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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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Music
An organized combination of sounds and silences arranged in time, involving melody, rhythm, harmony, and timbre.
20th-Century Music
Eclectic period offering diverse styles characterized by experimentation in melody, harmony, rhythm, and texture.
Eclectic (in music)
Style that draws from a wide variety of influences, techniques, or genres rather than a single tradition.
Disjunct Progression
Melodic contour with wide leaps or large intervals between successive notes.
Unusual Meter
Use of uncommon time signatures outside standard duple, triple, or quadruple patterns.
Multimeter
Frequent changes of time signature within a composition.
Unconventional (Asymmetrical) Meter
Irregular grouping of beats within a measure (e.g., 5/8, 7/4).
Polyrhythm
Simultaneous use of two or more contrasting meters or rhythmic patterns.
Quartal Harmony
Chords built on successive intervals of fourths instead of traditional thirds.
Polychord
Two or more distinct chords sounded together, creating layered sonorities.
Dissonance
Unstable, tension-producing combination of tones that feels unresolved.
Consonance
Stable, restful combination of tones that sounds resolved.
Atonality
Absence of a tonal center; music not written in any specific key.
Polytonality
Simultaneous use of two or more key centers in a composition.
Homophonic Texture
Multiple notes or voices moving together in support of a single principal melody or tonal focus.
Impressionism (Music)
Late-19th/early-20th-century French movement emphasizing suggestion, atmosphere, and color over definite form.
Neo-Modality
Return to medieval church modes such as Dorian, Phrygian, and Mixolydian scales.
Whole-Tone Scale
Scale consisting entirely of whole steps, totaling six notes per octave and lacking tonal gravity.
Parallelism
Two or more melodic lines moving together in the same direction by identical intervals (planing).
Open Chord
Chord containing fifths or octaves without the third, producing hollow resonance.
Claude Debussy
French composer (1862-1918), leading figure in musical Impressionism, dubbed “Father of the Modern School of Composition.”
Suite Bergamasque
Debussy’s famous piano suite that includes the movement “Clair de lune.”
Clair de lune
The third movement of Debussy’s Suite Bergamasque, renowned for its serene, moonlit atmosphere.
Jeux
Debussy’s only ballet, noted for fluid impressionistic orchestration.
Pelléas et Mélisande
Debussy’s only opera, exemplifying impressionistic drama and orchestral color.
Expressionism (Music)
Early-20th-century German/Austrian style emphasizing intense, subjective emotion, harsh dissonance, and atonality.
Twelve-Tone System
Compositional method arranging all twelve chromatic pitches in a fixed, recurring series (tone row).
Multiple Serialization
Organization of several musical parameters (rhythm, meter, harmony, tonality) into ordered series used simultaneously.
Arnold Schoenberg
Austrian composer (1874-1951) who pioneered atonality and invented the twelve-tone technique.
Verklärte Nacht
Early Schoenberg tone poem (“Transfigured Night”) bridging late Romanticism and emerging modernism.
Musique Concrète
1940s French practice of manipulating recorded everyday sounds on tape to create music.
Electronic Music
Any music that employs electronic sound production or processing techniques.
Tape Music Stage
1940s-50s phase where composers recorded and spliced sounds on magnetic tape, minimizing live performance.
Analog Synthesizer
1970s electronic instrument with voltage-controlled oscillators and filters capable of generating and shaping sound.
Digital Synthesizer
1980s electronic device using computer technology to create and manipulate sounds numerically.
Theremin
Early electronic instrument played without touch by moving hands near two antennas controlling pitch and volume.
Edgard Varèse
Innovative French-born composer (1883-1965) called the “Father of Electronic Music,” focused on rhythm and timbre.
Chance Music
20th-century style where elements of composition or performance are left to random procedures or performer choice.
Indeterminacy (Music)
Technique in which some aspects of a musical work are unspecified, resulting in varied performances.
John Cage
American composer (1912-1992) pivotal to chance music and indeterminacy; pioneered nontraditional sound sources.
4’33”
Cage’s 1952 piece instructing performers to remain silent, highlighting ambient sounds for 4 minutes 33 seconds.
Tacet
Latin instruction meaning “be silent”; indicates an instrument or voice should rest for an entire section.
Composer Determinacy of Randomly Chosen Event
Chance procedure where the composer selects events by random methods but fixes them permanently in the score.