MUS 121 Final Exam

Prepared piano

A piano whose sound is altered by placing objects such as bolts, screws, rubber bands, or pieces of felt between the strings of some of the keys

Solo concerto

A piece for a single solists and an orchestra

Call and Response

(1) In jazz, a pattern in which one voice or instrument is answered by another voice, instrument, or group of instruments. (2) Performance style in which the phrases of a solist are repeatedly answered by those of a chorus, often found in African and other nonwestern music.

20th Century to 1945

An Age of Musical Diversity

Aerophone

Any instrument-such as a flute or trumpet--whose sound is generated by a vibrating column of air.

Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) was born in Vienna, the city of Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms. Unlike such earlier masters, he was an almost entirely self-taught musician. "I began studying the violin at eight and almost immediately started composing," he later recalled. Schoenberg acquired his profound knowledge of music by studying scores, by playing in amateur chamber groups, and by going to concerts. His first musical hero was Brahms, then considered the greatest living German composer. He soon became an "equally confirmed addict" of Wagner; he saw each of Wagner's operas from twenty to thirty times. When Schoenberg was sixteen, his father died, and he had to work for several years as a bank clerk. When he lost that job at twentyone, he decided to devote himself to music. He earned a poor living by conducting a choir of metalworkers in an industrial center outside Vienna. He also orchestrated operettas written by popular composers of the time. Performances of his own early works met with hostility from the conservative Viennese public. One music critic suggested that Schoenberg be put in an insane asylum without music paper. Arnold Schoenberg developed the twelve-tone system, which offered the composer a new way of organizing pitch in a composition. Schoenberg began to teach music theory and composition in Vienna in 1904. His personality inspired love and loyalty among his students. Two of his disciples, Alban Berg and Anton Webern, themselves became leading composers. Around 1908 Schoenberg took the revolutionary step of abandoning the traditional tonal system. "I already feel the opposition that I shall have to overcome," he wrote in a program note for his first atonal works. Schoenberg was a man possessed. "I have a mission. I have a task. . . . I am but the loudspeaker of an idea." His productivity between 1908 and 1915 was incredible. Besides creating many dazzlingly original works at lightning speed, he published a harmony textbook, wrote his own librettos, and entered his paintings in exhibitions of the German expressionists. Following this fertile period came a span of eight years, encompassing World War I and the difficult postwar period, when Schoenberg published nothing. He searched for a way to organize the new musical resources he had discovered. Finally, in the summer of 1921, he told a student, "I have made a discovery which will ensure the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years." From 1923 to 1925 Schoenberg published compositions using his newly developed twelve-tone system. Although his music did not find a large audience, many important musicians respected it. At the age of fiftyone, Schoenberg received an important academic post: director of the master class in musical composition at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin. This period of official recognition was cut short in 1933, when the Nazis seized power in Germany. Schoenberg was dismissed from the faculty of the Prussian Academy. This shattering experience caused him to return to Judaism. (He had converted to Protestantism when he was eighteen.) The same year, he and his family left Germany for the United States, where he soon joined the music faculty at the University of California in Los Angeles. But Schoenberg felt neglected in his adopted country. His music was rarely performed, and he was refused a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation. At the age of seventy he was forced to retire from UCLA with a pension of less than $40 a month. "I am quite conscious," he wrote in 1947, "that a full understanding of my work cannot be expected before some decades, . . . and I know that—success or not—it is my historic duty to write what my destiny orders me to write." But appreciation came earlier than Schoenberg had anticipated. After his death in 1951, the twelve-tone system was adopted increasingly by composers throughout the world. It remains an important influence to this day. Schoenberg's Music "I claim the distinction of having written a truly new music which, based upon tradition as it is, is destined to become tradition." This proud assertion by Schoenberg contains a great deal of truth. His musical language was indeed new, yet it was rooted in the past and resulted from a gradual stylistic evolution. And his musical system was eventually adopted by many other composers. Schoenberg's point of departure was the music of Wagner, Brahms, and Mahler. His early works, like the string sextet Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night, 1899), show many features of the late romantic style. The music is emotionally intense and often has a literary program. Some early compositions use the gigantic orchestra favored by late nineteenth-century composers. For example, the immense cantata Gurrelieder (Songs of Gurre, 1901; orchestration, 1911) calls for five vocal soloists, a speaker-narrator, four choruses, and a greatly expanded orchestra including about fifty woodwind and brass players. A feeling of subjectivity is generated through dissonances that resolve in unexpected ways and through angular melodies that have wide ranges and big leaps. There is prominent use of chromatic harmony, or chords with tones that do not belong to the prevailing major or minor scale. The pull of the central tonality is weakened because the music moves rapidly through remote keys. During the years 1903 to 1907, Schoenberg moved farther from the harmonic language of the late romantics. In compositions such as Chamber Symphony, Op. 9 (1906), for fifteen solo instruments, he uses whole-tone scales and fourth chords.

Basso continuo

Baroque accompaniment made up of a bass part usually played by two instruments: a keyboard plus a low melodic instrument

Characteristics of Baroque music: Opening melody heard again and again

Baroque melody also creates a feeling of continuity. An opening melody will be heard again and agian in the course of a baroque piece. and even when a melody is presented in varied form, its character tends to remain constsant. There is a continuous expanding, unfolding, and unwinding of melody.

Ritornello form

Compositional form usually employed in baroque concerto grosso, in which the tutti plays a ritornello, or refrain, alternating with one or more soloists playing new material

Rondo

Compositional form usually employed in the baroque concerto grosso, in which the tutti plays a ritornello, or rerain, alternating with one or more soloists playing new material.

Concerto

Extended composition for several instrumental soloists and small orchestra; common in late baroque music

