Musicology III Final Exam-Listening and Identification

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4 minutes & 33 seconds of silence-By John Cage- audience sits in silence. Begs the question of what is music?

Sprechstimme

A vocal style developed by Schoenberg, in between singing and speaking

Socialist Realism

Artistic style whose goal was to promote socialism by showing Soviet life in a positive light-Shostakovich and Stravinsky

Seven Magnificat Antiphons: No. 1-O. Weisheit.

Arvo Part-Choral antiphons-Musical Predecessor: GREGORIAN ANTIPHONAL CHANT and early polyphony. Texts are translations of Latin antiphons that are sung just before and after the Magnificat in Vespers services. Diatonic melody that moves stepwise around a central pitch. Principal melody on tenor. Simplicity coupled with sustained quiet dynamics.

Etude No.9 Vertige for piano-

Gyorgy Ligeti-micropolyphony-independent contrapuntal lines. Nineteenth-century traditions for a virtuoso pianist from Liszt. Based on overlapping, rapidly descending chromatic scales of various lengths. No meter. Blur into continuous lines. Shepard effect from composer Jean-Claude Risset.

Philomel-

Milton Babbitt-Electronic music and Soprano. "E" utterances of screaming and tape music. Monodrama. Predecessors: Schoenberg, and sixteenth century madrigalists imitation of sounds. Three sections composition. Comments like a Greek chorus. Sprechstimme singing is used in a extremely disjunct vocal melody. Twelve-tone pitch rows are used as well.

Second Viennese School

Schoenberg, Berg, Webern

Rejoice! Sonata for Violin and Cello: Mvt 5: Listen to the Still Small Voice within.

Sofia Gubaidulina-Double Sonata. Sequence of gestures and variations, rotational form. Four principal motives in the violin with vibrato in the cello. Transition from normal sound to harmonics is a metaphor for transfiguration.

Come Out

Steve Reich-voice tape recording of "Come Out to Show them". Babbitt predecessor-Phase composition of electrical tape. Raw speech material used. Rhythm is uneven. Right track is incrementally pulling ahead of the ahead track. Composite track seems to be moving through space-This is ideas of Varese. Minimalism of music.

Sympathy for the Devil

The Rolling Stones-Speech singing at the beginning. Rock and Roll percussive rhythms.

"Grimes! Grimes" from Peter Grimes, Op.33, Act. 3

Benjamin Britten. Opera. Tragic scene from simple means through chorus calls and foghorn. Powerful message about the relationship between the individual and the state. Hated for being different. Character from The Borough, a 19th-century narrative poem by George Crabbe.

1889 Paris Exposition

Debussy discovered Gamelan music here.

Hyperprism

Edgard Varese-Spatial music, not rhetorical. "Sound-masses" moving through space. Percussion instruments suggest motion the very way they are sounded. Sounds produced suggest moving sound masses, no melody. Chromaticism in octaves. Predecessor: Stravinsky and Debussy in use of layers, block construction, and juxtaposition. Focus on timbre.

The Banshee

Henry Cowell, Color: Sounds played directly on the piano strings rather than by pressing the keys. Invention of new notation to show how to play the strings, only a few notes. Four types of sounds. Tablature. Predecessor: Sound effects from Strauss's Don Quixote. Wailing legend of the Banshee.

Doctor Atomic: Batter my Heart

John Adams-Opera 2005. Robert Oppenheimer main character. Rapid, continuous ostinatos, gradual accretion of dissonance, subtle changes of texture. Minimalism. Scotch Snap rhythms preceding from Verdi.

Music of Changes

John Cage-Chance composition for piano. Forms based on durations in square-root form. 29 5/8 durational units, each 29 5/8 measures long. Ratios of the music. Filled durational structure using chance operations. Ancient Chinese Book-Ching-Book of possible outcomes based on throwing a coin. Piece is not based on traditions of the past.

wax cylinder

the earliest phonograph recorded sound on this

Nonsense Society

A group of musicians who were friends of Franz Schubert.

Romantic Idealism

A naïve, miscalculated dream of a perfect world without factoring in the flaws that reality would bring

Seven Tunes heard in China, 1. Seasons

Bright Sheng-Cello Suite. Musical predecessor: Bach Cello suites-dancelike rhythms, double-stops, motivic repetition, sequences, simulated polyphony. Character and style of Chinese traditional music. Melodies heard in China. Playful nature of song text in highly rhythmic patterns. Elements of Chinese Music: Ornamental turns, slides between pitches, and long-held notes that crescendo with an intense vibrato. Two-part imitative counterpoint.

Partita for 8 Voices-Allemande

Caroline Shaw. Partita dance-suite in four movements, Baroque genres. Allemande. Nonverbal vocal sounds used as well. Singing traditions from Gregorian chant. New vocal syllables of yodel break, inhale-exhale, stretch pitch, gestures. IPA is used. Episodic and free in form. "Left and Round" Allemande Square dancing. Transformation at the end of the song is deeply satisfying.

Anthropology

Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie: Bebop. Contrafact from another song, Musical Predecessor: Duke Ellington and George Gershwin. New tunes built over blues, rhythm changes, etc. Color: Head and lead melody, solo that fills up three choruses. Blistering pace that is characteristic of bebop. Decorated melody. Virtuosity of performers. Quotes Temptation by Nacio Brown.

