Music & Dance Flashcards
Name the 6 time periods for classical music with the years included.
Medieval or Gothic (800 to 1400) Renaissance (1400 to 1600) Baroque (1600 to 1750) Classical (1750 to 1820) Romantic (1820 to 1910) Modern (1910 to present)
German composer of the Boroque period who lived 1685-1750.
Johann Sebastian Bach
German composer who lived 1770-1827; became deaf yet set the scene for the Romantic era. He wrote 8 symphonies, 1 opera “Fidelio”, many piano sonatas such as “Moonlight Sonata”, “Fur Elise” and “Minuet in G”.
Ludwig van Beethoven
French composer who lived 1803-1869; a true Romantic who influenced many composers of the Romantic period (e.g. Liszt and Wagner) with his fresh ideas, his approach to orchestration and his skills as a conductor. Works include “Symphonie Fantastique”, “Romeo and Juliet”, “Death of Cleopatra”, “Beatrice and Benedict”,
Hector Berlioz
Composer during the Romantic period who lived 1833-1897;
chose the stricter conventions of the classical period, and as a result received much criticism from his more adventurous peers and later composers. Yet he demonstrated time and again that it wasn’t necessary to abandon the old forms in forwarding the ideals of Romanticism. Most famous work was a lullaby.
Johann Brahms
Austrian composer who lived 1756-1791. Played piano by the age of 4, began composing at age 5, and learned violin by the age of 6. Finished two minuets by the age of 6. His father took him and his sister on a concert tour where he met George III of England, Louix XV of France, as well as a the young child Marie Antoinette. His work is said to be perfectly formed.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Austrian Composer who lived 1732 - 1809; He came at a time when the influence of the church on musical development was diminishing and this influence was moving towards the nobility who employed composers to provide entertainment for their guests.
Although it was a characteristic of music at the time that it obeyed the rules of “form”, he did not see these rules as constraints and frequently bent these rules and added variations and ideas so that his music never stagnated.
Joseph Haydn
Composer born in Venice who lived 1678 – 1741; one of the most famous and celebrated of composers from the Baroque Period. Learned to play violin at an early age and the violin became his main instrument as a performer and composer.
He was ordained into the priesthood at age 25, and because he had asthma and couldn’t fulfill duties of a priest, he was assigned to teach music at an orphanage where he spent 30 years teaching and composing.
Antonio Vivaldi
Polish composer who lived 1810 - 1849 ; skilled pianist, and a large proportion of his works are for solo piano. His country of origin clearly influenced Chopin to the extent that he wrote many Mazurkas and Polonaises based on Polish dances.
He also developed a form called the Ballade which is a more extended work, fairly free in style like a stream of consciousness, but with an internal logic.
Frederic Chopin
French composer who lived 1862 - 1918; regarded as unconventional, developing his own style of music which others labelled “impressionism” in parallel with the artistic movement. Although he disliked the term, it aptly describes the impact on the listener where musical colours and textures assume greater importance as building blocks than the thematic material.
Claude Debussy
Norwegian composer who lived 1843 - 1907; associated with Norway and Norwegian Folk Music
Edward Grieg
(1841-1904) Czech composer who integrated Bohemian folk styles with classical traditions
Antonin Dvorak
German composer who lived 1685-1759; known for his oratorio “Messiah”.
George Frederic Handel
a virtuoso pianist, composer and Romantic artist who lived 1811 - 1886; a child prodigy; remembered today mainly for his important contributions to piano technique and repertoire; inspired by Paganini at an early age.
Through his expanding of tonality to the breaking point, Liszt not only wrote powerfully expressive music, but also foreshadowed the harmonic developments of the 20th century
Franz Liszt
German composer of the Romantic Period who lived 1809 - 1847; child prodigy;
Felix Mendelssohn
German composer who lived 1653 - 1706; known for his “Canon in D” which is played at weddings
Johan Pachelbel
Late Romantic Russian composer who lived 1873-1943; famous for “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini” which was played in the films “Somewhere in Time” and “Groundhog Day”.
Sergei Rachmaninov
Austrian composer who lived 1797-1828; prolific composer who sometimes even composed several songs per day; quiet, shy; died at a young age;
Franz Schubert
Russian composer who lived 1840 - 1893; reputation to be a solitary figure who often worked in isolation; music characterized by beautiful melodies, inventive orchestration, and a “heart on sleeve” emotional warmth and engagement; Famous for “The Nutcracker”
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Composer who lived 1864 - 1949; composed Don Juan and “Death and Transfiguration; was Chief of Music Affairs for the Nazi’s from 1933-1935; most familiar work was used as the opening theme in 2001: A Space Odyssey and for many images of the moon landing.
Richard Strauss
1868-1917) African American composer and pianist most famous for his Ragtime piano works
Scott Joplin
What are the four different families of instruments in an orchestra?
Woodwinds
Brass
Percussion
Strings
consists of five horizontal lines, evenly spaced, on which the notes are placed according to their pitch.
Staff
indicates which pitches are assigned to the lines and spaces on a staff
Clef
What are the names of two most commonly used clefs?
Treble and bass
What are the two less frequently used clefs?
Alto clef and tenor clef
consists of two staves, one that uses a treble clef, and one that uses a bass clef. The staves are connected by a curly brace. These are used frequently for notating piano music and other polyphonic instruments.
Grand staff (staves)
When the music’s range exceeds what can be written on the staff, extra lines are drawn so that we can still clearly read the pitch. These are called what?
Ledger lines
used to indicate when a pitch has been raised or lowered. They are written to the left of the pitch. (Symbols for flats, sharps, naturals, double flats, double sharps)
Accidentals
In music, this involves the way multiple pulse layers work together to organize music in time.
Meter
How are standard meters in Western music classified?
simple meters and compound meters, as well as duple, triple, and quadruple meters.
How is the meter of a piece noted?
Time signature
A musical composition with a chorus, orchestra, and solo parts.
Oratorio
______________ music tells a story and requires a textual accompaniment for the audience to understand.
Program
____________ music is not written to follow a story.
Absolute
This technique is a means of ensuring that all 12 notes of the chromatic scale are sounded as often as one another in a piece of music while preventing the emphasis of any one note through the use of tone rows, orderings of the 12 pitch classes. All 12 notes are thus given more or less equal importance, and the music avoids being in a key.
Twelve-tone or dodecaphony technique
An Austrian composer (1885-1935) whose compositional style combined Romantic lyricism with the twelve-tone technique. He is remembered as one of the most important composers of the 20th century for his expressive style encompassing “entire worlds of emotion and structure”.
First operatic masterpiece was “Wozzeck”.
Alban Berg
Austrian-born composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School. As a Jewish composer, he was targeted by the Nazi Party, which labeled his works as degenerate music and forbade them from being published. He developed the most influential version of the dodecaphonic (also known as twelve-tone) method of composition.
Arnold Schoenberg
The first harmonic of a tone is perceived as ___________. It’s symbolized by a letter name and represents the frequency of vibrations the instruments should make.
Pitch
A term meaning several melodies woven together.
Polyphonic
The term for an unharmonized chant, such as a Gregorian chant.
Plainsong
What is a mode?
An arrangement of notes on a scale.
How many modes serve as the foundation for plain songs?
8
This type of music is monodic, with tones equal to one-fourth of Western tone.
Hindu music
