Music History II Exam

Lied

German Art Song

Song cycle

A group of songs performed in succession that tell or suggest a story. This was created by Beethoven and popularized in the early 19th century. Song collections previously had little to no continuity between them.

Grand opéra

A genre of opera that emerged out of France due to the decline of royal patronage. Therefore, it looked to garner attention from the well to do middle class audiences that wanted higher excitement. Themes focused around love stories with high stakes historical context. Big crowd scenes, machinery, and choruses.

Giacomo Meyerbeer

Major composer of grand opera. Originally German-Jewish and a child prodigy of piano, he moved to Italy for his education and career as an opera composer. Composer of Les Huguenots.

Symphonic poem

A programmatic work in one movement with sections of contrasting character and tempo, presenting a few themes that are developed, repeated, varied, or transformed. Called poems because the variations are similar to poetic methods. Developed by Frans Liszt.

Neoclassicism

A movement by composers between the late 1910s-1950s to imitate the styles, forms, and genres of Romantic era compositions. However, it was in part a rejection of Romantic music due to it’s heavy tries to emotion and the post-WW1 trend of moving away from that.

Ragtime

A style of music that emerged from the African Juba music tradition, which included syncopated clapping and drumming. Now it is known mostly in piano music, but it was also popular in brass and concert bands. Scott Joplin was a major composer of this style.

Scott Joplin

Major composer of Ragtime in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. His most famous piece is Maple Leaf Rag, which features complex rhythmic activity, syncopation, and meter. His music and rhythmic activity have roots in African American music, which has been influenced by both European and African musical cultures.

Gesamtkunstwerk

An idea and practice by Wagner, that drama and music are one and organically connected to each other. This idea was the combination of poetry, scenic design, staging, action, and music.

Atonality

A term for music that doesn’t establish a tonal center and usually follows the 12 tone method.

Tone cluster

Chords using diatonic or chromatic seconds that, on the piano, require the player to press on the keys with the fist or forearm.

Second Viennese School

Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern. Name modeled off of the first Viennese school (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven)

Twelve-tone method

A system of composition that ensures all 12 notes of the chromatic scale are treated equally, with no focus on a key or tonal center. These compositions include a row or a series of the 12 pitches in an order and are repeated throughout the work.

Socialist realism

A Soviet movement to display socialism in a positive light and to showcase the hardships of the Soviet/Russian people through the revolution. Musically, it drew from folk/folklike styles and was used for patriotic or inspirational means.

Hans von Bülow

Conductor and pianist that promoted both Wagner and Brahms’ works. He worked closely with both composers, often premiering or programming their works. Former husband of Cosima Liszt, before she left him for Wagner (which he remained loyal to after the fact).

Chance or indeterminate music

Approach to composing music pioneered by John Cage that any event can happen to create different sounds in a work, ex: tossing coins. The result is experienced as pure sound.

Minimalism

Minimalism in music arose from broader artistic trends of the 1970’s. Specifically, minimalism in music was a direct counterculture from the “showy” or virtuosic musical before WWII. Instead of overwhelming the listener with the typical complexity of modern music at the time, modernism was simpler by lowering the number of musical material and showing changes to musical works overtime and in broader contexts. That way, listeners had to listen carefully to hear the changes.

Franz Schubert

A major composer based in Vienna who specialized and was the first great master of Romantic Lieder. His works were widely performed in his day and still are, having composed over 600 songs.

Gretchen am Spinnrade

Composed by Franz Liszt, conveys a young woman working at a spinning wheel and getting lost in her imagination thinking about a man she loves. The piano line represents the constant moving of the machine.

Fryderyk Chopin

Romantic composer most closely identified by the piano. His works represented Polish character and nationalism, although he spent most of his time in Paris.

Chopin Mazurka, op. 7 no 1

Emulated from a Polish folk dance with Polish spirit. Very idiomatic for the piano.

Hector Berlioz

A French composer who was considered too radical for his time, but his works are now considered musical materpeices.

Symphonie Fantastique

A programmatic work that Berlioz wrote about his infatuation with the Irish actress Harriet Smithson. It was original in how it conveyed autobiographical experiences as well as emotional drama communicated effectively.

Richard Wagner

Major composer of German opera and had a large focus on drama and music coming together.

Der Ring des Nibelungen

A massive cycle of four operas written by Wagner. The stories were created from German epic poems and Nordic legends linked by common characters and musical motives.

Igor Stravinsky

One of the most prolific composers of the twentieth century. Invented the 12-tone method, famous for modernist music and pivotal in moving that movement forward.

The Rite of Spring (le sacre du printemps)

Work made my Stravinsky that was to be set with a ballet. The music and choreography were in the style of primitivism, which was a representation of the “elemental, crude, uncultured, and cast aside the sophistication and stylishness of modern life and trained artistry.” It was so controversial it caused a riot on it’s premiere.

George Gershwin

Composer of jazz-inspired classical music and writer of popular songs and musicals. Became a legend of tin pan alley and broadway music.

I Got Rythm

Written by George Gershwin as a tin pan alley broadway song, which became an instant hit and later became a jazz standard. It was originally made for the musical “Girl Crazy”.

Pierre Boulez

Composer of modernist and twelve tone music. Most famous for developing new methods of deriving related rows from a basic row that provided him with enormous flexibility and expressive material.

Le Marteau sans maître

Work by Boulez that is nine short movements in pointillist style. They are based on a setting of verses from a cycle of surrealist poems by René Char.

Steve Reich

American composer who specialized in minimalism and making music out of tape recordings. Reich's work is marked by its use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm, and canons.

Come Out

A piece made by Reich using spoken words from one of the members of the Harlem Six who were wrongfully accused of murder. He superimposed, cut, sped up, and distorted the words over a long period of time to create the effect.