Richard Wagner

Few composers have had so powerful an impact on their time as Richard Wagner (1813-1883). During the last decades of the nineteenth century, his operas and artistic philosophy influenced not only musicians, but also poets, painters, and playwrights. Such was his preeminence that an opera house of his own design was built in Bayreuth, Germany, solely for performances of his music dramas. Wagner was born in Leipzig and grew up in a theatrical atmosphere. His stepfather and two of his sisters were actors, and another sister was an opera singer. His boyhood dream was to be a poet and playwright. But at fifteen he was overwhelmed by the power of Beethoven's music, and he decided to become a composer. The young Wagner taught himself by studying scores. He never tried to master an instrument, though he did have almost three years of formal training in music theory. When he was seventeen, Wagner enrolled in Leipzig University, where he was more interested in riotous student club life than in academic studies. His family thought him good for nothing because of his dueling, drinking, and gambling. The pattern continued throughout his life; Wagner shamelessly lived off other people and accumulated enormous debts that he never repaid. During his early twenties, Wagner conducted in small German theaters, wrote several operas, and married Minna Planer, a beautiful and well-known actress. In 1839 he decided to try his luck in Paris, then the center of grand opera. Unpaid debts prevented him from getting a passport, and so he and Minna crossed the frontier illegally. Their two years in Paris were miserable. Unable to get an opera performed, Wagner was reduced to musical hackwork. He ran up so many bills that he was briefly confined to a debtors' prison. Richard Wagner's operas and artistic philosophy had a powerful impact on musicians, poets, painters, and playwrights. Wagner returned to Germany in 1842 to supervise the production of his opera Rienzi at the Dresden opera. The work was immensely successful, and Wagner was appointed conductor of the Dresden opera; the job paid a good salary and was to have been a lifetime position. He spent six years there, becoming famous both as an opera composer and as a conductor. Wagner demanded that his orchestra play with enormous dynamic subtlety and rhythmic freedom. "When he conducts," a musician observed, "he is almost beside himself with excitement.... Every sinew in his body speaks. His whole appearance is of arrogance and despotism personified." The revolutions of 1848 swept across Europe like a forest fire and marked a turning point in Wagner's career. His life in Dresden had become increasingly difficult because he had again accumulated debts (he owed more than ten times his annual salary). Hoping that a new society would wipe out his debts and produce conditions favorable to his art, Wagner participated in the insurrection in Dresden. He ordered hand grenades and tried to incite disobedience among the king's soldiers. When a warrant was issued for his arrest, Wagner fled to Switzerland. For several years Wagner did no composing; instead he worked out theories of art in essays such as Art and Revolution (1849), The Artwork of the Future (1850), and Opera and Drama (1851). More important, he completed the librettos to Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), a set of four operas based on Nordic mythology. The Ring was to occupy Wagner for a quarter of a century. He began the text in 1848 and finished the music in 1874. Wagner's amazing self-confidence and belief in his own greatness enabled him to compose one gigantic opera after another, with no prospect of performance. He composed the first opera of the Ring cycle, Das Rheingold (The Rhine Gold, 1853-1854); the second, Die Walküre (The Valkyrie, 1854-1856); and the first two acts of the third, Siegfried (1856-1857)—and then he interrupted his work to compose Tristan and Isolde (1857-1859), which he hoped would have a better chance for performance. In Tristan and Isolde, sexual passion is presented musically with unprecedented power and vividness. Wagner had several bad years after finishing Tristan. His opera Tannhäuser was a failure in a revival at the Paris Opera in 1861, and Tristan was abandoned by the Vienna Opera after many rehearsals. Creditors pounded on his door, demanding payment for the silks, satins, laces, and perfumes he "needed" as part of his lifestyle. In 1864 Wagner was rescued from his desperate situation by King Ludwig of Bavaria, an eighteen-year-old fanatical Wagnerian who was determined to help Wagner produce his operas and complete the Ring. All the resources of the Munich Opera were put at Wagner's disposal. Tristan and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (The Mastersingers of Nuremberg, 1862-1867) were lavishly produced in Munich. Wagner completed Siegfried (1869-1870) and composed the final opera of the Ring, Götterdämmerung (The Twilight of the Gods, 1869-1874). During this period, Wagner fell in love with Cosima von Bülow. She was Liszt's daughter and the wife of Hans von Bülow, Wagner's close friend and favorite conductor. Cosima gave birth to two of Wagner's children while still married to von Bülow. Shortly after Wagner's first wife died, he married Cosima. In Richard Wagner, towering musical genius was allied with utter selfishness, ruthlessness, and an absolute conviction about his place in history. He was a rabid German nationalist; he wrote in his diary, "I am the most German of beings. I am the German spirit." He bent people to his will, and he forged an audience for his complex music dramas from a public accustomed to conventional opera. Wagner designed a theater to suit performances of the Ring. With the help of King Ludwig and contributions from Wagner clubs, which had been formed all over Germany, Wagner's festival theater was constructed in Bayreuth, a small Bavarian town. The premiere of the Ring cycle in 1876 was perhaps the single most important musical event of the century. Sixty newspaper correspondents from all over the world attended, including two from the United States. Though some critics still found his music too dissonant, heavily orchestrated, and long-winded, Wagner was generally acclaimed the greatest composer of his time. A year after completing Parsifal (1877-1882), his last opera, Wagner visited Venice, where he died at the age of sixty-nine. Wagner's Music For Wagner, an opera house was a temple in which the spectator was to be overwhelmed by music and drama. He wrote his own librettos, which he based on medieval Germanic legends and myths. His characters are usually larger than life—heroes, gods, demigods. Wagner called his works music dramas rather than operas, to emphasize the close relationship in them between music and drama. He envisioned music drama as a "universal artwork" (Gesamtkunstwerk in German) in which all the arts—music, drama, dance, painting—are fused. Today, however, many people find Wagner's music more exciting than his rather static drama. For long stretches of time his characters exult, lament, or relate what has happened to them. Within each act, there is a continuous musical flow, which Wagner described as "unending melody." The music is not broken into traditional arias, recitatives, and duets. He achieves musical and dramatic continuity by smoothly connecting each section to the next. There are no breaks where applause can disturb the listener's concentration. Wagner conceived his vocal line as a "speech song" combining the speechlike quality of a recitative with the lyricism of an aria. The vocal line is inspired by rhythms and pitch fluctuations in the German text. Wagner revolutionized opera by shifting the musical center of gravity from the voice toward the orchestra. His expanded and colorful orchestration brilliantly expresses the drama and reveals characters' thoughts and feelings. He treats the orchestra symphonically, always developing, transforming, and intertwining musical ideas. Many long orchestral interludes graphically depict scenic effects such as floods, sunrises, and flames. Wagner loved to exploit the rich power of the brasses. The Ring calls for eight French horns and four new brass instruments (called Wagner tubas) that he designed. The orchestral sound is so full that only singers with unusually powerful voices, such as a "Wagnerian soprano" or a "heroic tenor," can cut through it. Wagner spins an orchestral web out of recurrent musical ideas called leitmotifs, or leading motives. A leitmotif is a short musical idea associated with a person, an object, or a thought in the drama. When the text refers to Siegfried, for example, his leitmotif is usually heard in the orchestra. Leitmotifs are sometimes also heard in the vocal parts. They are varied and transformed to convey the evolving dramatic situation and changes of character. When Siegfried is murdered, his leitmotif is set against strident dissonant harmonies. As Wagner develops his leitmotifs, he often sets one against another to suggest the clash of two persons or ideas. The leitmotifs unify Wagner's greatly extended music dramas. The emotional tension of Wagner's music is heightened by chromatic and dissonant harmonies. He creates motion and color through rapid shifts from one key to another and through many chromatic chords in each key. The listener often expects a resolution to a stable chord, only to hear yet another dissonance. Wagner's chromatic harmony ultimately led to the breakdown of tonality and to the new musical language of the twentieth century.

Swing

Jazz style that was developed in the 1920s and flourished between 1935 and 1945, played mainly by "big bands."

Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) was a romantic who breathed new life into classical forms. He was born in Hamburg, Germany, where his father made a precarious living as a string bass player. At thirteen, Brahms led a double life: during the day he studied piano, music theory, and composition; at night he played dance music in cafés. Brahms's first concert tour, when he was twenty, gave him a chance to meet two of the greatest composers then living—Liszt and Schumann. The contact with Liszt was not helpful. Brahms, a product of a conservative musical education, was repelled by what he considered the bombast and lack of form in Liszt's music. Schumann, on the other hand, was to shape the course of Brahms's artistic and personal life. Moments after presenting himself at Schumann's home, Brahms began to play one of his own piano sonatas. At the end of the first movement, Schumann called his wife, Clara, the famous piano virtuoso, and they listened enthusiastically to Brahms's music for hours. Four weeks later, Schumann published a magazine article hailing young Brahms as a musical messiah "called to give ideal expression to his time." Brahms was both overjoyed and apprehensive about his overnight fame. "The open praise which you gave me," he wrote Schumann, "has probably excited the expectations of the public to such a degree that I don't know how I can come anywhere near fulfilling them." As Brahms was preparing new works for an eager publisher, Schumann had a recurrence of his nervous illness and tried to drown himself. He was committed to an asylum, leaving Clara Schumann with seven children to support. Brahms rushed to her aid and helped care for the children while she went on concert tours to earn money. For two years Brahms lived in the Schumann home, becoming increasingly involved with Clara, who was fourteen years older than he. The conflict between his loyalty to Robert and his passion for Clara may well have accounted for the stormy music he wrote at the time. Robert Schumann's death left Brahms and Clara Schumann free to marry, yet they did not. They destroyed many of their letters, so we'll never know what passed between them. A few months later they separated, although they remained lifelong intimate friends. Brahms never married; for him, Clara Schumann was "the most beautiful experience of my life." Brahms desperately wanted to become conductor of the Philharmonic Orchestra in Hamburg, his birthplace. When he was passed over for the post in 1862, the disappointment was overwhelming. "For me this was much sadder even than you can possibly imagine," he wrote to Clara Schumann, "perhaps even sadder than you can understand." He left his native city to settle in Vienna, where he spent the last thirtyfive years of his life. For several years he conducted a Viennese musical society and introduced many forgotten masterpieces by Bach, Handel, and Mozart to the public. Brahms had a wide knowledge of older music; he edited baroque and classical compositions, and he was an ardent collector of music manuscripts. Brahms's intimate knowledge of past masterpieces made him extremely critical of his own work. Once, after a violinist had played a Bach piece, Brahms threw his own music to the floor, exclaiming, "After that, how could anyone play such stuff as this!" Brahms was obsessed by Beethoven. "You have no idea," he told a friend, "how the likes of us feel when we hear the tramp of a giant like him behind us." He worked at his own First Symphony on and off for twenty years and completed it only when he was forty-three. Brahms endlessly revised compositions and sent them to friends for advice and criticism. He sent some songs to Clara Schumann with the request, "Write me if possible one short word about each, ... such as: No. 5, bad; No. 6, shameful; No. 7, ridiculous." Brahms was a romantic who breathed new life into classical forms. In 1879, an honorary doctoral degree from Breslau University calling Brahms "the first among today's masters" provoked a venomous attack from Richard Wagner, who sneered, "Compose, compose, even if you don't have the slightest of ideas!" Music critics of the time pitted Brahms's fondness for traditional forms against Wagner's innovative music dramas. Actually, their musical paths hardly ever crossed; Brahms never ventured into opera, Wagner's special territory. Brahms always lived frugally, even though he earned a good income from publishers and from playing and conducting his works. He hid a shy, sensitive nature behind a mask of sarcasm and rudeness. Once, on leaving a party, he reportedly announced, "If there is anyone here I have not insulted, I apologize!" Yet this gruff bear could be extremely generous to talented young musicians. He helped Dvořák find a publisher, and the grateful Czech composer wrote: "I am so overcome by his kindness that I cannot help but love him! What a warm heart and great spirit there is in that man!" When Brahms's beloved Clara Schumann lay dying in 1896, his grief found expression in the haunting Four Serious Songs, set to biblical texts. Not long after, it was discovered that he had cancer. On March 7, 1897, he dragged himself to hear a performance of his Fourth Symphony; the audience and orchestra gave him a tremendous ovation. Less than a month later, at the age of sixty-four, he died. Brahms's Music Brahms created masterpieces in all the traditional forms except opera. His varied output includes four symphonies, two concertos for piano and one for violin, short piano pieces, more than 200 songs, and some magnificent choral music, such as the German Requiem (1868; we study its fourth movement). Some of Brahms's finest music may be found in the two dozen chamber works written for many different instrumental combinations, including duo sonatas for cello and piano (Op. 38 and Op. 99); a trio for violin, horn, and piano (Op. 40); and a quintet for clarinet and strings (Op. 115). Brahms's works, though very personal in style, are rooted deeply in the music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Brahms reinterprets classical forms while using the harmonic and instrumental resources of his own time. He was the greatest master of theme-and-variations form since Beethoven: he wrote variations that sound completely different from their thematic source, while retaining the theme's basic structure. Brahms's music embraces a range of moods, but particularly it has an autumnal or mellow feeling and a sense of lyrical warmth. Lyricism pervades even the rich polyphonic textures he was so fond of. One Brahms scholar has aptly observed, "It is possible to sing every Brahms movement from beginning to end as though it were a single, uninterrupted melody. Through all its polyphonic intricacies, the clear flow of invention always remains distinctly recognizable." We study the lyrical aspect of Brahms's art as represented in the third movement of his Third Symphony. Among romantics, Brahms is outstanding in his ability to make intricate polyphonic texture sound natural and spontaneous. When he was in his twenties, he and a violinist friend gave each other difficult contrapuntal exercises to correct. "Why shouldn't we two serious and intelligent people," Brahms wrote, "be able to teach each other better than some professor could?" All of Brahms's music is rhythmically exciting. Contrasting rhythmic patterns are set against one another; one instrument plays two even notes to the beat, while another plays three. The use of "2 against 3," as this rhythmic technique is called, is one of Brahms's trademarks. He also delights in all sorts of syncopations and in phrases of irregular length that push against the prevailing meter. The quality of sound in Brahms's music is very special. He liked rich, dark tone colors. In his orchestral music, he usually blended the different instrumental choirs, favoring mellow instruments like the viola, clarinet, and French horn. (It's characteristic of Brahms's feeling for tradition that he preferred the old-fashioned hunting-type horn to the modern horn with valves.) The rich sound often results from his practice of doubling melodies in thirds and sixths; the same melody is duplicated at the interval of a third or sixth. Brahms's music always radiates the security and solidity of a complete master. He justified Schumann's prediction of greatness for the "young eagle."

