Music Appreciation Flashcards Final Exam

Front 1

who was the one expressionist painter we care about in music appreciation and what did he do?

Back 1

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner a german expressionist painter painted Street, Berlin (1913) using deliberate distortion and violent colors to communicate the tension and anguish of the human psyche.

Hint 1

Name of a german city is the painting and the expressionists middle name is the same as Beethoven's first name.

Front 2

who are the Expressionist composers

Back 2

Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern.

Front 3

what were composers of The 20th century attracted to?

Back 3

Unconventional rhythms, sounds, and melodic patterns that deviated from the common practice of western music.

Front 4

Bela Bartok

Back 4

"studies of folk music in the countryside are as necessary to me as fresh air is to other people" Imagination was fired by Hungarian, Bulgarian and Romanian Folk songs. " peasant music provided the ideal starting point for a musical Renaissance."

Front 5

Tone Color

Back 5

During the 20th century tone color became a more important element of music than it ever had before. It often had a major role, creating variety, continuity and mood. In webern's orchestral piece op. No.3 (1913) for example the use of eerie bell-like sounds at the beginning and end is vital to the form. If this composition in tone color were altered it would lose alot. An orchestral work from an earlier period like Beethoven's fifth Symphony suffers less in a piano arrangement.

Front 6

Glissando

Back 6

a rapid slide up it down a scale.

Front 7

Rhythm

Back 7

irregularity and unpredictability was emphasized. Rapidly changing meters were used. syncopations or accents on a weak beat were heard against a pervasive meter. it could change with every bar of music.

Front 8

what is poly rhythm?

Back 8

music with two or more contrasting, independent rhythms at the same time. I.E. one instrument may be playing in duple meter while another plays in triple meter.

Front 9

What is an ostinato?

Back 9

a motive or phrase that is repeated persistantly at the same pitch throughout a section. The ostinato may occur in the melody or accompanyment.

Front 10

Who was the Impressionist Musician?

Back 10

Claude Debussy (1830-1903)

Front 11

Who was the French Impressionist Painter and what piece did he paint?

Back 11

Claude Monet (1840-1926)
Impression: Sunrise

Front 12

What are Symbolists?

Back 12

writers who rebelled against the conventions of French Poetry.

Front 13

Which Symbolist Writer was Claude Debussy closest to and what did they write?

Back 13

Mallarme " L'Apres-midi d'un faune ( The afternoon of the faun) it inspired Debussy's most famous orchestral work.

Front 14

Debussy's Music

Back 14

Impressionist composer who was a master at evokinh a fleeting mood and misty atmosphere. Stress on tone color and atmosphere and fluiditt are characteristics of impressionism in music.

Front 15

What is Neoclassicism? who represents it?

Back 15

Igor Stravinsky reflected neoclassicism. Neoclassicism is marked by emotional restraint, balance, and clarity. neoclassical compositions use musical forms and stylistic features of earlier periods, particularly of the 18th century. Stravinsky said " I attempted to build a new music on eighteenth-century classicism." Neoclassical music is not merely a revival of old forns and styles it uses earlier techniques to organize twentieth century harmoniesand rhythms. " Back to Bach" was the slogan of this movement which reacted against romanticism and impressionism.

Front 16

Igore Stravinsky

Back 16

Died when he was 88. (1882-1971) was a legendary figure and regarded as the world's greatest composer. his once revolutionary works were modern classics. A restless innovator who influenced three generations of composers and inspired many painters writers and choreographers. Picasso and T.S. Eliot were his friends. President John F. Kennedy honored him at a white house dinner in his eightieth year. Stravinsky was born in a small town near st. Petersburg, Russia grew up in a musical atmosphere. His parents wanted him to study law at University of St. Petersburg. At 21 he became a private student of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. His life changed in 1909 when the great impresario Sergei Dighilev heard his music at a concert in St. Petersburg. the man was a director at the Russian Ballet.

Front 17

Stracinsky's third Ballet

Back 17

The Rite of Spring. It was performed in Paris in 1913 and caused a legendary riot. Spectators hissed and booed at the music's " primitive" evocation of pagen fertility rites, its harshly insistent dissonance, its percussiveness and its pounding rhythms. One member of the audience reported that someone began to beat rhythmically on top of my head with his fists. My emotion was so great that I didn't feel the blows." Soon after it was recognized as a masterpiece. It influenced composers the world over.

Front 18

What is Expressionism?

Back 18

Centered in Germany and Austria from 1905 to 1925 Expressionist painters writers and composers explored inner feelings rather than depicting outward appearances. They used deliberate distortion to assault and shock their audience, to communicate tensions and anguish of the human psyche.

Front 19

The Scream

Back 19

1893 painted by Norwegian expressionist Edvard Munch. Expressionist painters reacted against French Impressionism.They often used jarring colors and grotesquely distorted shapes to explore the subconscious.

Front 20

Arnold Schoenberg

Back 20

born in Vienna, self-taught musician. " began studying the violin at age 8 and almost immediately started composing. He acquired his profound musical knowledge by studying scores playing in ameture chamber groups, and by going to concerts. His first musical hero was Brahms who was then considered the greatest living german composer.He was equally addicted to Wagner. seeing wagners operas 20-30 times. when he was 16 his father died and he worked as a bank clerk until he was 21 and once he lost his job he devoted himself to music.

