Music Flashcards
Composer who completed the grand ballets Firebird and Petrushka for Sergei Diaghilev
Igor Stravinsky
Composer who produced the neoclassical work Symphony of Psalms
Igor Stravinsky
Composer who moved to Hollywood, where he produced his only full-length opera, The Rake’s Progress
Igor Stravinsky
Composer who adopted the serialist, twelve-tone style of Anton Webern to produce the abstract ballet Agon
Igor Stravinsky
Austrian composer who pioneered dodecaphony, the twelve-tone system, which treated all parts of the chromatic scale equally
Arnold Schoenberg
Composer influenced by Richard Strauss and Richard Wagner, evident in his Transfigured Night for Strings
Arnold Schoenberg
German musical term meaning “halfway between singing and speaking”
Sprechstimme
Composer who broke from romanticism and developed expressionist pieces free from key or tone, such as Pierrot lunaire
Arnold Schoenberg
Composer whose students include Alban Berg and Anton Webern
Arnold Schoenberg
Composer who fled Nazi Germany, moving from Berlin to Los Angeles, where he completed A Survivor from Warsaw
Arnold Schoenberg
Composer whose first two acts of his unfinished opera Moses und Aron are still performed today
Arnold Schoenberg
Composer who studied under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Igor Stravinsky
Composer who revived the opera in the U.K. with Peter Grimes
Benjamin Britten
Britten opera about a fisherman who kills two of his apprentices
Peter Grimes
Composer who wrote Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, a tribute to his composition teacher
Benjamin Britten
Composer who wrote incidental music for works by his friend W.H. Auden
Benjamin Britten
Classical music festival founded by Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears
Aldeburgh Festival of Music
Composer who founded the Aldeburgh Festival of Music with his companion Peter Pears
Benjamin Britten
Composer of the operas Billy Budd, The Turn of the Screw, and Death in Venice
Benjamin Britten
Composer who wrote the American West theme El Salón Mexico
Aaron Copland
Composer of War Requiem, based on the anti-war poems of Wilfred Owen, who was killed during World War I
Benjamin Britten
Composer who was the first American student of the pedagogue Nadia Boulanger
Aaron Copland
Composer who finished his Organ Symphony and Music for the Theatre in Paris in the 1920s
Aaron Copland
Composer who wrote the ballets Billy the Kid, Rodeo, and Appalachian Spring
Aaron Copland
Copland ballet containing the Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts”
Appalachian Spring
Composer whose Third Symphony contains his Fanfare for the Common Man
Aaron Copland
Composer whose Lincoln Portrait featured spoken portions of Abraham Lincoln’s writings
Aaron Copland
Composer of several educational books, beginning with 1939’s What to Listen for in Music
Aaron Copland
Composer of seven symphonies, of which the First (“Classical”) is the most notable
Sergei Prokofiev
Composer who premiered the opera The Love for Three Oranges while in Chicago, based on Italian commedia dell’arte
Sergei Prokofiev
Composer who wrote works for Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, including The Prodigal Son
Sergei Prokofiev
Composer who wrote the score for the film Alexander Nevsky upon returning to the U.S.S.R
Sergei Prokofiev
Composer denounced by Stalin as “decadent” and forced to write obsequious tributes to him. He would go on to die just hours after Stalin on March 5, 1953
Sergei Prokofiev
Composer whose works were emblematic of both the Soviet regime and his attempts to survive under its oppression. He was severely criticized by Stalin in Pravda in 1936
Dmitri Shostakovich
Composer who wrote the operas The Nose and Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District
Dmitri Shostakovich
Composer who wrote the conciliatory pieces Fifth Symphony, Seventh Symphony (“Leningrad”), and Twelfth Symphony
Dmitri Shostakovich
Composer who made enemies with his Thirteenth Symphony (“Babi Yar”), based on the Yevgeny Yevtushenko poem
Dmitri Shostakovich
Soviet poet who wrote Babi Yar, condemning anti-Semitism, upon which Shostakovich’s Thirteenth Symphony was based
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Composer whose Basque mother gave him an affinity for Spanish themes, such as Rapsodie espagnole
