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Listening Quiz #5 Flashcards

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1
Q

Describe La Mer, i. De l’aube a midi sur la mer

A
  • By Claude Debussy
  • 1905
  • Movement 1 of La mer: Three Symphonic Sketches
  • Genre: program symphony/orchestral suite
  • Ensemble: orchestra
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2
Q

Describe Estampes, no. 1 Pagodes

A
  • By Claude Debussy
  • 1903
  • Movement 1 of Estampes for solo piano
  • Genre: estampes
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3
Q

Describe Le sacre du printemps, Part II, Le sacrifice, final 2 dances

A
  • AKA The Rite of Spring
  • By Igor Stravinsky
  • 1913
  • Ensemble: large and colorful orchestra, including many types of percussion
  • Genre: primitivism
  • Form: block form
  • Part of the 3 important ballets for the Ballet Russe (Russian Ballet)
  • Genre: ballet score in 2 parts (The Adoration of the Earth and The Sacrifice) -> original genre
  • The work is most often performed today as an independent, 2-movement orchestral work without the accompanying dance
  • Several of the musical themes in The Rite are free adaptations of traditional folk melodies from remote Russian regions
  • Complexly rhythmic: juxtaposes unmetered sections with quickly changing and/or asymmetrical meters (meters not divisible by 2 or 3); often features strong, unpredictable accents and syncopations (accenting the upbeats instead of downbeats of the overall pulse)
  • Generally dissonant
  • Some passages feature polytonality (the simultaneous juxtaposition of 2 (or more) different key areas in different parts of the orchestra)
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4
Q

Describe Vielle Prière Bouddhique

A
  • By Lili Boulanger
  • 1917
  • Genre: secular cantata
  • Form: ABA (ternary)
  • Ensemble: tenor soloist, chorus & orchestra
  • Uses a mixture of impressionist musical techniques to create a work intended to sound exotic and primitivist
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5
Q

Describe The Banshee

A
  • By Henry Cowell
  • Genre: character piece
  • Ensemble: string piano
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6
Q

Describe The Voice of Lir

A
  • By Henry Cowell
  • From “Three Irish Legends”
  • 1919
  • Includes a tone cluster (a chord that uses every pitch (on the piano, depresses every key) between 2 notated pitches)
  • At the beginning of the song these tone clusters are notated by thick, black, vertical lines that connect 2 pitches an octave or more apart
  • Playing these tone clusters requires the fist, open hand, or forearm
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7
Q

Describe String Quartet 1931, i. Rubato assai

A
  • By Ruth Crawford Seeger
  • 1931
  • Genre: string quartet
  • Ensemble: 1st violin, 2nd violin, viola and cello
  • 1st movement -> fast
  • Tempo: rubato assai
  • Dissonant harmonically
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8
Q

Describe In the Tall Grass, no. 3 of Three Songs on Poems by Carl Sandburg

A
  • By Ruth Crawford Seeger
  • Ensemble: scored for mezzo-soprano, oboe, percussion and piano (optional wind and string parts)
  • Published with 2 other songs as a cycle of chamber art songs
  • These songs were composed using a mixture of serial compositional methods and “free composition”
  • The resulting harmonic language is very atonal
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9
Q

Describe Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, iv. Allegro molto

A
  • By Béla Bartôk
  • 1936
  • Genre: symphony
  • Tempo: allegro molto
  • Style: neoclassicism -> reminiscent of the early 18th century (Baroque Era)
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10
Q

Describe String Quartet No. 4, v. Allegro molto

A
  • By Béla Bartôk
  • 1928
  • Ensemble: 1st violin, 2nd violin, viola and cello (string quartet)
  • Tempo: allegro molto
  • Form: entire work is organized as a large-scale arch form
  • Style: neoclassicism -> reminiscent of the early 18th century (Baroque Era)
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11
Q

