Music History Test II Terms

A life for the Tsar

• Opera by Mikhail Glinka

• First “great” Russian nationalist opera

• It also represents Glinka’s cosmopolitan techniques with influences from all around Europe.

• No spoken dialogue— new level of seriousness in Russian opera

• Full mastery of Rossini code and double aria, as well as contained aspects of French Grand Opera, such as emphasis on chorus. Also uses orchestra and harmony in a more sophisticated way.

• The opera itself represents the idea of subjugation of the lower class for the glory of the Tsar. It has a tragic ending in which the main character sacrifices himself for the Tsar.

Kamarinskaya

• Orchestral piece by Glinka

• Incorporates melodic cells that spin over and over, repeating itself — this becomes a signifier of Russian music later on

• Reflects mastery of cosmopolitan language of prestige plus a trademark of Russian culture.

• Use of melodic cells influenced Russian composers after him, such as Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky.

grand opera

• Refers to French opera with a main focus on grand historical plot rather than love plots.

• Example: Rossini, Le siege de Corinth

  • The first opera he wrote for the Paris Opéra

  • Featured a grand historical plot about the fall of Corinth to Ottoman empire in 1458 (although many historical liberties were taken)

  • Ended with mass carnage on stage

  • Tragic ending— another typical feature of grand opera

• Grand opera aims for spectacle and involves large casts and elaborate staging

• The plots had political resonances of the time too— Le siege de Corinth activated all sorts of ideas about Christians vs Muslims— contemporary subject.

• Generally had tragic endings

• They also tended to be very long— anything on the stage of the Opéra had to be 5 acts long and were therefore upwards of 4 hours. This is one reason that they aren’t performed much anymore.

Gesamtkunstwerk

• Idea brought about by Richard Wagner in “Art and Revolution”, which argued that art should be a representation of the community as a whole, not just individuals. In this came the idea of Gesamtkunstwerk, which stated all of the arts should be brought together rather than split.

  • He argued that when you split the arts you isolate them from the totality of life

• In particular, he saw Greek tragedy as the perfect model of Gesamtkunstwerk (elaborated in “The Artwork of the Future”)

• Pieces of Gesamtkunstwerk

  • Poetry - intellectual

  • Music - emotional

  • Dance - physical

  • Said that these things make up a human person

• Said Beethoven had taken “absolute music” as far as it would go.

• Brought rise to a new “genre” — which fused symphony and opera into “music drama”.

music drama

• A new “genre” of music brought about by Richard Wagner, which called for the synthesis of symphonies and operas. This was detailed in “Opera and Drama” — a substantial essay which elaborated on this idea.

  • He wished to bring together symphonic development with the theatrical genre of opera

• Said that people needed to look to myth as the source material for these dramas (specifically Germanic myth)

• No choruses in this kind of opera in a realistic impluse. This was replaced with dialogue.

• Used "motives of remembrance” and “motives of foreboding” (leitmotivs) to unit musical texture over long spans of time.

• First example— Siegfrieds Tod

  • This music drama morphed and expanded into an entire cycle of operas— The Ring of Nibelung

Stabreim

Means “alliteration” — refers to a technique used in Wagner’s operas, in which verses did not contain end rhymes but rather began with the same consonant sounds. This was done in order to avoid the artificiality of end rhymes.

leitmotiv

Refers to a technique used in Wagnerian musical dramas— “motives of remembrance” and “motives of foreboding” which united musical texture over long spans of time through their associations with specific characters, ideas, or things. However, Wagner did not advocate for an exact specification of the meanings behind these motives, but wanted them to emerge organically and provoke associations in the listener’s mind. These “motives” could be a melody, musical phrase, or even just a single chord.

unending melody

A compositional technique utilized by Wagner in his music dramas where the music flows continuously without distinct breaks between sections, blurring the boundaries between arias and recitatives. Example— his Ring Cycle.

Der Ring des Nibelungen

• Wagner’s ring cycle

• Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung

• Demonstrates medieval tradition of epic, but mixes Drama and Epic, which are two genres not mixed in Greece.

• Very grand, and aspired to be the grand mythology of the entire universe, according to Wagner.

• Utilized Leitmotivs in a new conception of operatic form, which was premised on symphonic development.

  • He did not use any conventional formal organizing principles, and the idea of developing Leitmotivs became a new organizing principle for the musical formal side of opera.

