Music History II Midterm II

New German School

group of people reffered to Wagnerians, applied Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk ideas and his interpretation of Beethoven's 9th to instrumental music, believed the future of instrumental music lay in programmaticism

Liszt

leading New German School composer who shifted his focus from piano works to programmatic orchestral music

Symphonic Poem

pioneered by Liszt, single movement programmatic orchestral work with several sections of conrasting character and tempo, contains programmatic title

Richard Strauss

composers heavily inspired by Liszt and Berlioz, wrote symphonic poems that contained high levels of chromaticism and virtuosic orchestral parts

Johannes Brahms

"conservative" Romantic composer who utilized chromaticism but still preffered utilizing standard classical forms (sonata, rondo)

Richard Wagner

German composer who wrote German operas of enermous length and scale, pioneered new approaches to chromatic harmony

music drama

special term given to Wagner's operas due to their enermous length and overall scale

Gesamtkunstwerk

"total work of art," belief that a work of art should unite different artistic media but also that music should be the primary medium in such a unified artwork

EX: opera should be experienced as a ritualistic event

Leitmotif

reccuring melodic and haromic ideas associated with a specific character, object, or event

musical prose/endless melody

preference for irregular phrasing, maximum musical and dramatic continuity desired, no distinction between recitative and aria

Tristan Chord

famous dissonant chord from Wagner's opera "Tristan and Isolde" that does not resolve

Bayreuth Festspielhaus

opera house bult in northern Bavaria specifically to perform Wagner's operas

Stabreim

a German poetic technique established by Wagner that uses alliteration

Wagner and anti-Semitism

1. Wagner's nationalist outlook incoporated strong anti-Semitic views, most notoriously expressed in his essay "Das Jundentum in der Musik," Jewish people according to Wagner do not have their own nation and thus do not have their own particular music

2. When the Nazis ruled Germany, Wagner's music was prominently used in their political propaganda

3. The extent to which Wagner's anti-Semtisim is reflected in the actual content of his operas has been widely debated by scholars

Cosmopolitan vs. Mighty Five

two different groups of Russian composers that reflected the eternal dilemma faced by all artists who are cultural "outsiders:" prove oneself on terms set by the dominant culture or carve a serparate path

cosmopolitan/internationlist school

Russian composers that utilizied a limited use of distinctively Russian elements, heavier reliance on Western (German) compsitional models

EX: Tchaikovsky

Mighty Five

group of five Russian composers who made much more frequent and explicit use of distinctively Russian elements, greater rejection of Western models

nationalism

the systematic project of unifying a group of people according to the nation they live in

nationalism and program music

the symphonic poem was popular among NON-German composers interested in expressing nationalist ideas in music (German vs. non-German composers)

Giacomo Puccini

the most succesful Italian opera composer after Verdi

Verismo movement

Italian movement that sought to potray the world with greater realism

EX: Puccini's La boheme

Puccini's Style

blended elements of Verdi and Wagner's style together

from Verdi: focus is still on the vocal melody and there are still some arias

from Wagner: vocal melodies are still memorable by less tuneful, music flows continously as there are no independent numbers (no distinction between recitative and aria), orchestra is independent of vocal line and uses more chromatic harmony

exoticism

the evocation of a foreign culture in a work of art, utilizied by Puccini

Gustav Mahler

the last major Austro-German composer of symphonies, also wrote lieder

Romantic maximalism

term used to describe how Mahler took romanticism to an extreme through extremely long works/large orchestra, extreme emotional intensity, and intending each work as a grand philosophical statement

modernism

artistic movement that contained extreme versions of Romanticism while simaltaneously rejecting Romanticism's sentimentality and emphasis on emotions, the idea that art is a critique of modern society

modernism in music

abandonment of functional tonality, rejection fo romantic sentimentality, complex melodies, hyper originality, ironic references to past musical traditions

impressionism

term to desribe Debussy's style, derived from a famous and groundbreaking painting by Claude Monet, influenced by a movement in French poetry known as symbolism

symbolism

French poetry movement that emphasizes the suggestive power of individual words (symbols) separate from sentences and phrases

non-functional tonality

individual chords are recongizably tonal but do not follow traditional rules governing functional chord progressions

"exotic" scales

pentatonic, whole-tone, octatonic

planing

extended passages of chords in parallel motion

coloristic harmony

greater attention is given to the sounds and colors of individual chords in themselves, regardless of how they fit into a larger progression or tonal hierachy

Claude Debussy

important composer of the fin-de-siecle period, pioneered impressionist music and heavily influenced 20th century harmony