Describe Symphony No. 4 in D Minor, iii. Juba Dance

A
  • By Florence B. Price
  • 1952
  • Genre: symphony
  • Movement: juba dance
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12
Q

Describe Songs to the Dark Virgin

A
  • By Florence B. Price
  • 1941
  • Genre: art song
  • 3 poems by Langston Hughes that Price set as one, 3-verse art song
  • Sung by many of the most renowned singers of her day (including Marian Anderson & Leontyne Price)
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13
Q

Describe Southland Sketches, iii. Allegretto grazioso

A
  • By Harry T. Burleigh
  • 1916
  • Genre (entire piece): cycle of character pieces for violin & piano
  • Genre (movement 3): sketch or character piece for violin and piano
  • Ensemble: violin & piano
  • Tempo: allegretto grazioso
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14
Q

Describe “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”

A
  • By Harry T. Burleigh
  • 1918
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15
Q

Describe impressionism

A
  • French stylistic movement
  • Developed in late 19th century by painters who tried to capture a first, fleeting image of a subject through innovative use of light, color and perspective
  • The surface of reflecting water, the play of light in nature, and the city are popular topics
  • Impressionist paintings demonstrate a fascination for continuous change in the appearance of places and things, in the play of changing light, in presenting more or less distinct images and moods with minimally sketched detail
  • Impressionism in painting was partly a reaction against the grandiose imagery, dramatic action, and heroic historical themes that inspired late romantic art
  • Impressionism in painting was oppositional to the aesthetic of “photographic realism” in much of Europe in the late 19th century
  • For the impressionist, recreating the natural world in all its detail through exact and realistic painting was a low form of artistic expression (mere copying) -> impressionism seeks to capture the fragmentary immediacy of human perception
  • Musical impressionism often exploits “exotic scales” of various types, including pentatonic scales, whole-tone scales, octatonic scales, and modes
  • Impressionist composer: Debussy
  • Lili Boulanger’s musical style is influenced by impressionist and exoticist styles that were prevalent in France during her lifetime
  • East Asian images and ideas are common in impressionist works
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16
Q

Describe Claude Debussy

A
  • 1862-1918
  • Always the first composer discussed in histories of modern music
  • Arguably the most important French composer of the early 20th century
  • Important innovator, especially in the realm of harmonic language and orchestration
  • Precocious and musically talented child -> at the age of 11 Debussy entered the Paris Conservatory, where his penchant for innovation set him at odds with the more conservative, academic musical establishment
  • He was impressed by Javanese gamelan music he encountered at the 1889 Paris Universal Exhibition, and many have noted gamelan-like elements of Debussy’s music, especially concerning harmony and timbre
  • He frequented stylish Parisian literary salons where symbolist writers also gathered
  • His primary innovation is his lush harmonic language, which is extremely chromatic without sounding unpleasant -> the harmonies are beautiful although they are rarely “goal-oriented” (moving toward a stable tonic) due to the purposeful avoidance of strong dominant-tonic relationships in favor of more static harmonies
  • His music features extended chords
  • He preferred short, lyric (often innovative) musical forms, often with descriptive titles -> trait most easily seen and heard in his character pieces for piano
  • His orchestral works tend to avoid classical genres -> many are one-movement works with free forms and descriptive titles
  • His instrumental music tends to be programmatic
  • He avoided designating any of his orchestral works a symphony, even if they were one
  • His orchestral works use a large and colorful late-romantic orchestra, but the instruments are used in small combinations, creating a rich variety of delicate sounds (many short solos, muted strings and brass, harp glissandi, novel combinations of instruments) -> like painting with sound
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17
Q

Which one of the works is a programmatic symphony?

A

Debussy’s “La mer: Three Symphonic Sketches” (1905)

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18
Q

What’s program music?

