Assessment 4 Listening Flashcards
Name the name of the composer, title of the work, musical characteristics that are historically important and/or unique to the work, and the work’s genre.
Arnold Schoenberg Pierrot Lunaire, song cycle for soprano and instrumental ensemble No. 7 “The Sick Moon,” soprano-flute duet
- Poetic cycle by Albert Giraud
- Translated from french into german
- 21 poems
- Soprano and instrumental ensemble
- One of the earliest works of atonal music to achieve a wide following
- Pierrot is melancholy, moonstruck clown who lives in state of constant longing.
- Makes the moon seem far more ill than any tonal idiom could.
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Name the name of the composer, title of the work, musical characteristics that are historically important and/or unique to the work, and the work’s genre.
Prokofiev Mvmt III, Gavotta from Symphony No. 1 “Classical” Symphony
- Good example of neoclassicism
- Preserves characteristic form and rhythms of gavotte
- Transforms melody and harmony
- D Major, yet harmonically avoids any strong cadence.
- At cadence strong sense of rhythmic arrival but harmony has been so skewed it makes it sound unexpected.
- Thematic and textual contrast
- Droning open 5ths evoke sound of bagpipe, hurdy-gurdy, or other folk instruments
- Reprise ends with a whimper: pp
Name the name of the composer, title of the work, musical characteristics that are historically important and/or unique to the work, and the work’s genre.
Weil: “Alabama Song” from The Rise & Fall of the City of Mahagonny”, aria
- a satire on capitalism that takes place in fictional city of Mahagonny
- the only crime is poverty
- Sung by Jenny, a prostitute, and her 6 cohorts.
- Assumes outward form of aria (declamatory introduction and soaring conclusion)
- Words are surreal, a parody of pidgin English
- In english
- Creates a sense of distance–objectivity–magnified by discordant sound of honky-tonk style accompaniment, using american foxtrot rhythms.
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- Creates a sense of distance–objectivity–magnified by discordant sound of honky-tonk style accompaniment, using american foxtrot rhythms.
Name the name of the composer, title of the work, musical characteristics that are historically important and/or unique to the work, and the work’s genre.
Schoenberg Pierrot Lunaire
No. 14 “Holy crosses are the verses on which poets bleed to death”
the voice makes leaps of 9ths and diminished and augmented octaves, and other nontriadic intervals, undermining any sense of a tonal center.
Name the name of the composer, title of the work, musical characteristics that are historically important and/or unique to the work, and the work’s genre.
Schoenberg “Pierrot Lunaire”
- No. 21 “O Ancient Scent”
- Speaks of the intoxicating “ancient scent” that comes from the time of fairy tales
- nearly tonal for longer streatches than any other part of cycle
- Moonstruck clown longs for age of tonality, childhood, and fairy tales but realizes its only a dream and there is no turning back
- Use of sprechstime-almost inaudible words
- descends low in voice towards end
- Contrasts from other numbers
- Dream is over, nightmare and screams of expressionism exhausted, a return to the past impossible.
Name the name of the composer, title of the work, musical characteristics that are historically important and/or unique to the work, and the work’s genre.
Webern: Five Pieces for String Quartet Op. 5 No. 4
- A series of miniatures that concentrates into a remarkably intense form of expression.
- Uses a limited number of building blocks (usually consist of 4 or 5 notes.)
- Avoid triads both linear and vertical
- Saw himself as a traditionalist who continued in the manner of Beethoven and Brahms by manipulating motivic ideas by “developing variation)
- Unusual voicings and textures
- Avoidance of any strong sense of meter over extended periods.
- Makes it hard to discern order
- Traditional in some respects
Name the name of the composer, title of the work, musical characteristics that are historically important and/or unique to the work, and the work’s genre.
Berg, Wozzeck, Act 1 Scene 1, atonal opera
- Most successful atonal work of the early 20th century both critically and comercially
- libretto traces mental and physical deterioration of a simple army soldier who is treated abysmally by everyone
- Scene 1 is a suite: series of dances. Similar to Verdi’s Rigoletto
- Prelude: Captain “one step at a time”
- Pavane: Eternity and mortality. Viola cadenza
- Gigue: weather, cadenza for bassoon.
- Gavotte: Morality
- Double 1: Captain doesn’t want to talk
- Air: Wozzeck erupts in passion of emotion.
- Prelude: Captain regains calm. Music of opening returns.