Chromatic scale

Scale including all twelve tones of the octave; each tone is half step away from the next one.

Pentatonic scale

Scale made up of five different tones, used in folk music and music of the far east

Whole tone scale

Scale made up of six different tones, each a whole step away from the next, which conveys no definite sense of tonality; often found in the music of Debussy and his followers

Development

Second section of a sonata-form movement, in which themes from the exposition are developed and the music moves through several different keys.

Art song

Setting of a poem for solo voice and piano, ranslating the poem's mood and imagery into music, common in the romantic period.

Giacomo Puccini

Some of the best-loved operas were created by Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924), who succeeded Verdi as the most important Italian opera composer of his time. Puccini came from a long line of composers and church organists. During his student years at the Milan Conservatory (1880-1883), he lived a hand-to-mouth existence, usually eating on credit at a restaurant fittingly named Aïda. The success of Puccini's first opera, written shortly after his graduation, brought him to the attention of Italy's leading music publisher, who commissioned new works and gave him an annual income. In 1893 Puccini became well known throughout Italy for his opera Manon Lescaut, and after 1896 he was wealthy and world-famous from the enormous success of La Bohème, which portrays a "bohemian" life similar to his own life as an impoverished music student. La Bohème, along with two other very popular operas, Tosca (1900) and Madame Butterfly (1904), was written in collaboration with the librettists Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. Puccini was very much concerned with the literary and dramatic qualities of his librettos, often demanding endless changes from his collaborators. He spent as much time polishing the librettos as he did composing the music. His last opera, Turandot, was based on a Chinese fairytale. He died before finishing it; the work was completed from Puccini's sketches by a friend, Franco Alfano. Puccini's marvelous sense of theater has given his operas lasting appeal. He knew just when to introduce new musical material or a moment of silence, and he was able to provide smooth transitions from one scene or mood to another. His melodies have short, easily remembered phrases and are intensely emotional. He used the orchestra to reinforce the vocal melody and to suggest atmosphere, landscape, and mood. As Verdi did in his late works, Puccini minimized the difference between aria and recitative, creating a continuous flow of music. He also achieved unity and continuity by using the same material in different acts, particularly at moments when his characters reflect on past events or emotions. Some of Puccini's operas, notably Tosca, reflect an artistic trend of the 1890s known as verismo—realism, or the quality of being "true to life." Operas coming out of this realistic movement deal with ordinary people rather than kings, gods, or great heroes and often contain shockingly violent scenes set to music of raw emotional power. Cavalleria rusticana (Rustic Chivalry, 1890), by Pietro Mascagni; and I Pagliacci (The Clowns, 1892), by Ruggiero Leoncavallo, are other famous examples of verismo. Puccini's operas also feature exoticism. Madame Butterfly is set in Japan and Turandot in China, and in both Puccini used melodic and rhythmic elements derived from Japanese and Chinese music. His melodies cast a romantic glow over any subject matter, realistic or exotic.

Lied or lieder

Strophic or through-composed For singer and piano German Romantic poem (german art song)

Ground Bass

aka basso ostinato: variation form in which a musical idea in the bass is repeated over and over while the melodies above it continually change; common in baroque music

Symphonic Poem

aka tone poem; programmatic composition for orchestra in one movement, which may have a traditional form (such as sonata or rondo) or an original, irregular form.

aspects of form; variation

changing some features of a musical idea while retaining others

Opera

drama that is sung to orchestral accompaniment, usualy a large-scale composition emplying vocal soloists, chorus, orchestra, costumes, and scenery

voice ranges female; soprano

female voice of high range

voice ranges female; alto

female voice of low range

Motive

fragment of a theme or short musical idea that is developed within a composition.

Crescendo

gradually louder

Diminuendo

gradually softer

Nationalism in music

inclusion of folk songs, dances, legends, and other national material in a composition to associate it with the composers homeland.

Instrument families: percussion (unpitched & pitched)

instrument of definite or indefinite pitch whose sound is produced by striking by hand, or with a stick or hammer, or by shaking or rubbing.

Instrument families: strings

instrument whose sound is produced by the vibration of strings

Instrument families: woodwinds

instrument whose sound is produced by vibrations of air in a tube; holes along the length of tube are opened and closed by the fingers, or by pads, to control pitch.

Instrument families: Electronic Instruments

instrument whose sound is produced, modified, or amplified by electronic means.

Instrument families: Keyboard instruments

instrument, such as the piano, organ, or harpsichord-- played by pressing a series of keys with the fingers.

Program music

instrumental music associated with a story, poem, idea, or scene, often found in the romantic period.

Absolute music

instrumental music having no intended association with a story, poem, idea, or scene; nonprogram music.

Binary

Two-part form, gives a sense of statement (A) and counterstatement (B). Usually, the compositon in two-part form repeat both parts: A A B B.

Cadenza

Unaccompanied section of virtuoso display for the solists in a concerto, usually appearing near the end of the first movement and sometimes in last movement

Characteristics of Baroque music: Continuity of rhythm within a singe piece

Unity of mood in baroque music in conveyed, first of all, by continuity of rhythm. Rhythmic patterns heard at the beginning of a piece are repeated throughout it. This rhythmic continuity provides a compelling drive and energy-the forward motion is rarely interrupted. The beat, for example, is emphasized far more in baroque music than in most Renaissance music.

Recitative

Vocal line in an opera, oratorio, or cantata that imitates the rhythms and pitch fluctuations of speech, often serving to lead into an aria.

Quotation Music

Works which make extensive use of quotations from erlier music; common since the mid-1960s

Step

interval between two adjacent tones in the scale

Octave

interval between two tones in which the higher tone has twice the frequency of the lower tone

Leap

interval larger than that between two adjacent tones in the scale.

Virtuosity

is an individual who possesses outstanding technical ability in a particular art or field such as fine arts, music, singing, playing a musical instrument, or composition

Pitch

is the relative highness or lowness that we hear in a sound. No doubt you've noticed that most men speak and sing in a lower range of pitches than women or children do.

Cool Jazz

jazz style related to bebop, but more relaxed in character and relykng more heavily on arragements; developed around 1950.

Free Jazz

jazz style which departs from traditional jazz in not being based on regular forms or on established chord patterns; devloped during the 1960s

Castrato

male singer castrated before puberty to retain a high voice range; the most important category of vocal soloists in opera during the baroque period

voice ranges male; tenor

male voice of high range

voice ranges male; bass

male voice of low range

Ostinato

motive or phrase that is repeated persistently at the same pitch, used in music of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries to stabilize a group of pitches.

Aleatory Music

music composed by the random selection of pitches, tone colors, and rhythms; devloped in the 1950s by John Cage and others.

