Final Music History Exam
original retrograde
A musical line which is the reverse of a previously or simultaneously stated line is said to be its retrograde or cancrizans. An exact retrograde includes both the pitches and rhythms in reverse.
Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930. His career spanned five decades, with his buildings constructed throughout central Europe, India, Russia, one in North and several in South America.
Don Jose
Corporal of Dragoons, main male of Carmen, tenor
Violetta Valery from La Traviata
Courtesan, love interest of Alfredo, soprano
Wunderhorn Symphonies
Gustav Mahler numbered the collection among his favourite books and set its poems to music throughout much of his life. The text of the first of his four Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, begun in 1884, is based on the Wunderhorn poem Wann mein Schatz. Between 1887 and 1901, he wrote two dozen settings of Wunderhorn texts, several of which were incorporated into (or composed as movements for) his Second, Third and Fourth symphonies. In 1899, he published a collection of a dozen Wunderhorn settings that has since become known, slightly confusingly, simply as "Songs from 'Des Knaben Wunderhorn.'"
Carmen (character)
Gypsy girl, main female of Carmen, mezzo-soprano
Paris Exposition 1889
It was held during the year of the 100th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, an event traditionally considered as the symbol for the beginning of the French Revolution. The fair included a reconstruction of the Bastille and its surrounding neighborhood, but with the interior courtyard covered with a blue ceiling decorated with fleur-de-lys and used as a ball room and gathering place.
Rodolfo
Poet, tenor, main male, woos Mimi
Mimi
Seamstress, soprano, main female
Das himmlische Leben
The Symphony No. 4 by Gustav Mahler was written between 1899 and 1901, though it incorporates a song originally written in 1892. The song, "Das himmlische Leben", presents a child's vision of Heaven. It is sung by a soprano in the work's fourth and last movement. Although typically described as being in the key of G major, the symphony employs a progressive tonal scheme ('(b)/G--E').
inversion
There are inverted chords, inverted melodies, inverted intervals, and (in counterpoint) inverted voices. The concept of inversion also plays a role in musical set theory.
Dance of the Knights
a 1930s piece of classical music written by Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev for his ballet Romeo and Juliet, also adapted by him for both orchestra and piano. It has become a signature tune for Soviet themed works, as well as seeing numerous other uses and adaptations in popular culture.
Impressionism
a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s. The name of the style is derived from the title of a Claude Monet work, Impression, soleil levant (Impression, Sunrise), which provoked the critic Louis Leroy to coin the term in a satiric review published in the Parisian newspaper Le Charivari. Characteristics of Impressionist paintings include relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes; open composition; emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time); common, ordinary subject matter; the inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience; and unusual visual angles. The development of Impressionism in the visual arts was soon followed by analogous styles in other media which became known as Impressionist music and Impressionist literature.
Antonín Dvořák
a Czech composer of late Romantic music, who employed the idioms of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia. Dvořák's own style is sometimes called "romantic-classicist synthesis". His works include symphonic, choral and chamber music, concerti, operas and many of other orchestral and vocal-instrumental pieces. His best-known works include his New World Symphony, the Slavonic Dances, "American" String Quartet, the opera Rusalka, Cello Concerto in B minor and choral works Stabat Mater, Requiem, Op. 89 and Te Deum.
Hector Berlioz
a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts (Requiem). Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a conductor, he performed several concerts with more than 1,000 musicians. He also composed around 50 songs. His influence was critical for the further development of Romanticism, especially in composers like Richard Wagner, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Franz Liszt, Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler and many others.
Maurice Ravel
a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects. Much of his piano music, chamber music, vocal music and orchestral music has entered the standard concert repertoire.Ravel's piano compositions, such as Jeux d'eau, Miroirs, Le tombeau de Couperin and Gaspard de la nuit, demand considerable virtuosity from the performer, and his orchestral music, including Daphnis et Chloé and his arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, uses a variety of sound and instrumentation. Ravel is perhaps known best for his orchestral work Boléro (1928), which he considered trivial and once described as "a piece for orchestra without music".
Georges Bizet
a French composer, mainly of operas. In a career cut short by his early death, he achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, became one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertory.
