Music History Exam

Question 0

The ring and the rings

Answer 0

Alex Ross

Wagner V.S Tolkien

Question 1

A lovely couple

Answer 1

By Alex Ross

Musical review

Question 2

The future of music

Answer 2

Charles rosin
1. Music evolves and adapts to survive
Everything can not be notated
2. A score is merely a set of directions to realize a work but there are so many different ways to realize something. Today we think of music as public. In the 19th century it was private though four handed works vs symphony even though it could be the same work It sounds different. Less people learn music now. There never has been a huge demand since it was private. But now people learn from CDs and such, altering our perspective on art.
3. Only so much can be notated. For much of history many things were not notated or not notated well.
Primary and secondary elements. Many secondary have become primary though. Ex- dynamics. Rhythm and generally pitch belong to the composer except in modern music perhaps.
4. Most of our musical history has not been recorded. And sometimes it can be hard to guess how it might have been preformed
5. People used to be proficient in higher music because it was a sign of social status
People now collect records
With records people can now hear the variations in classical music
But now people interpret less

Question 3

Preface and acknowledgments of the classical style

Answer 3

Charles Rosin
The drama is contained within the work
What makes is possible to posses and convey this significance

Question 4

A rant against chant

Answer 4

Tony Hendra

Chant should not be popular it should only be used in mass but even there it has faded.

Question 5

The transmission of the classical legacy

Answer 5

treatise De institutione musica: the science of musical sounds as one of the seven liberal arts
part of the quadrivium
written by boethius.
the quadrivium: the higher forms of education: arithmetic,geometry,and astronomy and music.
The trivium: elementary curriculum (grammar, dialectic, rhetoric)
Three types of music: musica mudana- music of the universe: there must be somc fixed order of musical modulation in this celestial motion- everything is to perfect for there not to be.
music of the human being- musica humana “for what unites the incorporeal existence of reason with the body except a certain harmony
created bv certain instruments- musica instrumentis constitua

Question 6

The Renaissance fount and origin

Answer 6

Early 15th century

Music is more consonant and euphonious the the old

Question 7

• The Brandenburg Concertos

Answer 7

-1721- Bach began to look for a job in politically more important city of Berlin
- Concerto Grosso- three movement work involving a musical give-and-take between a full orchestra and a much smaller group of soloists (concertino)
- The soloists in the concertino play along with the tutti; when ritornello stops they do their own thing- mainly very technical.
- Bach chose to write these pieces, because he wanted to challenge every section of instruments
Ritornello: idiomatic for the violin, asymmetrical, driving Rythem.

Question 8

Josquin des Prez in the eyes of his contemporaries

Answer 8

He was a great composer

Question 9

Bach’s duties and obligations at Leipzig and bach remembered by his son

Answer 9

the servant- the reading, where he ran the music school. his rules. He thought of himself as a servant too. he’s there to serve the world.

the virtuoso- “understood the buildings of organs to the highest degree”. in his own day more of a performer then a composer. when you die as a performer your gifts die with the world. its different with a composer because you have the score.

Question 10

The Rise of the Italian Comic Opera Style

Answer 10

• Italian comic opera style- pleasure by audiences everywhere because it gave musical expression to many of the new attitudes of the Enlightenment
• Italian troupe- brought these works to the Paris Opera- regular performances of French operas- between 1752 and 1754

Question 11

From the Writings of Schumann

Answer 11

-Schumann was not inclined by temperament to organize his views on the aesthetics- ethics- of music into a formal system
- Schumann withdrew as editor of Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik in 1844
- Last front page he wrote – 1853 – split up a lot of things “music of the future” and he talked about a not-so-known composer Johannes Brahms
Aphorisms (a short phrase that expresses a true or wise idea)
I have no liking for those whose life is not in unison with their works – FL

Question 12

Glimpses of Chopin

Answer 12

• Aura of mystery – magic surrounded the highly reserved personality of Chopin in his own day
• Music cast a spell on his listeners- compositions
• “Chopin played rarely and always unwilling in public; “exhibitions” of himself were totally repugnant to his nature.”

