music history - final exam
Charlie Parker
"Bird" played Saxophone, lifted Jazz to a new plane, known for creating Bebop
Boulez
"Schoenberg is dead"
Alban Berg
(1885-1935) Austrian composer who studied with Shoenberg. Extroverted man who was not as strict with the row. Wrote Wozzeck
Aaron Copland
(1900-1990). At first a modernist, he was the first American student of Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1920s; there he finished his Organ Symphony and Music for the Theater. By the 1930s, Copland turned to simple themes, especially the American West: El Salón Mexico was followed by the ballets Billy the Kid, Rodeo, and Appalachian Spring (1944), the last containing the Shaker hymn "Simple Gifts." His Third Symphony contained his Fanfare for the Common Man, while Lincoln Portrait featured spoken portions of the President's writings. He wrote several educational books, beginning with 1939's What to Listen For in Music.
Dmitri Shostakovich
(1906-1975). His work was emblematic of both the Soviet regime and his attempts to survive under its oppression. His operas, such as The Nose (1928) and Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, were well received at first--until Stalin severely criticized his work in Pravda in 1936. Fearful for his security, he wrote several conciliatory pieces (Fifth, Seventh/Leningrad, and Twelfth Symphonies) in order to get out of trouble. He made enemies, however, with his Thirteenth Symphony (Babi Yar). Based on the Yevtushenko poem, Babi Yar condemned anti-Semitism in both Nazi Germany and the USSR.
John Cage
(1912-1992). An American student of Arnold Schoenberg, he took avant-garde to a new level, and may be considered a Dada composer because he believed in aleatory, or "chance" music. His Imaginary Landscape No. 4 (1951) used twelve radios tuned to different stations; the composition depended on what was on the radio at that time. The following year's 4'33" required a pianist to sit at the piano for that length of time and then close it; audience noise and silence created the "music." He also invented the "prepared piano," where he attached screws, wood, rubber bands, and other items to piano strings in order to create a percussion sound.
Delta blues
- many artists performed on their own; in a solo self accompanied context, rarely did recordings, performed live
Bebop
1940s jazz style with complex improvisation and a fast tempo
Charles Ives
1st important American composer who used "ear-stretching" exercises. Became insurance salesman but still composed. Composed "The Unanswered Question," "Putnam's Camp"
Appalachian Spring
A ballet by Aaron Copeland and danced by Martha Graham. About a simple farm marriage. Showed a very American side. During modernist era but not "modern"
Expressionism
A form of art in which the artist depicts the inner essence of man and projects his view of the world as colored by that essence.
prepared piano
A practice sometimes used in twentieth-century music in which tacks, chewing gum, paper, and other objects are placed in the mechanism of the piano so that it sounds different timbres.
passacaglia
A set of variations on a short theme in the bass
Ragtime
A style of music first popular in the first two decades of the twentieth century. It is characterized by a strongly pulsated, non-syncopated bass line that supports a highly syncopated right-hand melody.
Sprechstimme
A vocal style developed by Schoenberg, in between singing and speaking
atonality
Absence of tonality, or key, characteristic of much twentieth-century music.
Short Ride in a Fast Machine
Adams, character music, huge orchestra, atypical instruments (large percussion & electronic keyboard), constant motion/energy
twelve-tone
Also known as Serialism, this subcategory of atonal music, invented by Schoenberg, is created with a tone row, or series of selected notes
Henry Cowell
American composer experiment with sound from playing piano inside, tone clusters
Gershwin
American, pianist, Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris
John Philip Sousa
An American bandmaster and composer of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Called the "March King," he wrote marches such as "The Sars and Stripes Forever, "Semper Fidelis," and "The Washington Post."
Piano Suite, Op.25
Arnold Schoenberg, uses a tone row. Consists of prelude and minuet and trio which is an allusion to the past. He also uses a Bach motive in the very beginning. The chromaticism in the piece makes Schoenberg seem like a very late Romantic.
Schoenberg
Austrian and later American composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School. Was known for extending the traditionally opposed German Romantic traditions of both Brahms and Wagner, and also for his pioneering innovations in atonality. developed twelve-tone technique, a widely influential compositional method of manipulating an ordered series of all twelve notes in the chromatic scale. developing variation, and was the first modern composer to embrace ways of developing motives without resorting to the dominance of a centralized melodic idea.
