Listening Quiz 5

Nuages—from Trois Nocturnes

Composer: Debussy

Date: 1900 (nuages=naught=0)

Genre: Symphonic Suite/Poem

Parallelism

Lack of motivic development/thematic integration

Unusual scales

Extended/Rich chords

Imitation of Javanese gamelan (harp+flute)

Extended techniques—harp and string harmonics

Final scene from Salome

Composer: Richard Strauss

Date: 1905 (auss=naught=0)

Genre: Music Drama

Leitmotifs (Salome chord, lust, kiss, estacy)

Traditional dissonance (dim 7)

Non-lyrical melody—recitative vocals, parlante

Bitonal

Dramatic Context: Just. So fucked up (Salome does Necrophilia on John’s head, stepfather orders her killed, soldiers crush her with shields)

“Nacht” from Pierrot lunaire

Composer: Schoenberg

Date: 1912 (Schoen you can make the word one out of that)

Genre: Song cycle w/ chamber ensemble

Developing variation

Atonal

Extended techniques: Sprechsang, playing on bridge, flutter tongue

Bass ostinato

“Enthauptung” from Pierrot lunaire

Composer: Schoenberg

Date: 1912 (schoen=one)

Genre: Song cycle w/ chamber ensemble

Whole-tone scale

Augmented chords

Metrical ambiguity

Fragmentary melody

Extended techniques: Sprechsang

Slower flute/woodwind section at end for some reason

Rigaudon from Le tombeau de Couperin

Composer: Ravel

Date: 1914-17 (Audon=one)

Genre: Dance piece from piano suite

Alberti Bass

Chromaticism

Written in repeats

Sequencing

Ornamentation

Octet for Wind Instruments, 1st mvt. only (“Sinfonia”)

Composer: Stravinsky

Date: 1923 (Octet/4=2) (4 movements)

Genre: Chamber work

Mixed meter

Counterpoint

Tweaked functional harmony

Walking bass

Syncopation

First tableau from La création du monde, Op. 81a

Composer: Darius Milhaud

Date: 1923 (first+1=2)

Genre: Ballet

Use of counterpoint (Anti-debussian) (Fugue)

Blues scale

Polytonality

Polyrhythm

Material superimposed in layers

Modal (Dorian, phrygian)

Dramatic Context: The world is being created

Suite for Piano

Composer: Schoenberg

Date: 1924 (Suite, Piano=2 words=20s)

Genre: Piano suite

2 Musical Characteristics for 1:

2 Musical Characteristics for 5:

Symphony, op. 21, 1st mvt. only

Composer: Anton Webern

Date: 1928 (20s because opus 21)

Genre: Symphony

Pointillistic texture [or fragmentary melody, NOT BOTH]

Atonal [or dodecaphonic (12-tone) serialism, NOT BOTH]

Use of inverted canons [congrats if you actually can hear them!]

Reduced/chamber scoring [i.e. reversion to “Classical” orchestra]

Generally remote/reticent mood

Moments of Romantic expressive/emotional writing [audible in his passage, at least; for all his anti-Romanticism, in other words, Webern actually has expressive Romantic qualities, just like Schoenberg and Berg

Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, 3rd mvt.

Composer: Bartók

Date: 1936 (3rd mvmt)

Genre: Orchestral work

Palindrome in Xylophone at beginning

Fugal statements

String melodies from Hungarian folk tunes, rapid figuration from Serbo-Croation folk songs

Octaves against drones and chordal tapestry of sound=bulgarian dance

5/4 meter=bulgarian dance (paidushko)

Neotonal–Centered on F#

Retrograde and counterpoint

Excerpt with Variations on a Shaker Hymn from ballet, Appalachian Spring

Composer: Aaron Copland

Date: 1944 (Spring is one of 4 seasons)

Genre: Ballet

Static harmony [at start: only 1st and 5th scale degrees present]

Bi-tonal [from 18.36: in GbM and Ebm simultaneously]

Metrical displacement [constant and unpredictable offbeat accompaniment throughout]

Mosaic form

Use of Shaker hymn/vernacular materials [nationalism]

Emphasis on winds not strings [anti-Rom Neo-Classical focus]

Dramatic context:

Bransle Double–dance piece from Agon

Composer: Stravinsky

Date: 1957 (50s because dance is 5 letters)

Genre: Ballet

Metrical ambiguity

Mosaic form

4’ 33”

Composer: John Cage

Date: 1952

Genre: Conceptual work

Silence is simply openness to ambient sound and that there are always environmental sounds worth contemplating.

Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima

Composer: Krzysztof Penderecki

Date: 1960

Genre: Orchestral work

Atonality

Metrical ambiguity

Indeterminacy of performance [limited aleatoric/chance directions given to performers; NOT compositional chance/indeterminacy]

Extended techniques [microtones, striking instrument, playing on bridge, etc., etc.]

Sound masses in second half of excerpt

De Donde Vienes? from Ancient Voices of Children

Composer: George Crumb

Date: 1970 (de donde is 7 letters)

Genre: Song cycle with chamber

Unconventional sounds (toy piano, musical saw, harmonica, mandolin, Tibetan prayer stones, Japanese temple bells, and electric piano)

Special effects from traditional instruments