Music Appreciation: Units 4&5 (Ch. 16-19)

chromaticism

A musical style employing all or many of the twelve notes of the chromatic scale much of the time.

rubato

"Robbed" time; the free treatment of meter in performance.

miniature

A short, evocative composition for piano or for piano and voice, composed in the Romantic period.

thematic transformation

A variation-like procedure applied to short themes in the various sections of Romantic symphonic poems and other works

lied

German for "song"; a special genre of Romantic songs with piano.

through-composed song

A song with new music for each stanza of the poem; as opposed to strophic song.

strophic song

A song in several stanzas, with the same music sung for each stanza; as opposed to through-composed song.

song cycle

A group of songs connected by a general idea or story, and sometimes also by musical unifying devices.

modified strophic form

Form in which modest changes are introduced in the successive stanzas of strophic form. A A A'

character piece

A short Romantic piano piece that portrays a particular mood.

nocturne

"Night piece": title for Romantic miniature compositions for piano, etc.

concert overture

An early nineteenth-century genre resembling an opera overture — but without any following opera.

program symphony

A symphony with a program, as by Berlioz.

Idee fixe

A fixed idea, an obsession; the term used by Berlioz for a recurring theme used in all the movements of one of his program symphonies.

bel canto

A style of singing that brings out the sensuous beauty of the voice.

ensemble

A musical number in an opera, cantata, or oratorio that is sung by two or more people.

music drama

Wagner's name for his distinctive type of opera.

Gesamtkunstwerk

"Total work of art" - Wagner's term for his music dramas.

leitmotiv

Guiding, or leading, motive in Wagner's operas.

symphonic poem

A piece of orchestral program music in one long movement.

nationalism

A 19th-century movement promoting music built on national folk songs and dances, or associated with national subjects.