pieces Flashcards
(28 cards)
1
Q
Nuages
A
Debussy, modernist, impressionist
- timbre interacts w/ motive, scale type to create musical image
- Piece begins w/ an oscillating pattern of 5ths/3rds → contains impression of mvmt but no harmonic direction → analogy for slowly drifting clouds.
- Took a theme and varied it (like Haydn, Beethoven, Wagner) → “leitmotify”
- Suite of symphonic poems, had program
- Harmonic/rhythmic ambiguity, oct/pentatonicism, tritone
- English horn plays OCT scales
- some CPE ideals: contrapuntal
2
Q
West End Blues
A
- King Oliver, Louis Armstrong
- Chicago jazz → early recording tech
- 12-bar blues song form
- scatting
3
Q
Le tombeau de Couperin, “Menuet”
A
- Ravel, NC w/ modernist elements
- Tombeau, menuet, and couperin
- Unexpected chords/key changes → modernist
- Chromaticism, parallel chords
- Key center
4
Q
Salome
A
- Strauss, modernist
- biblical story
- leitmotifs
- crazy dissonances
- C#
5
Q
Embryons Desseches
A
- Satie, modernist
- satire of Romantic piano music (Beethoven/Haydn/Wagner)
- kind of programmatic
6
Q
Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis
A
- Ralph Vaughn Williams
- English musical renaissance → favored 3rds/6ths
- Written in Phrygian mode
- introduces fragments of tune, states once, develops motives from it
7
Q
Pierrot Lunaire
A
- Schoenberg, expressionist
- Character from commedia dell’arte (sad clown)
- Sprechstimme, non rep (diff instruments every mvmt), dev variation, chromatic sat
- traditional elements (forms) → baroque suite (passacaglia, but diff), repeating bass line
8
Q
Piano Suite, op. 25
A
- Schoenberg, 1925
- 1st 12 tone piece
- still has prelude/minuet so somewhat traditional
9
Q
Wozzeck
A
- Berg, modernist/expressionist
- Plot with strong socialist perspective
- Atonal (not 12 tone), sprechstimme, chromatic sat
- leitmotifs, older/popular/folk borrowings
- Each scene takes on new invention (i.e. motive developed throughout, B → triads float around it)
10
Q
Symphony, Op. 21
A
- Webern
- klangfarbenmelodie (tone-color melody)
- double canon (2 simultaneous themes) w/ retrograde motion
11
Q
Rite of Spring
A
- Stravinsky, 1913
- Russian, riots over the piece
- “that chord” → dissonance
- Meter, timbres, juxtaposed blocks of sound, borrowed folk tunes
12
Q
Symphony of Psalms
A
- Stravinsky, neoclassical
- 3 mvmts, each sets a Latin psalm (orch + chorus)
- Classic Stravinsky methods → disruptions in rhythms, juxtaposed blocks of sound, orchestration
- Neoclassical:
- Neotonal in 1st mvmt (tonal center in Em but G is prominent, battle between E and G for tonal center of piece) - No violins/violas to make the piece less romantic
- Form, briefly: A B A” C A” B’
13
Q
Mikrokosmos
A
- Bartok, radical modernist w/ NC elements
- Primer, didactic (introducing to modernist sound world instead of CPE)
- Neoclassical, modernist, and traditional dimensions
- Neoclassical:
- modeled on Bach’s style (2 part invention w/ 2 melodic lines, 1 imitating other), both lines inverted
- Contrasting legato/staccato
- Neotonal (moving tonal centers)
- Modernist → chromaticism
- Traditional → modeled on Hungarian folk tune
14
Q
Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celeste
A
Bartok
- Palindrome (i.e. hannah) → xylophone part same @ end and beginning, symmetry in all 4 mvmts (esp. timpany)
- Arch form, tonal scheme of whole piece
- A little cyclic, fugue in 1st mvmt
(References to past → forms like rondo and fugue) - Folk influence
- Neotonal (F#-C) → tritone, splits 8ve in ½
- Irregular rhythms/non functional harmony
15
Q
General William Booth Enters into Heaven
A
- Ives, modernist
- Use of collage, cumulative form
- Use of imitation (piano → bass drum)
(Booth used to lead parades around NYC w/ bass drum, voice also sings in march style) - Use of rhythms and performing styles from Protestant hymns, vaudeville, ragtime, minstrel songs
16
Q
I Got Rhythm
A
Gershwin
- Written for musical, Girl Crazy
Standard TPA form (32 bar), “rhythm”/chord changes → many jazz standards use
17
Q
Backwater Blues
A
Bessie Smith
- Classic blues, music based on traditional blues practice