Front 21

The Nazis Seized Power 1933

Back 21

Schoenberg was dismissed from the faculty of the Prussian academy of arts in Berlin Germany. He converted back to Judaism from Protestanism. he then went to Los Angeles and joined the faculty of UCLA and was forced to retire at 70 with a pension of less than 40 dollars per month. He developed the 12 tone system which allowed for a new way of organizing pitch in a composition. prior that in 1908 he was writing Atonal music. Atonal means the absense of key. His 3 languages of his life are English German and Hebrew.

Front 22

Alan Berg

Back 22

Conservative student of Schoenberg. (1885-1935) a student of Schoenberg, wrote music that is a unique synthesis of traditional and twentieth century elements. He combines romantic sounds and time honored forms with the techniques of free atonality and the twelve tone system. He was born in Vienna and audiences were attracted by his lyrical warmth, vivid tone colors, and theatrical qualities of Bergs compositions. he studied privately with Schoenberg at 19 and continued from 1904 to 1911. After serving in the austrian army during WWI he became a codirector with Schoenberg of the society for Private Musical Performances in Vienna. The goal which lasted from 1918 to 1921 was to give artists and music lovers a real and exact knowledge of modern music. through repeated and well rehearsed performances.

Front 23

Anton Webern

Back 23

The liberal student of Schoenberg. Neglected during his lifetime ( 1883-1945) he did not live to see his music influence composers throughout the world during the 1950s and 1960s. With the rise of Nazism in Austria in 1934, Webern's orchestra and chorus which has been sponsored by the Social Democratic Party were dissolved. In 1938, when Nazi Germany annexed Austria, Webern lost his job with the government radio and his music was banned. He had to earn a living by Proofreading for his Viennese publisher. Toward the end of WWII he took refuge from the bombing of Vienna in a small Austrian Town of Mittersill. His daughter lived there with her husband and 3 children. Webern died when an American soldier bumped into him while he was out for a cigar smoke and the soldier thought he was under attack and fired 3 shots. Poetic Lyricism pervades Webern's Music which is amazingly original in its brevity, quietness, and concentration. Webern Distills a musical universe into miniatures lasting only 2-3 minutes. Every single tone is of critical importance, so that the listener experiences time with a new intensity. Schoenberg aptly observed that Webern " expressed a novel in a single gesture, a joy in a breath."

Front 24

Bela Bartok (1881-1945)

Back 24

his music infused with the spirit of east european folk song, and he was born in the Hungarian town of Nagyszentmiklos. When Bartok was seven his father died. his mother was forced to move with her son from town to town while she earned a living as a school teacher. she gave him his first lessons on a piano. The piano played an important role in his career. for twenty seven years he taught piano at his alma mater the Budapest Academy of Music, and gave recitals throughout Europe. During the early 1900s Bartok was influenced by the Nationalist movement that swept Hungary. He came to love the music of hungarian peasants and spent most of his free time in tiny villages recording folk songs on a cylinder phonograph. Bartok became a leading authority on the peasant music of the Magyars, Romanians, Slovaks, and the Turks and the Arabs of north Africa. soon his own music was effected by the folk music he knew so well. Though recognized abroad as an important composer early on it wasn't until 1917 when his ballet the wooden prince that he was accepted in his homeland. spent his last 5 years in the USA. In the hospital he wrote his most famous work Concerto for Orchestra in a hospital despite boycotts of his work by the Nazis.

Front 25

Minimalist Music

Back 25

steady pulse, clear tonality, insistent repitition of short melodic patterns. creates a hypnotic effect through constant dynamic level, texture and harmony overtime. Philip Glass and John Adams were examples. Their influences were primarily non western and come from Indian African and Balinese music.

Front 26

Musical Quotation

Back 26

The act of inserting another composers work into your own.

Front 27

electronic music

Back 27

includes rock, chance music, and serial compositions.

Front 28

Call and response

Back 28

occurs when a voice is answered by an instrument or when an instrument or group of instruments are answered by another. Derived from African American church services.

Front 29

Ragtime music

Back 29

a style of piano music that flourished from 1890s to about 1915. aka saloon music.

Front 30

Blues

Back 30

bent notes also called blue notes give it its name.

Front 31

Louis Armstrong

Back 31

Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong. born in a poor black section of New Orleans. Quoted name means Satchel mouth. spent a year in jail for firing a gun in the air during new years. learned to play the trumpet in jail and even learned techniques classical trumpeters never knew one could use. He popularized scat singing which was nonsense words intended to imitate an instrument.

Front 32

swing

Back 32

a style of Jazz that was mainly played by big bands. Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald were examples of it as was Frank Sinatra. It was not improv so music was in front of them.

Front 33

bebop

Back 33

improv jazz rebellion against swing music and commercialism. Charlie Parker a saxophonist and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and pianist Thelonious Monk came to participate in jam sessions at Mintons playhouse.

Front 34

Fusion Music

Back 34

Jazz Rock or fusion is a new style combining jazz improvisatory approach with rock rhythms and tone colors. It's popularity was unmatched by any other jazz style since the swing of 1930s and 40s.

Front 35

Musical Periods

Back 35

Middle ages (450-1450)
Renaissance (1450-1600)
Baroque (1600-1750)
Classical (1750-1820)
Romantic (1820-1900)
Contemporary (1900- Present day)

Front 36

Gregorian Chant

Back 36

consisted of Latin Texts sung without accompanyment. No women were allowed to sing it. Conveys a calm otherworldly quality. It represents the voice of the church rather than an individual. It has no meter, an uncertain rhythms. Named after Pope Gregory I.