  • The only divisions in Wagner operas were between acts, further amplifying importance of leitmotivs

  • Also contains elevated role of orchestra, very distant from Italian bel canto/Rossini

  • Within this operatic cycle he linked together moments that were within the 4-5 hour long opera but also across the cycle

• Was also very interested in sustaining long-range tonal tension, with very few cadences compared to those before him in an interest of building up to bigger moments of tonal arrival.

Arthur Schopenhauer

A philosopher who essentially argued that life is fundamentally suffering and devoid of inherent meaning or purpose. He believed that the driving force behind existence is the “Will”, an irrational and blind striving that is constantly unsatisfied, leading to endless conflict and dissatisfaction. These ideas had a large influence on Wagner, and the darker philosophy and ideas of lack of redemption led to his prioritization of music as the “top” of the arts, in that it understood the world as will (as it truly is) and the world as representation (the world as we see it). Wagner liked the idea that music had direct access to the will itself, in a life with suffering defined by unfulfilled desire.

Tristan chord

A dissonant harmony that occurs in Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde (tragic romance music drama), symbolizing longing and desire. It takes the form of a half diminished 7th chord that creates tension and a sense of wanting to go somewhere but not knowing where. The chord is constantly unresolved throughout the opera. This opera itself was the most influenced out of Wagner’s operas by Schopenhauer’s ideas and the concept of the"Will" in relation to unfulfilled desires.

Risorgimento

The Italian unification movement that occurred in the 19th century, in which the fall of the Roman Empire led to Italy becoming a collection of city-states which eventually began to gel into larger groups. The congress of Vienna decided to rework borders and split Italy back into the city-states, leading to a need for unified nationalism. The Risorgimento united the nation rather than having individual city-states, and took decades to do so. Eventually, however, Italy was united as a constitutional monarchy.

This uprising led to a sense of Italian nationalism that was not about cultivating individualism but was rather tied into ideas of nationhood and defining Italy against foreign powers.

Rigoletto

An opera by Guiseppe Verdi, based on La roi s’amuse by Victor Hugo. Verdi found a heavy source of inspiration in Shakespeare, and this is reflected in the opera in the embodiment of dramatic realism rather than strict adherence to “serious” or “comic” ideas. The story itself revolves around a comic main character in a tragic plot.

Some musical elements Verdi imbues in this opera are superficial characters which sing very diatonically, used to portray a lack of seriousness and turning around expectations of a romantic tenor by leaning into voice characterizations in different ways. Verdi is also a master at “mixing” such emotions, for example in the Act III quartet where the characters sing together in a quartet, each emulating different emotions.

This opera is a tragicomedy, with heightened irony and aspects of tragedy for dramatic effect and realism, as well as a more accurate portrayal of real life.

tragicomedy

A genre of opera invented by Verdi, in which the genres of tragedies and comedies are fused together to provide a sense of realism. Example— Verdi’s Rigoletto.

operetta

A genre of opera founded in 1855 by Offenbach, in his pursuit of creating a “true comic opera”. It is usually highly satirical, funny, and often risquée. In Offenbach’s hands, operetta took the form of parody operas which aspired to aristocratic ideals, such as in Orphee aux enfers, in which Orfeo and Euridice are married but can’t stand each other. He over-inflates and skews the Minuet genre, which is serious and associated with aristocracy, and introduces the can-can, which involves lots of high kicks, which was seen as very scandalous.

However, he also takes these operas as a chance to point out the hypocrisy and underlying contradictions in society, such as in La vie parisienne, in which the puritanical views are put in stark contrast with the culture of frivolity and pleasure of the time in Paris.

Orphée aux enfers

• Offenbach’s first larger production of operetta

• Operetta— satirical, funny, risque, etc.

• Offenbach counters Gluck’s rendition of the story and writes an Orfeo and Euridice that are married and cannot stand each other

• This is a parodying opera that aspires to aristocratic ideals. This can be seen in the musical features within (for example, Offenbach takes the Minuet genre and over-inflates it, making it very pretentious). It also has a can-can dance with high kicks, making the opera very scandelous for its time.