Claude Debussy
a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions. Debussy is among the most important of all French composers, and a central figure in European music of the turn of the 20th century. He was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1903.His music is noted for its sensory component and for not often forming around one key or pitch. Often Debussy's work reflected the activities or turbulence in his own life. His music virtually defines the transition from late-Romantic music to 20th century modernist music.[citation needed] In French literary circles, the style of this period was known as symbolism, a movement that directly inspired Debussy both as a composer and as an active cultural participant
Carmen (opera)
a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies (1824) by Alexander Pushkin. Mérimée had read the poem in Russian by 1840 and translated it into French in 1852
Johannes Brahms
a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene. In his lifetime, Brahms's popularity and influence were considerable; following a comment by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow, he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the Three Bs.
Richard Wagner
a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas (or "music dramas", as they were later called). Wagner's compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for their complex texture, rich harmonies and orchestration, and the elaborate use of leitmotifs: musical themes associated with individual characters, places, ideas or plot elements. Unlike most other opera composers, Wagner wrote both the music and libretto for every one of his stage works. Perhaps the two most well-known extracts from his works are the Ride of the Valkyries from the opera Die Walküre, and the Wedding March (Bridal Chorus) from the opera Lohengrin.
Béla Bartók
a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer. Through his collection and analytical study of folk music, he was one of the founders of ethnomusicology.
Frédéric Chopin
a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano".
Victor Hartmann
a Russian architect and painter. He was associated with the Abramtsevo Colony, purchased and preserved beginning in 1870 by Savva Mamontov, and the Russian Revival.
Sergei Diaghilev
a Russian art critic, patron, ballet impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes, from which many famous dancers and choreographers would arise.
Vaslav Nijinsky
a Russian ballet dancer and choreographer of Polish descent, cited as the greatest male dancer of the 20th century. He grew to be celebrated for his virtuosity and for the depth and intensity of his characterizations. He could perform en pointe, a rare skill among male dancers at the time, and his ability to perform seemingly gravity-defying leaps was also legendary.
Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky
a Russian composer of the Romantic era. His wide-ranging output includes symphonies, operas, ballets, instrumental, chamber music and songs. He wrote some of the most popular concert and theatrical music in the classical repertoire, including the ballets Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, the 1812 Overture, his First Piano Concerto, his Violin Concerto, his last three numbered symphonies, and the opera Eugene Onegin.
Modest Musorgsky
a Russian composer, one of the group known as 'The Five'. He was an innovator of Russian music in the romantic period. He strove to achieve a uniquely Russian musical identity, often in deliberate defiance of the established conventions of Western music. Many of his works were inspired by Russian history, Russian folklore, and other nationalist themes. Such works include the opera Boris Godunov, the orchestral tone poem Night on Bald Mountain, and the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition. For many years Mussorgsky's works were mainly known in versions revised or completed by other composers. Many of his most important compositions have recently come into their own in their original forms, and some of the original scores are now also available.
Sergey Prokofiev
a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century. His best-known works include the March from Love for Three Oranges, the suite Lieutenant Kijé, the ballet Romeo and Juliet - from which "Dance of the Knights" is taken - and Peter and the Wolf. He also composed amongst many other works five piano concertos, nine completed piano sonatas and seven symphonies.
Igor Stravinsky
a Russian, and later French and American, composer, pianist, and conductor. He is widely acknowledged as one of the most important and influential composers of 20th century music. He was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of the century. He became a naturalized French citizen in 1934 and a naturalized US citizen in 1945. In addition to the recognition he received for his compositions, he achieved fame as a pianist and a conductor, often at the premieres of his works.
"The gift to be simple"
a Shaker song written and composed in 1848 by Elder Joseph Brackett. It has endured many inaccurate descriptions. Though often classified as an anonymous Shaker hymn or as a work song, it is better classified as a dance song.
Dmitri Shostakovich
a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century. Shostakovich achieved fame in the Soviet Union under the patronage of Leon Trotsky's chief of staff Mikhail Tukhachevsky, but later had a complex and difficult relationship with the government. Nevertheless, he also received accolades and state awards and served in the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR (1947-1962) and the USSR (from 1962 until death).