Question 13

Charles Rosin: the romantic generation

Answer 13

• During the Renaissance the ruin was appreciated both for its moral significance and for its eccentricity as well as for its bearing witness to a sacred past.”
• “The fragment is no longer the introduction to Nature into Art, but the return of Art, of the artificial, to a natural state.”
• “The most responsible artist, in short, creates the work in terms of its inevitable ruin. It might be said that the ruin is now no longer an unhappy fatality but the ultimate goal of work.”
• Montaigne- French writer regarded as the originator of the modern essay
• “An apt reader often discovers, in the writing of something else, perfections other than those that the author had put in and perceived himself, and lends to the work richer meanings and appearances.”
• “The art of writing books is not yet invented.”
• “The Romantic fragment and the forms it inspired enabled the artist to face the chaos or the disorder of experience, not by reflecting it, but by leaving a place for it to make a momentary but suggestive appearance within the work.”
• Chaos- metaphor for the biological disorder of a non-mechanistic universe, the disorder of everyday experience.
• “The principle of Romantic prose exactly like that of verse- symmetry and chaos, quite according to the old rhetoric; in Boccaccio both are very clearly in synthesis.”
• Successful fragments- clearly defined symmetry
• “This prevision acts like the quills of the hedgehog, which both sharpen and blur the perfect definition of the animal’s shape.”
• “Fragment is symmetrical, well balanced, and closed in expression-but it invites and even forces the reader to crack it open by speculation and interpretation.”
• “Fragment was, for a brief time, an unstable, but successful solution to the problem of introducing the disorder of life into art without compromising the independence and integrity of the work.”
• “In music, the Romantic Fragment similarly leaves a place- ambiguous and disconcerting- for an unresolved detail which undermines the symmetry and the conventions of the form without never quite destroying them.”

Question 14

Debussy and Musical Impressionism

Answer 14

• Claude-Achille Debussy (1862-1918)
• Innovations in harmony and in formal organization suggested new paths to musicians every, at a time when the prevailing musical mood: “Wagnerian revolution”
• Wagnerian formula- great collector of formulas
• “the dramatic melody has to be quite different from what is different from what is generally called melody”
• “The musicians hear only music written by practiced hands, never the music of Nature herself.”

Question 15

The First Performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony

Answer 15

-Beethoven was not always feeling the love of his fellow Austrians and germans. Raccini was feeling the love. He was not always satisfied with the political situation. He threatened to premiere his 9th else where. He did not want to be associated with the idea of the repression in Austria. when he threatened this people wrote him letters saying no.
pg 184 in course pack-account of the premier. because the emperor was not there there was an atmosphere of tension. police there. they thought that the love of the symphony was an attack on kings and emperors. Beethoven was happy that the public loved this and the empirical
family was chilled by that.
its the ode to joy and the use of the popular style was a way of defying the repression movement.
using a poem that had revolutionary ideas. revolutionary ideals being manifested in the popular style of the ode to joy.

February 1824- Beethoven was writing a new symphony- word got out

• “Past continued to withdraw himself more and more from public notice”
• 7th of May- a grand musical performance took place at the Karnthnerthor Theatre
• “Beethoven was unanimously called forward.”
• “He modesty saluted the audience and retired amidst the loudest expressions of enthusiasm.”

Question 16

Performance practice and authenticity

Answer 16

the issue especially arises with early music

What does it mean to be faithful to a piece of music
its hard to answer this question
reading markings

Why does it matter
disgraceful to the composer
this idea we have that “thats not how it goes”
you could miss out on things in the piece.

basically it comes down to we don’t know exactly how it could have sounded. We could never mimic exactly what it sounded like because theres to many factors.

Bogus
just playing whats on the music. that we get rid of all our interpretations.
text as an object
performance as an object.
people became to focussed on trying to replicate it exactly.
a lot of this ends of objectifying the performance. its just something you did.
bad art critic
on this side of the argument though playing on period instruments is good because it changes your perspective.
difference between sound and music, when you get to caught up on for example the sound of cut strings vs steal. you are not just making music.

Good:
prefers the idea of performance as an action or a process.
preforming authentically is an incentive that drives the work we do
rather then saying after a performance “was a true to it”
pg 68. new York times, uses both meanings.
personal conviction
more philosophical
statements that are meaningful to an audience more personal, acknowledging our own interpretation.
accretions- “the gunk that stuff picks up” he’s talking about clearing away all the stuff that could be inaccurate and all the stuff we added. they are trying to just put down the most basic thing. performers also do this. they just do the bare thing just trying to replicate exactly where there. but then we are left with a hole.
individual response to individual pieces.

Historically informed performance, they’re not talking about history dictated exactly but more of an informed sense, use the ideas of the period but this still leaves it up to interpretation.