Wozzeck
Berg's only opera, unique hybrid containing baroque and classical forms, gigue, polka, waltz, folk music, aria, military march, passacaglia, quasi-rondo, fugues, postludes, sonata, suites, full orchestra in interlude, chord represents Wozzeck (leit motive), A TONAL, sprechstimme, play by Buchner, libretto by Berg, 3 acts, 14 interludes per act (when full orchestra plays), 5 scenes per act, used 12 tones but is NOT a 12 tone composition
Duke Ellington
Born in Chicago middle class. moved to Harlem in 1923 and began playing at the cotton club. Composer, pianist and band leader. Most influential figures in jazz.
Symphonie, Op. 21
By Webern. First movement is in sonata form. Focuses on the change of timbre in the melody rather than instrumental
modernist
Did not aim to please listeners on first hearing. They sought to challenge our perceptions and capacities.
Black Angels
George Crumb piece, uses electronic string instruments, speaking, singing, shouting, and percussion. Written in response to the Vietnam War. Contains a sarabande, dies irea, numerology, score as artwork.
Souvenir de Porto Rico
Gottschalk, character piece. variations on a Puerto Rican Christmas song. Afro-Caribbean rhythmic figures. Assorted types of virtuoso configuration.
The Banshee
Henry Cowell. Cowell, EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC, tone clusters, STRING PIANO music (opening top of piano & playing on strings)
Béla Bartók
Hungarian composer and pianist who collected Hungarian folk music
aleatoric
Indeterminacy - chance -roll of the dice - a desire for freedom.
commedia dell'arte
Italian, "Comedy of art" an Italian theatrical genre from the sixteenth century, using puppets and stock characters, with a strong streak of improvisation. Highly influential later on live theater in Italy and elsewhere.
4:33
John Cage's most famous piece. Written for any orchestration of instruments, instrumentalists are instructed not to hold their instruments. Four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence. Born from Cage's idea that any sound can constitute as music.
serialism
Method of composition in which various musical elements (pitch, rhythm, dynamics, tone color) may be ordered in a fixed series.
John Adams
Minimalist composer
Ruth Crawford
Modernistic American Composer who also collected, edited, and arranged folksongs.
musique concrète
Music composed with natural sounds recorded electronically
Second Viennese School
Name given to composer Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils Alban Berg and Anton Webern; represents the first efforts in twelve-tone composition.
contrafact
New melodies composed over chord progressions borrowed from other songs. This was a popular approach during the bebop period.
The Cotton Club
Night club that operated during prohibition and the Great Depression. The entertainment was predominantly black but only whites were allowed to enter the club. "The Esterhazy" of Harlem
Phrygian Gates
Piano piece by John Adams in the minimalist style.
Bessie Smith
Powerful, influential blues singer in the 1920's, "Empress of Blues"
Seven Magnificat Antiphons
Pärt; sung on the 7 nights before Christmas Eve; syllabic and homophonic; word lengths determine pitch lengths with bar lines marking word length, not meter; principal melody in tenor; soprano and bass sing every other word
String Quartet 1931
Ruth Crawford Seeger (1931) Palindrome, first violin has free inventive motives, lines built with rotations of a series, dissonant counterpoint.
emancipation of dissonance
Schoenberg's concept of freeing dissonance from its need to resolve to a consonance
Pierrot lunaire
Schoenberg, poem by Albert Girand, sprechtimme, text painting, piano motive, atonality, drunken clown, German text
Maple Leaf Rag
Scott Joplin's first successful piano piece
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
Shostakovich's opera about a murderous and adulterous merchant's wife; offended Stalin. "Collage" like treatment of style
dissonant counterpoint
Species counterpoint emphasizing dissonant harmony and voice leading rather than consonance.
twelve-bar blues
Standard formula for the BLUES, with a HARMONIC PROGRESSION in which the first four-measure PHRASE is on the TONIC, the second phrase begins on the SUBDOMINANT and ends on the tonic, and the third phrase starts on the DOMINANT and returns to the tonic.