A
  • Instrumental music associated with a story, poem, idea, scene, or something extra-musical, usually with a descriptive title revealing the source of inspiration
  • The non- or extra-musical association is rarely identified by explanatory notes given to the audience as part of the concert program
  • Not a genre -> it’s a broad category encompassing nearly all instrumental chamber and orchestral genres
  • Often nationalistic and/or exotic
  • Textual concepts are nearly always associated with programmatic works
  • Musical works with texts (songs, opera, etc.) are not considered program music by this definition
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19
Q

What’s an extended chord?

A
  • Chords of 4, 5, 6, or more different pitches, stacked on top of each other
  • Debussy’s music features extended chords
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20
Q

What are the exotic scales?

A
  • Pentatonic scale
  • Whole-tone scale
  • Octatonic scale
  • Various Modes
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21
Q

What are pentatonic scales?

A

5-note/5-pitch scales of various types

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22
Q

What are whole-tone scales?

A

Scale in which every interval is a whole step

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23
Q

What are octatonic scales?

A

Alternating half and whole steps

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24
Q

What are various modes?

A

Diatonic scales other than major & minor

25
Q

What’s harmonic planing?

A
  • Chord progression in which each chord has the same interval content (all of the pitches within each chord are the same distances from one another)
  • The ‘intervallic similarities’ in such chord progressions give them an aural sense of ‘cohesiveness’, despite not belonging together in the same key -> creating pleasing but chromatic harmonies and chord progressions
  • Found in Debussy and Lili Boulanger’s music
26
Q

What are pedal tones?

A
  • AKA pedal points
  • Long-held notes, normally in the bass, that sound against changing harmonies in the upper parts
  • Very common and recognizable feature of Debussy’s music for both piano and larger ensembles
27
Q

What are the dates of World War I?

A

1914-1918

28
Q

What are the dates of World War II?

A

1939-1945

29
Q

What’s modernism?

A
  • Style term too broad to be useful
  • Ambiguous but often used style term that encompasses a variety of specific innovative stylistic developments that occurred in the first half of the 20th century
  • All of the composers and styles from ~1900-1945 have been described as “modernist”
  • Some of the most important precursors to modernism are the innovations of Claude Debussy
30
Q

What’s primitivism?

A
  • Artistic style and movement that imitated and emulated the artworks of various non-European cultures, particularly those considered to be in a ‘lesser stage’ of cultural development, in an attempt to express less refined and more genuine feelings, a vision of ‘humanity in its infancy’
  • Basically a subcategory of exoticism
  • Combined escapist fantasy with rejection of modern European society ~1900, where egalitarian visions of the Enlightenment and promised prosperity of the Industrial Revolution had resulted in an urban landscape many found bleak, dehumanizing, unhealthy, and ‘unnatural’
  • Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan of the Apes (1912) provides an example in literature
  • Paul Gauguin was an innovative French painter and sculptor, and an important representative of primitivism in the visual arts
  • In music, primitivism is primarily about rhythm -> percussions play an important role
  • Stravinsky’s pieces include primitivism
  • Primitivist characteristics in music: title referring to “primitive” peoples, emphasis on rhythm, prominent dissonance throughout, dancing as typical activity in exotic depictions, extreme dynamics (particularly very loud), use of extreme piano range, etc.
31
Q

Describe Igor Stravinsky

A
  • 1882-1971
  • Russian-born composer
  • Became famous in Paris just before WWI for his ballet scores
  • Later became an American citizen (1945)
  • Arguably one of the 2 or 3 most important and influential composers of Western art music in the 20th century
  • Commissioned by the great impresario Diaghilev to write 3 important ballets for the Ballet Russe (Russian Ballet) who were at that time dominating the ballet scene in Paris:
  • Wrote The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), & Le sacre du printemps (1913)
  • Stravinsky and his family sought refuge in Switzerland in 1914 (start of WWI), then moved back to France until the outbreak of WWII (1939), at which time he was forced to flee again
  • Due to the success of his ballet scores and later works, he was an international celebrity in the 1920s&30s, traveling in both Europe and the US, composing on commission and conducting his own works
  • At the start of WWII he moved to the US, where he lived for the rest of his life, settling near LA and becoming a US citizen
  • He experimented with neoclassicism in his works composed after ~1920
32
Q

