Test 4 Flashcards
Why were Still’s achievements so unusual for the era?
Still was an African American man whose work was the first symphonic work by a Black composer to be performed by a Major American orchestra. Encompassing black musical elements with European frameworks.
Who were Still’s colleagues and African American contemporaries?
Took compositions studies with George Chadwick and Edgard Varese, who was very experimental.
Define Bebop.
Style of jazz criticizing big band music. Built around virtuosic solos and imitation. It took chops to play this complicated style of jazz
Define Cool Jazz.
A style of Jazz that took the extremes of Bebop and slowed them down. Small bands with a more relaxed pace.
Define Modal Jazz.
Type of jazz inspired by French composer Ravel characterized by slowly unfolding melodies over stable relatively static modal harmonies. So What Davis
Describe Coltrane’s style.
Very fast playing
Motivic development
New sonorities
Greater dissonance, density of sound
Define operetta and name one French composer and an English composer/librettist team.
operetta: 19th century kind of light opera with spoken dialogue, originating in opera buffa. Gilbert and Sullivan
What was the source work for Peter Grimes?
George Crabbe’s the Borough
Describe the early history of musicals and the genres that contributed to it.
Burlesque: parodies of serious plays, operas, dance. Black-face minstrelsy. European operettas: Gilbert and Sullivan.
Describe the significant innovation of Showboat, including its handling of racism.
Son of a minister who was a former slave. Went to Rutgers and went to study law. Learned that American Law was racist and he didn’t want to do that. Got in trouble during the Cold War because he said that the soviet union was better than America because they were less racist.
Describe the most significant musical and social issues in Westside Story
Dealing with serious social issues while using appealing music and settings. Cutting edge because New York had a large number of Puerto Rican immigrants. Shows in the gangs in the musical. Angular melodic lines come from bebop
Tritones. Disjunct melody, separated by rests
Define minimalism
Rebelling against the chaos of Abstract Expressionism. 1 element of design, rectangles of different sizes
Describe Crawford Seeger’s career and the reasons her career track changed.
Decided to concentrate on being a wife and mother. Work with Alan Lomax. Charles Seeger got into left-wing politics and wanted his new works to involve the larger community.
The three of them worked on Folk songs written by white Americans to relate to the broader community
Convinced preserving folk songs would be a greater contribution
Define post minimalism
longer melodies, chordal harmonies, canonic, constantly shifting irregular meters (Compared to minimalism)
Describe the contrasting styles (polystylism) that are present in Adams “Batter my Heart.”
Introduction: minimalism
Baroque monody– scotch snap: expressive dissonances
Baroque concept of ritornello with modernist music
When the lyrics come in it is more Baroque than post minimalist
Style of music matches when words were written
Describe the contrasting elements of Symphony no. 5 mvt. by Shostakovich
Scherzo (March like)-Trio (dainty) -Scherzo
What are some of the sources for Adams Doctor Atomic libretto?
US government documents. Bhagavad Gita. Tew Indian Songs
Discuss the countries of inspiration for Golijov’s Passion According to Saint Mark (nos. 24-226)
Melodic lines and ornamentation influenced by Spanish Flamenco. Sung in conversational Spanish. Percussion form Africa and slave traditions. Claves from Cuba .
Describe in detail the repetition and sequences in Quartet for the end of time mvt. 1 by Messiaen
Cello: 5-note sequence/15 durations
Piano: 29 chords overlapping a rhythmic pattern of 17 durations
Symmetry: 2 non-retro gradable rhythms (4-1-1-3-1-1-1-1-3-1-1-4) in eight notes
Discuss the retrograde patterns in Seeger’s String Quartet 1931 mvt. 4
1st violin: each phrase gets one note longer until m. 55 where there are 21 notes. Next phrase is 21 notes then it moves in reverse transpose up one semitone, loosing a note each phrase.
Low Strings: starts with a 20 note phrase and loses a note until m. 55 where there is 1 note. Retrograde a semitone higher. 10 note row that rotates.
Name Golijov’s piece
Passion According to Saint Mark nos. 24-26
Name Shastakovich’s piece
Symphony no. 5 mvt. 2
Name Adam’s piece
Doctor Atomic “Batter my Heart”
Name Messiaen’s piece
Quartet for the end of time mvt. 1
Name Sheng’s piece
Seven tunes heard in China no. 1 “Seasons
Name Seegers piece
String quartet 1931 mvt. 4
Name Stills piece
Afro-American symphony mvt. 1
Name Chavez’s piece
Sinfonia India
Name Coltranes piece
Giant Steps
Name Shaw’s piece
Partita for 8 voices mvt. 3 allemande
Name Brittens piece
Peter Grimes Act III Scene 2
Name the Kern and Hammerstein piece
Showboat “Ol’ Man River”
Name Bernstein’s piece
West Side Story “Cool”
Name Davis’s piece
So What
Name the Parker and Gillespie Piece
Anthropology
