Music Appreciation Final Exam Study Material

idee fixe

"Fixed Idea", a term coined by Berlioz for a recurring musical idea that links different movements of a work.

bel canto

"beautiful singing"; an Italian Opera term

Gesamtkunstwerk

(German for "total art work") an art form that involves music, poetry, drama, and scenic design; often used in reference to Richard Wagner's music dramas

Text setting

(syllabic, neumatic, melismatic)

ternary form

A-B-A

Atonality

Absence of tonality or key

What is the Count singing about here? Giuseppe Verdi - La donna e mobile (Rigoletto)

All women are fickle

How would you describe the vocal melody in this excerpt? Madame Butterfly by Puccini - Love Duet (Opera Movie, 1995 - subtitled)

Bel canto

What commonality does Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie share?

Both are trumpeters

What does Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring and Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring have in common?

Both were ballets

Whom does Wotan put in a magic sleep in The Valkyrie?

Brünnhilde

How would you describe the meter in this excerpt? Igor Stravinsky - The Rite of Spring - Introduction (1/13)

Changing meter (polymeters)

· French Impressionist composer: Claude Debussy · Blending sounds together · Emphasis on timbre · Unusual instrumentation - harp, wind instruments, antique cymbals · Chromaticism - flute idea at beginning

Claude Debussy

Primitivism

Disney - Fantasia

bebop

Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Thelonious Monk were figureheads of what jazz style?

Big Band Jazz

Duke Ellington is associated with

call-and-response singing

Eighteenth-century slaves from Africa's west coast brought the _______ style to America

Which term can be applied to this music? Israeli Chamber Project | Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire.

Expressionism

· German composer of character pieces and songs · Salon concerts in her home where she could perform her own compositions · Eventually published her works at the end of her life o Das Jahr (The Year) - composed when spent a year travelling in Europe, primarily Italy - each piece is like a diary entry representing a month in the year

Fanny Hensel (The Romantic Period 1825-1900)

_______ is the theater dedicated to the performance of Wagner's operas.

Festival Theater at Bayreuth

· Austrian Romantic composer o Erlking - Lied (form of song and role of the piano, characteristics of the singer's part ....)Through-composed form. German

Franz Schubert (The Romantic Period 1825-1900)

· Polish pianist and composer, "poet of the piano" · Lived in Paris · Works for piano o Mazurka in B-flat minor (triple meter dance, rubato, expressive chromaticism, embellishments....) o Polonaise "Military" in A Major (triple meter, folk dance, march characteristics - typical rhythms, homophony)

Frederic Chopin (The Romantic Period 1825-1900)

Lied

German word for song

Which term refers to Wagner's concept of a total artwork, encompassing all the arts?

Gesamtkunstwerk

· Italian late Romantic opera composer · Verismo - Realism · Bel canto style · Exoticism o Madame Butterfly "Un bel di" - Cio-Cio San (soprano) Aria: Lyrical/ dramatic singing, emotional melodies (supported by strings), tragic, text setting...

Giacomo Puccini (The Romantic Period 1825-1900)

· Italian opera · Bel canto style (beautiful singing) · Opera seria o Rigoletto Duke of Mantua (tenor) - Aria Donna e mobile (extends pitch range, homophonic, lyrical/ dramatic conclusion ...) o Rigoletto Ensemble (Rigoletto, Gilda, Duke, Maddelena) = Quartet. (Each person speaks their thoughts, polyphony, complex texture)

Giuseppe Verdi (The Romantic Period 1825-1900)

· French composer · Recognized as innovative use of orchestra - Program Symphony o Symphonie Fantastique 4th movement "March to the Scaffold" (Recurring idee fixe = Harriet Smithson (clarinet); cyclic; programmatic, characteristics of a march - tells a story)

Hector Berlioz (The Romantic Period 1825-1900)

Polyrhythms

Igor Stravinsky - The Rite of Spring - Dance of the Young Girls Country Band March - Charles Ives

swing, or big-band

In the 1930s and 40s, early jazz gave way to

opera buffa

Italian comic opera

Berg's music follows the tradition established by Richard Wagner where short musical ideas represent people, emotions, places, and things. What are these short musical ideas called?

Leitmotifs

What is the leitmotif heard at 1:27-2:00? Wagner - Die Walkure

Magic Fire

French Symbolist poet:

Mallarme

French Impressionist painters:

Monet, Manet, Renoir

What does Polyrhythms mean?

Multiple different rhythms played simultaneously

Sprechstimme

Pierrot Lunaire by Arnold Schoenberg 1-6

What does chromatic mean?

Pitches outside of a key

How would you describe the use of harmony in this work? Stravinsky The Rite of Spring // London Symphony Orchestra/Sir Simon Rattle

Polychordal

Charles IVES : "Symphonie #3 The Camp Meeting"

Polyphony

What is the primary texture of this excerpt? Wynton Marsalis - Take the A train

Polyphony

Which characteristics are typical of Charles Ives' music?

Polytonality and Polyrhythms

· German opera composer · Gesamtkunstwerk (Total Art Work) · The Ring Cycle (4 operas linked by use of leit motiv: e.g. Magic Fire, Sleep, Slumber, Siegfried) o Die Walkure: End of Act III - Wotan (Bass-baritone) Aria: (dramatic singing and orchestration; syllabic ...)

Richard Wagner (The Romantic Period 1825-1900)

· German composer of lied o In the Lovely Month of May - lied - part of a song cycle, Dichterliebe (A Poet's Love): Strophic form. German

Robert Schumann (The Romantic Period 1825-1900)

Emancipation of dissonance is associated with which composer?