Describe the Rite of Spring

A
  • 1913
  • Choreographed by progressive Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky
  • The Ballet Russe performed the world premiere of Le sacre in Paris (1913) before a shocked and scandalized audience, who were more accustomed to the refined grace and accessibly exotic music of French, late romantic ballet in the classical style (ex: Tchaikovsky)
  • The premiere resulted in a very famous riot, which enraged Stravinsky and culminated in various lawsuits for acts of petty violence, but subsequent performances elsewhere were received more decorously
33
Q

What’s a ballet score?

A
  • Proper term (genre designation) for the music alone in the ballet genre
  • Ex: The Rite of Spring
34
Q

What’s block form?

A

Structure of the work is comprised of abrupt juxtapositions of differing musical tableaux, purposefully suggesting a “crude” craftsmanship

35
Q

What’s polytonality?

A
  • Simultaneous juxtaposition of 2 (or more) different key areas in different parts of the orchestra
  • Some passages of The Rite of Spring feature polytonality
36
Q

What’s commission?

A
  • Sum of money paid to an artist (composer) in advance to facilitate the creation of a new work for a specific ensemble, performance, occasion, etc.
  • ‘Commissioned work’
37
Q

What’s pizzicato?

A
  • AKA Bartók pizzicato
  • Plucking the string of a bowed-string instrument so hard that it snaps back against the fingerboard, making a percussive sound
38
Q

What’s neoclassicism?

A
  • Style term
  • Intentional use of genres & styles from previous style periods (especially the Baroque and Classical Eras) in works of the 20th century
  • Reaction against late romanticism and impressionism
  • Neoclassic composers looked back to and consciously imitated some aspects (forms, genres, ensemble types, etc.) of 18th-century music (music of the High Baroque Era -> J. S. Bach)
  • After World War I, neoclassicism was a reaction against all aspects of the previous romantic aesthetic, which had involved nationalism and a focus on subjective personal expression
  • Neoclassic works by Stravinsky and others show a preference for non-programmatic genres -> preferred absolute music
  • Much neoclassic music was intended to be an objective musical expression free from all non-musical associations
  • Bartók had an individual approach to neoclassicism, and his works frequently feature ensembles, forms and textures reminiscent of the early 18th century (Baroque Era)
39
Q

Describe Nadia Boulanger

A
  • 1887-1979
  • AKA Juliette
  • Eminent French teacher of music composition, conductor, composer, keyboardist (piano and organ), and devoted sister of Lili Boulanger
  • At the age of 10, Nadia entered the Paris Conservatory, where she studied harmony and composition with various teachers, including French composer Gabriel Fauré
  • She also studied organ and piano and traveled as a keyboard virtuoso
  • She toured as a concert pianist and organist during the first 2 decades of the 20th century, and she was an active composer
  • Her compositions include over 30 songs, chamber music, and a Fantasie variée for piano and orchestra
  • Her musical language is often highly chromatic, but always based in tonality (never atonal)
  • Debussy’s influence is apparent in Boulanger’s fondness for modal melodies and parallel chord progressions (harmonic planing)
  • Her music shows the stylistic influence of impressionism
  • One of the foremost composition teachers of the 20th century and one of the first professional female conductors
  • She taught privately from 16-92yrs old
  • Served on the music faculty of several esteemed institutions, including the American Conservatory at Fountainbleau and the Paris Conservatory
  • Important figure in American musical life -> often toured in the US as a performer, conductor, and lecturer, and lived there during the upheaval of World War II
40
Q

What’s chinoiserie?

A
  • The imitation of Chinese images and themes in Western decorative arts
  • East Asian images and ideas are common in impressionist works and in French decorative arts of the time
41
Q

What’s atonal music?