- Introduces opera’s principal ideas: consequences of emotional repression.
Name the name of the composer, title of the work, musical characteristics that are historically important and/or unique to the work, and the work’s genre.
Schoenberg Prelude from Piano Suite Op. 25
- Prime form e-f-g-c-f#-g#-d-b-c-a-bb-a
- Limited himself to eight different versions of the row
- clear example of how serial music works
- based on same row
- Prime row presented in upper voice in first 3 bars.
- Left hand the first four notes transposed up a tritone
- Multiple pitches sounded. Divides row in two: middle voice continues with 5-8th pitches and left hand plays 9th-12th.
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Name the name of the composer, title of the work, musical characteristics that are historically important and/or unique to the work, and the work’s genre.
Schoenberg Piano Suite: Minuet
- fairly complicated
- Trio more straight-forward
- canonic element in trio
- Serial composition incorporates harmonic, contrapuntal, rhythmic, registral, timbral, and dynamic elements
Name the name of the composer, title of the work, musical characteristics that are historically important and/or unique to the work, and the work’s genre.
Berg Lyric Suite for String Quartet Mvmt III: Allegro misterioso-Trio Estatico
- Scherzolike A section of 69 measures, B section of 23 measures, shortened return of A
- Negate declaration of love in ecstatic trio
- tetrachord by different voices in opening (1st violin, 2nd, and viola)
- Trio is freely composed and the return is in large scale retrograde.
- Inverse relationship of opening and closing.
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- Inverse relationship of opening and closing.
Name the name of the composer, title of the work, musical characteristics that are historically important and/or unique to the work, and the work’s genre.
Wagner: Tristan and Isolde Prelude
Act II Scene I and II
The opening three bars of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde may best be described in the composer’s own words. According to his program notes, Wagner writes of the Prelude that there is “henceforth no end to the yearning, longing, rapture, and misery of love: world, power, fame, honor, chivalry, loyalty, and friendship, scattered like an insubstantial dream; one thing alone left living: longing, longing unquenchable, desire forever renewing itself, craving and languishing; one sole redemption: death, surcease of being, the sleep that knows no waking!” (Bailey, p. 47). “The Prelude [was] conceived as ‘one long succession of linked phrases’ in which ‘that insatiable longing swells forth from the first timidest avowal to sweetest protraction…’” (Newman, Wagner Nights, p. 219). The music’s resounding lack of resolution parallels the longing and agony suffered by Tristan and Isolde over the course of the opera.
Most Wagner scholars have divided this opening into two separate motives, as seen in the example above, labeled “Longing” and “Desire.”. Other analysts have interpreted the opening as a single motive. For example, Hans Redlich has described this opening as a “tender feminine query,” that is later answered with the Glance motive (Redlich, p. 20).
Tristan und Isolde, Prelude to Act I: mm. 1-3 read as a single motive:
“Tender Feminine Query” later answered in Motive 5 – (Redlich, p. 20)
“Liebestrank” or “Love Potion” – (Windsperger, p. 39)
“Yearning” – (Kobbé, p. 110)
“Sehnsucht” or “Longing” – (Pfohl, p. 213)
Tristan und Isolde, Prelude to Act I: mm. 1-3 – Order of occurrence by Act and Scene
Act 1: Scene 1
“The Tristan Chord”
[Tristan and Isolde Motives]
Tristan und Isolde, Prelude to Act I: m.2
Music analysts have labeled the opening chord of the Prelude to Act I of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde the “Tristan Chord.” In the opera, the chord’s lack of traditional tonal resolution serves to prolong the yearning and longing suffered by the ill-fated lovers.
One of the most famous chords in music history, its resolution changed conventional music analysis forever. Composed as an enharmonically spelled diminished seventh chord, the “Tristan Chord” does not properly function or resolve according to the part-writing rules of the Western art tradition. It was this chord that prompted many later composers to push the tonal idiom to its limits and to abandon tonality altogether for experimentation with 12-tone serialism and the musical avant-garde.
Longing
[Tristan and Isolde Motives]
This is the opening motive of Tristan und Isolde. Occurring in mm. 1-2 of the Prelude to Act I, this example is most commonly referred to as the “Tristan” motive. George Ainslie Hight actually considers this to be a derivative of the Desire motive, which he refers to as the “Love Motive,” but most Wagner scholars have labeled this example as an independent motive, as seen below.
