people Flashcards
(31 cards)
1
Q
Claude Debussy
A
- modernist, impressionist
- Anti-Germanism
- Grounded in tradition with Wagner and other Russian composers
- Instrumental colors/timbre.
- Looked around for influences → Russia (i.e. Mussorgsky), medieval music (parallel organum), Asia (Java, China, Japan)
Nuages
2
Q
Maurice Ravel
A
- neoclassicist, some modernist ideas
- influenced by Debussy
- more direct references to past music but still experimenting w/ forms
- master orchestrator
Le tombeau de Couperin, “Menuet” (slightly modernist)
3
Q
Richard Strauss
A
- modernist
- wrote opera after 1900 (had many periods)
Salome
4
Q
Luigi Russolo
A
- futurist
- wrote manifesto of futurism: “The Art of Noises” → world of machines, music based on noise – style of avant-garde
5
Q
Erik Satie
A
- modernist/futurist/avant-garde
- “the ultimate nosethumber”, “the precursor”
- irony and modernism
- Associated w/ avant-garde artist
Embryons Desseches
6
Q
Ralph Vaughn Williams
A
- Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis
- English musical rennaisance → favored 3rds/6ths
- Written in Phrygian mode
- The piece introduces fragments of the tune, states it once, and develops motives from it
7
Q
Arnold Schoenberg
A
- classical tradition is innovation
- also expressionist painter (seen in Pierrot Lunaire)
- taught Berg and Webern
- “Second Viennese School”
- Early period: late Romantic musical language (Wagner, Mahler, Strauss)
- From Brahms → dev variation (theme changes throughout), non repetition (avoiding any repetition)
- Atonality, created 12-tone pitch class sets
Pierrot Lunaire, Piano Suite (1925)
8
Q
Alban Berg
A
- modernist, expressionist
- Wozzeck, opera
- Atonal (not 12 tone)
- sprechstimme, leitmotifs, older/popular/folk borrowings, chromatic sat
- Each scene takes on new invention (i.e. motive developed throughout, B → triads float around it)
9
Q
Igor Stravinsky
A
- born in Russia, studied w/ Korsakov (Russian 5)
- Many phases that successfully explored most major trends from Russian nationalism to cosmopolitanism
- Politics: “anti-romanticism”, coolness, detachment, objectivity, absolute (not programmatic)
Rite of Spring (Danse des Adolescents), Symphony of Psalms
10
Q
Stravinsky’s Periods
A
- Period in Russia (1907-19): unpredictable rhythm that undermines meter, ostinatos, layered blocks of sound, juxtaposition, interruption, diverse scales (dia/octa/pentatonic), orchestration, ballets
- Neoclassical (1920-54): western art music as a source rather than Russian, lot’s of borrowings
11
Q
Sergei Diaghilev
A
- Russian art critic, ballet impresario, and founder of Ballet Russets in Paris (famous ballet company)
- Stravinsky composed ballets for him/Ballet Russets
12
Q
Bela Bartok
A
- radical modernist
- musical influences → Strauss to Debussy to Schoenberg to mature style
- Transylvianian singer incident: “lightbulb moment”, began writing eastern European traditional music (peasant music, contrast, modes)
- Classical approach → counterpoint, form
- Modernism → neotonalism, dissonance
Mikrokosmos, Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celeste
13
Q
Charles Ives
A
- modernist
- organ prodigy
- Musical borrowing/synthesis → pop music, church music, classical music
- Layers pop and sacred quotes of music (leads to polytonality)
- Collage
- cumulative form → “turns sonata form on it’s head”
- Hear chunks of theme, later all of it, found in Tchaikovsky symphony
General William Booth Enters into Heaven
14
Q
George Gershwin
A
- successful in classical, Broadway, and jazz
- first job as song plugger on TPA
I Got Rhythm
15
Q
Bessie Smith
A
- “blues queen”
Backwater blues
16
Q
Robert Johnson
A
Crossroad
- Delta blues (from Mississippi delta)
- Less adherent to form than classic blues → breaking rules for purpose of expression
17
Q
Louis Armstrong
A
- played trumpet on West End Blues, collaborated with Duke Ellington on Cotton Tail
- played trumpet/sang/composed
18
Q
Paul Whiteman
A
- American bandleader, called “King of Jazz” for making jazz popular to American audiences in late 20s’/30’s (white perspective of segregated jazz)
19
Q
Duke Ellington
A
- worked to break down barriers btwn jazz/classical music
Cotton Tail
20
Q
Les Six
A
- (Milhaud) like Russian Mighty 5, younger generation than Ravel, Satie, d’Indy
- Didn’t want to have to fit into old binary oppositions → appropriateness of certain influences debated (German esp.) → wanted to move beyond the debate and welcome ANY INFLUENCE
21
Q
Darius Milhaud
A
- immense diversity of influences, part of Les Six
La creation du monde
22
Q
Kurt Weil
A
- German, politically left, anti-elite
The Three Penny Opera
23
Q
Dmitri Shostakovich
A
- originally modernist, dealt w/ censorship
- Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District → piece denounced by communist paper for being modernist and not being tonal enough (not atonal though)
Symphony no. 5, mvmt 2 (more traditional)
24
Q
Hector Villa-Lobos
A
- neoclassicist, but used modernist elements
- studied in Paris, then supported by nationalist dictatorship in Brazil
- loved Bach
Bachianas Brasileiras no. 5, Aria (Cantilena)
25
Edgard Varese
- ultra-modernist
- music as “art-science”, based off machines (futurists)
- New sounds of new life (space and sound masses, music as organized sound)
Hyperprism
26
Henry Cowell
- interested in traditional music, theosophy/spirituality
- champion of new music
The Banshee → extended technique, plucking piano strings
27
Ruth Crawford Seeger
- modernist composer to champion of traditional music
Dissonant counterpoint
- 12 tone, tone clusters (from Cowell), polytonality
- Saw her work as representation of American modern musical tradition
String Quartet (10 note series/rotation)
28
William Grant Still
- Americanist
- “Dean of Afro-American composers”, Harlem Renaissance
Afro-American Symphony, mvmd 1
29
Aaron Copland
- studied w/ Nadia boulanger
- Accessible, sweet sounds but can also be seen as Modernist
- Quotations of folk tunes/hymns (Western)
- Landscapes → wide open spaces, open intervals
Appalachian Spring
30
Martha Graham
- choreographed Appalachian Spring
| - modernist dancer interested in folk music/leftist ideas
31
Anton Webern
- Theories about 12-tone music
- Expressivity and stripping to bare essentials
Symphony, Op. 21