- created in recording studio for urban audiences
18
Q
Crossroad
A
Robert Johnson
- Delta blues (from Mississippi delta)
- Less adherent to form than classic blues → breaking rules for purpose of expression
19
Q
Cotton Tail
A
Duke Ellington
- Rhythm changes/contrafact: harmonic progression borrowed from Gershwin’s I Got Rhythm
- Swing rhythms, syncopation, 32 bar song form
- Series of solos over orchestrated accompaniments, then composed group solo of sax section
- Ben Webster’s tenor sax solo → imitation, sequences
20
Q
La creation du monde
A
Darius Milhaud, NC elements
- Ballet with jazz music
- Neoclassical elements (fugue)
- African influence (practices, dance)
- Strings are soloists
- Jazz band → piano/sax subs for viola
- Fugue w/ blues scales/jazz rhythms
- Heterophonic texture resembles New Orleans style jazz
21
Q
The Three Penny Opera
A
Kurt Weil
- Surreal parody of pop culture → John Gay’s Beggar Opera
- Music very folk based → strophic, no refrain
- New objectivity
22
Q
Symphony no. 5, mvmt 2
A
Shostakovich, slightly modernist
- Mostly tonal, more traditional, less modernist than other music at that time
- 4 mvmt symphony w/ relatively standard form/instrumentation
- Scherzo-trio-scherzo (standard dance-based scherzo)
- Mahlerian style → big brassy scherzo resembling German dance, dramatic contrasts btwn large/loud groups + smaller solo sections
- Ballet sounding and march like (Tchaikovsky)
- Still had modern elements → abrupt key changes (Modernist composer adhering to restrictions)
23
Q
Bachianas Brasileiras no. 5, Aria (Cantilena)
A
Villa-Lobos, NC w/ modernist elements
- 9 Baroque dance suites w/ several mvmts all adopting Baroque-era form
- Fusion of traditional Brazilian folk and pop music, w/ diff Bach styles (counterpoint) – BACHianas
- Aimed to establish Brazilian style (nationalism)
- Bach influence (da capo aria, descending bass line in celli → reminiscent of passacaglia)
- Brazilian folk influence (initial vocal ease gives impression of improv, plucking cello/bass line mimics Bralizian guitar technique)
- Modernist elements:
- instrumentation → unusual 7 cellos + 1 voice
- Mostly tonal, but chromatic descending parallel chords in B section
24
Q
Hyperprism
A
Varese
- Ultra Modernism, very atonal (avoided functional harmony)
- “sound masses” → “dance in sound”, suggest motion
- Sound masses move through instruments or multiple around each other
- A lot of chromaticism
- Episodic structure → 3 separate sections, each one has 3 subsections
- Percussion important → diff combos to imply moving sound masses, unique instruments/techniques/sounds
- Use of brass + winds → don’t play themes, rarely melodies, similar to percussion (produces sounds that suggest moving masses)
- Influence → Stravinsky (block structure, timbre), Debussy (timbre), Schoenberg (atonality, chromaticism)
25
The Banshee
- Cowell, ultra-modernist
| - extended technique, plucking piano strings
26
String Quartet
- Ruth, ultra-modernist
- Takes on regular form (fast, scherzo, slow, fast) → still grounded in Western classical tradition
- Each mvmt is a set of modernist devices
* 4th most systemic (palindrome, second ½ transposed up a ½ step, begins how it ends) → Bartok liked palindromes
- 2 contrapuntal lines → violin + other 3 instruments
- Crawford’s 10 note series → uses process of rotation (takes 1st note and keeps moving to end)
* Reminiscent of 12 tone composers
27
Afro-American Symphony, mvmt 1
William Grant Still, Americanist
- First symphony by black composer premiered by major U.S. orch
- 4 mvmt work, sonata form
* 1st/2nd themes reversed in recap → looks more like arch form
- 12 bar blues, call and response, syncopation, jazz harmonies, timbre
- Specific lowered pitches sound like blue notes
- Sounds like film music
- Orchestration sounds like jazz band → muted trumpets/trombones combined, vibraphone
28
Appalachian Spring
Copland, modernist themes
- Adapted themes from modern Appalachian American life w/ Modernist themes such as dissonance, counterpoint, motivic unity, and juxtaposed blocks of sound
- Famous quote of hymn “A Simple Gift”
- Open intervals