Chamber music

music using a small group of musicians, with one player to a part

Meter

organization of beats into regular groups

Phrase

part of a melody

Polyphonic textures

performance of two or more melodic lines of relatively equal interest at the same time.

Timbre

quality of sound that distinguishes one instrument or voice from another

Chromatic scale

scale including all twelve tones of the octave; each tone is a half step away from the next one.

Tone Poem

see symphonic poem

Major scale

series of seven different tones within an octave, with an eighth tone repeating the fist tone an octave higher, consisting of a specific pattern of whole and half steps; the whole step between the second and third tones is characteristic.

Melody

series of single tones that add up to recognizable whole

Leitmotiv

short musical idea associated with a person, object, or thought, characteristic of the operas of Wagner.

aspects of form; contrast

striking differences of pitch, dynamics, rhythm, and tempo that provide variety and change of mood

Consonance

tone combination that is stable and restful

Dissonance

tone combination that is unstable and tense

Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) was the last great Austrian romantic composer. He opened new realms of orchestral sound that influenced composers of the early twentieth century, but his works were not fully appreciated until half a century after his death. Mahler was born in Bohemia and grew up in a small town where his father was a tavern keeper. His musical environment included Bohemian peasant songs and dances, and marches played by a local military band. (This early contact with folk music and marches later had an influence on his style.) As a boy, he studied piano and composed constantly. At fifteen, he entered the Vienna Conservatory, where he studied for three years. He also took courses in history, Greek art, and ancient literature at the University of Vienna. At twenty he began his conducting career, directing musical comedies at a summer resort. In the years that followed, Mahler steadily gained in professional status, working as an opera conductor in several theaters, each more important than the last. By the time he was twenty-eight, he was director of the Budapest Opera. Brahms heard one of his performances there and declared that to hear "the true Don Giovanni" you had to go to Budapest. Mahler's ambition as a performer was to direct the Vienna Opera, but there was one obstacle: he was Jewish. However, in 1897, at thirty-seven, he converted to Roman Catholicism and became director of the Vienna Opera, a position he held for ten years. Mahler brought the Vienna Opera to new heights of excellence, supervising every aspect of its performances: music, acting, costumes, and scenery. He was uncompromising in artistic matters, with the result that many performers regarded him as a tyrant. Although Mahler quickly won fame as a conductor, he had to struggle for recognition as a composer. Performances of his symphonies often met with a mixed reception. Critics would acknowledge his talent but complain about his harsh dissonances, overelaborate orchestration, and confusing shifts of mood. Mahler composed much of his music during summer vacations because he was preoccupied with his feverish activity as a conductor during most of the year. In addition to his directorship of the Vienna Opera, he also conducted the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra. At the age of forty-two, Mahler married the beautiful and musically talented Alma Schindler, who was nineteen years his junior. Two daughters were born to the couple within the first two years of their marriage. Tragically, Maria ("Puzi"), the older daughter, died of scarlet fever at the age of four, leaving Mahler a broken man. In 1908, Mahler traveled to the United States to become principal conductor of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The next year he was elected director of the New York Philharmonic orchestra. Mahler's experiences in New York were not happy. His own works were received coolly, he aroused the dislike of many of his players, and he was unable to get along with the socialites who supported the orchestra. In 1911 he became seriously ill and returned to Europe. He died in Vienna at the age of fifty. Mahler was a passionately intense man, full of conflicts and contradictions. He was an active leader and administrator, but he often craved solitude. His mood frequently shifted from exaltation to despair. He could be cruel to his players, and yet he gave generous support to young musicians—for example, the conductor Bruno Walter and the composer Arnold Schoenberg. Mahler's Music Mahler's music is often programmatic and reflects his constant search for the meaning of life. His output consists basically of nine symphonies (plus an unfinished Tenth Symphony that is also performed) and several song cycles for voice and orchestra, including Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer, 1883-1885), which we study; and his monumental masterpiece Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth, 1908). "The symphony is the world!" Mahler once explained. "The symphony must embrace everything." Following the example of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Mahler used voices in four of his symphonies. And his symphonies are often monumental in length and in their performing forces. His Eighth Symphony (Symphony of a Thousand, 1907), for example, lasts about an hour and a half and calls for eight vocal soloists, a boys' choir, two choruses, and a gigantic orchestra. Yet Mahler often uses his gigantic orchestra to achieve delicate chamber music effects in which only a few instruments are heard at a time. He created polyphonic textures in which several themes are presented simultaneously in contrasting tone colors. His use of unconventional instruments—including cowbells, celesta, guitar, and mandolin—influenced twentieth-century Viennese composers such as Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and Alban Berg. Mahler's instrumental music, like that of Schubert—whose music was a source of inspiration—is permeated with the spirit of song. Many of Mahler's symphonic movements are based on themes from his own songs. Mahler loved to use folklike tunes and march music, perhaps remembering his childhood in a small Bohemian town. But sometimes he parodies a tune by giving it an unusual twist or a grotesque glissando (a continuous slide in pitch up or down the scale), and there are many sudden and extreme shifts of mood in his music—an intensely emotional section may be interrupted by something light and frivolous.

Prelude

(1) short piece usually serving to introduce a fugue or another composition (2) see overture: short musical composition, purely orchestral, which opens an opera and sets the overall dramatic mood. Orchestral introductions to later acts of an opera are called preludes.

Bebop

(bop) complex jazz style, usually for small groups, developed in the 1940s and meant for attentive listening rather than dancing.

Jazz Rock

(fusion) style which combines the jazz musician's improvisatory approach with rock rhythms and tone colors; developed in the 1960s

Musical Comedy

(musicial) type of American theater create to entertain through fusion of a drmatic script, acting, and spoken dialogue with music, singing, and dancing--and scenery, costumes, and spectacle.

When was the Baroque Era?

1600-1750

Dates of Classical Period

1750-1820

Dates of Romantic Period

1820-1900

Antonin Dvorak

1841-1904) followed Smetana as the leading composer of Czech national music. He infused his symphonies and chamber music with the spirit of Bohemian folksong and dance. Dvořák's father was a poor innkeeper and butcher in a small town near Prague. After working in his father's butcher shop, Dvořák left home at the age of sixteen to study music in Prague. For years he earned a meager living by playing in an opera orchestra under Smetana's direction. He was little known as a composer until his works came to the attention of the German master Brahms, who recommended Dvořák to his own publisher: "I took much pleasure in the works of Dvořák of Prague. If you play them through, you will enjoy them as much as I have done. Decidedly he is a very talented man." From this time on—Dvořák was then about thirty-six—his fame spread rapidly. He was invited several times to England, where the melodiousness of his symphonies, chamber music, Slavonic dances, and choral works appealed to the English love for folk music and the countryside. Although Dvořák rarely quoted actual folk tunes, his works breathe a folk quality and express a cheerful and direct personality. In 1892, Dvořák went to New York, where he was to spend almost three years as director of the National Conservatory of Music. He received a salary of $15,000, about twenty times what he was earning as a professor at the Prague Conservatory. In addition to his urban impressions, Dvořák learned about the American heartland by spending a summer in Spillville, Iowa, where there was a colony of Czechs. Dvořák encouraged American composers to write nationalistic music. He had become interested in Native American melodies and African American spirituals, which were sung for him by Henry T. Burleigh, a black composer and baritone who studied at the National Conservatory of Music. Dvořák told a reporter from the New York Herald that in the spirituals he had "found a secure basis for a new national musical school. America can have her own music, a fine music growing up from her own soil and having its own character—the natural voice of a free and great nation." In 1895 Dvořák returned to his homeland and rejoined the faculty of the Prague Conservatory, becoming its director six years later.

Characteristicis of Baroque music: unity of mood

A baroque piece usually expresses one basic mood: what begins joyully will remain joyful throughout.. (Read p. 122-123, 153)

Atonality

Absence of tonality, or key, characteristic of much music of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Syncopation

Accenting of a note at an unexpected time, as between two beats or on a weak beat. Syncopation is a major characteristic of jazz

Bedrich Smetana

Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884) was the founder of Czech national music. His works are steeped in the folksongs, dances, and legends of his native Bohemia (which became part of the Czech Republic). When Smetana was growing up, Bohemia was under Austrian domination, and the official language in Prague's schools and government bureaus was German, not Czech. The young Smetana's feelings of national identity were inflamed during the revolutions of 1848, when Czech radicals fought for political freedom and the abolition of serfdom. As a member of the armed Citizen Corps, he was probably on the barricades when the Austrians bombarded Prague. The insurrection was a failure and resulted in a harsh reaction from Austria; censorship was increased, and patriots were imprisoned. In this repressive atmosphere, Smetana's musical nationalism could make little headway. Though he was recognized as a pianist, his compositions were scorned by those opposed to nationalism or "modernity" of any variety. In 1856, Smetana emigrated to Sweden, where he taught, conducted, and composed symphonic poems in the style of Franz Liszt. He did not return to Prague until 1862, when Austria's military defeats had resulted in some liberal concessions. Political prisoners were released, Czech-language newspapers were established, and Czech theaters for drama and opera were allowed to open. It was for one of these theaters that Smetana wrote The Bartered Bride, his most famous opera, based on Bohemian legend and folk material. Smetana was active in Prague not only as a composer but as a pianist, conductor, teacher, and tireless propagandist for Czech musical nationalism. At age fifty, Smetana suffered the same fate as Beethoven—he became completely deaf. Yet some of his finest works followed, including Má Vlast (My Country; 1874-1879), a cycle of six symphonic poems glorifying Bohemian history and legend, the fertile Czech countryside, and peasant songs and dances. Smetana passed his last ten years in acute physical and mental torment caused by syphilis. He died in an insane asylum at age sixty.

