IB Music HL: Romantic Era Vocab

Chapters: 37, 38, 39, 42, 44, 45, 49, 50,

Swing Low Sweet Chariot

• A spiritual written before the 1840s

• may have been created by a slave named Choctaw Willis who worked at a native american boarding school in Oklahoma

• A white reverend heard the song and popularized it within the African American community

• This song was arranged and rearranged multiple times by different artists of the early 20th century

Harlem Renaissance

• An attempt by African American artists and philosophers to claim a “high culture” space for their people in order to counteract the racism they experienced in America

• This led to spirituals being presented alongside European music as valid american art

• This was a time where African American writers and Musicians gained popularity in the process of finding where their art fit into the European centered world which they lived in

Swing Low Sweet Chariot

• A spiritual written before the 1840s

• may have been created by a slave named Choctaw Willis who worked at a native american boarding school in Oklahoma

• A white reverend heard the song and popularized it within the African American community

• This song was arranged and rearranged multiple times by different artists of the early 20th century

Harlem Renaissance

• An attempt by African American artists and philosophers to claim a “high culture” space for their people in order to counteract the racism they experienced in America

• This led to spirituals being presented alongside European music as valid american art

• This was a time where African American writers and Musicians gained popularity in the process of finding where their art fit into the European centered world which they lived in

Spiritual

• Semi-improvised tradition of sacred songs

• developed by black slaves and freedmen

• often involved monophonic signing with some heterophonic elaboration

• were full of rhythmic and melodic traits which were very different from the European norms

Ring Shout

• An extended call and response

• would build into a religious fervor

• developed by slaves from African traditions

Camp meetings

• Days of weeks when African American and European American people gathered to sing hymns of praise

A-B-A’

• Statement - departure - return (a familiar pattern for orchestral work)

Ninth chord

• A set of five notes in which the interval between the lowest and highest tones is a ninth

• The effect was one of hovering between tonalities, creating elusive effects that evoke the misty outlines of impressionist painting

Impressionism

• A musical style of composition in which clarity of structure and theme is subordinate to harmonic effects

• characteristically using the whole-tone scale

• Impressionism is also a literary or artistic style that seeks to capture a feeling or experience

Melodrama

• One element that characterized the German musical theater of the early 1800s

Leitmotifs

• Recurring themes, that represent a person, place, or idea. (leading Motives)

Music Dramas

• Integrated music, poetry, drama, and spectacle

Singpiel

• Music genre, of a light, comic drama with spoken dialogue (in Germany)

Bel Canto

• Beautiful Singing

Opera Buffa

• Comic Opera

Opera Seria

• Serious opera

Shakespeare’s Comedy

• A type of Shakespeare

• EX: A Midsummer Nights Dream

Symphonic Poem

• AKA: Tone Poem

• Formed out of the composers need for large orchestral forms

• A program music for orchestra in one movement with contrasting sections that develop a poetic idea, suggest a scene, or create a mood

• Most common type of orchestral program music through the second half of the century

Incidental Music

• A form of program music

• Consisting of an overture and a series of pieces performed between the acts of a play and during important scenes

Overture

• A rousing orchestral piece in one movement

• Due to the popularity of program overtures, overtures became separate concert pieces and eventually disassociate from opera

Program Overture

• A type of program to come out of an opera house

• Where the overture served as an introduction to an opera or play

Character Piece

• Short lyric piano piece, equivalent to the song

Rubato of “robbed time”

• In which certain liberties are taken with the rhythm without upsetting the basic beat

Polonaises

• A slow dance of Polish origin

• in triple time

• consisting chiefly of an intricate march or procession

études

• Highly virtuosic study pieces

Minstrel shows

• Racially charged theatre through which songs were popularized

Minstrelsy

• A form of entertainment associated with minstrel shows

• featuring songs, dances, and formulaic comic routines based on stereotyped depictions of African Americans

• typically performed by white actors with blackened faces.

parlor songs

• Usually performed by amature musicians in parlors

• Often sweet, sentimental, and nostalgic.

Modified strophic

• The same melody may be repeated for two or three stanzas, with new material introduced when the poem requires it

through-composed

• Proceeds from beginning to end without repetitions of whole sections

Strophic Form

• The melody is repeated with every stanza/strophe of the poem

• hymns, carols, as well as most folk and popular songs are strophic

Song Cycle

• Groups of Lieder that were unified by a narrative thread or descriptive theme

The Lied

• A German-texted solo song

• generally with a piano accompaniment