Anton Webern
Student and friend of Schoenberg who wrote brief, clean, delicate pieces. Composed using serialism, total serialism, and Klangfrabenmelodie
tintinnabuli
The term is derived from the bell-like sonorities that it can produce. Features counterpoint between a mostly stepwise diatonic melody and voices sounding notes of the tonic triad determined by a preset system. Part developed this method in the 1970's.
polytonality
The use of several different keys at the same time
Milton Babbitt
This American composer taught music and mathematics at Princeton University, and exerted his influence through teaching, writing, and composing.
George Crumb
This American composer was born in West Virginia and is known for a series of songs setting the Spanish poetry of Frederico García Lorca.
dodecaphony
Twelve-tone technique (also dodecaphony, and in British usage, twelve-note composition) is a method of musical composition devised by Arnold Schoenberg. The 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[2] through the use of tone rows, an ordering of the 12 pitches. All 12 notes are thus given more or less equal importance, and the music avoids being in a key. The technique was influential on composers in the mid-twentieth century.
Big Band
Type of large JAZZ ENSEMBLE popular between the world wars, featuring brass, reeds, and RHYTHM SECTIONS, and playing prepared arrangements that included rhythmic unisons and coordinated dialogue between sections and soloists.
Scott Joplin
United States composer who was the first creator of ragtime to write down his compositions (1868-1917)
King Oliver
United States jazz musician who influenced the style of Louis Armstrong (1885-1938)
Ethel Merman
United States singer who appeared in several musical comedies (1909-1984). "Annie Get Your Gun". Identifiable voice; big and brassy. Worked with Irving Berlin.
arch form
a form in which themes are introduced in order, and then repeated in reverse order, for example: A B C D C B A
scat singing
a jazz style that sets syllables without meaning (vocables) to an improvised vocal line
Klangfarbenmelodie
a melody constructed of timbres, not pitches
Poème eléctronique
a piece of electronic music by composer Edgard Varèse, written for the Philips Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair. The Philips corporation commissioned Le Corbusier to design the pavilion, which was intended as a showcase of their engineering progress. Corbusier came up with the title Poème électronique, saying he wanted to create a "poem in a bottle". Varèse composed the piece with the intention of creating a liberation between sounds and as a result uses noises not usually considered "musical" throughout the piece.
tone row
a series of notes comprising the 12 pitches of the chromatic scale the row may be used in any transposition, as well as in inversion, retrograde, and retrograde inversion (maximum total of 48 forms of the row) the tones of the row may be used successively or simultaneously, in any octave and rhythm regardless of which form a composer chooses at a given moment in a composition, the row must be used complete
belting
a style of pop singing where the chest register is pushed upward beyond its natural limits without gradual blending with the head register
New Orleans Jazz
an early style of jazz that emphasized improvisation by a small group of soloists (cornet, clarinet, and trombone) and a rhythm section
Fifth Symphony
by Dmitri Shostakovich. A Socialist-Realist symphony. Mahler like traits everywhere. Stylistic allusion was a very important technique. Considered his best work and well received when premiered.
Edgar Varèse
composed for winds and percussion. traditional sounds with noise as well as hearing and seeing music as "sound masses in space. "Ionization", believed that new instruments or machines would create sounds of a composer without performers interpretation.
total serialism
extremely complex, totally controlled music in which the twelve-tone principle is extended to elements of music other than pitch
Amy Beach
first generation of professional women musicians, first American concert pianist without European training, first major female classical composer in America. (Mrs. H.A.A Beach)
ultramodernist
group of composers identified with the US, contains new musical resources, new techniques (in composition and performance) and avant-garde practices. (Varese, Cowell, Crawford Seeger)
quarter tones
intervals half way between half steps
The Blues
music that became popular around 1900, based on black folk music including field hollers & work chants.
rhythm section
piano, banjo, and drums
Ben Webster
tenor saxophonist, who came to fame as a result of his work in Ellington band. regarded as one of the "3 great pillars of prewar tenor saxophone" along with Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young
Arvo Pärt
this composer was a spiritual or holy minimalist, his music was based on orthodoc texts and latin roman text (he was Estonian). his song "Cantate Domino" used few notes and a more sparce harmony, used tintinabulation
I Got Rhythm
this was the song that catapulted Ethel Merman to fame in 1930; from Gershwin's Broadway musical Girl Crazy
front line
trumpet, clarinet, trombone
break strain
unstable rhythmic section very dramatic before last strain
call and response
usually the voice calls and an instrument responds
