Jazz and Post-War Avant-Garde Lecture Notes

Flashcards covering the transition from the Swing Era and Bebop into post-war Avant-Garde movements, including Serialism and Indeterminacy.

West End Blues

A jazz piece characterized by playing the main melody in the beginning and chorus, while alternating between the melody and improvisation.

Big Band

A jazz ensemble of the Swing Era containing $20+$ members with standardized instrumentation including saxophones, trombones, trumpet, drums, string bass, and piano.

Swing Era

The period in the $1930s$ and $1940s$ when Jazz reached peak popularity, moving toward more structured, written music and less emphasis on free improvisation.

Duke Ellington

A pianist and composer born in DC who rejected the label 'Jazz composer' and was influenced by ragtime, early jazz, and composers like Debussy, Stravinsky, and Gershwin.

The Cotton Club

A venue where Duke Ellington played from $1927-1931$ that featured an exclusively white clientele and plantation or jungle-themed scenery.

Syncopation

A defining feature of swing where instruments play around the beat rather than on it, contributing to the 'grooviness' of the music.

Bebop

A complex jazz style from the mid-$1940s$ onwards intended for listening rather than dancing, typically performed by small groups of $3-5$ musicians.

The Head

The main melody in a Bebop performance that all members play together before and after individual solo sections.

Zero Hour (Stunde Null)

The post-$WWII$ period in Germany and Europe characterized by a cultural 'reset' and the rebuilding of society and artistic identity from the ground up.

Carmina Burana (1935/6)

A work by Orff associated with the Nazi regime's musical aesthetic, characterized as conservative, grandiose, and extremely tonal.

Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (1961)

A programmatic work by Penderecki for string orchestra that uses virtuosic textures, novel sonorities, and a stopwatch rather than a meter.

Penderecki's Expressionist Notation

A highly inventive system using strange symbols for note heads to indicate playing the highest pitch physically possible on an instrument.

Integral Serialism

A movement where composers like Boulez sought to assert total control over compositions by applying $12$-tone rows to rhythm, dynamics, and articulation.

Pierre Boulez

A leading post-war European composer and conductor who radically opposed Neoclassicism and Romanticism, believing emotional music was a liability for propaganda.

Schoenberg is Dead

The title of an obituary written by Boulez critiquing Schoenberg for being too moderate and relying on old German formal structures.

Structure 1A

A mathematical composition by Boulez that employs a 'totalitarian' system of control, dissolving melody and utilizing the full range of the piano.

Indeterminacy (Chance)

A method of composition or performance intended to remove human elements or leave results to the universe, often influenced by Buddhism and Daoism.

Prepared Piano

A technique involving placing objects between piano strings to change the sound, ensuring every performance is unique because the setup cannot be perfectly notated.

John Cage

A self-taught American composer and pen-pal of Boulez who used coin flips and divination texts to influence his musical compositions.

Music of Changes (1951)

A work by John Cage where rhythms and dynamics were determined by flipping coins and using a Chinese divination text.

Bacchanale for Prepared Piano (1940)

A composition by Cage where the score does not strictly correlate with the sound, leading to different results in every performance.