A
  • AKA atonality/pantonal music/“free atonality”
  • Schoenberg referred to the advent of atonal music as “the emancipation of dissonance” -> in his atonal music, dissonance is used freely and intuitively, with no governing rules of harmony
  • Atonality is a term for harmonic language (not style, genre or form), and involves the intentional avoidance of any pitch center (atonal = no tonic) through the careful avoidance of chord patterns common in tonal music
  • In atonal music all 12 pitches of the equal-tempered octave may be used at any time and in any combination: it’s the epitome of a completely intuitive, chromatic music
  • Problem: how does a composer create coherent musical forms without using “key areas” (the major and minor keys used in tonal music) as a basis? How does one know when a piece of music is finished, if there’s no return to tonic?
  • Bartok and Ruth Crawford Seeger used atonality in their pieces
42
Q

What’s ethnomusicology?

A
  • Area of academic study
  • The scientific study, collection, and classification of music from non-Western cultures (outside the ‘art music’ tradition)
  • Vibrant, valuable, and diverse area of scholarly endeavor well represented today in many international universities
  • Historical origins of ethnomusicology must be viewed in the context of late-Romantic and modernist ideologies of nationalism and primitivism, aesthetic ideals that emphasized the recovery and preservation of ‘folk’ traditions as a source of ‘original inspiration’ rooted in the common heritage of a specific national or ethnic group
  • Bartok was an important scholar who did groundbreaking fieldwork in remote peasant villages of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, recording and studying ethnic (and usually orally transmitted or ‘unwritten’) musical traditions -> compiled more than 10,000 Romanian, Slovak, and Hungarian folksongs.
43
Q

What’s a musical palindrome?

A
  • Musical feature that is the same forwards as it is backwards
  • Ex: the pitches of a melody might be A-C-B-E-B-C-A, forming a simple palindrome at the level of pitch
  • Symmetrical arrangements, rhythms, and timbres can also create palindromes, which may or may not be discernible to the listener
  • Bartók was fond of using musical palindromes as an abstract structural principle
  • Arch forms are palindromic at the level of larger formal sections
44
Q

What’s a tone cluster?

A
  • In Cowell’s music, a tone cluster is a chord that uses every pitch (on the piano, depresses every key) between 2 notated pitches
  • At the beginning of Voice of Lir these tone clusters are notated by thick, black, vertical lines that connect 2 pitches an octave or more apart -> playing these tone clusters requires the fist, open hand, or forearm
  • Cowell’s music frequently employs tone clusters, heard in many of his character pieces
45
Q

What’s the string piano?

A
  • Cowell’s most influential innovation was the creation of the string piano
  • With the string piano, the performer isn’t restricted to playing the keys but also reaches inside the opened piano to manipulate the strings by plucking, scraping, scratching, etc.
  • Many of Cowell’s character pieces (ex: The Banshee) are for string piano
46
Q

What’s the juba dance?

A
  • Elaborate form of handclapping and body slapping practiced by African Americans as the rhythmic accompaniment to improvised dance, usually creating complex cross-rhythms with the fall of the feet
  • The juba routine may be performed by the dancer himself or by onlookers and is sometimes accompanied by a rhymed chant
  • Earliest reference to juba dancing was recorded among enslaved peoples on American agricultural plantations in the 1820s
47
Q

What’s a secular cantata?

A
  • 17th century
  • Large work for solo vocalist, basso continuo, and occasionally other instruments, featuring secular texts that are often sad but might be humorous
  • One-movement works divided into several sections featuring a variety of vocal styles (recitative, arioso, and aria) with changing meters and tempos
  • Cantatas of this sort were common forms of entertainment at court in 17th Century
48
Q

Describe Lily Boulanger

A
  • 1893-1918
  • AKA Marie-Juliette Olga
  • French composer and younger sister of Nadia Boulanger
  • She was trained as a performing and composing musician from an early age
  • In December 1909, after her sister gave up her attempts to win the Prix de Rome, Lili decided to compete for the prize
  • After an unsuccessful 1st attempt in 1912, she won the Prix de Rome in 1913 with her cantata Faust et Hélèn
  • Her success made international headlines because she was the first woman to win the prize for music
  • Her musical style is influenced by impressionist and exoticist styles that were prevalent in France during her lifetime
  • Her impressionist style is most obvious in her character pieces
  • Her choice and setting of texts shows her concern with social and political issues of her time
49
Q

What’s the Prix de Rome?