Primitivism
a Western art movement that borrows visual forms from non-Western or prehistoric peoples, such as Paul Gauguin's inclusion of Tahitian motifs in paintings and ceramics. Borrowings from primitive art has been important to the development of modern art.
The Rite of Spring (Le sacre du printemps)
a ballet with music by Igor Stravinsky; choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky; and concept, set design and costumes by Nicholas Roerich. It was produced by Sergei Diaghilev for his Ballets Russes ballet company and had its première in Paris on 29 May 1913.
The Mighty Handful
a circle of composers who met in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in the years 1856-1870: Mily Balakirev (the leader), César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Borodin. The group had the aim of producing a specifically Russian kind of art music, rather than one that imitated older European music or relied on European-style conservatory training. In a sense, they were a branch of the Romantic Nationalist movement in Russia, sharing similar artistic goals with the Abramtsevo Colony and Russian Revival.
Des Knaben Wunderhorn
a collection of German folk poems edited by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano, and published in Heidelberg, in the Grand Duchy of Baden, between 1805 and 1808. The collection was an important source of idealized folklore in the Romantic nationalism of the nineteenth century. Des Knaben Wunderhorn became widely popular across the German-speaking world; Goethe, one of the most influential writers of the time, declared that Des Knaben Wunderhorn "has its place in every household". Gustav Mahler numbered the collection among his favourite books and set its poems to music throughout much of his life. The text of the first of his four Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, begun in 1884, is based on the Wunderhorn poem Wann mein Schatz. Between 1887 and 1901, he wrote two dozen settings of Wunderhorn texts, several of which were incorporated into (or composed as movements for) his Second, Third and Fourth symphonies. In 1899, he published a collection of a dozen Wunderhorn settings that has since become known, slightly confusingly, simply as "Songs from 'Des Knaben Wunderhorn.'"
Intermezzo
a composition which fits between other musical or dramatic entities, such as acts of a play or movements of a larger musical work.
chromaticism
a compositional technique interspersing the primary diatonic pitches and chords with other pitches of the chromatic scale. Chromaticism is in contrast or addition to tonality or diatonicism (the major and minor scales). Chromatic elements are considered, "elaborations of or substitutions for diatonic scale members."
Concerto for Orchestra
a five-movement musical work for orchestra composed by Béla Bartók in 1943. It is one of his best-known, most popular and most accessible works.[1] The score is inscribed "15 August - 8 October 1943", and it premiered on December 1, 1944 in Boston Symphony Hall by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Serge Koussevitzky. It was a great success and has been regularly performed since.[1] It is perhaps the best-known of a number of pieces that have the apparently contradictory title Concerto for Orchestra. This is in contrast to the conventional concerto form, which features a solo instrument with orchestral accompaniment. Bartók said that he called the piece a concerto rather than a symphony because of the way each section of instruments is treated in a soloistic and virtuosic way
Claude Monet
a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. The term Impressionism is derived from the title of his painting Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant).
Habanera
a genre of Cuban popular dance music of the 19th century. It is a creolized form which developed from the contradanza. It has a characteristic "Habanera rhythm", and is performed with sung lyrics. It was the first dance music from Cuba to be exported all over the world.
opera comique
a genre of French opera that contains spoken dialogue and arias. It emerged out of the popular opéra comiques en vaudevilles of the Fair Theatres of St Germain and St Laurent (and to a lesser extent the Comédie-Italienne), which combined existing popular tunes with spoken sections. Associated with the Paris theatre of the same name, the Opéra-Comique, opéra comique is not always comic or light in nature — indeed, Carmen, perhaps the most famous opéra comique, is a tragedy.
demi-mondaine
a group of people who live hedonistic lifestyles, usually in a flagrant and conspicuous manner. The term was commonly used in Europe from the late 18th to the early 20th century, and modern use often refers to that period[citation needed]. Its connotations of pleasure-seeking contrasted with wealth and high-class behavior make it comparable to the later jet set or nomenklatura. The term was often used as one of disapprobation, the behavior of a person in the demimonde being contrary to more traditional or bourgeois values. Such behaviors often included drinking or drug use, gambling, high spending (particularly in pursuit of fashion, as through clothing as well as servants and houses), and sexual promiscuity. The term demimondaine referred to a woman who embodied these qualities; later it became a euphemism for a courtesan or prostitute.
