICISM
- Popular in France during the pre/interwar period
- Return to the aesthetic concepts of Classicism: order, balanced forms, thematic clarity, economy and emotional restraint, modality/extended tonality
- Anti-Germanic revival of French historical/baroque musical forms
EXOTICISM
- Evocation of a distant ‘Exotic’ land
- Assimilation of borrowed musical materials to signal something ‘Other’
- Often entirely inauthentic and used for ‘colour’
ORIENTALISIM
- Offshoot of EXOCTICISM
- Representation of the ‘Orient’ or the East as well as diasporic communities like the Jewish and Romani
- Essentialisation of non-western cultures
CULTURAL RELATIVISM
- Notion that no culture is more developed than another, just distinct
- Accompanied the shift from COMPARATIVE MUSICOLOGY/ESSENTIALISM to ETHNOMUSICOLOGY/PLURALISM
ESSENTIALISM
- The belief that music is a natural expression of biology and ethnicity
- Linked to COMPARATIVE MUSICOLOGY
PLURALISM
- The belief that musical culture is not tied to race but cultural tradition and can be learned; one can embrace multiple musical traditions
- Linked to CULTURAL RELATIVISM and ETHNOMUSICOLOGY
POLIS
- A group of people belonging to the same political sphere
- Sharing political beliefs
POLITICS
- Combination of prescription, change and hope for the future
- Fuelled by ideology
VERFREMDUNGSEFFEKT
- ‘The Alienation Effect’ (Brecht)
- Way of distancing the audience from emotional involvement
- Reminding them of the artificiality of theatre
- Prompting critical evaluation on what is presented to them
WEINMAR CABERET
- Risqué, underground establishments responding to current events
- Using Jazz and American Popular music
- Post-WW1 tensions and cultural explosion collide
SOCIALIST REALISM
- Belief that art should be a faithful mirror of life as experienced by the everyman
- A pedagogical tool that informs social ideas
- Depicting struggle, but with an uplifting end (associated with Stalin)
FORMALISM
- Art for Art’s sake
- Imitation of Western Art Music
CONSTRUCTIVISM
Use of method and process in musical composition
THE CHILLING EFFECT
- The suppression of free speech and legitimate forms of dissent among a population because of fear of repercussion
- Brought on by 20thC political climate: Wars, Soviet Union, the Berlin Wall, apartheid etc
- Facilitating the rise of musical production addressing topical issues
ESOTERIC
Intended for and understood by only a small group of people with specialised knowledge
TOTAL SERIALISM/MULTIPLE SERIALISM
Multiple musical parameters of composition decided upon by serial methods
POINTILLISTIC
Musical texture where pitches are presented as isolated ‘points’ rather than in a continuous melodic line
EXPERIMENTALISM
- ‘Anything goes’ attitude
- Untethered by history and and aesthetic/philosophical argument
- Aims to explore all possibilities
MODERISM
- Linear/progress orientated path, extending yet situated within past tradition
- Legitimising oneself in lineage of European masters (popular with American students who felt lost regarding their own national musical heritage)
- Academic cannon prefers modernism: easier to analyse, modernist composers in teaching positions/positions of power
- Lack of performance popularity due to elitism - allows the unappreciated modernist to feel consoled that his music is too complex for the layman
POSTMODERNISM
- Acknowledging the multiplicity of pathways ‘a directionless field’
- Anti-narrative (fragmented, eclectic, destructive), critiquing modernism and requisite colonial/imperial ties (global connectivity, intersectionality)
- Addressing class and power inequalities; accessible and preoccupied with reception, emotion, spirituality
- Transient; local, multi-layered/subjective IDENTITY instead of universal and absolute
CHANCE COMPOSITION
Fixed musical product composed via chance methods
INDETERMINACY
Composing approach in which some aspects of a musical work are left open to chance or to the interpreter’s free choice
SYSTEMATIC ACOUSTEMIZATION
‘Hearing without seeing’ (Chion)
MUSIC CONCRETE
- Music technology movement headed by Pierre Schaeffer at the ‘Groupe de Recherches Musicales’ in Paris (1948)
- Sound Reproduction: using sounds recorded on tapes as compositional building blocks that can be manipulated
- Real acoustic sources and everyday sounds