Music History 3 Mid-Term

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Wagner

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1830, German, Romantic era, Tristan und Isolde, leitmotiv, complex chromatic chords, weakens tonic, dissonance, delayed resolution

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Gesamtkunstwerk

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Wagner, dramatic work in which poetry, scenic design, staging, action and music all work together toward one artistic expression. (total artwork)

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music drama

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19th century genre created by Wagner in which drama and music become organically connected to express a kind of absolute oneness.

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leitmotif

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German: leading motive. a motive, theme, or musical idea associated with a person, thing, mood or idea which returns in original or altered form throughout.

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endless melody

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A term introduced by Richard Wagner to describe an uninterrupted melodic flow unhampered by sectional cadences. Particularly characteristic is the flow of one leitmotiv into another with a free interchange of voices and instrumental parts.

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the new german school

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took beethoven as their model: Wagner, Liszt, Berlioz. Believed music could be linked to the other arts. coined by editor Franz Brendel in 1859. programs!

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program music

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instrumental music that tells a story or follows a narrative or other sequence of events, often spelled out in an accompanying text called a program. debussy, ives, schostakovich, the new german school, strauss, mahler

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symphonic poem

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coined by Liszt, one movement work of program music for orcehstra that conveys a poetic idea, story, scene or succession of moods by presenting themes are are repeated, varied, and transformed. Strauss, Schoenberg, Liszt. Form is molded to the story. Following from Wagner's dissonant language

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thematic transformation

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a method devised by Liszt to provide unity, variety, and a narrative-like logic to a composition by transforming the thematic material into new themes or other elements, in order to reflect the diverse moods needed to portray a programmatic subject.

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decadence

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opulent, erotic approach to a subject

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Gustave Moreau

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french symbolist painter, precursor to movement in art and music, mythological and biblical figures, decadence

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impressionism

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late 19th century term derived from art, used for music that evokes moods and visual imagery through colorful harmony and instrumental timbre. not being obvious, but suggesting

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Claude Monet

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impressionist painter. sought to capture the impressions they gave to the artist, detached observation, no emotional engagement.

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whole-tone scale

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a scale consisting of only whole steps

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parallel chords

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auxiliary chord derived from one of the primary triads and sharing its function

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symbolism

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late 19th century movement, detached observation, influenced Debussy, art should capture absolute truths through indirect methods, wanted to evoke states of mind.

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Baudelaire's Theory of Correspondences

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examine the connection and similarities between the physical and spiritual realms. symbols are the guardians of ancient correspondences

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Monsieur Croche

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Debussy's pseudonymn under which he wrote music criticisms

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Second Viennese School

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Berg, Webern and Schoenberg

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sprechstimme

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(speaking voice) approximating written pitches in gliding tones of speech while following the notated rhythm exactly

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atonal

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music that avoids establishing a central pitch or tonal center

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expressionism

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early 20th century term derived from art, music avoids all traditional forms of beauty in order to express deep personal feelings through exaggerated gestures, angular melodies and extreme dissonance. unconscious, emphasis on darker side, distortion, nocturnal (moon).

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Die Brucke

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(the bridge) 1905-1913. intense colors, sexually charged. group of german expressionists artists. interested in primitivist art,extreme emotion through non-natural colors, crude drawing technique

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Der blaue reiter

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(the blue rider) 1911-1914. Schoenberg, Kandinsky connection between visual arts and music. Spontaneous, intuitive, intense colors. wrote articles for almanac. group of artists from Germany and Russia centering around Kandinsky. express spiritual truths through their art. believed in the promotion of modern art; the spiritual and symbolic associations of colour; and a spontaneous approach to painting. primitivism, as well as contemporary art. they moved towards abstraction.

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Kandinsky

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russian painter, first to do abstract works

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serial music

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music that uses the twelve tone method, used especially for music that extends the same general approach to series in parameters other than pitch. doducaphonic.