New German School

A school of thought in Germany, friendly with Wagner, which said good composers were those who did radical things and were at the forefront of history. This school’s standard-bearer was Liszt, named by critic Franz Brendel. He also named the composer Berlioz. While neither composer was German, Brendel argued that they both “drew nourishment” from the German spirit, suggesting that it lays claim to everything that is new and good in the wake of Beethoven. The genres in which this school specialized was the Symphonic poem and Musical Drama.

Franz Brendel

The inheritor of the role of editor of the German music journal Neue Zietschirift für Musik, taking over the role from Robert Schumann. He was very invested in politics and the idea of German unification, particularly in the future of German nationalist music. He advocated for a philosophical idea which states that history needs to advance and continually innovate, and these ideas gave rise to the New German School (which advocated for music to be at the forefront of history), containing composers such as Wagner, Liszt, and Berlioz.

Symphonic poem

A genre of orchestral music invented by Liszt aimed to elevate the Symphony as a genre by linking it to literary works. His first attempt at this was Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne (“What you hear on the mountaintop”, sometimes called “Mountain Symphony”) — which depicts a romanticized imagined poetic experience of ascending a mountain. He musically depicts these experiences, for example, with the opening containing tremolo and oscillations in the strings, which creates a “rumbling” effect, and the juxtaposing of the melodious “sound of nature” and sad, “rent with curses” humanity motive. Themes in a symphonic poem are subject to continual development throughout the entirety of the piece. There is no “sonata form” in a symphonic poem, but rather a program that it follows, guiding the audience through the inspiration of the piece that they too are aware of. In this way, he stabilized the ambiguity of music so that the “true” meaning could be communciated.

Thematic transformation

A technique used in Liszt’s symphonic poems, in which themes are subject to continual development throughout the entirety of the piece (more so than any composer prior), and the key in which the theme is heard also has programmatic and interpretive significance. In the context of his piece Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne, for example, the progression at the beginning of the piece later becomes a theme, completing the octatonic scale.

Eduard Hanslick

The most influential critic of the “Traditionalist” school of German music, which sought to conserve classical values. He emphasized renewing and reverencing old forms rather than an exclusive overturn of the past, emphasizing continuity. A significant composer in his school of thought was Johannes Brahms.

Mighty Handful (“Mighty Five”)

A group of 5 19th-century Russian composers who sought to create a distinctly Russian style of music, heading a “New Russian School”. They included Balakirev, Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Borodin.

drame lyrique

A french dramatic form of opera in which emphasis shifts onto the psychologies and motivations of individual characters, thus emphasizing psychological complexity over progression of events and how they catch characters within them. This makes it different from Grand Opera. An example of this is Georges Bizet’s Carmen, which is based on a naturalistic novella (naturalistic movement also going on which was tied to realism and diagnosis of social ills). Following some of the innovations of Wagner, this genre sought to be more continuous and less artificial in the construction of Arias. In this way, it followed the dramatic action from one end to another. It also presented a new form of aria, in which the singer sings for the stage, not for the audience, further reflecting a more realistic feel.

Boris Godunov

An opera by Modest Mussorgsky, in the genre of a drame lyrique. Some notable features include the use of seventh chords as having an identity within itself and not a dissonance that needs to resolve. The plot follows the troubled reign of Tsar Boris Godunov as he grapples with guilt and the consequences of his actions in killing the 8 year old child heir to the throne, and his descent into madness. In this way, it starkly contrasts the kind of nationalist opera that Glinka wrote.

The Oriental Miscellany

A collection of Indian songs for harpsichord by William Hamilton Bird. It was an attempt to spread “oriental” music to other parts of Europe, however, in his attempt to make the songs fit the Western diatonic scale and bring the rhythms into Western frameworks of metrical divisions, the songs became virtually unrecognizable to their originals. It represents a fascination with the repertoire but a failure to accurately comprehend or represent it, shown in the assumption that Western tonal harmony was some sort of neutral medium.

vernacular music

In the context of African American music, it refers to music by African Americans in the United States, including spirituals but also Ragtime (music of urban centers), Blues (music of rural south), and Jazz (urban centers).

spiritual

A genre of African American music created in the context of slavery that expressed Christian imagery, but were typically performed in ritual settings that retained aspects of dance from African tradition. They served the role of expressing people’s hardships in their situations and hope for freedom while also retaining contact with traditions of their past. They often feature a call and response structure and some sort of rhythmic clapping, as well as a heterogeneous sound, characterized in a wide range of vocal quality and timbre.