Maurice Ravel
Composer of Pavane for a Dead Princess while a student of Gabriel Fauré
Maurice Ravel
Composer overlooked by the French Conservatory for the Prix de Rome four times
Maurice Ravel
Composer of the ballet Daphnis et Chloé for Sergei Diaghilev, as well as Mother Goose and La Valse
Maurice Ravel
Composer who reorchestrated Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition
Maurice Ravel
Composer whose health declined after a 1932 taxi accident. Unsuccessful brain surgery ended his life
Maurice Ravel
Composer of the Concerto in F for Piano and Orchestra
George Gershwin
Author upon whose story Porgy and Bess the Gershwin opera was based
DuBose Heyward
Gershwin’s first major hit, sung by Al Jolson in 1919
Swanee
Composer of the first musical to win the Pullitzer Prize for Drama, Of Thee I Sing
George Gershwin
Composer who died of a brain tumour at age 38
George Gershwin
American avant-garde student of Arnold Schoenberg
John Cage
Dada composer who propagated aleatory, or “chance” music
John Cage
Composer of Imaginary Landscape No. 4, using twelve radios tuned to different stations, the composition depending on what was playing at the time
John Cage
Composer of 4’33”, which required a pianist to sit at the piano for that length of time and close it; audience noise and silence created the music
John Cage
Inventor of the prepared piano, in which screws, wood, and rubber bands were attached to piano strings to create percussion sounds
John Cage
Composer who revived the Tudor style and folk traditions in English music
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Composer of Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, Hugh the Drover, and the Pilgrim’s Progress
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Composer of nine symphonies, notably his First Symphony (“Sea”), Second Symphony (“London”), Third Symphony (“Pastoral”), and Seventh Symphony (“Sinfonia Antarctica”)
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams work based on a George Meredith poem
The Lark Ascending
Ralph Vaughan Williams opera featuring the Fantasia on Greensleeves
Sir John in Love
Composer of the Shakespearean opera Sir John in Love, featuring the Fantasia on Greensleeves
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Virtuouso pianist and conductor who twice turned down conductorship of the Boston Symphony Orchestra
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Composer who cheaply sold his early pieces to a publisher, such as C-Sharp Minor Prelude
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Composer treated by hypnosis in 1901 to cure his multi-year depression
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Composer of Second Piano Concerto and the symphonic poem The Isle of the Dead
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Composer who moved to the U.S. in 1917 following the Bolshevik Revolution
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Composer who completed Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Composer inspired by peasant tunes of the Hungarian countryside with Zoltan Kodály
Béla Bartók
Composer of the opera Duke Bluebeard’s Castle
Béla Bartók
Composer of the ballets The Wooden Prince and The Miraculous Mandarin
Béla Bartók
Virtuouso pianist and innovative composer who fled Nazi-allied Hungary for the U.S. in 1940
Béla Bartók
Composer of many instrumental pieces, notably six string quartets, the educational piece Mikrokosmos, and Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta
Béla Bartók
Composer who studied music at Yale but found insurance sales more lucrative
Charles Ives
Composer whose insurance firm with Myrick was the largest in New York during the 1910s
Charles Ives
State in which composer Charles Ives was born
Connecticut
Composer of the Second Piano Sonata (“Concord”) and Three Places in New England
Charles Ives
Charles Ives work with movements named after Emerson, Hawthorne, the Alcotts, and Thoreau
Second Piano Sonata (“Concord”)
Composer whose father George was a local Connecticut businessman and bandleader
Charles Ives
Composer whose Third Symphony won a Pullitzer Prize in 1947
Charles Ives
Composer whose General William Booth Enters into Heaven was based on a Vachel Lindsay poem
Charles Ives