Polychord

Combination of two chords sounded at the same time, used in twentieth-century music

Concerto Grosso

Composition for several instrumental soloists and small orchestra ; common in late baroque music

Secular cantata

Composition in several movements, usually written for chorus, one or more vocal soloists, and instrumental ensemble. Chamber canta styles

Sacred cantata

Composition in several movements, usually written for chorus, one or more vocal soloists, and instrumental ensemble. the church cantata for the LUtheran service in Germany during the baroque period often includes chorales.

Minuet and trio

Compositional form-derived from a dance--in three parts: minuet (A), trio (B), minuet (A). Often used as the third movement of classical symphonies, string quartets, and other works, it is in triple meter (3/4 time) and usually in a moderate tempo.

Characteristics of Baroque music:Predominant texture: Early Baroque:Homophonic

Early baroque composers favored homophonic texture over polyphnic texture typical of Renaissance music. They felt that words could be projected more clearly by using just one main melody with a chordal accompaniment.

Equal temperament

Equal temperament, in music, a tuning system in which the octave is divided into 12 semitones of equal size.

Igor Stravinsky

Even before his death at the age of eighty-eight, Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) was a legendary figure and was regarded as the world's greatest composer. His once revolutionary works were modern classics; he was a restless innovator who influenced three generations of composers and inspired many painters, writers, and choreographers. Cultural giants like Picasso and T. S. Eliot were his friends; President John F. Kennedy honored him at a White House dinner in his eightieth year. Stravinsky, who was born in a small town near St. Petersburg, Russia, grew up in a musical atmosphere. His father was a leading singer at the St. Petersburg opera. Despite Stravinsky's obvious talent, his parents insisted that he study law at the University of St. Petersburg. Soon he began to neglect his studies and devote himself to composition. At the age of twenty-one, he became a private student of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Stravinsky's life took a sudden turn in 1909, when the great impresario Sergei Diaghilev heard his music at a concert in St. Petersburg. Diaghilev was director of the Russian Ballet. This troupe, based in Paris, had a powerful impact not only on Stravinsky but on the entire cultural scene in Europe from 1909 to 1929. It employed great masters in all arts. Its dancers included Vaslav Nijinsky, and the choreographers Michel Fokine and George Balanchine created works for the troupe. It commissioned stage designs from great painters like Picasso and ballet music from outstanding musicians like Stravinsky, Debussy, Ravel, and Prokofiev. Diaghilev asked the twenty-six-year-old Stravinsky to orchestrate piano pieces by Chopin as ballet music for the first season of the Russian Ballet in 1909. In 1910, Stravinsky was commissioned to compose an original ballet, The Firebird. The immense success of this ballet, which was based on a Russian fairytale, immediately established Stravinsky as a leading young composer. His second ballet, Petrushka (1911), was performed a year later, and at the age of twenty-nine Stravinsky was hailed as a modern master. His incisive rhythms, witty musical satire, and brilliant orchestral colors delighted sophisticated Parisians. Igor Stravinsky in a sketch by Picasso. A now-legendary riot erupted in the audience when Stravinsky's third ballet, The Rite of Spring, was performed in Paris in 1913. Spectators hissed and booed at the music's "primitive" evocation of pagan fertility rites, its harshly insistent dissonance, its percussiveness, and its pounding rhythms. One member of the audience reported that someone excitedly "began to beat rhythmically on top of my head with his fists. My emotion was so great that I did not feel the blows." Soon after, however, the ballet was recognized as a masterpiece; it influenced composers all over the world. The outbreak of World War I in 1914 forced Stravinsky to seek refuge in neutral Switzerland, where he lived for six years with his wife and children. When the Russian Revolution of 1917 ended his private income, he faced financial difficulties for the first time in his life. To "escape from this alarming situation," he wrote The Soldier's Tale (1918), a theatrical work that required few performers and was easy to present under wartime conditions. After the armistice in 1918, Stravinsky moved to France, which remained his home until the onset of World War II. Now Stravinsky was an international figure, constantly touring Europe and the United States to play and conduct his music. His voluntary exile from Russia coincided with his turning away from Russian folk music as a source of inspiration. Stravinsky's works in the 1920s and 1930s seemed excessively cool and objective to some music lovers, who preferred the early, Russian-flavored ballets. Unlike his contemporaries Schoenberg and Bartók, Stravinsky got well-paying commissions for his work and was an astute businessman. He described himself as composing "every day, regularly, like a man with banking hours." His love of order and discipline was reflected in his studio, which had, in the words of a friend, "all the instruments needed for writing, copying, drawing, pasting, cutting, clipping, filing, sharpening, and gluing that the combined effects of a stationery and hardware store can furnish." World War II caused Stravinsky to settle in yet another country, the United States. He lived outside Los Angeles, not far from Arnold Schoenberg, but the two never visited each other. Their different musical philosophies created an unbridgeable gulf, and each had his own group of loyal disciples. In 1948, Stravinsky engaged Robert Craft, a twenty-four-year-old conductor, as his musical assistant. Craft encouraged Stravinsky to become more familiar with the works of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. By the 1950s, all three composers were dead, and Stravinsky astonished his followers by adopting Schoenberg's twelve-tone system. And in his seventies and eighties, despite physical pain, this incredible man toured the world from Chile to Tahiti, conducting his rich and intense late works. He also, for the first time in fifty years, returned to Russia and bared his soul to a group of Soviet composers: "The smell of the Russian earth is different. . . . A man has one birthplace, one fatherland, one country." Stravinsky's Music Stravinsky had an enormous influence on twentieth-century music. His innovations in rhythm, harmony, and tone color inspired musicians throughout the world. No contemporary contributed so many masterpieces to the international repertoire. Stravinsky's extensive output includes music of almost every kind, for both voices and instruments. His many works for the stage include thirteen ballet scores. Like that of his friend Picasso, Stravinsky's development shows dramatic changes of style. His three early ballets—The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), and The Rite of Spring (1913)—call for very large orchestras and draw on Russian folklore and folk tunes. During World War I, Stravinsky abandoned the large orchestra and wrote for small chamber groups with unconventional combinations of instruments. Ragtime rhythms and popular dances (for example, the tango) were used in such works as The Soldier's Tale (1918). From about 1920 to 1951 (described earlier, in Section 6, as the period of neoclassicism), he gradually turned from Russian folklore and drew inspiration largely from eighteenth-century music. First came the ballet Pulcinella (1920), based partly on the music of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, an Italian composer of the early eighteenth century; this phase ended with his opera The Rake's Progress (1951), modeled after Mozart's operas. Emphasizing emotional restraint, balance, and wit, Stravinsky's work at this time was far removed from the violence and "primitivism" of The Rite of Spring. Many pieces feature woodwind and brass instruments, which Stravinsky felt to be less "romantic" in sound than strings. Some works are based on subjects from antiquity, like the opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex (1927); others were inspired by sacred texts, like Symphony of Psalms (1930). Whatever Stravinsky's current style, he had always written music with a clear tonal center, and so the musical world was startled when he shifted from tonality to the twelve-tone system. This dramatic change of approach came during the 1950s, when Stravinsky was in his seventies. Taking inspiration from the music of Anton Webern (1883-1945), Stravinsky now wrote brief works in which melodic lines were "atomized" into short fragments in continually changing tone colors and registers. Despite such stylistic changes, all of his music has an unmistakable "Stravinsky sound." His tone colors tend to be dry and clear, while his beat is strong and regular. Stravinsky's rhythmic imagination was one of the most fertile in the twentieth century. His music abounds in changing and irregular meters; sometimes several meters are heard at once. Ostinatos, or repeated rhythmic patterns, frequently unify sections of a piece. They also accompany melodies with highly irregular phrase structures. Stravinsky's treatment of musical form is also unique. Rather than connecting themes with bridge passages, he shifts abruptly from one section to the next. One idea is repeated and varied for a while, only to be broken off by something new. "Here, you see, I cut off the fugue with a pair of scissors," he remarked of a fugue that is repeatedly punctuated by contrasting material. But despite all the sudden changes, Stravinsky's music sounds unified and continuous. Tone color is an integral part of his work. The effectiveness of his rhythms, chords, and melodies depends largely on how they are orchestrated. Much of his music is scored for unconventional groups of instruments. Highly contrasting tone colors are often combined: a violin is set against a trumpet, or a piano against a trombone. Instruments play in unusual registers too. For example, The Rite of Spring opens with the highest tones of a solo bassoon. Stravinsky uses percussion instruments imaginatively, often giving them solo roles. He even acquired percussion instruments so that he could personally try out his drum parts. The writer who collaborated with Stravinsky on The Soldier's Tale reported that he and Stravinsky met almost daily "surrounded by side drums, kettledrums, bass drums, and every kind of percussion instrument." Stravinsky's music has rich, novel harmonies, such as the famous "Petrushka chord," a bitonal combination of a C major triad with an F sharp major triad. He makes even conventional chords sound unique through spacing, doubling, and the orchestration of their tones. The spirit of this composer's approach is seen in his exclamation about one such novel-sounding harmony: "How happy I was when I discovered this chord!" Stravinsky often used existing music to create original compositions. He drew on a vast range of styles, from Russian folksongs to baroque melodies, from Renaissance madrigals to tango rhythms. Sometimes he gave another composer's melody new harmonies and orchestration. But more often the music is entirely Stravinsky's, while vaguely suggesting a past style. Stravinsky spoke of a "lifelong need for outside nourishment." He believed that tradition is "a living force that animates and informs the present. . . . It appears as an heirloom, a heritage that one receives on condition of making it bear fruit before passing it on to one's descendants."

