Listening Test 3 Flashcards
Three Nocturnes, Clouds
Composer: Claude Debussy
ID Confidence: 5
Trait: Impressionism, parallel/ wandering chords and largely arhythmic, small hints of rhythm.
The Rite of Spring
Composer: Igor Stravinsky
ID Confidence: 4
Traits: musical cubism, primitivism, chopping music into cells (ostinatas) and combining/arranging them use of strong dissonance.
Pierrot Lunaire no 8, “Night”
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.
Wozzeck scene 3
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.
Wozzeck Scene 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.
The Rockstrewn Hills Join in the People’s Outdoor Meeting
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.
Pierrot Lunaire No. 18, “Moonfleck”
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.
An Unanswered Question
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.
Piano Concerto in G
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.
Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta
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.
Appalachian Spring (excerpts)
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.
Preludes for Piano 1. Allegro ben ritmato e deciso
Composer: George Gershwin
ID Confidence: 0
Traits: Sort-of nationalism. Jazz infused piano miniature. Uses syncopation.
Alexander Nevsky V. The Battle on Ice (excerpts)
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.
4’33”
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.
Lux Aeterna
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.
Poème électronique
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.
From the Grammar of Dreams
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.
Music for 18 Musicians, Introduction
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.
Music for 18 Musicians, Section One
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.