A
  • Competition sponsored by the French Académie des Beaux-Arts that awarded artists and composers with a funded period of study in Rome
  • The contest was held annually from 1803 to 1968
  • The competition was a rite of passage for generations of French composers, providing some with official standing, public recognition, and monetary support early in their careers
  • Music histories and concert programs often mention it
50
Q

Describe expressionism

A
  • Style of art, music, and theater, especially associated with Germany and Scandinavia between 1880-1925
  • Often stresses intense, subjective emotion, isolation, madness, or some extreme and/or deranged psychological state
  • Stylistic reaction against the pleasant subjects and soft pastel colors of impressionism and the realism of southern European Romantic art
  • Expressionist painters used bright, clashing colors, infused with darkness, colors that are wrong, disturbing, and suggestive of psychic violence
  • Often painted the canvas black to start
  • Expressionist artworks often involve distortions of both color and form, creating a sense of unease, and an altered perception of reality
  • Ex: Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”
  • Can be a form of social protest & commentary, depicting the horrors of war, the despair of poverty & disease, man’s
    inhumanity to man
  • Expressionism has been disparaged as “the aesthetic of ugliness”
  • Expressionist artists described their work as a search for brutal honesty and alternative forms of beauty
  • Arnold Schoenberg was an expressionist musical composer (atonal music)
51
Q

Describe Arnold Schoenberg

A
  • 1874-1951
  • Austrian Jewish composer, most associated with Vienna before he emigrated to the US to escape the Nazi rise to power
  • Arguably one of the 2 most important composers of the 20th century
  • Influential teacher, author of primary texts, and innovator whose music (atonal music) became one of several trends of modernism
  • Influenced by the highly chromatic, innovative music of German late-Romantic composers (Brahms, Bruckner, Wagner), and like them, saw J.S. Bach and Beethoven as musical forefathers
  • He “abandoned tonality” altogether around 1908, composing the first works of atonal music, in the forms and genres of art songs, string quartets, and orchestral works
  • His music was highly rejected by many of his contemporaries
  • His music, and that of his students, were banned by the Nazis
  • Forced to emigrate to the US in the late 1930s and taught music composition and basic theory at University of California LA late in his life -> one of his students was John Cage
  • In 1922, he announced his invention of 12-tone composition -> introduced this new concept as a refinement to address a ‘flaw’ with his previous atonal idiom
52
Q

Who are the American ultra-modernists?

A
  • 1920s-30s
  • Group of progressive American composers, mostly centered in NYC
  • This group included Ruth Crawford Seeger, Henry Cowell, Edgard Varése, and Carl Ruggles
53
Q

Describe Béla Bartôk

A
  • 1881-1945
  • Hungarian composer, pianist, professor at the Budapest Academy of Music, and pioneering scholar of ethnic music
  • Toured throughout Europe as a concert pianist during the early 1900s, although few of his works were published before 1918
  • Important scholar who did groundbreaking fieldwork in remote peasant villages of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, recording and studying ethnic (and usually orally transmitted or ‘unwritten’) musical traditions -> compiled more than 10,000 Romanian, Slovak, and Hungarian folksongs
  • In 1940 he immigrated to the US, where he performed and conducted ethnomusicological research for Columbia University
  • There he expanded his studies of ethnic music to include countries in the Middle East and elsewhere
  • Although Bartók rarely quoted folk music in his works, he frequently used the rhythms, harmonic language, and other elements of the folk styles he studied, integrating these elements into his own, distinctive style
54
Q

What was the influence of folk music on early 20th-century nationalism?

