Spring '26

Quiz #1 Material

What is Modernism

Modernism is a reaction to the 19th century

Tone: musical sound, not percussive/talking. even regular vibration (sometimes called frequency)

  • steady frequency, vibration

Pitch: Named tone, western naming uses letters A-G + sharps and flats

  • A 440 (# is the amount of vibrations per second), A 880 is one octave above, A 220 is one octave below

  • Octave is in 2:1 ratio

  • frequency increases as you go up the piano, decrease as you go down

Note: written pitch, “notated” if you will

Key:

Chord:

Tonality: “returning to home” music that has a tonal center

Atonality:

Solfege: Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do

  • Shows the basic building block of western music → the scale

  • Also called the major scale → diatonic scale (7 notes)

  • 12 note scale → chromatic scale

  • Do = Tonic = Tonal Center

Richard Wagner

  • Music Dramas

  • Antisemitic

  • Hyper late Romanticism

  • Works

    • Tristan and Isolde 1857

      • Prelude Act 1

      • Liebestod

    • Ring of the Nibelungs 1876

      • 4 part opera given on 4 successive nights

      • Das Rheingold

      • Die Walkure

      • Siegfried

      • Gotterdammerung

  • Leitmotif = leading motive

  • controversial person

    • people did not understand his music, but many were excited about it

Schoenberg

  • Modernist composer

  • transformated night

    • Berg

    • Webern

The romantics had very long thoughts

Vienna

Austria-Hungary (In 19th century)

  • Hapsbergs

  • Franz Joseph

    • ruled from middle of 19th century til his death in 1916

  • Mozart, Beethoven worked

  • most important musical capital in the world

  • Center of German music

  • The ring road

  • Transition to Modernism Composers

    • Wagner (middle 19th century)

      • Tristan

    • Mahler

      • famous conductor

      • wrote 9 symphonies, started a 10th

      • died about 1912

      • Hired by the NY philharmonic

      • Symphony #1

    • Richard Strauss

      • late 19th century, lived through ww2

      • “flirted with atonality” but music is mostly tonal

      • Salame

        • considered most shocking piece

    • Arnold Schoernberg

1/22 Review

  • Wagner

    • Tristen

  • Strauss

    • Salome/Thus Spake Zu

  • Mahler

    • Symphony #1, 3rd movement

      • Skeletal framework: A,B,A

  • Schoernberg

    • Pierrot Luen—-

1/27

Orchestra Families

  • Strings

    • Violin I, Violin II, Cello, Violas

    • Harp - Behind the rest of the strings

  • Woodwinds

    • highest to lowest sounding

      • flute (+ piccolo), oboe , clarinet (Bass clarinet), Bassoon (Contra Bassoon)

  • Brass

    • Highest to lowest

      • Trumpet, French Horn, Trombone, Tuba

  • Percussion

    • Timpani

    • Celeste (Bells)

    • Chimes

    • Snare Drums

    • Miscellaneous instruments

“The Hunter’s Funeral Procession” - Mahler

Klezmer music

  • traditional Jewish

  • played for weddings, funerals, social occasions

Mahler Symphony #6, Movement 4 is called The Tragect

Expressionist: mostly strong emotions

Presentation Notes:

Coffee Houses

  • Place of communal debates

  • All social classes could sit together reading, writing, and talking

    • Rank was irrelevant, “public intellectual”

  • Important public figures met here regularly

  • Vienna’s intellectual life was centered around coffee houses

  • Coffeehouses have existed as early as 1th century

    • First in Vienna opened in 1683

    • When coffee spread to Vienna via trade/diplomacy, they rebranded it by adding things like milk and sugar

    • Coffee was served on a silver tray always accompanied by a glass of water and a discrete coffee spoon

    • Billiards and card games

Architecture

Literature

  • The Trial

  • The Castle

Quiz #2 Material

Paris

Belle Epoque: the Beautiful Era

Serge Diaghilev

  • Ballet had always been dominated by females

  • Famous Male Dancer

    • Nijinsky

Impressario: a person who produces entertainment

Ballets Russe

Debussy - guy

  • Prelude to Afternoon of a Fawn

Stravinsky - guy

  • Musical Classics:

    • The Firebird 1910

    • Petruska 1912

    • The Rite of Spring May 29th, 1913

History of Ballet

  • Was important for young men to know as a part of court life

  • Became female dominated eventually

  • Also big in Russia

  • Started in Italy, then moves to France, center of development. part of the court of Louis 15th, then becomes more of a display heavily for women,

  • Russia Ballets, most glorious. brings troop to France

  • Watched: the spirit of the rose: La spectre de la rose

    • Used the music Carl Maria von Veber’s

Stravinsky:

  • 1910 Firebird

  • 1912 Petruska. → the same time as Debussy “Afternoon of a Faun

Rimsky Korsakov

  • The composer most known for “Scheherazade”

  • “coloristic” scores, used the full orchestra instead of just relying on the strings

1913 Rite of Spring

Presentation Notes:

  • Camille Claudel

    • French Sculptor: mediums: clay, bronze, marble, etc.

    • Moved a lot as a child because of father’s work. Where they lived determined her education

    • Creates all throughout the 1880s and 1910s but she is eventually placed in a mental asylum where she stays until her death in 1943

    • Her brother decided to put her in the asylum because she was withdrawn and distant

    • There was a 1988 film about her

  • #2

  • #3

Quiz #3 Material

WWI : called “The Great War” at the time

  • 1914-1918

Jazz

  • Improvised, not printed music

  • Tunes

    • Verse

    • Chorus: where improve is based off of

    • standard pop song form: AABA (32 bar song form)

      • Ex: Somewhere over the rainbow

    • The “form” also known as the chorus (or the chord changes)

  • The Blues

    • 12 bar blues

Ives

  • Designed to be performed with instruments in different spaces. trumpet upstairs, strings on stage, flute up on other side of balcony. encircling the audience type of idea

  • Ives was not a professional composer. was director of an insurance agency

Review:

  • the structure of improvisation is called the form

  • Substructure of improv is: the blues

    • 12 bar blues

      • structure has to do with the harmony

      • Louis Armstrong’s: West End Blues

  • Scat singing: wordless vocal

  • Charles Ives

    • Childhood experiences

      • 2 bands playing at the same time

      • Bitonality: playing in two keys at once

      • Organ piece

      • Quotation, collage, humor, bitonality

      • Piece: The Unanswered question

        • indeterminacy or chance

Gershwin

  • Jewish immigrant parents

  • “American melting pot” versus “American salad”

  • 3 technological achievements

    • Phonograph

    • Radio

    • Film

      • displaced live performance bc film was cheaper to produce. 1927 - first talkie, called Jazz Singer

Presentations:

Skyscrapers

  • Foreign trade led to rapid financial growth. led to population increase and congestion of people

    • They needed to start providing as many urban functions and services as possible in a single building

  • Technology advancements

    • elevator transport

    • central heating

    • ventilation

    • lighting and plumbing

  • Chrysler Buiding

    • completed in 1930

    • Art Deco masterpiece with a distinct spire and ornate design

  • Themes of despair and negativity toward urban environments

    • Themes

      • city girl (1930)

      • Metropolis (1927)

      • Explore the themes of inequality and dirty parts of city life

    • Literature Works

      • The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

      • The Walls of Jericho by Rudolph Fisher

  • Mixed-use developments

Quiz Review

  • WW1 was different: machine guns, submarine, prototype of both of these. poison gas, trench warfare, 1920s epidemic

Final Material

Berlin 1920s

Weimar Republic

  • Kurt Weill (composer)

    • 1900-1950

  • Lotte Lenya (Kurt’s wife)

    • Out lives her husband

  • Bertolt Bracht (playwright)

  • Stefan Zwerg

USSR

  • The animated history video

  • Stalin

    • Artists always kept a bag packed. they feared for their lives

  • Shostakovich