Examples: “Long John” and “Blow, Gabriel”

“New World” Symphony

• Symphony No. 9 by Dvorak

• The piece brings together ideas of nationalism in Europe and America as a whole

• Dvorak meant to capture something about the “spirit of the new world”, trying to make it sound like it had some spirit of the United States, and in this endeavor used the Song of Hiawatha, for example, throughout the second and third movements.

• In this native American narrative of music, however, he also took Black American music as a new kind of “American nationalist folk music”, although he heavily Westernized the melodies.

• This symphony did not go over well with the audience, which was highly racist.

verismo

New opera genre in Italy, referring to generally shorter, one act operas. They tend to make a spectacle of poverty and lower classes, and are often gruesome. Verismo composers did not follow the Rossini code, and were also less tuneful and neat. Some trademarks include noisy crowd scenes with lots of characters bustling about. Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci is a good example of this form.

La fanciulla del West

Puccini’s very last opera (genre of Verismo opera), premiered at the MET in New York City. It was far outstripped in populrity by other Puccini operas in his time. Its plot depicts the American West after the first gold was found in California. The prelude draws on Circus music, and weaves in stereotype ideas of what sounds “American”. American critics hated it, speaking to how much people hate being “exoticized”. This opera demonstrates how these Verismo operas are about presenting a richly textured and detailed view of foreign culture that will come across as realistic but are not necessarily.

modernism

Early modernism began in the 1890s. This stage represents a crucial juncture for how we tell the story of Western Art Music. It represents an age of disenchantentment, materialism, and urbanization. In Germany, a significant composer was Gustav Mahler, who in his Symphony No. 1, for example, experimented with amping up emotional intensity to levels unheard of by those before him (i.e. Beethoven), and also introduced aspects such as contradictions, riddles, juxtapositions, and allusions to other composers in his music. his emphasis of hyper-emotionalism of romanticism and simultaneous recoil from it represents the glaring contradictions of romanticism. A significant French composer, on the other hand, was Claude Debussy, who created a new and radical sound in his use of parallels and diffusion of harmonic tension. In this way, modernism took different forms in different parts of Europe in the late 19th century, as composers Mahler and Strauss amped up the romantic aspects in earlier music, and composers such as Debussy destructed some of the common conventions.

progressive tonality

A compositional technique in which one begins in one key and ends in another in a movement. This is seen in movement four of Mahler’s Symphony NO. 1, in which it begins in stormy F minor and Ends in triumphal D major.

tone poem

A genre of music seen in Richard Strauss’s symphonic music, which were essentially modifications of Lisztian symphonic poems. Don Juan is a significant example of this. In it, he builds on Romanticism and amplifies its effects. He uses the orchestra in ways attuned to timbre and orchestra color, thus creating uncannily precise images. Similarly to Mahler, he also simultaneously uses all Romantic techniques alongside a side of the “absurd”, inserting weird, almost dark irony in the music.

Société Nationale de Musique

A French organization for music founded after the Third Republic was put in place. People began to blame the culture of frivolity and fun/entertainment in the Second Empire for weakening the sense of nationality and military defeat. therefore, this organization represented a return to seriousness. Significant composers were Saint-Saens, Franck, Gounod, and Lalo. All emphasized serious music, particularly in the chamber setting. They attempted to emulate the seriousness in German music with a “French” touch, and with this came a resurgence of interest in old French Baroque music. This is later emulated in Satie and Debussy’s music. Both wrote Sarabandes and old styles of music, but with a distinct new touch.

Impressionism

A movement in visual art headed by Monet, Pissarro, and Renoir, interested in capture moments in time through attuning to visual sensations of light and color and absence of clear lines. These attributes of art likely influenced musical composers such as Debussy.

Prélude à l’aprés-midi d’un faune

Debussy’s first major orchestral work, which was a pivot piece to the mature Debussy style. The piece musically emulates a duality between dream and reality, inspired by a poem by Stephane Mallarme. However, unlike a tone poem, it simply sets the “mood” of the poem rather than being a synthesis. While it is a tonal piece, it begins and keeps our ears suspended in a dreamy stasis for some time, with no suggestion of forward tonal momentum— a key thing about Debussy in harmony. This work points forward to a distinctly French modernism that relates to the savoring of sonority and timbre over constant harmonic “motion”.