Primitivism

Evocation of primitive power through insistent rhythms and percussive sounds

Exposition

First section of a sonata-form movement, which sets up a strong conflict between the tonic key and the new key; and between the first theme (or group of themes) and the second theme (or group of themes)

Theme and variations

Form in which a basic musical idea (the theme) is repeated over and over and is changed each time in melody, rhythm, harmony, dynamics, or tone color. used either as an independent piece or as one movement of a larger work

Sonata (or sonata-allegro) form

Form of a single movement, consisting of three main sections: the exposition, where the themes are presented; the development, where themes are treated in new ways; and the recapitulation, where the themes return. A concluding section, the coda, often follows the recapitulation.

Giuseppi Verdi

Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901), the most popular of all opera composers, was born in a tiny Italian village. As a boy, he had such an intense love of music that his parents bought him a piano—an unusual acquisition in nineteenth-century Italy. At the age of ten, Verdi went to live in a nearby town, Busseto, to study music and go to school. Every Sunday for nine years, he walked three miles barefoot to serve as church organist in his own village, carrying his shoes to preserve them. A wealthy music patron took Verdi into his home and later supported Verdi's studies in Milan. After finishing his music education at twenty-two, Verdi returned to Busseto and became municipal music director. Thus assured of a regular income, he was able to marry his patron's daughter, a young woman he had known and loved since childhood. But the small town couldn't fulfill Verdi's needs for long. After three years he returned to Milan with the score of his first opera, Oberto (1839). With the help of an influential friend, the young provincial's work was produced at La Scala, the most important opera house in Italy. Though the response to Oberto was only modest, it was enough to win Verdi a contract for three more operas. Just when Verdi's future seemed bright, however, disaster struck. While he was working on his next opera—a comedy—his wife fell ill and died. This tragedy completed the destruction of his family because two infant children had died within the previous two years. Verdi managed to complete the opera, but it understandably lacked inspiration and was greeted by boos and hisses. In despair, he vowed to compose no more. He changed his mind after reading a libretto about the ancient Jews exiled from their homeland. Verdi was an ardent nationalist who yearned to see the Italian people freed from Austrian domination and unified into one nation. For him, the ancient Jews symbolized the enslaved Italians. He quickly composed Nabucco (Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon), which was an enormous success. One chorus, Oh, my country so beautiful and lost! became a national liberation hymn sung by all Italian patriots. From that time on, Verdi and his operas symbolized a free and united Italy. A poet wrote that "the very soul of Italy ... has today its voice in the name of Giuseppe Verdi." As Italy approached war with Austria, the cry Viva Verdi stood also for the patriotic slogan, Vittorio Emmanuele, Re D'Italia (Victor Emmanuel, king of Italy). In his late thirties, Verdi composed Rigoletto (1851), Il Trovatore (1853), and La Traviata (1853), the first of his operas that are now universally known. Although the public loved these works, critics were often scandalized by their subject matter. Rigoletto seemed to condone rape and suicide, and La Traviata apparently glorified free love and made a heroine out of a kept woman. But Verdi was a fiercely independent man who himself lived openly with his second wife for ten years before marrying her. After these successes had made him wealthy, Verdi bought an estate at Busseto. In 1861 he was elected deputy to the first Italian parliament to convene after Italy had become a nation. Verdi was Italy's most famous native son when he wrote Aïda (1871), an opera commissioned to commemorate the opening of the Suez Canal. In 1874 he wrote his most important nonoperatic work, a gigantic Requiem to honor the memory of the Italian poet and novelist Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873). In 1887, Verdi, then seventy-three, had a triumphant success with Otello (Othello), one of his greatest operas. Even this masterpiece did not still his creative urge. Remarkably, at the age of seventy-nine, Verdi completed Falstaff (1893), his only comedy since the failure of his second opera fifty years earlier. Giuseppe Verdi was one of the greatest opera composers and an ardent Italian nationalist. Verdi's Music "In the theater," Verdi once wrote, "lengthy is synonymous with boring, and of all styles the boring style is the worst." He composed not for the musical elite, but for a mass public whose main entertainment was opera. Verdi wanted subjects that were "original, interesting ... and passionate; passions above all!" An aria "needs the greatest variety of mood; irony, contempt, rage, all thrown into sharp profile." Almost all of Verdi's mature works are serious and end unhappily. The operas move quickly and involve characters who are plunged into extremes of hatred, love, jealousy, and fear. His powerful music summons up heroes and villains and vividly underlines dramatic situations. Expressive vocal melody is the soul of a Verdi opera. No matter how elaborate or atmospheric the orchestral part, the musical center lies in the voice. There are many duets, trios, and quartets, in which each character is given melodies superbly tailored to the emotions depicted. Choruses—of Gypsies, Egyptian priests, conspirators, and monks, for example—play an important role in his operas. In the course of his long life, Verdi's style became less conventional, more subtle and flexible. His later works have greater musical continuity. He used fewer pauses between sections and lessened the difference between aria and recitative. His orchestration became more imaginative and the accompaniments richer. Verdi's last three operas are perhaps his greatest. Aïda is a true "grand opera" with spectacular pageants, ballets, and choruses. Yet for all its spectacle, there are many scenes of tender and intimate beauty. Otello and Falstaff, the operas of Verdi's old age, have marvelous librettos based on plays by Shakespeare. The librettist was Arrigo Boito, himself a gifted opera composer. For Otello, the seventy-three-year-old Verdi wrote sensuous, overpowering music that completely fuses with the poetry and action. The opera rivals Shakespeare's play in its dramatic force and lyricism. Verdi's last opera, Falstaff, is incomparably witty, imaginative, and sparkling. The aged composer ended this comic masterwork with a carefree fugue to the words All the world's a joke!

Song Cycle

Group of art songs unified by a story line that runs through their poems, or by musical ideas linking the songs; often found in romantic music.

Chorale

Hymn tune sung to a German religious text

Sprechstimme

In German, speech-voice;a style of vocal performance halfway between speaking and singing, typical of Schoenberg and his followers.

Front Line

In New Orleans or Dixieland jazz, the group of melodic instruments that improvise on a melody, supported by the rhythm section.

Coda

In a sonata-form movement, a concluding section following the recapitulation and rounding off the movement by repeating themes or develping them further.

Suite

In baroque music, a set of dance-inspired movements all written in the same key but differing in tempo, meter, and character

Riff

In jazz, a short repeated phrase that may be an accompaniment or a melody.

12-bar Blues

In vocal blues and jazz, a harmonic frame-work that is twelve bars in length, usually involving only three basic chords: tonic (1), subdominant (IV), and dominant (V).

Electronic Instrument

Instrument whose sound is produced, modified, or amplified by electronic means.

Instrument families: brass

Instrument, made of brass or silver, whose sound is produced by the vibrations of the player's lips as he or she blows into a cup- or funnel-shaped mouthpiece. The vibrations are amplified and colored in a tube that is flared at the end

Membranophone

Instrument--basically, a drum--whose sound is generated by a stretched skin or another membrane.

Chordophone

Instrument--such as a harp or lute--whose sound is generated by a stretched string.

Idiophone

Instrument--such as bells, a gong, a scraper, a rattle, or a xylophone--whose sound is generated by the instrument's own material (no tension is applied).

Oratorio

Large scale composition for chorus, vocal soloists, an orchestra, usually set to a narrative text, but without acting, scenery, or costumes; often based on biblical stories

Theme

Melody that serves as the starting point for an extended piece of music

Serialism

Method of composing that uses an ordered group of musical elements to organize rhythm, dynamics, and tone color, as well as pitch; developed in the mid-twentieth century.