A

Preservation of folk traditional music as a source of original inspiration rooted in the common heritage of a specific national or ethnic group

55
Q

Describe Henry Cowell

A
  • 1897-1965
  • American composer, music theorist, author, and pianist
  • Author of New Musical Resources (1930), a book that advanced the innovative rhythmic and harmonic concepts he used in his compositions (along with speculation regarding the future of music)
  • Tireless advocate of contemporary music
  • Founded, organized, and ran various organizations (ex: the New Music Society founded in LA in 1927) that promoted ‘new music’ through the organization of concerts, fundraising, and publication of works
  • Cowell’s New Music Quarterly, began publication in 1927, published many new and challenging works by the most innovative composers working in the US at that time, including Edgard Varèse, Charles Ives, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Carl Ruggles and many others
  • Among Cowell’s several important innovations, the most influential was the creation of the string piano
56
Q

Describe Ruth Crawford Seeger

A
  • 1901-1953
  • American musician who had 2 important careers in her lifetime:
    1. Composer: as a composer, she was an outstanding figure among early American modernists of the 1920s&30s
    2. As a specialist in American traditional (folk) music, she transcribed, edited, and arranged important anthologies of musical Americana in the 1940s & ‘50s.
  • Her reputation as a composer is based primarily on the works she composed in Chicago and New York between 1923-1933, which provide models for her husband’s (musicologist Charles Seeger) concept of dissonant counterpoint, as well as indigenously American (original) approaches to serialism (12-tone music)
  • During the early 1930s, she became involved with a group of American Ultramodernists
  • Her works are predominantly cast in conventional classic/romantic genres and forms: suites, chamber songs, character pieces, string quartets, violin sonatas, etc.
  • Crawford’s character pieces provide excellent examples of her dissonant harmonic language, influenced by the atonal music of the 2nd Viennese School
  • In 1926 she became acquainted with Chicago poet Carl Sandburg
  • She contributed folksong arrangements to his landmark anthology The American Songbag, and nearly all of her original art songs are based on Sandburg’s poetry
  • After moving to Washington, D.C. in 1936, she worked closely with John and Alan Lomax at the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress -> gave up composition of art music at this time, although she published several important anthologies of transcribed and/or arranged American folk music
57
Q

Describe Carl Sandburg

A
  • 1878-1967
  • Chicago poet
  • Created landmark anthology “The American Songbag”
  • Nearly all of R. C. Seeger’s original art songs are based on Sandburg’s poetry
58
Q

Describe Florence Beatrice Price

A
  • 1887-1953
  • American composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher
  • First African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer, rising to prominence in the 1930s, and the first to have a composition played by a major orchestra
  • Majored in piano and organ, and studied composition and counterpoint at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston with noted American composers
  • Also studied privately with George Whitefield Chadwick, who encouraged her to incorporate African-American folk materials into her late-Romantic musical style
  • In 1932 Price won the first-prize Wanamaker Foundation Award with her Symphony in E Minor, and 3rd for her Piano Sonata
  • The Chicago Symphony Orchestra premiered the symphony in 1933, making Price’s piece the first composition by an African-American woman to be played by a major orchestra anywhere in the world
  • Most well known for her songs -> her art songs and arrangements of African-American spirituals were sung by many of the most renowned singers of her day
  • Made considerable use of characteristic African-American melodies and rhythms in many of her works
  • In her large-scale works, her musical language is often conservative (compared to innovations made in the earlier 20th century), in keeping with the Romantic American nationalist style of the 1920s–40s, but also reflects the influence of her cultural heritage and the ideals of the ‘Harlem renaissance’ of the 1920s–30s
  • She incorporated spirituals and characteristic dance music within classical forms, and at times deviated from traditional structures in deference to African-American influences (ex: call-and response techniques and Juba dance rhythms)

Music (9 decks)

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