Music History Terms Flashcards
Minstrel Show
This was an American form of racist entertainment in the early 19th century where white people would dress up in black face in order to poke fun at the African-American people. They would usually put on variety acts, comedic skits, dances, and music performances.
Tin Pan Alley
This was a collection of New York City music publishers that dominated popular music in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Notable composers that led to this were George and Ira Gershwin, Benny Davis, and Scott Joplin.
Ragtime
This was a musical genre who’s cardinal trait was its syncopated rhythms and had origins from the African American communities in cities like St. Louis. It was also a modification of march style popularized by John Phillip Sousa. The Maple Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin is one of the most notable pieces to ragtime.
Minimalism
This was a style of music that employed limited or minimal compositional techniques. Some of these techniques could include, repetitive rhythms, drones, consonant harmonies, and melodies that would often repeat themselves either identically or in a varied form. Steve Reich’s “Electric Counterpoint” is a pure example of minimalism.
Electronic Music
A style of music that was used as early as 1909 but didn’t become popular until much later. Electronic music would often use devices to create or manipulate sounds. Devices that would be used for this are, tape recorders, electric oscillators, theremins. Pre-recorded music would often have alterations in their tempo, volume and direction of sound altered by computer. John Cage, Steve Reich, George Crumb and Phillip Glass were notable composers of classical music.
Indeterminacy
This is a compositional technique in which some aspects of the musical work are left up to chance or the interpreters free choice. This can be reached by the use of random procedures, graphical notation, and text. Notable composers are John Cage, Charles Ives, and Henry Cowell.
City Blues
This was a form of blues that were known to be more codified. Most performers were no longer within their local and immediate community. This form of blues was played in order to draw in larger crowds and be more varied for the audience’s aesthetic. The “big three” female singers of this genre were, Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Lucille Bogan.
Fuging Tune
This was a tune based in four parts where the tenor voice had the melody and the other voices harmonized with block chords. The next to last phrase each of the four voices enter with the melody or some varied version of it.
Bay Psalm Book
This book was written in 1640 in Cambridge, Massachusetts and was also the first book printed in British North America. The book was created so full congregations of people could sing psalms together at church OR at home.
Bebop
A style of jazz developed in the early to mid-1940s in the United States. It feature compositions using fast tempo, complex chord progressions, rapid chord change, changes in key, and improvisation. These were based on the combination of harmonic structure, scales and references to the melody. Influential composers include, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis.
Singing Schools
American singing schools first began in New England in the early 1700s and were used to spread the use of written music in a congregational setting. They used new systems of notation such as shape note notation to help aid students to learn to sing by sight rather than just ear.
Aleatory
Music in which some of the composition is left to chance and the primary element of the work is left up to the performers.
Integral Serialism
Influenced by Anton Webern, this refers to the application of the twelve-tone technique in early serialism to aspects of music such as duration, dynamics, register and pitch.
Dodecaphonic Serialism
Otherwise known as twelve-tone serialism, this was developed by Arnold Schoenberg and the music composed in this style is based off of a set of twelve tones or “tone row” taken from the chromatic scale, chosen by the composer and ordered in their fashion.
Musique Concrete
A type of music that uses recorded sounds as raw material and then are modified through the use of electronic devices such as tape maniupulation, audio effects, digital processing, etc. The basis of this was developed by Pierce Schaffer in the 1940s and developed well into the 1970s.
