The Modern Era (Level 9 History)

Impressionism

Led by French painters Claude Monet, Édouard Manet, and Edgar Degas, this emerged as a reaction to more formal “learned” styles by utilizing new techniques and textures, by drawing subject matter from everyday life, and by exploring the interplay of light and colour.

Expressionism

Originating in Vienna with painters like Wassily Kandinsky and Oskar Kokoschka, this often depicts human fears, obsessions, and complications, echoing Freudian psychology with exaggerated, distorted, and even nightmarish imagery.

Symbolism

A late 19th-century French literary movement led by Charles Baudelaire, where unorthodox grammar and syntax sought to evoke moods and sensations, rather than using matter-of-fact statements and descriptions.

Modal scales

The use of scales (modes) in which the pattern of whole steps and half steps is different from conventional major and minor scales (ex. Dorian, Lydian, and Mixolydian). These were common in music in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and “rediscovered “ by 20th-century composers.

Whole-tone scales

A non-traditional scale employed by composers of the late 19th and 20th centuries, consisting of six different pitched, all a whole-tone apart.

Pentatonic scale

A scale of 5 pitches (ex. C-D-F-G-A), easily rendered by playing the 5 black keys. This is common to folk music of many European and Asian cultures.

Expanded tonality

The use of extremely chromatic harmony while still maintaining allegiance to a tonal centre.

Polytonality

The simultaneous use of two or more tonal centres.

Atonality

The total absence of any tonal centre, characterized by unresolved dissonances.

Twelve-tone method

Atonal music based on an arrangement of all twelve chromatic pitched (in a tone row), developed by composer Arnold Schoenberg.

Changing meter

The shift of metrical groupings, manifested through changes of time signature.

Polyrhythm

The simultaneous use of two or more conflicting rhythms.

Symphonic poem

Invented by Franz Liszt, this is one of the most important forms of orchestral program music, and is a single-movement work, generally free in form, with literary or pictorial associations.

Impressionism in music

Paralleling the French movement in visual art, harmonic vocabulary is expanded (employing whole-tone, modal, and pentatonic scales, as well as parallel chords), suggesting images (versus depicting them), featuring innovative orchestral colours (ex. individual treatment of instruments and use of muted instruments), and frequently obscuring the metric pulse.

Symbolism

A French literary movement of the late 19th century where symbolist writers (ex. Paul Verlaine and Stéphane Mallarmé) sought to suggest subject matter, rather than depict it specifically, stressing the beauty of the word itself.

Antique cymbals

Small brass discs (finger cymbals) which produce a gentle ringing sound when struck together.

Glissando

French, “glisser”, “to slide.” On the harp, this is a quick strumming of all the strings with a broad, sweeping hand movement, creating a shimmering effect.

Ballet

A highly stylized type of dance that often interprets a story. It was first developed in the 1600s at the city of Louis XIV, but truly flourished in the 19th-century Russian court. Many significant composers (Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Debussy, and Prokofiev) composed music for this genre.

Choreography

The art of designing dance steps and movements in a ballet or musical.

Primitivism

An effect created largely through rhythm where strong accents, heavy syncopation, polyrhythms, and an expanded percussion section are used (such as in “The Rite of Spring”).

Musical

A unique genre developed in the United States, of a play with spoken dialogue that featured musical numbers (songs, dances, and choruses), typically with spectacular staging (sets, costumes, and lighting).

Jazz

A musical style based on improvisation that combines elements of African, popular, and European music, developed in the early 20th century in the United States.

Verse-chorus structure

A common song structure in popular music, in which the verses develop the character/storyline, while the “chorus” acts as a tuneful refrain.

Mambo

A dance of Afro-Cuban origins popular in the 1940s and 1950s, usually characterized by rhythmic ostinatos as well as “riff” passages (short melodic ostinatos) for wind instruments. Typically moderately fast and in 4/4.

Cha-cha

A popular Cuban dance of the early 1950s, derived from the mambo and named for the sound of its characteristic rhythm.

Hemiola

A temporary shift of the metric accents where notes grouped in threes momentarily are grouped in twos (or vice versa).

Tritone

The name used to describe the interval of an augmented fourth or diminished fifth, which comprises three whole steps.

Minimalism in music

A musical style that evolved in the late 20th century (associated with compositions by Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and John Adams) that is characterized by the repetition of melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic patterns with little variation.

Fanfare

A loud ceremonial tune or flourish, featuring brass instruments, used to herald the arrival of an important person, the launch of an event, or in commemoration of someone.