Question 17

La Garang, Mahler

Answer 17

Mahler was scrutinized for his interpretation of Beethoven’s ninth because it was not authentic.
Even though he thought he was making it for the better because Beethoven was deaf

Question 18

John Adams, Shaker Loops (1978)

Answer 18

we would all identify this as a minimalist work.
Minimalism as style vs. Technique.
is minimalism a technique or a style? it is both. power of minimalism. composers can do different things with it.

Question 19

Ave Maria

Answer 19

By Josquin des Parez

Question 20

Postmodernist Paradigms

Answer 20

-“Cultural historians also look for paradigms or what the French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984) called episteme: the assumptions, usually unspoken (but, when things become unsettled more likely to be articulated) that govern notions of what is self-evidently true. (ARCHEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE)
- “General state of the arts is defined by their most advanced practitioners, and so the artists using the most novel and esoteric techniques are the most significant and authentic artists at any given time.”
- Brahms-essay-1945-“Brahms the progressive”
Darwinian requirements:
1. Inheritance, in the style of music
2. Variation, from the personal expression of the musicians or composers
3. Differential success among the variants, from the assessment that we voted with our palms
Comprehensibility vs Value of a piece
1. Comprehension presupposes listening competence for the music in question
2. Comprehension pertains to the listening grammar rather than to the compositional grammar
3. We are talking about intuitive rather than analytic comprehension
Aesthetic Claims
1. The best music utilizes the full potential of our cognitive resources
2. The best music arises from an alliance of a compositional grammar with the listening grammar

Question 21

Feminist Perspectives

Answer 21

• “The essentialist view locates the causes of dominance in the nature of the groups; the social constructivist view locates them in the social structures and relations that govern the contexts.”
• Male dominance-music composition-until 1970s
• Pauline Oliveros-composer-made her mark with realms of electro-acoustic music and group improvisation
• “Women have not completed successfully in realms of intellectual endeavor, this argument holds, not because of an inferior endowment but because of the way they have been socialized.”
• Women-taught to despise activity outside of domestic realm
• Men- taught to despise domestic duties
• 75% of those listed are composers of the present and twenty-four of these are women
  1. That composers of our time are no longer ignored
  2. That women could be emerging from musical subjugation
• Violence of tonal procedures is that the actual reward- the cadence – can never be commensurate with the anticipation generated or the effort expended in achieving it.

Question 22

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony/

A clockwork orange

Answer 22

• One of the most horrifyingly violent episodes in the history of music
• Problem constructed- seems to begin before the subject of the symphony has managed to achieve its identity (witnessing the emergence of the initial theme- and its key- then hear a collapse back twice more into it.)
• Pushes mechanisms of frustration – violence
• This is a reason for him being known as serious, virile.
• Virile- characterized by energy and vigor
• “Beethoven resists that exigencies of formal necessity at the moment of recapitulation in the opening movement, embraces and perpetuates them and even raises them to a much higher level of violence.”

Question 23

Esteban Buch Beethoven’s ninth a political history

Answer 23

Beethoven threatened to premier his ninth in Prussia
People wrote to him to tell him not to
Police presence at the premier
Emperor did not show up- political tension
Rossini had more sucess
Beethoven spent 30 years trying to out the ode to joy in
In a popular style. Also with german nationalistic ideas
Shows state presence in music. Continues to haunt us

Question 24

Charles Rosin; the popular style

Answer 24

Haydn’s music is full of folk music but they are made to fit into the classical style
“Any collision between his style and the folk tune, it was always the tune that had to give way”
Integrated into high art as a means of clarifying the form
Regularity and square rhythm, Linear patterns
Haydn like rythemic irregularities the popular tune provided a contrast- stabilizing effect

Question 25

Folk song

Answer 25

• Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) – 1733 coined the German word “Volkslied,”
• Differences between German culture and that of most other Western countries
• “Collecting and publishing orally transmitted tales, ballads, lyrical poetry, and tunes was certainly not unique to Germany; in fact, the early impulse came from Scotland and England.”
• Herder – pursued endeavor w/ ultimately ethical purpose of giving his contemporaries the wholesome nourishment of their ancestors’ unadorned poetry and song at a time when the lower classes were cut off from their own traditions and the upper classes indulged in fashionable, refined works of art.
• Testimonials to the Folk Song

