20th/21st Century/Modern

Question 1

Atonality

Answer 1

describes music that does not conform to the system of tonal hierarchies that characterized classical European music between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries

Question 2

Second Viennese School

Answer 2

the group of composers that comprised Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils, particularly Alban Berg and Anton Webern, and close associates in early 20th-century Vienna,

Question 3

12-tone serialism

Answer 3

a method of musical composition first devised by Austrian composer Josef Matthias Hauer, who published his “law of the twelve tones” in 1919. In 1923, Arnold Schoenberg developed his own, better-known version of 12-tone technique, which became associated with the “Second Viennese School” composers

Question 4

Sprechstimme

Answer 4

an expressionist vocal technique between singing and speaking that doesn’t emphasize any pitches

Question 5

Klangfarbenmelodie

Answer 5

“sound-color-melody” a musical technique that involves splitting a musical line or melody between several instruments, rather than assigning it to just one instrument

Question 6

Ballets Russes

Answer 6

a traveling ballet company based in Paris that performed between 1909 and 1929 throughout Europe and on tours to North and South America- the same ballet that performed Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” and “Petrouchka”

Question 7

Neoclassicism

Answer 7

a Western cultural movement in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity

Question 8

Les Six

Answer 8

a name given to a group of six composers, five of them French and one Swiss, who worked in Montparnasse. Made up of: Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, Arthur Honegger, Georges Auric, Louis Durey, and Germaine Tailleferre