Music History & Lit Final Terms

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Lieder

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(song) a German art song or popular song

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nocturne

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a type of piano character piece appearing in the nineteenth century distinguished by a dreamy mood, a lyric melody in the right hand, and widely-spaced, arpeggiated chords in the left hand

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Bayreuth

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Bavarian village where Wagner had a theater built for the performance of his operas

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absolute music

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music with no explicit programmatic content; seen w/ Brahms

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retrograde

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reverse

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impressionism

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a French painting style of 19th century; used in music to designate the style of Claude Debussy and others composing evocative music partially freed from strict beat and normative harmonic progressions

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New German School

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a group of musicians gathering around Franz Liszt in Weimar and supporting the artistic outlook of Liszt and Richard Wagner

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kuchka

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Rimsky-Korsakov, Cui, Borodin, Mussorgsky, Balakirev; wanted a distinct Russian style in their music; reacting against pro-Western musicians like Rubinstein; amateurs with little systematic musical education

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Rite of Spring

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Stravinsky ballet - badly received; used very large orchestra with unique instruments which played to limits of their ranges and played in some irregular ways; choreographed by Nijinsky

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Le tombeau de Couperin

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Ravel piano suite - tribute to Couperin - revived and parodied the forms and styles of the past, updating them with modern harmony.

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chance music

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twentieth-century music in which compositional decisions are made by chance procedures

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prepared piano

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a piano whose sound is modified by the introduction of mutes and other objects between strings

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minimalism

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a musical style originating in the United States in the 1960s in which works are created by repetition and gradual change enacted upon a minimum of basic materials

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strophic form

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a song form in which the music composed for the initial stanza of text is repeated for each additional stanza

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Goethe

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most celebrated German writer of his time - Schubert set many of his poems

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through-composed form

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containing new music for every stanza of text, as opposed to strophic form in which the music is repeated for each successive stanza

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grand opera

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a style of opera originating around 1830 in France characterized by lavish use of chorus and ballet and elaborate spectacle

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Meyerbeer

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German composer; most prominently composed in grand opera style

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Liszt

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piano virtuoso and composer; first focused on piano compositions then moved on to orchestral, especially programmatic music

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double escapement action

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a piano action in which a hammer falls back only halfway after striking a string, allowing the hammer to restrike more quickly

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Berlioz

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French orchestral & choral composer; programmatic symphonies

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idée fixe

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[obsession]; term used by Hector Berlioz to describe a recurrent melody in his Symphonie fantastique; the idée fixe melody symbolizes the beloved in the work's program

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nocturne

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a type of piano character piece appearing in the nineteenth century distinguished by a dreamy mood, a lyric melody in the right hand, and widely-spaced, arpeggiated chords in the left hand

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rubato

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flexible tempo; a relaxation of strict time

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concert overture

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an orchestral piece in one movement, usually programmatic in content, and intended for concert purposes

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cyclicism

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the recurrence of melodic ideas (often transformed) throughout a multimovement or multisectional composition

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programmatic symphony

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a multimovement symphony that is explicitly programmatic

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etude

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a study; a work intended to build a player's technique and often also having artistic value

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complete works

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a musical edition containing the complete oeuvre of a composer

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Bach revival

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a movement originating in Germany in the early nineteenth century by which Bach's entire compositional oeuvre was published and performed

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musical criticism

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writings about newly published music; Berlioz and Schumann both prominent critics

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Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik

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[New Journal for Music]; Schumann edited and wrote

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Clara Wieck Schumann

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Robert Schumann's wife, piano virtuoso, and composer

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melodrama

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a musical genre in which spoken text is accompanied by, or alternates with, instrumental music

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Wagner

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German opera composer, balanced text, music, and staging; featured leitmotives in the orchestral parts

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Bayreuth

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Bavarian village where Wagner had a theater built for the performance of his operas

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Gesamtkunstwerk

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[total work of art]; a term used by Richard Wagner to designate a goal for art in which its various branches are merged into a integrated and dramatic whole

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leitmotive

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a musical motive, normally occurring in the orchestral part of an opera, which symbolizes a character or dramatic entity; associated primarily with the operas of Richard Wagner, and also used by later composers

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music drama

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a term associated with the operas of Richard Wagner, who rejected the genre term "opera" for his mature works; Wagner preferred the word "drama"-sometimes "music drama"-for his operas to stress their heightened literary value; but in his essay "On the Nam

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Risorgimento

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[resurgence]; the movement toward Italian political and social unification that began in 1814 and culminated in 1861 when much of Italy was brought together as a single nation under King Victor Emmanuel II

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cavatina

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in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Italian opera, an entrance aria; in German opera a simple aria in a slow or moderate tempo

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Rossini crescendo

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a characteristic feature in operas by Gioachino Rossini in which a long crescendo is accompanied by ever shorter phrases, a thickening of orchestration, and quicker harmonic motions

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nationalism

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in general, the love for or allegiance to a region of birth and its people, culture, and language; in music, nationalism is often expressed by the quotation of folk songs and dances or the use of folk stories

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symphonic poem

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a one-movement programmatic orchestral work; roughly synonymous with tone poem

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recital

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a concert given by a single performer or a small number of musicians

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Gypsy scale

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a scale used by Gypsy musicians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries containing two augmented seconds (such as C D E F G A B C)

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New German School

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a group of musicians gathering around Franz Liszt in Weimar and supporting the artistic outlook of Liszt and Richard Wagner

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thematic transformation

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drawing the work's themes out of a common melodic prototype from the beginning; it's character is changed at each reappearance

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Lisztomania

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Heinrich Heine's term for the emotional effect that Liszt had on his audiences