Question 26

Thinking about music and popular culture

Musical values

Answer 26

• “Our own musical preferences are shaped by judgments that, however unexpressed, impart greater value to some music than to other music.”
• Some music= good, implying that there might be bad or not so good
• “…its quality is more than a matter of individual opinion.”
• “…that judgments about music are concerned with its quality and that its quality is related to its value.”
• More we value music, more likely we defend its quality against the opinion of others.
• “Music is like a language; when we “speak” or “listen” in musical language, we participate in a signifying system that is communally shared and defined, something that is larger than our own use of it and that we enter whenever we involve ourselves with music.”
• “Simply a matter of taste.”
• “Its collective, communal aspect suggests that its significance exceeds our purely individual responses…..we tend to experience music as significant in intensely personal and subjective ways.”
• History- nothing natural or essential about the ways we experience music today-we account for that experience
• Taste cultures- socially defined
• Taste is always a social category
• “Music was no more “a matter of taste” than was the orbit of the planets or the physiology of the human body.”
• “…music was understood to be based on natural laws.”
• “…value was derived from its capacity to frame and elaborate these laws in musical form.”
• “…matter of subjective judgment than the laws themselves.”
• “…music as derived “from nature””
• “…music flows from individuals to other individuals and yet seems to be shaped by supra-individual forces.”
• “…music has never delivered permanent answers; rather, its significance lay in its role within the continuous process of social change through a self-critique of culture ideas.”
• “It’s all a matter of taste”
• “Music sells because it is popular. It is popular because it has sold.”
• Pseudo-democracy-describes a political system which calls itself democratic, but offers no real choice for the citizens.
• “…promise because it implies that the musical judgment of a minority is…keener than that of a majority.”
• The minority of the music industry doesn’t really get a say because the majority is not into music.
• British Arts Council- improves access to the arts, seemed harmless enough, the council was increasingly challenged to explain what was so important about the traditional arts that people should be encouraged to participate in them.
• “For those in control of public funds to talk of the unrealized “cultural needs” of people (as distinct from what the people themselves wanted) was seen as high-handed at the very least. A modern, multicultural society had no place for this kind of nineteenth-century cultural paternalism instead of the cultural democracy cherished by groups like the Arts Council, such countermovement’s proposed a more radical democratization of culture.”
• Countermovement’s are against funding
• Public doesn’t know what they want
• “…loosening of classical music from some of the social trappings that surrounded it in the nineteenth century has been refreshing.”
• “…put off classical music by the perception that it was guarded by a pretentious and stuffy layer of social ritual almost designed to repel the uninitiated.”
• “Cultural tradition, some would argue has an important role to play in contemporary society as a counterweight to what is merely fashion or fad, a society in which media construction of public opinion is too often a substitute for genuine debate and independent thought.”
• “…provide cultural choices to those traditionally denied access to high culture.”
• Market place has a certain way of profitability vs value
• This is where he is coming from: democracy vs truth of democracy. “We broadly accept government legislation…”
• “The idea of law, from its theological origins onward, implies that we aspire to be something greater than we are. Like education, law is based on a transcendental premise: it promises something that exceeds the present reality of its participant, denying an immediate gratification in return for a greater reward later.”
• “But the pseudo-democracy of the marketplace is based on an empirical premise: it delivers something immediate and tangible. It promises to satisfy instantly the demands it creates, and it accords to every individual the absolute right to have their demands satisfied- a democratic right whose hollowness is self-evident given the disparity between individuals’ financial resources.”
• That’s not democracy finances vs what is good for the society
• “…suggest that classical music, far from suffering a demise, has in recent years enjoyed a marked increase in popularity.”
• “Classical music does not ignore its listeners’ desires, but it is shaped by its adherence to internal, musical demands that are often at odds with the pleasurable immediacy commercial success requires.”
• “…other kinds of classical music, such as contemporary music and much chamber music, are often far less adaptable and tend to be excluded.”
• “Yet as long as we continue to pay taxes to central and local government we collectively endorse the idea that democracy and individual consumer choice are not synonymous. If funding of public institutions and services were left to voluntary individual contributions, few would survive. Instead, we largely put aside our personal preferences and assent (by paying taxes) to a collective contract.”

