Assessment 3 Listening Flashcards
Identify the title, composer, music characteristics that are historically important and or unique to the work, and the work’s genre.
Beethoven String Quartet in B-flat Major, 5th movement (Cavatina) Op. 130
- In effect an aria without words
- 1st violin openly imitates a solo voice that is almost sobbing, choking. (“beklemmt” or “as caught in a vise”.)
- Texture of other three voices homophonic and contrapuntal.
- Effect created by violinist reducing pressure on the bow, letting it ride lightly across the string.
Identify the title, composer, music characteristics that are historically important and or unique to the work, and the work’s genre.
- Schubert Wanderers Nachtlied “Wanderer’s Night Song”
- Brief poem of a single strophe
- Poem by Goethe
- Limited melodic motion and straightforward rhythms of opening capture the sense of calm that pervades the text
- Makes syncopation more pronounced
- Repeated horn call like figures add importance through repetition
- Lied
Identify the title, composer, music characteristics that are historically important and or unique to the work, and the work’s genre.
- S. Foster, Beautiful Dreamer, parlor song
- Text is strophic and sentimental
- Simplicity and melodic straightforwardness
- Follows the aesthetic of German Lied
Identify the title, composer, music characteristics that are historically important and or unique to the work, and the work’s genre.
- Chopin, Ballade No. 1 in G minor Op. 23
- Character piece for piano
- Thought to be associated with the ballads of the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz
- Narrative approach with clearly delineated episodes of contrasting character
- Written between 1831 and 1835
- Influence of sonata form
- Resigned to lyrical to ecstatic to agitated to waltzlike to furious.
- Strong sense of creative improvisation associated with the ballad.
Identify the title, composer, music characteristics that are historically important and or unique to the work, and the work’s genre.
- F. Liszt, Nuages gris, character piece for piano
- Written in 1881 but unplished at the composer’s death 5 years later.
- Chromatic passages (chords, with tremolo octaves) that question the tonal identity
- Seems to float like the clouds evoked in its title
- Little sense of forward motion
- Anticipates the impressionist style of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Identify the title, composer, music characteristics that are historically important and or unique to the work, and the work’s genre.
- Schumann, Carnaval Op. 9 “Chiarina (Passionato),”
- Character piece for piano
- Cycle of character pieces ranging from simple to complex linked by theme of Carnival, the brief season of revelry immediately preceding Lent.
- Nickname of Clara
- To be played passionately
Identify the title, composer, music characteristics that are historically important and or unique to the work, and the work’s genre.
Brahms, Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98, fourth movement (finale)
- Variations traditional as in Beethoven’s Eroica.
- 30 variations, each 8 measures long, & based on the same 8 measure theme. (Traditions back to Bach)
- Variety of thematic ideas, textures, harmonies, and colors.
- Theme based on Bach’s Cantata no. 150
- Coda freely composed
- Old forms are capable of rejuvenation
Identify the title, composer, music characteristics that are historically important and or unique to the work, and the work’s genre.
Mahler, Symphony No. 1 in D Major, 3rd Movement
- Funeral march
- Inspired by illustration showing wild animals bearing a hunter to his grave.
- Funeral march linked to Beethoven’s Eroica.
- Minor mode variant of Frère Jacques
- Eastern & Jewish qualities - klezmer characterized by a steady oompah sound in the bass
- Contrasting folk melody section from the melody of Mahler’s “The Two Blue Eyes of My Beloved”
Identify the title, composer, music characteristics that are historically important and or unique to the work, and the work’s genre.
Debussy, Prelude to an Afternoon of a Faun, orchestral prelude
- Inspired by symbolist poem, Stéphane Mallarmés (L’Après-midi d’un faune - 1876)
- Captures ruminations of a mythological faun, a half man, half goat who remembers/dreams about his erotically charged encounter with a pair of wood nymphs. Floating between dream and consciousness.
- Chromatic line falls and rises like the faun’s fantasy.
- Music traditionalists found lack of clearly defined themes.
- Succession of 7th chords & parallel 5ths.
- Cultivated an absense of style, of logic, and of common sense.
Identify the title, composer, music characteristics that are historically important and or unique to the work, and the work’s genre.
Debussy, Voiles, from Preludes for Piano Book 1, character piece for piano
- Parallel octaves and fifths
- Harmonies are nondirectional
- Supple rhythms add to a sensation of constant fluidity, as does its form.
- Title has two meanings: “sails” or “veils”
- Illustrates the increasing use of nontraditional scale forms.
- Whole-tone and pentatonic scales
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- Whole-tone and pentatonic scales
Identify the title, composer, music characteristics that are historically important and or unique to the work, and the work’s genre.
Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring: Pictures from Pagan Russia, ballet
- Traits of primitivism present
- Rejected traditional harmonic progressions, timbres, and rhythms
- Reflects the same kind of raw, elemental relationship between humans and natures represented by dance
- Story centers on pre-Christian ritual that welcomes the coming of spring and offers in thanks to the gods a human sacrifice
- Elevated role of rhythm
- Meter shifts
- Polytonal harmony
Identify the title, composer, music characteristics that are historically important and or unique to the work, and the work’s genre.
Bartok, Mikrokosmos Book 6, No. 148, Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm No. 1
- 4+2+3 over 8 meter
- Folk music origins
- Ethnic characteristics
- Irregular rhythms and meters, avoided traditional harmony
- Substitute intervals of the 2nd, 4th, and 7th in favor of the traditional triad
- Nondiatonic scales
Identify the title, composer, music characteristics that are historically important and or unique to the work, and the work’s genre.
Milhaud, Saudades do Brazil (Nostalgia for Brazil) No. 6 “Gavea,” character piece for piano
- Latin American tunes and dance rhythms
- Integrates popular dance rhythms into a harmonic idiom that is unpredictable
- Polytonality distinguishes his music
- Brazillian flavor in the rhythms
Identify the title, composer, music characteristics that are historically important and or unique to the work, and the work’s genre.
Cowell, The Banshee, character piece for piano
- “string piano” direct contact with the piano strings rather than by the striking of keys.
- Requires 2 performers
- The one at the keyboard keeps damper pedal down throughout
- Other player stands in the crook of the instrument and touches strings with fingers
- Sweeps, plucking,
- “Women of the inner world who is charged with duty of taking your soul into the inner world when you die. You will hear her wailing atht the time of a death.”
Identify the title, composer, music characteristics that are historically important and or unique to the work, and the work’s genre.
W. A Mozart, Don Giovanni Act I, Scenes I-4:
No. 1 Introduction. Leprello et al, “Notte e giorno faticar,” (Rest I’ve none by night or day)
- Plot based on legend of Don Juan, and nobleman and notorious libertine.
- Comic drama
- Plot pits men against women, nobles against commoners, individuals against the community.
- Title character is malevolent and alluring.
- 1st scene: Leporello, the servant of DG, stands guard outside a nobleman’s house while his master attempts to seduce a woman. Music announces he is a commoner, nothing sophisticated. Complaining to himself about the wicked ways of his master while longing to be a gentlemen. Comical “no no no”