Minimalistic Music

Music characterized by steady pulse, clear tonality, and insistent repetition of shot melodic patterns; its dynamic level, texture, and harmony tend tto stay constant for fairly long stretches of time, creating a tranclike or hyponotic effect; developed in the 1960s

Jazz

Music rooted in improvisation and characterized by syncopated rhythm, a steady beat, and distinctive tone colors and performance techniques. Jazz was developed in the United States predominantly by African american musicians and gained popularity in the early twentieth century.

Neo-Classicism

Musical style marked by emotional restraint, balance, and clarity,k inspired by the forms and stylistic features of eighteenth-century music, found in many works from 1920-1950

Expressionism

Musicial style stressing intense, subjective emotion and harsh dissonance, typical of German and Austrian music of the early twentieth century.

Impressionism

Musicial style which stresses tone color, atmosphere, and fluidity, typical of Debussy (flourished 1890-1920)

Pyotr Tchaikovsky

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893), the most famous Russian composer, came from the small town of Votkinsk, where his father was a mining inspector. When he was ten, he and his family moved to St. Petersburg, where he studied at the School of Jurisprudence. After graduating at nineteen, Tchaikovsky became a government clerk. He began to study music theory at the relatively late age of twenty-one. While keeping his government position, he entered the newly established St. Petersburg Conservatory, the first college-level music school in Russia. Two days after the opening of the conservatory, he wrote to his sister: "Sooner or later I shall abandon my present job for music. . . . Of course, I won't resign from my present job till I'm certain that I'm no longer a clerk, but a musician." The next year he did resign. So rapid was his progress in music that after graduating he became professor of harmony at the new Moscow Conservatory, a position he held for twelve years. As though to make up for his late start, Tchaikovsky composed furiously; a symphony, an opera, and a tone poem flowed from his pen, and by the age of thirty he had composed his first great orchestral work, Romeo and Juliet. The year 1877 was bitterly dramatic. Tchaikovsky took the disastrous step of marrying a twenty-eight-year-old conservatory student who adored him and his music. Tchaikovsky seems to have married only to conceal his homosexuality. A few days after the wedding, he was writing of "ghastly spiritual torture." Two weeks later he waded into the icy Moscow River, intending to commit suicide by getting pneumonia. But a strong constitution saved him, and he fled to St. Petersburg, where a nervous collapse put him into a coma for two days. He separated from his wife and never saw her again. In 1877 Tchaikovsky also acquired a benefactress, Nadezhda von Meck, a very rich widow of forty-six with eleven children. Madame von Meck passionately loved Tchaikovsky's music. She gave him an annuity that allowed him to quit his conservatory position and devote himself to composition. For fourteen years they corresponded, but they agreed never to meet. "I prefer to think of you from afar," she wrote, "to hear you speak in your music and to share your feelings through it." After so many years of this curious but intimate friendship, Tchaikovsky was deeply hurt when she abruptly cut off the annuity and stopped writing to him. "This situation lowers me in my own eyes," he wrote to her son-in-law; "it makes the memory of the money I accepted from her almost unbearable." Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky was the most famous Russian composer of the nineteenth century. During these years, Tchaikovsky conducted his own works more and more, achieving success throughout Europe. Yet success did not bring spiritual peace. His brother observed, "The weariness and suffering which sprang up in Tchaikovsky's soul . . . reached their greatest intensity at the moment of his greatest triumphs." In 1891 he was invited to the United States, where he participated in four concerts inaugurating Carnegie Hall in New York and two concerts of his music in Baltimore and Philadelphia. On October 28, 1893, Tchaikovsky conducted the premiere of his last great work, his Symphony No. 6 (Pathétique), which ends unconventionally with a slow, despairing finale. Nine days later, he died at the age of fifty-three. Tchaikovsky's Music "I grew up in the backwoods, filling myself from earliest childhood with the inexplicable beauty of the characteristic traits of Russian folk music. . . . I passionately love the Russian element in all its manifestations." Tchaikovsky thought of himself as "Russian in the fullest sense of the word." But Russian folksong was only one influence on his art. His style also contains elements of French, Italian, and German music. Tchaikovsky's works are much more in the western tradition than are the compositions of his contemporaries, the Russian five. He fused national and international elements to produce intensely subjective and passionate music. "At the moment of composing," Tchaikovsky wrote, "when I am aglow with emotion, it flashes across my mind that all who will hear my music will experience some reflection of what I am feeling myself." And indeed, the brooding melancholy that plagued Tchaikovsky is a prominent feature in much of his music. Tchaikovsky was a prolific composer of both instrumental and vocal works. Among his most popular orchestral compositions are the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth (Pathétique) Symphonies (1877, 1888, and 1893); Piano Concerto No. 1 in B Flat Minor (1875); the Violin Concerto (1878); and the overture-fantasy Romeo and Juliet (1869), which we'll study. Tchaikovsky wrote some of his best music for ballet: Swan Lake (1876), Sleeping Beauty (1889), and The Nutcracker (1892). He reworked these ballet scores into concert suites, of which the suite from The Nutcracker is best known. The spirit of ballet permeates much of Tchaikovsky's music. Of his eight operas, Eugene Onegin (1877-1878) and Pique Dame (The Queen of Spades; 1890) are performed with some frequency. He also wrote the orchestral showpieces Marche slave (Slavic March) and Overture 1812. All of Tchaikovsky's music contains beautiful melodies that stretch and leap widely, like dancers. He repeats melodies over and over, sometimes transforming an intimate, lyrical utterance into an intense outcry by means of louder dynamics and fuller orchestration. His treatment of the orchestra is extremely colorful, marked by striking contrasts and alternations of strings, woodwinds, and brasses. The emotional quality of his music results from sharp contrasts of tempo, dynamics, and thematic material, as well as from powerful climaxes.

Movement (of a composition)

Piece that sounds fairly complete and independent but is part of a larger composition

Fugue

Polyphonic composition based on one main theme, or subject

Blues

Term referring both to a style of performance and to a form; an early source of jazz, characterized by flatted, or "blue", notes in the scale; vocal blues consist of 3-line stanzas in the form a a' b.

Maurice Ravel

The French composer Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) was a master of orchestral and pianistic tone color. Like his older contemporary Debussy, Ravel grew up in Paris and studied piano and composition for many years at the Paris Conservatory. But unlike Debussy, Ravel never succeeded in winning the Prix de Rome, despite five attempts. His last failure—at age thirty, when he was already a recognized composer—caused a scandal that led to a change of administration at the Conservatory. It was perhaps owing to his lingering resentment of the musical establishment that he refused the Legion of Honor when it was offered to him, as France's most famous living composer, in 1920. Though he is often described as an impressionist and paired with Debussy, Ravel does not fit neatly into any stylistic category. It is true that some of his music—such as the piano piece Jeux d'eaux (Fountains, 1901) and the ballet Daphnis and Chloé (1909-1912)—has the fluid, misty, atmospheric quality associated with impressionism. And subtle changes of tone color are indeed extremely important in Ravel's works, as in the impressionist music of Debussy. Yet much music by Ravel is too clearly defined in form and tonality and classically balanced in phrase structure to be considered impressionist. His lyrical melodic lines, though individual in style, are closely related to melodies by nineteenth-century French composers such as Georges Bizet. However, Ravel's melodies are often based on modes, which sometimes make them suggest music from a foreign land or from the distant past. His music is often characterized by a clear beat, and rhythmic patterns are often obsessively repeated. Above all, Ravel was a master craftsman; he once said, "My objective is technical perfection." He worked unceasingly to produce a relatively small number of vocal and instrumental works (for piano, orchestra, and chamber groups) that are almost all widely performed and recorded. His highly original piano pieces contain novel sonorities and extend the virtuoso style of Liszt. They were a proving ground for compositional procedures he later used in orchestral compositions. In fact, a considerable proportion of his orchestral works—including Alborada del gracioso (Jester's Dawn Song) and Le Tombeau de Couperin (The Tomb of Couperin)—are orchestrations of piano pieces; and his orchestral transcription of Mussorgsky's piano piece Pictures at an Exhibition is very popular (see Part VI, Section 11). Ravel was extremely sensitive to the technical and expressive capacities of orchestral instruments and created many fresh combinations of tone colors. Ravel had a taste for exotic musical idioms. Many of his works have a Spanish flavor; examples are the one-act opera L'Heure espagnole (The Spanish Hour, 1907-1909) and the orchestral works Rhapsodie espagnole (Spanish Rhapsody, 1908) and Bolero. He exploited the rhythms and tone colors of American jazz in such works of the 1920s as Piano Concerto in G major, Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (commissioned by the one-armed pianist Paul Wittgenstein), and the Blues movement of Sonata for Violin and Piano. Ravel was also fascinated by dance and wrote several ballets, including Daphnis and Chloé, which he later arranged as two concert suites for orchestra. Stylized dance rhythms pervade much of his music: the Renaissance pavane in Pavane pour une infante défunte (Pavane for a Dead Princess, 1899); the baroque forlane, rigaudon, and minuet in Le Tombeau de Couperin (1914-1917); the Viennese waltz in Valses nobles et sentimentales (Noble and Sentimental Waltzes, 1911) and La Valse (The Waltz, 1919-1920); and the Spanish bolero in Bolero.