Maurice Ravel

neo-classist composer who combined pre-Romantic musical elements with certain modern features

neoclassicism

style of twentieth-century music that employed features associated with pre-Romantic music with certain modern features

pitch centricity

structural choherence generated by emphasis on particular single pirches rather than an actual key

ostinati

repeated melodic/rhythmic pattern, often in the bass

pedal points

when one line in the music holds a single note for an extended period of time

parsimonious voice-leading

minimal melodic motion between adjacent chords, a method of moving between chords in a smooth or logical manner that is different from functional chord progressions

bitonality/polytonality

simultaneous use or implication of two or more keys

Second Viennese School

group of composers working in Vienna who pioneered atonal music, Arnold Schoenberg, Alan Berg, and Anton Werben

Schoenberg's Late Romantic Style

utilized a high level of chromaticism and frequent use of unresolved dissonances to blur distinction between consonant and dissonant chords

Schoenberg and Free Atonality

eradicated all traces of tonal harmony, proclaimed the "emanciptions of the dissonance" which erased distinctiosn between consonance and dissonance

Schoenberg and the Twelve-tone method

developed as a response to the limitations of free atonality

twelve-tone method

specific sequence of the 12 chromatic pitches that could be transposed, inverted, or retrograded

expressionism

a departure from traditional tonality and the use of dissonance and fragmented rhythms to convey intense emotions and a sense of alienation

Sprechstimme

"speech-voice," type of extended technique utilized by Schoenberg

Alan Berg

musical style regarded as more "approachable" than Schoenberg's/Webern's, created rows that contained strong tonal implications, least fragmenty and most lyrical style of the three composers

Anton Webern

the most extreme of the Second Viennesse composers, created rows that do everything possible to avoid tonal implications, extremely fractured/disjointed musical surface

pointillistic

extremely fractured and disjointed musical surface, used by Werbern

Klangfarbenmelodie

tone color melody

Igor Stravinsky

Russian composer who was the most popular and influential composer of art music in the 20th century, avoided the atonality of Schoenberg

Stravinsky's Russian Period

period when he wrote his three major ballets, heavy presence of Russian musical elements, use of complex rhythm and non-functional tonality

Stravinsky's Neoclassical Period

period when he used smaller instrumentation, less dense and complex musical strcutres, less dissonant harmonic language

Stravinsky's Serial Period

period when we used a flexible application of serial method, use of incomplete rows and non-consecutive repetition of pitches, rows derived from the basic row could have their pitches re-ordered

Stravinsky's Three Major Ballets

The Firebird, Petrushka, The Rite of Spring

primitivsm

artistic movement emphasizing the depiction of cultures that were considered less "developed/sophisticated" than the modern west, this interest was intended as a gesture of admiration as "underdeveloped" cultures were perceived as more natural and closer to the essence of humanity

layering

stacking disharmonious lines of top of each other to generate climaxes, used by Stravinsky

Stravinsky's Complex Rhythmic Style

unpredictable accents, changing meter, asymmetrical meter, polymeter, polyrhythmn

block construction

discontinous juxtaposition of contrasting musical marterial

parlor song

vernacular song for piano and voice intended to be performed in the home, texted setting either strophic or verse-refrain

Stephen Foster

composer of popular parlor songs/minstrel songs

Musical theater

artistic form involvig combining a spoken play, normally with a romantic or comic plot, with song and dance in vernacular musical styles

minstrelsy

racist theaterical productions where white performers performed in blackface and impersonated African Americans

band music

originated in music for the militartly, but was widely performed in public venues for social occasins

march

main type of band music, written in duple time, regular phrase lengths, highly repetitive material

John Phillip Sousa

famous composer of band music/marches, pioneered non-repetitive march form

non-repetitive march form

march: A B, trio: C, break strain: D, trio: C

standard march form

march: A B, trio: C D, march (da capo): A B

Band music and African American music

Black bands tended to infuse their performances with pervasive rhythmic syncopation

Characteristics of African American Music

pervasive syncopation and multiple layers of rhythm, emphasis on pentatonic scales/pitch bending, use of instruments derived from West Africa, use of call and response

African American religious music

music especially associated with varities of evangelical Protestantism

Spiritual

traditional religious folk song that is orally transmitted and closely tied to the experience of slavery, usually call and response

(Black) Gospel music

simple religious songs associated with American evangelical Protestantism, usually strophic

Ragtime

highly syncopated style of Black instrumental music played at bars and bothels, associated with the piano