Gustav Mahler
a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic. Then his family moved to nearby Iglau (now Jihlava) where Mahler grew up. As a composer, he acted as a bridge between the 19th century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi era. After 1945 the music was discovered and championed by a new generation of listeners; Mahler then became one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers, a position he has sustained into the 21st century.
Pravda
a leading newspaper of the Soviet Union and an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991.
Character piece
a literal translation of the German Charakterstück, a term, not very precisely defined, used for a broad range of 19th century piano music based on a single idea or program. The term is less frequently applied to music for another instrument (never voice) with piano accompaniment, but very seldom for larger ensembles. Character pieces are a staple of Romantic music, and are essential to that movement's interest in the evocation of particular moods or moments. What distinguishes character pieces is the specificity of the idea they invoke. Many character pieces are composed in ternary form, but that form is not universal in the genre. A common feature is a title expressive of the character intended
Opera and Drama
a long essay written by Richard Wagner in 1851 setting out his ideas on the ideal characteristics of opera as an art form. It belongs with other essays of the period in which Wagner attempted to explain and reconcile his political and artistic ideas, at a time when he was working on the libretti, and later the music, of his Ring cycle.
Pierrot lunaire
a melodrama by Arnold Schoenberg. It is a setting of twenty-one selected poems from Otto Erich Hartleben's German translation of Albert Giraud's cycle of French poems of the same name. The première of the work, which is between 35 and 40 minutes in length, was at the Berlin Choralion-Saal on October 16, 1912, with Albertine Zehme as the vocalist.
gypsy
a member of a nomadic, Caucasoid people of generally swarthy complexion, who migrated originally from India, settling in various parts of Asia, Europe, and, most recently, North America.
Appalachian Spring
a modern score composed by Aaron Copland that premiered in 1944 and has achieved widespread and enduring popularity as an orchestral suite. The ballet, scored for a thirteen-member chamber orchestra, was created upon commission of choreographer and dancer Martha Graham with funds from the Coolidge Foundation headed by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge; it premiered on Monday, October 30th, 1944, at the Library of Congress in Washington DC, with Martha Graham dancing the lead role.
ostinato
a motif or phrase, which is persistently repeated in the same musical voice. An ostinato is always a succession of equal sounds, wherein each note always has the same weight or stress. The repeating idea may be a rhythmic pattern, part of a tune, or a complete melody in itself. Both "ostinatos" and "ostinati" are accepted English plural forms, the latter reflecting the word's Italian etymology. Strictly speaking, ostinati should have exact repetition, but in common usage, the term covers repetition with variation and development, such as the alteration of an ostinato line to fit changing harmonies or keys.
nocturne
a musical composition that is inspired by, or evocative of, the night. Historically, nocturne is a very old term applied to night Offices and, since the Middle Ages, to divisions in the canonical hour of Matins. The name nocturne was first applied to pieces in the 18th century, when it indicated an ensemble piece in several movements, normally played for an evening party and then laid aside. Sometimes it carried the Italian equivalent, notturno, such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's quadraphonic Notturno in D, K.286, written for four lightly echoing separated ensembles of paired horns with strings, and his Serenata Notturna, K. 239. At this time, the piece was not necessarily evocative of the night, but might merely be intended for performance at night, much like a serenade. In its more familiar form as a single-movement character piece usually written for solo piano, the nocturne was cultivated primarily in the 19th century.
Idée fixe
a musical term (though occasionally used in theatre or literature), referring to a recurring theme, associated with a particular person, place, or idea.
leitmotive
a musical term (though occasionally used in theatre or literature), referring to a recurring theme, associated with a particular person, place, or idea. It is closely related to the musical idea of idée fixe. The term itself comes from the German Leitmotiv, literally meaning "leading motif", or, perhaps more accurately, "guiding motif." In particular such a theme should be 'clearly identified so as to retain its identity if modified on subsequent appearances' whether such modification be in terms of rhythm, harmony, orchestration or accompaniment. It may also be 'combined with other leitmotifs to suggest a new dramatic condition' or development.
retrograde inversion
a musical term that literally means "backwards and upside down": "The inverse of the series is sounded in reverse order." This is a technique used in music, specifically in twelve-tone technique, where the inversion and retrograde techniques are performed on the same tone row sucessively, "[t]he inversion of the prime series in reverse order from last pitch to first
cavatina
a musical term, originally a short song of simple character, without a second strain or any repetition of the air. It is now frequently applied to a simple melodious air, as distinguished from a brilliant aria, recitative, et cetera, and often forms part of a large movement or scena in oratorio or opera.