Claude Debussy

The French impressionist composer Claude Debussy (1862-1918) linked the romantic era with the twentieth century. He was born in St. Germain-en-Laye, a small town near Paris. At the early age of ten, he entered the Paris Conservatory, where he studied until he was twenty-two. (While Debussy was at the Conservatory, the impressionists were exhibiting their paintings in Paris.) Debussy's teachers regarded him as a talented rebel who improvised unorthodox chord progressions of dissonances that did not resolve. In his late teens, Debussy worked summers as pianist for Nadezhda von Meck, the Russian patroness of Tchaikovsky. During his stays in Russia, Debussy's lifelong interest in Russian music took root. In 1884, he won the highest award in France for composers, the Prix de Rome, which subsidized three years of study in Rome. But he left Italy after only two years because he lacked musical inspiration away from his beloved Paris. The impressionist Claude Debussy was a master at evoking a fleeting mood and misty atmosphere. When Debussy returned to Paris in 1887, the music and ideas of Richard Wagner were having a profound influence on French composers and writers. Many of Debussy's friends wrote articles for La Revue Wagnérienne (The Wagnerian Review), a periodical devoted to the German master. During the summers of 1888 and 1889, Debussy traveled to Bayreuth, Germany, to hear Wagner's music dramas. They were memorable events for Debussy, who was both attracted and repelled by Wagner's music. The Asian music performed at the Paris International Exposition of 1889 also had a strong impact on Debussy. "Do you not remember the Javanese music," he wrote to a friend, "able to express every shade of meaning, . . . which makes our tonic and dominant seem like ghosts?" For years, Debussy led an unsettled life, earning a small income by teaching piano. His friends were mostly writers, such as Stéphane Mallarmé, whose literary gatherings Debussy attended regularly. In cafés and cabarets he mingled with jockeys and entertainers like those immortalized in the paintings of Toulouse-Lautrec. Until the age of thirty-one, Debussy was little known to the musical public and not completely sure of himself. "There are still things that I am not able to do—create masterpieces, for example," he wrote in 1893. But that same year Debussy did complete a masterpiece, his String Quartet. And in 1894 he created another, the tone poem Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, which has become his most popular orchestral work. A dramatic turning point in Debussy's career came in 1902, with his opera Pelléas et Mélisande. Critics were sharply divided. Some complained about the absence of melody and the harmonies that broke traditional rules; others were delighted by the poetic atmosphere and subtle tone colors. The opera soon caught on, however, and Debussy was recognized as the most important living French composer. Musicians all over the world imitated his style. This artistic triumph contrasted with a personal life filled with financial and emotional crises. Debussy constantly borrowed money for luxuries he craved: fine food, beautiful clothes, and artworks. The attempted suicides of two women in his life were major scandals in Paris. His longtime mistress shot herself when he left her for Rosalie Texier, a milliner who became his first wife. Then Rosalie Texier, in turn, shot herself when Debussy left her for Emma Bardac, an intelligent, talented, and rich society woman. Debussy's marriage to Emma Bardac necessitated his undertaking concert tours to maintain their high standard of living. Though he was not gifted as a conductor and hated appearing in public, he presented his music throughout Europe. The onset of World War I in 1914 heightened his sense of nationalism, and he began to sign his works "Claude Debussy, French musician." He had developed cancer at the age of fifty, and he died in Paris on March 25, 1918, while the city was being shelled by German artillery. Debussy's Music Like the French impressionist painters and symbolist poets, Debussy was a master at evoking a fleeting mood and misty atmosphere. His interest in the effects of fluidity, intangibility, and impermanence is mirrored even in his titles: Reflets dans l'eau (Reflections in the Water), Nuages (Clouds), and Les Sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir (Sounds and Perfumes Swirl in the Evening Air). Literary and pictorial ideas often inspired Debussy, and most of his compositions have descriptive titles. His music sounds free and spontaneous, almost improvised. He once wrote, "I am more and more convinced that music is not, in essence, a thing which can be cast into a traditional and fixed form. It is made up of colors and rhythms." This stress on tone color, atmosphere, and fluidity is characteristic of impressionism in music. Tone color truly gets unprecedented attention in Debussy's works. His subtle changes of timbre are as crucial to his music as thematic contrasts are to earlier music. The sound he sought is sensuous and beautiful—never harsh. The entire orchestra seldom plays together to produce massive sound. Instead, there are brief but frequent instrumental solos. The woodwinds are especially prominent and are used in unusual registers. (The velvety low register of the flute is featured in Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.) Strings and brasses are often muted; their sound seems to come from far off. Atmosphere is created through the shimmer of a string tremolo or the splash of a harp. Debussy wrote some of his finest music for piano, again creating new sonorities. His frequent use of the damper pedal, which allows a pianist to sustain tones after the keys are released, results in hazy sounds. Chords are often blended together, and the pianist is directed to let the sounds vibrate. The rich variety of bell and gonglike sounds in Debussy's piano works may reflect the influence of Asian music he heard at the Paris International Exposition in 1889. Debussy's treatment of harmony was a revolutionary aspect of musical impressionism. He tends to use a chord more for its special color and sensuous quality than for its function in a standard harmonic progression. He uses successions of dissonant chords that do not resolve. (As a young man, Debussy was once asked which harmonic rules he followed; he replied, simply, "My pleasure.") He freely shifts a dissonant chord up or down the scale; the resulting parallel chords characterize his style:

Romanticism

The emotional intensity associated with romanticism was already present in the work of Mozart and particularly in that of Beethoven, who greatly influenced composers after him. The romantic preference for expressive, songlike melody also grew out of the classical style. Romantic works tend to have greater ranges of tone color, dynamics, and pitch. Also, the romantic harmonic vocabulary is broader, with more emphasis on colorful, unstable chords. Romantic music is linked more closely to the other arts, particularly to literature. New forms developed, and in all forms there was greater tension and less emphasis on balance and resolution. But romantic music is so diverse that generalizations are apt to mislead. Some romantic composers, such as Mendelssohn and Brahms, created works that were deeply rooted in classical tradition; other composers, such as Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner, were more revolutionary.

Recapitulation

Third section of a sonata-form movement, in which the first theme, bridge, second theme, and concluding section are presented more or less as they were in the exposition, which one crucial difference: all the principal material is now in the tonic key.

Characteristics of Baroque music:Terraced dynamics - why?

This alternation between loud and soft is called terraced dynamics; Gradual changes through crescendo and decrescendo are not prominent features of baroque music. However, singers and instrumentalists no doubt made some subtle dynamic inflections for expressive purposes.

Ternary

Three-part (ternary) form: A B A′

Opera buffa

a comic opera, typically in Italian, especially one with characters drawn from everyday life.

Tempo

basic pace of the music

Figured bass

bass part of a baroque accompaniment with figures (numbers) above it indiciating the chords to be played.

Chord

combination of three or more tones sounded at once.

String quartet

composition for two violins, a viola, and a cello usually consisting of four movements.

Improvisation

creation of music at the same time as it is performed

Dynamics

degrees of loudness or softness in music

Interval

distance in pitch between any two tones

Fortepiano

eighteenth century or early nineteenth century piano, which differs from the modern piano in sound and in construction.

Harmony

how chords are constructed and how they follow each other.

Verismo

realism, or the quality of begin "true to life." A style of operatic composition, prevalent in Italy in the 1890s, with repercussions extending to other European countries and later decades.

Beat

regular, recurrent pulsation that divides music into equal units of time

Aspects of Form: Repitition

reiteration of a motive, phrase, or section, often used to create a sense of unity.

Monophonic textures

single melodic line without accompaniment

Aria

song for a solo voice with orchestral accompaniment, usually expressing an emotional state through its outpouring of melody; found in operas, oratorios, and cantatas.

Aria

song for solo voice with orchestral accompaniment, usually expressing and emotional state through its outpouring of melody. found in operas, oratorios, and cantatas

Ragtime

style of composed piano music, generally in duple meter with a moderate march tempo, in which the pianist's right hand plays a highly syncopated melody while the left hand maintains the beat with an "oom-pah" accompaniment. Ragetime was developed primarily by African American pianists and flourished from the 1890s to about 1915.

Tone color

succession of varying tone colors serving as a musical idea in a composition, used by Schoenberg and his followers

Homophonic textures

term describing music in which one main melody is accompanied by chords

Libretto

text of an opera

Characteristics of Baroque music: Predominant texture: Late Baroque: Polyphonic

two or more melodic lines compete for listener's attention. Usually, the soprano and bass lines are the most important. Imitation between the various lines, or "voices," of the texture is very common. A melodic idea heard in one voice is likely to make an apperance in the other voices as well.

Exoticism in music

use of melodies, rhythms, or instruments that suggest foreign lands, common in romantic music.

Electric Guitar

uses a built-in pickup to convert the vibration of its strings into electrical impulses for amplication.