Intro. to Music Lit. Exam III

Sergei Diaghilev

(1872-1929) His Paris-based dance company, the Ballets Russes opened up a new chapter in the cultural life of Europe. He worked with the best dancers and artists, and commissioned three ballets - The Firebird, Petruschka, and The Right of Spring by Igor Stravinsky.

Impressionism

A French movement developed by visual artists who favored vague, blurry images intended to capture an "impression" of the subject. Impressionism in music is characterized by exotic scales, unresolved dissonances, parallel chords, rich orchestral tone color, and free rhythm.

Shakers

A Protestant religious sect known for its spiritual rituals that included spinning and dancing; a famous part of Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copland uses the song Simple Gifts ('Tis a Gift to Be Simple), which is associated with this religion.

Fractals

A pattern in music (similar to a factor tree in mathematics); the music is made of of several different parts (the branches off the trunk of the tree) that split off into other branches, and then into even more branches.

March Form

A style incorporating characteristics of military music, including strongly accented duple meter in simple, repetitive rhythmic patterns.

Expressionism

A style of visual art and literature in Germany and Austria in the early twentieth century. The term is sometimes also applied to music, especially composers of the Second Viennese School.

Neoclassicism

A twentieth-century style that combined elements of Classical and Baroque music with modernist trends.

Sprechstimme

A vocal style in which the melody is spoken at approximate pitches rather than sung on exact pitches, developed by Arnold Schoenberg.

Retrograde inversion in Twelve-Tone

An arrangement of pitches in the opposite direction and in reverse order, so that the twelve-tone row comes out upside down and backward.

Retrograde in Twelve-Tone

An arrangement of the pitches in reverse order, so that the twelve-tone row comes out backward.

Tone row

An arrangement of the twelve chromatic tones that serves as the basis of a twelve-tone composition.

Quarter Tone

An interval halfway between a half step

Martha Graham

Celebrated choreographer that worked with Aaron Copland on his Appalachian Spring; she also danced the lead in the ballet.

Ethnomusicology

Comparative study of musics of the world, with a focus on the cultural context of music.

The Twelve-Tone Method

Compositional procedure of the twentieth century based on the use of all twelve chromatic tones (in a tone row) without a central tone, or tonic, according to prescribed rules.

West Side Story (Tonight Quintet)

Form: A-A'-B-A'' Genre: Musical theater Composer: Bernstein Salient Characteristics: It's dramatic content, stirring melodies, colorful orchestration, and vivacious dance scenes continue to delight audiences of today.

Prelude to "The Afternoon of a Faun" Identification

Form: Loose A-B-A' structure Genre: Symphonic poem Composer: Debussy Salient Characteristics: Debussy's best known orchestral piece. His handling of the orchestra is thoroughly French, allowing individual instruments to stand out against the ensemble.

Pierrot Lunaire ("The Moonfleck")

Form: Rondeau text with poetic/musical refrain Genre: Song cycle Composer: Schoenberg Salient Characteristics: established the use of Sprechstimme (spoken instead of sung melody on exact pitches in strict rhythm)

Concerto For Orchestra (IV)

Form: Rondo-like structure Genre: Orchestral concerto Composer: Bartók Salient Characteristics: Called a concerto because he treated the single orchestral instruments in a concertante or soloistic manner

Maple Leaf Rag

Form: Sectional dance Genre: Piano rag Composer: Joplin Salient Characteristics: It is perhaps the best-known rag ever composed; the listener's interest is focused throughout on the syncopated rhythms of the melodies, played by the right hand, which are supported by an easy, steady, duple-rhythm accompaniment.

The Rite Of Spring, Part I (Dance of the Youths and Maidens / Game of Abduction)

Form: Sectional, with opening section recurring several times Genre: Ballet Composer: Stravinsky Salient Characteristics: Embodies the cult of primitivism and sets forth a new musical language characterized by the percussive use of dissonance, as well as polyrhythms and polytonality.

Appalachian Spring (Sections 1 & 7)

Form: Theme and 4 variations Genre: Ballet suite in 7 sections Composer: Copland Salient Characteristics: One of Copland's best know ballets. It premiered in 1944 and was the basis for his popular 1945 orchestral suite.

Doctor Atomic (Chorus: "At The Sight Of This")

Form: Verse/refrain structure with repeated sections of text Genre: Opera Composer: Adams Salient Characteristics: It takes a hugely complex subject that draws together science and art, and presents it in a multilayered, eclectic score that offers much to the imagination as well as to the ears.

Basic Plot of Rite of Spring

In Part I of the ballet, celebrations for the arrival of spring include a lustful abduction of women, a rivalry between two tribes, and a round dance. At the climax of these activities, the oldest and wisest man of the village is brought out for the ritual kissing of the earth, and the tribes respond joyfully and energetically. Part II is more solemn. The women of the tribe, conducting a mysterious game, select a young maiden whom they will sacrifice in order to save the fertility of the earth. The Chosen One begins her fatal dance in front of the elders, and her limp body is eventually carried off to the Sun God Yarilo.

Aleatoric Music

Indeterminate music in which elements of performance (such as pitch, rhythm, or form) are left to choice or chance.

Wax Cylinder Records

Invented in 1888, 2-minute wax cylinder records were a part of the early sound recording movement

Twelve-bar blues

Musical structure based on a repeated harmonic-rhythmic pattern that is twelve measures in length (I-I-I-I-IV-IV-I-I-V-V-I-I).

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.

Inversion in Twelve-Tone

The movement of notes is in the opposite direction, up instead of down and vice versa, so that the twelve-tone row appears upside down.

Basic Plot of Wozzeck

This opera by Berg is based on the gruesome, real-life events. The character of Wozzeck displays his unhappy love for Marie, by whom he has fathered an illegitimate child. Wozzeck, a common soldier, is the victim of the sadistic Captain and the coldly scientific Doctor, who uses Wozzeck for his experiments. Marie is hopelessly infatuated with the handsome Drum Major. Wozzeck slowly realizes that she has been unfaithful to him. Ultimately he cuts her throat, then, driven back to the death scene by guilt and remorse, he drowns himself.

Basic Plot of Pierrot Lunaire

This song cycle used character of the Italian com media dell'arte; one of the most parodied characters is the clown Pierrot. Schoenberg chose the texts for his song cycles from a collection of poems by the Belgian writer Albert Giraud. He picked 21 texts and set them for a female reciter and a chamber music ensemble of five players using eight instruments. No song in the cycle used the same instrumentation, despite its small size.

Atonality

Total abandonment of tonality (centering in a key); music that moves from one level of dissonance to another, without areas of relaxation.

"Emancipation of Dissonance"

Twentieth-centruy composers emancipated dissonance by freeing it from the obligation to resolve to consonance.

Klangfarbenmelodie

Twentieth-century technique in which the notes of a melody are distributed among different instruments, giving a pointillistic texture.

Commedia dell'arte

Type of improvised drama popular in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Italy; makes use of stereotyped characters.