Listening Test 3

Question 1

Three Nocturnes, Clouds

Answer 1

Composer: Claude Debussy
ID Confidence: 5
Trait: Impressionism, parallel/ wandering chords and largely arhythmic, small hints of rhythm.

Question 2

The Rite of Spring

Answer 2

Composer: Igor Stravinsky
ID Confidence: 4
Traits: musical cubism, primitivism, chopping music into cells (ostinatas) and combining/arranging them use of strong dissonance.

Question 3

Pierrot Lunaire no 8, “Night”

Answer 3

Composer: Arnold Schoenberg
ID Confidence: 4, female German singer less wild
Traits: Atonal Expressionism, pre 12-tone. Used “sprechstimmer”, a vocal technique developed by schoenberg between speaking and singing. Freudian focus inward.

Question 4

Wozzeck scene 3

Answer 4

Composer: Alban Berg
ID Confidence: 3
Traits: Expressionism/12-tone. Used 12-tone serialist technique of Schoenberg, which orders all 12 tones of the chromatic scale in a particular order and the music is different retrogrades and inversions of that order. So no note is emphasized/ is atonal.

Question 5

Wozzeck Scene 4

Answer 5

Composer: Alban Berg
ID Confidence: 3
Traits: Expressionism/12-tone. Used 12-tone serialist technique of Schoenberg, which orders all 12 tones of the chromatic scale in a particular order and the music is different retrogrades and inversions of that order. So no note is emphasized/ is atonal.

Question 6

The Rockstrewn Hills Join in the People’s Outdoor Meeting

Answer 6

Composer: Charles Ives
ID Confidence: 0

Instrumental, but wild and experimental
Traits: Transcendentalism. Shows Ives’ idiosyncratic experimental approach to music, quoting various American folk tunes and ideas, heavy use of dissonance and polyrhythm.

Question 7

Pierrot Lunaire No. 18, “Moonfleck”

Answer 7

Composer: Arnold Schoenberg
ID Confidence: 4, wilder female german singing
Traits: Expressionism. Not 12-tone. Used “sprechstimmer”, a vocal technique developed by schoenberg between speaking and singing. Freudian focus inward, an expressionistic inquest into madness.

Question 8

An Unanswered Question

Answer 8

Composer: Charles Ives
ID Confidence: 4
Traits: Transcendentalism. A metaphysical program piece. Strings provide baseline of music, offstage trumpets pose a question answered by offstage (other side) oboes. Piece ends on unanswered question posed by trumpet.

Question 9

Piano Concerto in G

Answer 9

Composer: Maurice Ravel
ID Confidence: 1
Traits: Neoclassicism. Maurice Ravel could communicate with his cats. A 20th cent variant on classical form of piano concerto, with no orchestral exposition and no development section. Recapituation is re-textured, ravel was a great texturer.

Question 10

Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta

Answer 10

Composer: Béla Bartók
ID Confidence: 0
Traits: Nationalism. Neoclassical, use of symmetry. Elements of folk music. This piece features contrasting themes are are developed but hard to hear due to extensive chromaticism.

Question 11

Appalachian Spring (excerpts)

Answer 11

Composer: Aaron Copeland
ID Confidence: 3, most normal classical music. Listen for Simple Gifts.
Traits: Nationalism. Showing Copland’s approach of writing American music for common people audiences, features a theme and variations on the Shaker hymn “simple gifts.” Mountainous music, big ranges and intervals.

Question 12

Preludes for Piano 1. Allegro ben ritmato e deciso

Answer 12

Composer: George Gershwin
ID Confidence: 0
Traits: Sort-of nationalism. Jazz infused piano miniature. Uses syncopation.

Question 13

Alexander Nevsky V. The Battle on Ice (excerpts)

Answer 13

Composer: Sergei Prokofiev
ID Confidence: 1
Traits: Nationalism, film score. Music composed to accompany Soviet propaganda film, about a battle with Germans. Rythmic and melodic ostinatas during the battle scene.

Question 14

4’33”

Answer 14

Composer: John Cage
ID Confidence: 5
Traits: Aleatory. Completely silent, music that is aleatory-random. Puts focus on environmental sounds, which are out of the performer’s or the composer’s control.

Question 15

Lux Aeterna

Answer 15

Composer: György Ligeti
ID Confidence: 3
Traits: Cluster-sound. Music spreads out from origins in series of crescendos. Contrasting blocks of texture forms the structure of the music.

Question 16

Poème électronique

Answer 16

Composer: Edgard Varèse
ID Confidence: 3
Traits: Musique concrète. Music that combines sounds found in daily life (washing machine, construction, trucks, etc) with electronic music. Put together by cutting and splicing tape.

Question 17

From the Grammar of Dreams

Answer 17

Composer: Kaija Saahriaho
ID Confidence: 5 - two weird fucking soprano women
Traits: “new stuff.” Avant grade work, setting of two sylvia plat poems for two different sopranos. Use of unusual vocal technique, taking apart words.

Question 18

Music for 18 Musicians, Introduction

Answer 18

Composer: Steve Reich
ID Confidence: 2
Traits: Minimalist music. Gradual change in small, repeated sections of music. This piece is 11 chords lasting for 11 breaths each.

Question 19

Music for 18 Musicians, Section One

Answer 19

Composer: Steve Reich
ID Confidence: 2
Traits: Minimalist music. Gradual change in small, repeated sections of music. This section is based on one of the chords from the intro, five minutes of assembly+disassembly on it.