Test 3 Flashcards
Describe the motivic structure and how it unifies Pierrot Lunaire
- Uses developing variations, presenting a basic idea and continuously drawing out new variants.
- Each new idea is derived from what has preceded it.
- Motivic development is how modernist composers kept a piece unified.
What elements in Pierrot Lunaire relate to the past
Passacaglia (use of ostinato) theme is presented in the bass clarinet, imitated by piano and then cello.
Minuet and Trio to reflect his new language
What is the name of the style of vocal writing in Pierrot Lunaire? describe it.
Sprechstimme
- not quite speech, but not quite lyrical singing
- Rhythms are performed as written.
- Pitches are approximated.
Describe the orchestration of Webern’s Symphonie Op 21
Derived from pointillism, featuring only a few notes at a time at once or in the same instrument in succession.
Describe one way Webern’s Symphonie Op 21 uses symmetry
Symmetrical tetrachords; The sense of a “home key” is created by registration, like when each chromatic scale appears in only one octave during the exposition around a central pitch of A (which does not function as a traditional tonic).
Development is a mirror image of itself
Describe the structure of Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta, including specific information from the anthology.
- The form is approximately symmetrical, surrounding the C section.
- Starts and ends the same way, there is a section and then a fugue theme.
- contrapuntal techniques.
- Serbo-Croatian melody m 6 in viola.
How many sections are there in Music for Strings, percussion, and celesta, how are they organized
There are five sections, ABCB’A, and four Fugal themes that appear in each. Slow Arch Rondo
Define Bartok’s night music and his use of symmetry
Night music technique after his piece of the same name, a wash of sound using a pentatonic scale.
The xylophone part is exactly symmetrical.
describe the cyclical characteristics of Music for Strings, percussion, and celesta.
Reflective of itself, the xylophone mirrors itself
B’ is approximate symmetry.
contrapuntal technique - melody is in retrograde.
Characteristic that unify the wrok bc of atonality
fugue theme fragments form symmetrical form
What dose Black water blues commemorate?
A flood that happened on Christmas day in 1926 in Nashville, Tennessee. It can be seen as a complaint against poverty and racial oppression.
Describe the types of changes in the music from one verse to another in Back water blues
Each stanza follows the 12-bar blues
Sung different words to same melody, piano line got more complicated and included more improvisation each repetition.
How does the piano/song version of West End Blues differ from Armstrongs’ band arrangment?
trumpet solo instead of piano introduction
12 bar blues form instead of verse chorus.
Define Scat Singing
singing syllables rather than playing notes on an instrument in a way that imitates instrumental sounds.
What style of jazz does Cotton Tail represent and what are its characteristics
Big Band and Swing style
Define contrafact
New tune over borrowed harmonic progression,
What is the contrafacts in Cotton Tail, what other piece in the anthology uses it?
I Got Rhythm, Gershwin AA’BA’ melody
What is the form of Stravinsky’s Octet, first movement? How does it differ from the classical version of this form?
Sonata form. Has a slow introduction, frequent meter changes, dissonances
Define the other stylistic elements stravinsky borrows from earlier periods in his octet.
Sonata form
