20th Century Music Styles and Key Figures

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Vocabulary flashcards covering major terms, styles, techniques, and composers from 20th-century music lessons, including Impressionism, Expressionism, Electronic, and Chance Music.

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43 Terms

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Music

An organized combination of sounds and silences arranged in time, involving melody, rhythm, harmony, and timbre.

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20th-Century Music

Eclectic period offering diverse styles characterized by experimentation in melody, harmony, rhythm, and texture.

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Eclectic (in music)

Style that draws from a wide variety of influences, techniques, or genres rather than a single tradition.

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Disjunct Progression

Melodic contour with wide leaps or large intervals between successive notes.

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Unusual Meter

Use of uncommon time signatures outside standard duple, triple, or quadruple patterns.

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Multimeter

Frequent changes of time signature within a composition.

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Unconventional (Asymmetrical) Meter

Irregular grouping of beats within a measure (e.g., 5/8, 7/4).

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Polyrhythm

Simultaneous use of two or more contrasting meters or rhythmic patterns.

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Quartal Harmony

Chords built on successive intervals of fourths instead of traditional thirds.

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Polychord

Two or more distinct chords sounded together, creating layered sonorities.

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Dissonance

Unstable, tension-producing combination of tones that feels unresolved.

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Consonance

Stable, restful combination of tones that sounds resolved.

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Atonality

Absence of a tonal center; music not written in any specific key.

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Polytonality

Simultaneous use of two or more key centers in a composition.

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Homophonic Texture

Multiple notes or voices moving together in support of a single principal melody or tonal focus.

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Impressionism (Music)

Late-19th/early-20th-century French movement emphasizing suggestion, atmosphere, and color over definite form.

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Neo-Modality

Return to medieval church modes such as Dorian, Phrygian, and Mixolydian scales.

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Whole-Tone Scale

Scale consisting entirely of whole steps, totaling six notes per octave and lacking tonal gravity.

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Parallelism

Two or more melodic lines moving together in the same direction by identical intervals (planing).

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Open Chord

Chord containing fifths or octaves without the third, producing hollow resonance.

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Claude Debussy

French composer (1862-1918), leading figure in musical Impressionism, dubbed “Father of the Modern School of Composition.”

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Suite Bergamasque

Debussy’s famous piano suite that includes the movement “Clair de lune.”

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Clair de lune

The third movement of Debussy’s Suite Bergamasque, renowned for its serene, moonlit atmosphere.

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Jeux

Debussy’s only ballet, noted for fluid impressionistic orchestration.

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Pelléas et Mélisande

Debussy’s only opera, exemplifying impressionistic drama and orchestral color.

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Expressionism (Music)

Early-20th-century German/Austrian style emphasizing intense, subjective emotion, harsh dissonance, and atonality.

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Twelve-Tone System

Compositional method arranging all twelve chromatic pitches in a fixed, recurring series (tone row).

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Multiple Serialization

Organization of several musical parameters (rhythm, meter, harmony, tonality) into ordered series used simultaneously.

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Arnold Schoenberg

Austrian composer (1874-1951) who pioneered atonality and invented the twelve-tone technique.

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Verklärte Nacht

Early Schoenberg tone poem (“Transfigured Night”) bridging late Romanticism and emerging modernism.

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Musique Concrète

1940s French practice of manipulating recorded everyday sounds on tape to create music.

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Electronic Music

Any music that employs electronic sound production or processing techniques.

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Tape Music Stage

1940s-50s phase where composers recorded and spliced sounds on magnetic tape, minimizing live performance.

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Analog Synthesizer

1970s electronic instrument with voltage-controlled oscillators and filters capable of generating and shaping sound.

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Digital Synthesizer

1980s electronic device using computer technology to create and manipulate sounds numerically.

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Theremin

Early electronic instrument played without touch by moving hands near two antennas controlling pitch and volume.

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Edgard Varèse

Innovative French-born composer (1883-1965) called the “Father of Electronic Music,” focused on rhythm and timbre.

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Chance Music

20th-century style where elements of composition or performance are left to random procedures or performer choice.

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Indeterminacy (Music)

Technique in which some aspects of a musical work are unspecified, resulting in varied performances.

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John Cage

American composer (1912-1992) pivotal to chance music and indeterminacy; pioneered nontraditional sound sources.

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4’33”

Cage’s 1952 piece instructing performers to remain silent, highlighting ambient sounds for 4 minutes 33 seconds.

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Tacet

Latin instruction meaning “be silent”; indicates an instrument or voice should rest for an entire section.

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Composer Determinacy of Randomly Chosen Event

Chance procedure where the composer selects events by random methods but fixes them permanently in the score.