Nationalsm
a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what constitutes a nation, however, which leads to several different strands of nationalism. It can be a belief that citizenship in a state should be limited to one ethnic, cultural, religious, or identity group, or that multinationality in a single state should necessarily comprise the right to express and exercise national identity even by minorities.[
Symphonie Fantastique
a program symphony written by the French composer Hector Berlioz in 1830. It is one of the most important and representative pieces of the early Romantic period, and is still very popular with concert audiences worldwide. The first performance took place at the Paris Conservatoire in December 1830. The work was repeatedly revised between 1831 and 1845 and subsequently became a favourite in Paris.
Shakers
a religious sect originally thought to be a development of the Religious Society of Friends. Founded upon the teachings of Ann Lee, Shakers today are mostly known for their cultural contributions (especially style of music and furniture).
whole-tone scale
a scale in which each note is separated from its neighbors by the interval of a whole step. There are only two complementary whole tone scales, both six-note or hexatonic scales:
Bayreuth
a sizeable town in northern Bavaria, Germany, on the Red Main river in a valley between the Franconian Jura and the Fichtelgebirge Mountains. The town's roots date back to 1194 and it is nowadays the capital of Upper Franconia with a population of 72,576 (2009). It is world-famous for its annual Bayreuth Festival at which performances of operas by the 19th century German composer Richard Wagner are presented.
Pictures at an Exhibition
a suite in ten movements composed for piano by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky in 1874. The suite is Mussorgsky's most famous piano composition, and has become a showpiece for virtuoso pianists. It has become further known through various orchestrations and arrangements produced by other musicians and composers, with Ravel's arrangement being the most recorded and performed.
Orientalism
a term used especially in art for the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists. In particular, Orientalist painting, depicting more specifically "the Middle East and North Africa", was one of the many specialisms of 19th century Academic art.
Suite for Piano, Op. 25
a twelve tone piece for piano. The "Gavotte" movement contains, "a parody of a baroque keyboard suite that involves the cryptogram of Bach's name as an important harmonic and melodic device (Stuckenschmidt 1977 108: Lewin 1987-83, n.9)" and a related quotation of Schoenberg's op. 19/vi
Program symphony
a type of art music that attempts to musically render an extra-musical narrative. The narrative itself might be offered to the audience in the form of program notes, inviting imaginative correlations with the music.
music drama
a work of art that makes use of all or many art forms or strives to do so. The term is a German word(Gesamtkunstwerk) which has come to be accepted in English as a term in aesthetics.
Alfredo from La Traviata
a young bourgeois from a provincial family, tenor, main male.
The Song of Hiawatha
an 1855 epic poem, in trochaic tetrameter, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, featuring an Indian hero and loosely based on legends and ethnography of the Ojibwe (Chippewa, Anishinaabeg) and other Native American peoples contained in Algic Researches (1839) and additional writings of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft. In sentiment, scope, overall conception, and many particulars, Longfellow's poem is very much a work of American Romantic literature, not a representation of Native American oral tradition, despite Longfellow's insistence that "I can give chapter and verse for these legends. Their chief value is that they are Indian legends."
Aaron Copland
an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers". He is best known to the public for the works he wrote in the 1930s and 40s in a deliberately more accessible style than his earlier pieces, including the ballets Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid, Rodeo and his Fanfare for the Common Man.
Ellen Taafe Zwilich
an American composer, the first female composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Her early works are marked by atonal exploration, but by the late 1980s she had shifted to a post-modernist, neo-romantic style. She has been called "one of America's most frequently played and genuinely popular living composers."
Martha Graham
an American modern dancer and choreographer whose influence on dance has been compared with the influence Picasso had on modern visual arts, Stravinsky had on music, or Frank Lloyd Wright had on architecture.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline. He was also the first American to translate Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy and was one of the five Fireside Poets.
