Music Appreciation - Final Exam Review (20th Century Music)

These flashcards cover key concepts, musical styles, and important composers from the 20th-century music lecture.

Impressionism

A musical style that emphasized tone color, atmosphere, and the capturing of fleeting moments, primarily developed in France during the late 19th to early 20th century.

Expressionism

A style depicting intense inner feelings such as anxiety and grief, meant to shock the audience and often associated with atonal or 12-tone music.

Primitivism

A musical style characterized by repetitive rhythms, harsh dissonances, and inspired by primitive cultures, exemplified by Stravinsky's 'The Rite of Spring'.

Neoclassicism

A style that uses classical and baroque forms but sounds modern, featuring emotional restraint, clarity, and often employing major and minor scales.

Jazz

A music genre blending elements from various cultures, known for strong improvisation and evolving from dance music to a serious art form in the mid-20th century.

Minimalism

A style of music that focuses on repetitive patterns and pulses, aiming to eliminate all non-essential features.

Chance Music

Also known as aleatory music, it is composed through random selection of pitches, tone colors, and rhythms.

Microtone

An interval smaller than a half-step, used in various contemporary music styles.

Prepared Piano

A piano altered by placing objects between the strings to change its sound.

Sprechstimme

A vocal style that lies between speaking and singing, popular in expressionist music.

Pentatonic Scale

A scale consisting of five different tones which can sound both major and minor.

Whole-Tone Scale

A scale made up of six tones, each a whole step apart, creating a sense of ambiguity in tonality.

Claude Debussy

A French composer associated with Impressionism, active from 1862 to 1918.

Igor Stravinsky

A Russian composer notable for Primitivism and Neoclassicism, he lived from 1881 to 1971.

Arnold Schoenberg

A German composer known for his development of atonality and 12-tone technique, active from 1874 to 1951.

Steve Reich

An American composer known for Minimalism, born in 1936.