Schoenberg

Who are members of the Second Viennese School?

Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg

Music which features a matrix, rows, and transposition is known as

Serialism

"Simple Gifts" is a well-known

Shaker Hymn

This song was originally a ____________________________. Jewel - Simple gifts

Shaker Hymn

How would you describe the singing style in this excerpt? Pierrot Lunaire by Arnold Schoenberg 1-6

Sprechstimme

What is the text setting in this song? BILLIE HOLIDAY · Billie's Blues (I Love My Man)

Syllabic

Which recent movie was based on some of the same material as The Ring of the Nibelung?

The Lord of the Rings

Expressionism

The Scream by Edvard Munch

What happened at the first performance of The Rite of Spring?

The audience created a riot

Why is there a musical reference to The Star-Spangled Banner in Madame Butterfly?

The title character marries an American naval officer.

What was the street called where music publishers published popular music in America in the early Twentieth Century?

Tin Pan Alley

In Serialism, what term is used when the "Prime Row" starts on a different pitch but the intervals remain the same?

Transposition

Mazurka

Type of Polish folk dance in triple meter

dissonance

Unpleasant or unharmonious sound

Who wrote the libretto to Wagner's The Valkyrie?

Wagner

How would you describe the contour and range of this melody? Renée Fleming - Un bel di vedremo - Madama Butterfly

Wave-like and wide pitch range

They both use Theme and Variation form

What is the connection between Haydn's Surprise Symphony second movement and Copland's Appalachian Spring Section 7 "Simple Gifts"

Magic Fire

What is the leitmotif heard at 1:27-2:00? Wagner - Die Walkure

Congo Square in New Orleans

Where did slaves meet in the pre-Civil War era to dance to the accompaniment of drums, gourds, mouth harps, and banjos?

Billie Holiday

Which singer is also known as "Lady Day"?

Which instrument(s) play the melody in this excerpt? Aaron Copland - Simple Gifts

Woodwind

Charles Ives

You are listening to a piece of music which sounds dissonant, features well-known American hymns and tunes, and uses a large instrumental ensemble. Which of the following composer's music are you hearing?

Primitivism

a belief in the value of what is simple and unsophisticated, expressed as a philosophy of life or through art or literature.

strophic form

a musical form often used in setting a strophic, or stanzaic, text, such as a hymn or carol; the music is repeated anew for each successive strophe

homophonic texture (homophony)

a musical texture in which a melody is performed with a supporting accompaniment

The literary basis for Verdi's Rigoletto is

a play by Victor Hugo.

Expressionism

a style of painting, music, or drama in which the artist or writer seeks to express emotional experience rather than impressions of the external world.

Butterfly sings the famous aria, "Un bel dì" ("One beautiful day")

as she dreams of Pinkerton's return.

The _____ style is characterized by florid melodic lines delivered by voices of great agility and purity of tone.

bel canto

Melodic "pitch bending" is also known as

blue notes.

What describes Wagner's harmonic language?

chromatic

Sprechstimme

developed by Schoenberg; a vocal style in which the melody is spoken at approximate pitches rather than sung on exact pitches

Klangfarbenmelodie

developed by Schoenberg; each note of the melody is played by a different instrument, creating a shifting effect, (tone-color melody)

song cycle

group of art songs unified by a story line that runs through their poems, or by musical ideas linking the songs.

New Orleans

is where the fusion of ragtime, blues, and other musics resulted in the development of jazz.

Big Band Jazz

large-ensemble style with sections of brass, reeds, and rhythm instruments.

program symphony

multimovement orchestral work whose form is based on programmatic concepts

Word Painting (Text Painting)

music that imitates, describes, or conjures images of the text being sung

· (German) Expressionism - Arnold Schoenberg

o Pierrot Lunaire - Der Mondfleck · The Moon Fleck · Sprechstimme · Klangfarbenmelodie · Chamber ensemble - 8 instruments (5 players) · Song cycle · Atonality · German

· German) Expressionism - Alban Berg

o Wozzeck Act III scene 4 · Opera - real life events · Late Romantic harmonies/ atonality · Chromaticism/ dissonance · Sprechstimme · Lyricism · Word painting

Timbre

quality of sound, tone color

opera seria

serious opera

Pierrot Lunaire is a ______________.

song cycle

Voice types: Female -

soprano, mezzo-soprano, alto

Voice types: Male -

tenor, baritone, bass-baritone

Polytonality

the simultaneous sounding of two keys or tonalities

Klangfarbenmelodie

tone color melody

Polymeter

two or more meters sounding simultaneously

The nineteenth-century trend toward realism in opera was known as

verismo.

§ Louis Armstrong § Billie Holiday - Billie's Blues · 12-bar Blues - harmonic progression · Blues Text · Improvisation

· New Orleans Jazz

o The Rite of Spring - "Adoration of the Earth" and "Dance of the Adolescents" · Primitivism - characteristics · "poly" - chords, rhythms, meters (changing meters), harmonies · Extensive use of the orchestra (timbre) · Dissonance · Paris Riot · Diagaliev and Nijinsky (Ballet Russe)

· Primitivism - Igor Stravinsky (Russian)

§ Blues § Spirituals § Work Songs

· Roots of Jazz

§ Duke Ellington § Big band music § Billy Strayhorn - Take the A Train · Bar form A-A-B-A · Special effects from band - reeds, brass, percussion · Syncopation

· Swing Era

Prelude L'apres-midi d'un faune

· Symphonic poem - one movement · Mallarme - poetry influence - Symbolism · ABA-coda · Choreographed by Nijinsky (Ballet Russe) in Paris