Arnold Schoenberg
an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School. Schoenberg's approach, both in terms of harmony and development, is among the major landmarks of 20th-century musical thought; at least three generations of composers in the European and American traditions have consciously extended his thinking or, in some cases, passionately reacted against it. During the rise of the Nazi Party in Austria, his music was labeled, alongside jazz, as degenerate art.
Giuseppe Verdi
an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century. His works are frequently performed in opera houses throughout the world and, transcending the boundaries of the genre, some of his themes have long since taken root in popular culture - such as "La donna è mobile" from Rigoletto, "Va, pensiero" (The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves) from Nabucco, "Libiamo ne' lieti calici" (The Drinking Song) from La traviata and the "Grand March" from Aida. Verdi's masterworks dominate the standard opera repertoire a century and a half after their composition.
Giacomo Puccini
an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire. Some of his arias, such as "O mio babbino caro" from Gianni Schicchi, "Che gelida manina" from La bohème, and "Nessun dorma" from Turandot, have become part of popular culture.
Tristan and Isolde
an influential romance and tragedy, retold in numerous sources with as many variations. The tragic story is of the adulterous love between the Cornish knight Tristan (Tristram) and the Irish princess Iseult (Isolde, Yseult, etc.). The narrative predates and most likely influenced the Arthurian romance of Lancelot and Guinevere, and has had a substantial impact on Western art, the idea of romantic love and literature since it first appeared in the 12th century. While the details of the story differ from one author to another, the overall plot structure remains much the same.
Edgard Varese
an innovative French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States. Varèse's music emphasizes timbre and rhythm. He was the inventor of the term "organized sound", a phrase meaning that certain timbres and rhythms can be grouped together, sublimating into a whole new definition of music. Although his complete surviving works only last about three hours, he has been recognised as an influence by several major composers of the late 20th century. His use of new instruments and electronic resources led to his being known as the "Father of Electronic Music" while Henry Miller described him as "The stratospheric Colossus of Sound".
etude
an instrumental musical composition, most commonly of considerable difficulty, usually designed to provide practice material for perfecting a particular technical skill. The tradition of writing études emerged in the early 19th century with the rapidly growing popularity of the piano. Of the vast number of études from that era some are still used as teaching material (particularly pieces by Carl Czerny and Muzio Clementi), and a few, by major composers such as Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, Claude Debussy and Charles-Valentin Alkan, achieved a place in today's concert repertory.
Ballets russes
an itinerant ballet company from Russia which performed between 1909 and 1929 in many countries. Directed by Sergei Diaghilev, it is regarded as the greatest ballet company of the 20th century. Many of its dancers originated from the Imperial Ballet of Saint Petersburg. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, younger dancers came from those trained in Paris, within the community of exiles.
La Boheme
an opera in four acts, by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger. The world premiere performance of La bohème was in Turin on 1 February 1896 at the Teatro Regio and conducted by the young Arturo Toscanini. Since then, La bohème has become part of the standard Italian opera repertory and is one of the most frequently performed operas internationally. According to Operabase, it is the fourth most frequently performed opera worldwide.
La Traviata
an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias (1852), a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman Who Goes Astray. It was originally entitled Violetta, after the main character.
Romeo and Juliet
an orchestral work composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. It is styled an Overture-Fantasy, and is based on Shakespeare's play of the same name. Like other composers such as Berlioz and Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky was deeply inspired by Shakespeare and wrote works based on The Tempest and Hamlet as well.
Symphony no. 5
by Dmitri Shostakovich is a work for orchestra composed between April and July 1937. Its first performance was on November 21, 1937, in Leningrad by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky. The premiere was a huge success, and received an ovation that lasted well over half an hour
Russian Revolution
collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917 (March in the Gregorian calendar; the older Julian calendar was in use in Russia at the time). In the second revolution, during October, the Provisional Government was removed and replaced with a Bolshevik (Communist) government.
Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune
commonly known by its English title Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, is a symphonic poem for orchestra by Claude Debussy, approximately 10 minutes in duration. It was first performed in Paris on December 22, 1894, conducted by Gustave Doret.
polychord
consists of two or more chords, one on top of the other.
atonality
describes music that lacks a tonal center, or key. Atonality in this sense usually describes compositions written from about 1908 to the present day where a hierarchy of pitches focusing on a single, central tone is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale function independently of one another. More narrowly, the term describes music that does not conform to the system of tonal hierarchies that characterized classical European music between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries
serialism
method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of post-tonal thinking. Twelve-tone technique orders the 12 notes of the chromatic scale, forming a row or series and providing a unifying basis for a composition's melody, harmony, structural progressions, and variations.
Balinese (Javanese) gamelan
musical ensemble from Indonesia, typically from the islands of Bali or Java, featuring a variety of instruments such as metallophones, xylophones, drums and gongs; bamboo flutes, bowed and plucked strings. Vocalists may also be included. The term refers more to the set of instruments than to the players of those instruments. A gamelan is a set of instruments as a distinct entity, built and tuned to stay together - instruments from different gamelan are generally not interchangeable. The word gamelan comes from the Javanese word gamels, meaning "to strike or hammer", and the suffix an, which makes the root a collective noun.
Sprechstimme
musical terms used to refer to an expressionist vocal technique between singing and speaking. Though sometimes used interchangeably, sprechgesang is a term directly related to the operatic recitative manner of singing (in which pitches are sung, but the articulation is rapid and loose like speech), whereas sprechstimme is closer to speech itself (because it does not emphasise any particular pitches).
Symphony no. 9 "From the New World"
popularly known as the New World Symphony, was composed by Antonín Dvořák in 1893 during his visit to the United States from 1892 to 1895. It is by far his most popular symphony, and one of the most popular in the modern repertoire. In older literature and recordings this symphony is often indicated as Symphony No. 5.
tone row
refers to a non-repetitive ordering of a set of pitch-classes, typically of the twelve notes in musical set theory of the chromatic scale, though both larger and smaller sets are sometimes found.
verismo
refers to a post-Romantic operatic tradition associated with Italian composers such as Pietro Mascagni, Ruggiero Leoncavallo, Umberto Giordano and Giacomo Puccini. They sought to bring the naturalism of influential late 19th-century writers such as Emile Zola and Henrik Ibsen into opera.
2nd Viennese School
the group of composers that comprised Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils and close associates in early 20th century Vienna, where he lived and taught, sporadically, between 1903 and 1925. Their music was initially characterized by late-Romantic expanded tonality and later, following Schoenberg's own evolution, a totally chromatic expressionism without firm tonal centre (often referred to as atonality) and later still, Schoenberg's serial twelve-tone technique. Though this common development took place, it neither followed a common time-line nor a cooperative path. Likewise, it was not a direct result of Schoenberg's teaching - which (as his various published textbooks demonstrate) was highly traditional and conservative. Schoenberg's textbooks also reveal that the Second Viennese School spawned not from the development of his serial method, but rather from the influence of his creative example.
Neo-Classicism
the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome. One such movement was dominant in Europe from the mid-18th to the 19th centuries.
Risorgimento
the political and social movement that agglomerated different states of the Italian peninsula into the single state of Italy in the 19th century. Despite a lack of consensus on the exact dates for the beginning and end of this period, many scholars agree that the process began in 1815 with the Congress of Vienna and the end of Napoleonic rule, and ended in 1871 with the Franco-Prussian War. The last città irredente however, did not join the Kingdom of Italy until after World War I.
polyrhythm
the simultaneous sounding of two or more independent rhythms.
ethnomusicology
the study of social and cultural aspects of music and dance in local and global contexts.
"Love-Death" Liebstod
the title of the final, dramatic aria from the opera Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner. When used as a literary term, liebestod (from German Liebe, love and tod, death) refers to the theme of erotic death or "love death" meaning the two lovers' consummation of their love in death or after death. Two-sided examples include Pyramus and Thisbe, Tristan und Isolde, Romeo and Juliet, and to some degree Wuthering Heights. One-sided examples are Porphyria's Lover and The Sorrows of Young Werther. The joint suicide of Heinrich von Kleist and lover Henriette Vogel is often associated with the liebestod theme.
cabaletta
the two-part musical form particularly favored for arias in 19th century Italian opera, and is more properly the name of the more animated section following the songlike cantabile. It often introduces a complication or intensification of emotion and/or plot.
