PAGE-BY-PAGE NOTES: 20th Century Music
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Theme: 20th Century Music overview.
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Content Standards: understand 20th-century music styles, characteristics, and features.
Performance Standards: create musical pieces in a 20th-century style.
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Performance Standards and Learning Competencies:
1. Listens perceptively to selected 20th-century music.
2. Describes distinctive musical elements of given pieces in 20th-century styles.
3. Relates 20th-century music to its historical and cultural background.
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Learning Competencies (continued):
4. Explains the performance practice (setting, composition, role of composers/performers, and audience) of 20th-century music.
5. Sings melodic fragments of given Impressionism period pieces.
6. Explores other arts/media that portray 20th-century elements through video/films or live performances.
7. Creates short electronic and chance music pieces using knowledge of 20th-century styles.
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Priming: Identify the following composers. Write their names on a sheet of paper.
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Prompt: Identify composer 1.
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Prompt: Identify composer 2.
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Prompt: Identify composer 3.
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Prompt: Identify composer 4.
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Answers (part 1):
1. Claude Debussy
2. Maurice Ravel
3. Arnold Schoenberg
4. Igor Stravinsky
5. Bela Bartók
6. Sergei Prokofieff
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Answers (part 2):
7. Francis Poulenc
8. George Gershwin
9. Leonard Bernstein
Phillip Glass
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
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Answers (part 3):
Edgard Varèse
Karlheinz Stockhausen
John Cage
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Priming Answers (continued): 7–9.
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Priming Answers (continued): 10–14.
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End of Priming activity.
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Recap: Major 20th-century composers listed for quick recall.
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Listening activity: Identify titles and note key characteristics as you listen.
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Activity reflection prompts: clues used to identify titles and what the pieces reveal about their styles.
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Analysis prompts: How were composers identified? What were the clues? What do the pieces reveal?
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Abstraction: 20th-century styles overview.
Styles: Impressionism, Expressionism, Neo-classicism, Avant Garde, Modern Nationalism.
Influences: Electronic music, Globalization, World Wars, Cinema, Jazz.
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Aesthetic principles: revolt against Romanticism; rejection of old beauty norms; experimentation with tech; complexity for listener and creator.
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Summary of stylistic categories (Impressionism, Expressionism, Neo-classicism, Avant Garde, Modern Nationalism).
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Musical styles overview (Impressionism vs Expressionism):
Impressionism: whole-tone scale, mood over depiction, translucent texture, vague melodies, innovative chords, mild dissonances.
Expressionism: atonality and twelve-tone scale, strong emotions; non-traditional harmonies.
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Neo-classicism, Avant garde, Modern nationalism: brief definitions.
Neo-classicism: return to classical forms with modulated dissonances; seven-note diatonic scale.
Avant garde: electronic music; focus on sound dimensions and space.
Modern nationalism: nationalism with modern techniques and folk materials.
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Composer profiles (selected): Debussy, Ravel, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartók, Prokófieff, Poulenc, Gershwin, Bernstein, Glass, Varese, Stockhausen, Cage, Prokofieff.
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Composer: Claude Debussy – Impressionist; dissolved traditional rules; examples:
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Composer: Maurice Ravel – innovative but not atonal; dissonant yet refined harmony; examples:
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Composer: Arnold Schoenberg – atonal, twelve-tone; complex; examples:
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Composer: Igor Stravinsky – trendsetter; revived 18th-century forms with modern style; abandoned traditional tonality; examples:
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Composer: Bela Bartók – Hungarian folk themes, changing meters, strong syncopations; examples:
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Composer: Sergei Prokófieff – neo-classical, nationalist, and avant-garde; progressive technique, pulsating rhythms, direct melodies, resolving dissonance; example:
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Composer: Francis Poulenc – cool, elegant modernity with classical proportion; example:
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Composer: George Gershwin – fusion of jazz and classical; father of American jazz; example:
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Composer: Leonard Bernstein – stage/conductor/composer for Broadway; tonality as basis; example:
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Composer: Philip Glass – minimalist; cell-like phrases; bright electronic textures; examples:
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Composer: Edgard Varèse – electronic/experimental sounds; father of electronic music; example:
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Composer: Karlheinz Stockhausen – initially atonal; musique concrète; example:
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Composer: John Cage – challenged traditional music; Chance Music; performances vary each time; examples: ,
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Application: Singing activity – Group performance of a West Side Story song; use available instruments or sounds.
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Application: Class concert – live performance of a localized version of an excerpt from West Side Story or Porgy and Bess.
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Application: Sound experimentation – group activity with percussive items in a bag; record sounds; present composition.
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End of notes: Reflect on how 20th-century styles differ from earlier conventions and what makes them distinctive.