Poeme Electronique

Edgard Varese-Modern "Wagner" Gesamtkunstwerk: It has no score. Composed the piece out of sounds recorded on the audiotape. New ways to explore compositional philosophy of music as moving through space. Meter is measured in durations of seconds. Separate dynamics from timbre. Section titles correlate to various types of music: Bell toll, blips, ticks, siren etc all the way to utterances and shakers. Genesis, Matter and Spirit, From Darkness to Dawn, Manmade gods, how time molds civilization, harmony, to all mankind. Voice in a new sonic environment.

Sonata 5 from Sonatas and Interludes

John Cage-Experimentation with new sounds on the piano by preparing the piano with various screws and bolts attached to the strings. Musical predecessor: Henry Cowell. Table of preparations describes how he prepares the piano. Tablature notation. "Gamut" of sound. Comparison to the piano binary form sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti. References to Schoenberg, Webern, Stravinsky, and Bartok. Duration for percussion pieces.

Giant Steps

John Coltrane: Color: All chords are seventh chords. Bebop. Blistering speed solos. A repertoire of patterns. Third-related harmonies. Circles of major thirds precede from Schubert, Liszt, Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Meyerbeer, and Beach. Minor-third relationships from Rimsky-Korsakov, Debussy, and Ravel.

"Delia's Gone"

Johnny Cash, alt-country, blues inflections. It is a murder ballad.

Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima-

Krzysztof Penderecki-Originally called 8'37. Standard symbols and new symbols to represent specific pitches and rhythms when needed. Tone clusters. Use of quarter-tone pitches. Unusual techniques of playing behind the bridge. images linked to effects. Sense of form by moving through several sections of diverse sounds. Radio effects. Musical predecessor can be John Cage and Cowell with new experimental sounds.

The Ballad of Mack the Knife

Kurt Weill, Musical Predecessor: John Gay's The Beggar's Opera. English Ballad Opera. "Local Color": "Variety of genres: Neoclassicism, operetta, jazz,etc. Ironic distortions of familiar tunes. Spoken dialogue. Strophic-song in a mock-popular style. Imitating barrel organ at first.

So What

Miles Davis-Predecessor: George Russell's theories about the relationships between chords and scales. Modal Jazz. Ravel: Combines diatonic and other modes. Modal music of African mbira. Traditional jazz form: Series of choruses and solos then return to the head. Simplicity. An unusual choice of bass with the melody. Contrast of scale between A and B phrases resembles the practice of Stravinsky and Debussy. The rhythm of paired chords gives the name of the piece.

traditionalists vs. progressives

Musicians were either traditionalist or progressive in programmatic music during the 19th century. Brahms and Mahler are traditionalists while Schubert and Liszt are more progressive.

"Where did you sleep last night/In the Pines"

Nirvana, Murder Ballad, strophic form and lyrics about murder and death of young woman.

Quatour pour la fin du Temps: Liturgie de cristal.

Olivier Messiaen, Refers to Biblical prophecy of the Apocalypse. End of time. Ecstatic contemplation for the passage of time. "Bird-calls" in the violin and clarinet. No clear meter. Complex patterns of duration and pitch in the cello and piano. Two non-retro gradable palindromes. Various repeating cycles. No real predecessors.

Bourreaux de Solitude from Le Marteau sans Maitre.

Pierre Boulez-Based on Rene Char's collection of surrealist poetry. Instrumental movements precede and follow three song cycles. Interweaving of the three song cycles. Low female voice, alto flute, and viola gives the music a darker quality. Serialism procedures similar to Schoenberg. Deploying rows in new ways. Systematic approach to serialising all aspects of the music. Singer must have perfect pitch in order to sing with it.

Fight the Power

Public enemy-Motown Rap beat tune-Based on repetitions of vocal phrases. Steve Reich influences? Political implications in the 80s of Black Struggle.

String Quartet 1931, 4th movement, Allegro Possibile

Ruth Crawford Seeger: Musical Predecessors: Haydn and four-movement string quartet order of fast, scherzo, slow, and fast. Color: Systematic palindrome, second half retrograde of the first, transposed up a half-step. Composition process of rotation. No musical predecessors. Dissonant counterpoint.

Symphony No.5 in D minor, 2nd Movement

Shostakovich. Musical Predecessors: Classical four-movement structure of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, Mahler's Scherzos. Desire to regain state approval. Musical elements: Dance movement, Binary form trio, Jarring contrasts of mood, satirical tone, use of counterpoint. Rowdy and comedic fanfare. "Mocking the government" Reverse roles of winds and strings. Modern harmonic elements.

Social Darwinism

The belief that only the fittest survive in human political and economic struggle. Led to idea of the Noble Savage common in 19th century music.

Serialism

The technique of composing with a series, generally a twelve-tone series

Salon

a social gathering of intellectuals and artists, like those held in the homes of wealthy women in Paris and other European cities during the Enlightenment

program symphony

a symphony with the usual three, four, or five movements in which the individual movements together tell a tale or depict a succession of specific events or scenes-Berlioz wrote many of these.

ETA Hoffman

saw instrumental music as an autonomous art, free from earlier notions that music must serve the words of a madrigal or opera, convey an affect, or fulfill a particular role.

Les Six

six French composers of the 1920s whose music reflected the strong influence of popular styles-Ravel were one of these.

Klangfarbenmelodie

tone-color melody, schoenberg