BGSU - Music Theory IV: Styles and Composers

Minimalism

Focus on steady pulses, compositional elements unchanging or slowly-changing

Minimalist Composers

Phillip Glass, Steve Reich, Terry Riley

Postminimalism

Musical style that uses techniques of minimalism in combination with traditional methods, more varied material, and greater expressivity

Postminimalist composers

John Adams, Julius Eastman, Louis Andriessen

Twelve-tone technique

arrangement of the twelve pitches into a tone row that provides the melodic and harmonic basis for a music composition.

Twelve-tone technique composers

Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Alban Berg, Pierre Boulez, Milton Babbitt, Luigi Dallapiccola

Holy minimalism

Takes the aesthetic ideals of minimalism and applies these ideals to a religious context. Heavily influenced by Medieval and Renaissance music, mysticism, and Eastern Orthodoxy.

Holy minimalist composers

Arvo Pärt

Ambient music

Atmospheric music which emphasizes texture over rhythm, melody, and harmony. Is often electronic music.

Ambient music composers

Brian Eno.

Messiaen's modes of limited transposition

Musical scales that are symmetrical due to the repetition of their interval groups. While these scales can be transposed to all twelve notes of the chromatic scale, at least two of these transposition will result in the exact same group of pitch classes.

Church modes

Ionian

Dorian

Phrygian

Lydian

Mixolydian

Aeolian

Locrian

Church mode composers

Debussy

Octatonic scale

One of Messiaen's Modes, created by alternating whole and half steps.