MH E2

CH 25, 26, 27, 30, 34

atonal

not written in any stable key or mode, particularly when it comes to cadential points

decadence

a perceived decline or moral corruption within a musical style, often characterized by excess, artificiality, and a focus on sensuality and exotic themes. often related to using heavy themes of desire and death and how they’re related

Expressionism

the contemporary German art of the early 1900s. goal is to explore human unconscious. composers tried to portray something that is unknown to the audience and sometimes even the composer. feeling the subconscious feelings and stuff

Grundgestalt

the “basic shape” of a motivic complex serving as the source for everything happening in a composition

Klangfarbenmelodie

the tone color melody or melody of the tone of colors (ie, quality of how the note is played)

Maximalism

intensification of modernism where emotional expression, topics of art were intensified: length, volume, texture

Modernism

philosophical mvt characterized by belief in the value of the present over the past. aka, optimism and faith in progress

monodrama

a drama show with a single character

pantonal

Schoenberg likes to call his music pantonal, suggesting a “single transcendent, all-encompassing tonality” (so just literally all the pitch classes ig)

Second Viennese School

the triad of Berg, Webern, and Schoenberg

Sprechstimme

“speaking voice”: notation of spoken notes in music, where the notehead appears as Xs

tone poem

a piece of orchestral music, usually in a single movement, that depicts a story, idea, or mood

ballet d’action

a “plot ballet”, where a scenario takes the place of the libretto of an opera. able to express the content of the plot in danceable situations

Ballets Russes

“Russian Ballet”: stylistically considered very folkish and “Oriental” in style

impressionism

a style focusing on atmosphere and mood rather than detailed, narrative-driven music

melodie

french traditional folk music

octatonic

primitivism

the belief that what is least mediated by modern society (children, peasants, “savages,” raw emotion, plain speech), is closest to the truth of our world and society

Symbolism

a device where something, like an object or action, stands for something else, often an abstract idea or feeling

synesthesia

a condition where sense experience crosses

whole-tone scale

a scale of 6 pitches (including the octave) of evenly spaced whole steps

inversion

in a 12-tone row, the opposite interval in relation

Neoclassicism

a style that emerged in the 20th century as a reaction against the excesses of late Romanticism and the experimentalism of the earlier part of the century. It involves a return to elements of classical music, particularly forms, structures, and harmonic vocabulary, while also incorporating contemporary elements and techniques

prime

the original 12 tone row

retrograde

reverse the order of the pitch classes in a 12 tone row (backwards)

serialism

composition using 12-tone rows

Society for Private Musical Performances

a concert series created by Schoenberg that wasn’t advertised in papers and critics weren’t allowed at.

tone row

an ordering of all 12 pitch classes

twelve-tone technique

how a 12-tone piece of music is composed (specifically using tone rows)

totalitarianism

concentration of political power in the hands of a ruling elite, either a single person or select group/class

mass song

marchlike pieces of music for group singing with propoganda lyrics in the soviet union

Socialist Realism

the official doctrine guiding arts creation in the soviet union: mthod based on truthful, historically concrete reflection of reality

neo-tonalists/neo-Romantics

musical compositions where the tonality of the common-practice period (i.e. functional harmony and tonic-dominant relationships) is replaced by one or several nontraditional tonal conceptions

New Complexity

a counter-movement to the advances of minimalist compositions. made music complex and detailed

IRCAM

electric-acoustic institute research in France researching music technology

MIDI

sampler

sequencer

performance art