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tone row

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refers to a non-repetitive ordering of a set of pitch-classes, typically of the twelve notes in musical set theory of the chromatic scale. can be prime, retrograde, inversion, retrograde inversion. each can be transposed 11 times, 48 possible forms

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Klangfarbenmelodie

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(tone color melody) term coined by Schoenberg to describe a succession of tone colors that is perceived as analogous to the changing pitches in a melody.

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pointillistic

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associated with Webern. Texture is stripped to bare essentials, may feature only one-four notes at once or in the same instrument in succession. Different musical notes are made in seclusion, rather than in a linear sequence

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primitivism

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Stravinsky, deliberate representation of the elemental, crude and uncultured, cast aside the sophistication and stylishness of modern life and trained artistry.

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Diaghilev

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Russian art critic, ballet impresario, commissioned pieces from Stravinsky for the Ballets Russes.

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Ballet Russes

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ballet from russia that performed in paris, best ballet company of the 20th century. With Stravinsky: The Firebird, Petrushka, Rite of Spring (the last was choreographed by Najinski)

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octatonic scale

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a scale that alternates whole and half steps

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petrushka chord

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combines F# and C major triads, both part of the same octatonic scale, a tritone apart

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bi or polytonal

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the simultaneous use of two or more keys, each in a different layer of the music

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polymeters

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ues of two time signatures simultaneously

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twelve bar blues

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12 measures in between repeat signs in 4 measure segments. I-IV-I-V-IV-I. Text is AAB

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blue notes

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slight drop or slide in pitch on the third, fifth or seventh degree of a major scale

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32 bar form

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divided into 4 eight bar phrases (AABA), B has different changes, 2 chord changes per measure, popular with broadway composers

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contrafact

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using old changes with a new melody line

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neoclassicism

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trend in music from the 1910s to the 1950s in which composers revived, imitated or evoked the styles, genres and forms of pre-romantic music, especially those of the 18th century

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arch form

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sectional structure for a piece of music based on repetition, in reverse order, of all or most musical sections such that the overall form is symmetric, most often around a central movement. The sections need not be repeated verbatim but must at least share thematic material. (Bartok)

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night music

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used mostly in slow movements of multi-movement ensemble or orchestra compositions in his mature period. It is characterized by "eerie dissonances providing a backdrop to sounds of nature and lonely melodies (Bartok)

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Les Six

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coined in 1920, Poulenc, Milhaud, Honneger, Taillefarre, Auric, Durrey. music is often seen as a reaction against the musical style of Richard Wagner and impressionist music

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new objectivity

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term coined in the 1920s to descibe a kind of new realism in music, in reaction to the emotional intensity of the late romantics and expressionism of Schoenberg and Berg.

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gebrauchsmusik

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(music for use) term from the 1920s to describe music that was socially relevant and useful, especially music for amateurs or children to play. (Hindemith)

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socialist realism

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a doctrine of the soviet union begun in the 1930s, in which all the arts were required to use a realistic approach that portrayed socialism in a positive light. in music this meant use of simple, accessible language, centered on melody and patriotic subject matter

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union of soviet composers

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1933 combo (Stalin) of Assoc. for Contemporary Musicians and Russian of assoc. of Proktarian Musicians.

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D Es S H

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assertion of individuality by Schostakovich. 10th symphony, third movement, motive drawn from the german spelling of his name (D, E flat, C, B). Used motives in other string quartets later

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emancipation of dissonance

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Schoenberg: all 12 tones used equally

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Stravinsky's Russian Ballet period

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accented chords, unpredictable pattern, blocks of sound juxtaposed, motives are self-contained within a passage, layers ideas on top of each other, rapid change of meter

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neotonality

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keeps tonal sense without using traditional harmonic motions

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harmonic fluctuation

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Hindemith: theory of tonality. consonance-dissonance-consonance. always control the amount of dissonance, all on a continuum.

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formalists

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Russia: wrote music for its own sake. Stalin not a fan.