33 - Radical Modernists

Question 1

younger modernists

Answer 1

sought to challenge our perceptions and capacities instead of please audience upon first hearing

Question 2

arnold schoenberg best known for

Answer 2

atonal and 12tone music

Question 3

modernists vs avante-garde

Answer 3

modernists want new out of what’s before, carrying on from innovative classics, in that tradition and pushing forward with atonality, avant garde pushes further

Question 4

schoenberg tonal works 3

Answer 4

• applied developing variation of Brahms and wagnerisn techniques
• nonrepetition, each work should not repeat past, but build on it
• nonrepitition within each piece

Question 5

schoenberg atonal music 4

Answer 5

• avoided tonal centre (weaker pull to the tonic, prolonging dissonance and conflict)
• “emancipation of dissonance”, atonality inevitable as a way forward
• dissonance can be on its own without resolution
• structure through developing variation, integration of harmony and melody, or chromatic saturation

Question 6

pierrot lunaire 3

Answer 6

• song cycle by schoenberg
• expressionits and traditional elements
• spreksteima - speak singing, approximated to notes
• 8 nacht and 13 entropy

Question 7

schoenberg’s saget mir aud wetchen pfade2

Answer 7

symbolist subject matter, in tradition of lied but sounds very different musically

Question 8

12-tone method 2

Answer 8

• 12 tones related only to one another
• traditional instrumental forms (motives and themes, tonal forms, classic and romantic genres)

Question 9

row or series 3

Answer 9

• 12 pitch classes arranged in chosen order by composer, melody, chords, arranged in different ways
• all 12 tones stated before row used again
• can contain multiple sets

Question 10

12-tone set

Answer 10

combo of those classes, could represent a character

Question 11

pitch class

Answer 11

each 12-tone tone

Question 12

schoenberg’s piano suite op 25

Answer 12

themes are presented and developed, using the tonal forms and genres of Classic and Romantic music, but twelve-tone rows stand in for the keys.

Question 13

2nd vienna school people and…

Answer 13

schoenberg, berg, webern
recognized as important in development of atonality, but not very popular

Question 14

schoenberg as modernist

Answer 14

still used traditional forms

Question 15

berg general 3

Answer 15

• uses techniques from earlier eras to give listeners a reference point fusing the way he writes with expressions of the past
• adopted atonal, 12-tone methods
• writing for general audiance, but in a new direction

Question 16

berg’s wozzeck 5

Answer 16

• expressionist
• leitmotifs, comment on characters and situations, traditional forms
• act 3 scene 3 imitates/refers to tonal styles and genres
• uses musical effects to enhance the plot, continuity
• 12 tone methods in new ways, combines with old methods

Question 17

post tonality

Answer 17

pushing boundaries of tonality, but not yet atonal

Question 18

anton webern main idea

Answer 18

evolution is necessary, musical idioms must move forward and follow laws of nature

Question 19

webern style 3

Answer 19

• extremely concentrated and short, now waste, controlled, understated
• avoided tonal implications
• sometimes described as pointillistic, melody not fully stated in any voice

Question 20

weber’s symphony no 21 1st mvnt

Answer 20

• double canon, inversion integrates 2 canons
• applies schoenberg’s klangfarbenmelodie (different statement of stating melody by changing timbre)

Question 21

igor stravinsky style3

Answer 21

• undermining meter with unpredictable accents, rests, rapid changes of meter
• frequent ostinatos (often in bass, could by rhythmic or melodic)
• dry, anti-lyrical, colourful use of instruments, angular, block-like, rhythm over melody

Question 22

petrushka chord

Answer 22

F#m and Cm triads from same octatonic scale

Question 23

stravinsky’s rite of spring 6

Answer 23

• danse des adolescents and danse sacrale
• undermining meter
• ostinatos - no development of motives or themes, repitition and unpredictable variation
• timbre linked with motive variation
• petrushka chord
• stark timbres

Question 24

stavinsky’s neoclassic period 3

Answer 24

• preromantic form but not tonal
• neotonality (tonal centres not established through functional harmonic progressions)
• octet for wind instruments

Question 25

octet for wind instruments by stravinsky 3

Answer 25

- sounds tonal, but not moving in forward way - melodic, diatonic, but parrallel motion and dissonance - neoclassic

Question 26

stravinsky's influence

Answer 26

support for serialism helped it gain strong following

Question 27

bela bartok 3

Answer 27

- collected peasant tunes to use them to progress music writing, recorded peasant people singing - synthesized peasant and classical music - used sungle pitch centre instead of a key (neotonality)

Question 28

bartok's staccato and legato from mikrokosmos 2

Answer 28

- elements of tonality - mixture of diatonic chromatic motion, ornamentation

Question 29

charles ives3

Answer 29

- distinctly american modernist techniques - 4 distinct spheres - cumulative form (thematic development first, themes at end)

Question 30

ives' 4 spheres

Answer 30

- vernacular music - protestant church music - european classical music - experimental works

Question 31

schoenberg developing variation

Answer 31

process of continuously building on germinal ideas so that each new idea is derived from what has come before

Question 32

scheonberg The principle of nonrepetition 3

Answer 32

- continue tradition of saying something that has never been said before - great composers say something new while conserving what's best of their predecessors - within and between pieces

Question 33

schoenberg's 3 principles of coherence within atonal music

Answer 33

developing variation, the integration of harmony and melody, and chromatic saturation

Question 34

chromatic saturation

Answer 34

the appearance of all twelve pitch-classes within a segment of music

Question 35

expressionism 3

Answer 35

sought to capture the human condition as it was perceived in the early twentieth century, introspective and negative, related to Freudian theories of the mind

Question 36

inversion, retrograde

Answer 36

upside down, backwards

Question 37

tetrachords

Answer 37

four consecutive notes

Question 38

webern length

Answer 38

music only should do what's necessary, so concentrated length, often as soon as all 12 tones used

Question 39

Klangfarbenmelodie

Answer 39

(tone-color melody), in which changes of tone color are perceived as parallel to changing pitches in a melody.

Question 40

primitivism

Answer 40

style with pulsation rather than meter, static repitition, unresolved dissonance, dry timbres, etc cast aside the sophistication and stylishness of modern life and trained artistry

Question 41

composer most closely aligned with neoclasssicism

Answer 41

stravinsky

Question 42

neotonality

Answer 42

has a single pitch centre, but does not follow the rules of traditional tonality

Question 43

serial music

Answer 43

extended the principles of the 12-tone method to series in parameters other than pitch, such as rhythm

Question 44

polytonality

Answer 44

melody in one key and the accompaniment in another

Question 45

unanswered question

Answer 45

first to use tonality and atonality in the same piece

Question 46

cumulative form

Answer 46

development happens first and the themes appear in their entirety only at the end