Question 27

Intention in music and art

Stanly cavell

Answer 27

• Music is generally rhythm and melody
• “Point of piece”= why is it as it is?
• Musical worth- patterns of give it character- but one can find or produce things of that description virtually at will
• New Criticism- one motive fixed on preserving poetry from what it felt as the encroachment of science and logical positivism (repeating as an academic farce what the nineteenth century went through as a cultural tragedy.”
• “It is still wroth saying about such remarks that they appeal to a concept of intention as relevant to art which does not exist elsewhere: in, for example, the case of ordinary conduct, nothing is more visible than actions which are not meant, visible in the slip, the mistake, the accident, the inadvertence . . . , and by what follows (the embarrassment, confusion, remorse, apology, attempts to correct . . .)”
• Utterance- a spoken word, statement, or vocal sound, the action of saying or expressing something a loud.
  the meaning is up to you.
  it dose not matter who wrote what. a work of art is a object.
  intention- we don’t know enough about intention to say that you can get rid of it. he’s trying to create uncertainty where people are overconfident about it, has to refer to mental state not an object its self. you have to be asking about a persons intention to find out what the real intention is.
  what cavel is doing is to move away as a sense of art where it is just in the physical object its self- the musical score is not identical to the music its self.

Question 28

Bachs 5th Brandonburg concerto

Answer 28

A concerto by its self is a work for the orchestra and the soloist. a concerto grosso is when there is not just one soloist there is a soloist group.
why do people write them?
what a concerto does that other things do not do is highlight virtuosity. gives them on opportunity to show off.
concerto grosso
who plays- tutti and soloist (concertino= solo group)
what they play: ritornello and solo
tutti plays the ritornellos.
thus you have alternation.
cadenza- a solo passage that really highlights a composers virtuosity. Usually improvised.
the ritornello never introduces a new key. a soloist does. the ritornello can be preformed in different keys though.
a harpsichordist function is usually there to accompany in an orchestra. so its unusual for one to be part of a solo group.

Question 29

Prelude to an afternoon of faun

Answer 29

Symphonic poem
Ambigouous tonality despite the key signature 
Impressionist 
Triston chord 
Opens with a flute playing the tritone 
Innovative orchestration-harp glissando 
Contrast in B section

Question 30

Garriot Gallus by de Vitry

Answer 30

Motet
We have no idea how this would be preformed
From roman de Fauvel
Isorythemic motet. melodic pattern that repeats for for foundation of the chant. highly mathematical sense of music

Question 31

This is the last movement of Mozart’s string quartet in G, K. 387

Answer 31

Changes in color

Question 32

Last number of wagners Tristan and Isolde

Answer 32

Triston chord

Called the love death

Question 33

Prelude to Tristan and Isolde

Answer 33

Wagner though he was bringing back the greek. building a cultural indention. it brought a culture together in a kind of ritual. music starts to take the place of religion. the opera stage for the symphony concert. He thought he was a successor of Beethoven and the leap for him from Beethoven was the 9th symphony and how it was the first symphony with words. Along the ideas of greek tragedy. he thought that Beethoven paved the way for this greek thing. this tristan especially

Question 34

Chopin prelude in E-

Answer 34

-rubato.
-its not how much dissonance but how its used.
-when Beethoven introduces dissonance it is resolved.
chopin is different. only time you get the tonic chord in the etude is at the last chord. uniform rhythm.
melody:
it feels as if he is just improvising it. its just coming to him. Gregory the great its almost as if that idea is back again except its the soul this time.
is a prelude but to what?
this fragmentation is a way of relating back to nature. the idea that you can tell something is real by its corruptibility relates back to nature, things can be changed, ruins.
character piece. the character piece is usually played by the solo pianist.
a character piece is not a symphony. for 1 person or a small audience. this is because of Beethoven. Basically Beethoven scared everyone away. the symphony celebrated the universal.
when someones choosing a genre they can be making a statement about their view of the world.

Question 35

Prelude and fugue in G-

Answer 35

Fantasy and Fuge in G minor- using dissonance to create a powerful emotional effect.
showed baroque style
sequences,
the use of sequences for melodies. the baroque style is not just rhythmic continuity but instead of having nice phrases it has continued motion through the use of sequences.

Question 36

Steve Reich, Violin Phase (1967)

Answer 36

the longer you allow your self to focus on you the more it grown on you. theres only 1 violin. or 4. relates to the sol lewin. reduction to the simplest materials.
for what its worth- is a tequnique identical with a style- if it is its limited. if there isnt it has to be used differently.

Question 37

autonomy

Answer 37

: greek for self legislating, it creates its own law, its own rule. self law.

Question 38

Ascetic:

Answer 38

a theory or science of beauty, you’re moved by something because it seems beautiful to you.