20Th Century Terms – Flashcards

Also called chance music, is a style of 20th-century music in which chance or indeterminate elements are left for the performer to realize. First used by Ives, who left performers to find their own solution for unrealizable notations it was then followed Cowell from the 1930s whose works such as the String Quartet no.3 'Mosaic' (1934), which allows the players to assemble the music from fragments provided. Cowell used other 'elastic' (his own word) notations to introduce chance or choice into the performance, occasionally instructing the performers to improvise a certain number of bars or ad libitum. There are mainly three types of aleatory techniques: (1)The use of random procedures in the generation of fixed compositions. In the Music of Changes (1951), Cage tossed coins to choose from charts of pitches, durations, intensities and other sound aspects, deriving his chance operations from the 'I Ching', the Chinese book of changes. 2: The allowance of choice to the performer(s) among formal options stipulated by the composer; Examples of this technique are Stockhausen's Klavierstück XI, in which the player is instructed to pick from the alternatives on the spur of the moment. 3: Methods of notation such as Indeterminate notation which reduce the composer's control over the sounds in a composition. Stockhausen's Zeitmasse (1955-6), whose tempos depend on the physical capacities of the five wind players: the duration of a single breath, or the fastest speed possible. The most systematic use of newly invented symbolic notations is to be found in Stockhausen's 'process' compositions, which specify how sounds are to be changed or imitated rather than what they are to be. The first of these compositions was Plus-Minus (1963), whose title indicates the two principal signs that Stockhausen introduced for these purposes: the plus sign means that a sound is to be increased in some 'parameter' with respect to some preceding sound (i.e. it may be louder, higher in pitch, longer, more subdivided etc.), and the minus sign has the reverse significance.

The antonym of tonality; atonal music (the term 'post-tonal' is preferred by some theorists) is that which does not adhere to any system of key or mode. There is no such contextual definition with reference to triads, diatonic scales or keys, but there may be hierarchical distinctions among pitches. Atonality was considered by many scholars as an inevitable fate due to fact that chromaticism has stretched the boundaries of tonality so far by composers such as Wagner and Strauss that tonality started to make no sense. Other group of composers outside of the Austro-German heritage such as Liszt, Bartók, Korsakov and Stravinsky contributed to the arrival of atonality by making their music based on Folkloric elements that relied on modes, octactonic and whole tone scales that also did not relied on functional harmony. It is also a term that may be used to describe music that does not always follow conventional rules of harmony such as Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra or to describe post-tonal and pre-12-note music such as Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire. Three theories of organizational structures in atonal music emerged and became influential in musicians' perceptions and understanding: (1) normative structures based on symmetry, from George Perle; (2) pitch class set theory, from Allen Forte; and (3) transformational networks, from David Lewin. The last two are influenced by the premises of twelve-note theory given by Schoenberg and later expanded on by Babbitt.

A Russian Ballet company founded in Paris in 1909 by the Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev. In 1909 he was invited to present a season of Russian opera and ballet in Paris, for which he engaged the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky and choreographer Michel Fokine. From this season the sensational Ballets Russes developed, transforming the ballet world. The company performed in many different countries between 1909 and 1929 and is regarded as the greatest ballet company of the 20th century. The Ballet commissioned music of Rimsky-Korsakov, Debussy, Stravinsky and designs of Picasso and Matisse. The company was dissolved after Diaghilev's death in 1929 .

An American folksong that foreshadowed the Jazz and other popular music of the 20th century. In origin, 'the blues' refers to a state of melancholy or depression; it came during the second half of the 19th century to be seen by black Americans as their characteristic emotion, and was later applied to the kind of singing that expressed it. The archetypal 'down home' or country blues is an improvised solo song, with the (male) singer accompanying himself on guitar or banjo. The verbal form is typically a three-line stanza, the first line of which is immediately repeated while the singer extemporizes the third, rhyming line, and this is supported by a conventional 12-bar harmonic scheme || I- IV- I-V-IV-I:|| Some of the earliest downhome blues singers to be recorded were Charley Patton (1929-34), the founder of a Mississippi blues tradition, and the Texan Blind Lemon Jefferson (from 1926) and Lightnin' Hopkins. Beginning in about 1910 a popularizing type of blues had been pioneered by the Memphis bandleader W. C. Handy and was diffused by Mamie Smith (Crazy Blues, 1920) and other female singers, who performed on stage with the accompaniment of a New Orleans-style jazz band. This so-called 'classic' blues was immensely popular throughout the 1920s, and did much to sell what were then called 'race' records, aimed at the black audience. Classic blues exploited other musical resources drawn from the ragtime early jazz traditions; the 12-bar, three-line song form was often loosened or abandoned, and extended instrumental solos were common. The foremost singer in this style was Bessie Smith. During the Depression of the 1930s Big Bill Broonzy helped make Chicago the centre of an approach to blues performance that drew on qualities of both the downhome and classic traditions. After World War II, as the music of black Americans became more appreciated by white audiences, an important school of Chicago blues arose, whose most notable exponents were Muddy Waters and B. B. King.

An artistic movement concerned with the ruthless expression of disturbing or distasteful emotions, often with a stylistic violence that may involve pushing ideas to their extremes or treating the subject matter with incisive parody. It is associated with the 'Blaue Reiter' group of painters, such as Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, who worked in Munich in the years before World War I. It also extended to the poetry of Georg Trakl and some of the music of Schoenberg and his pupils, particularly the atonal, non-serial works they composed from 1908 to c. 1920. Schoenberg took a close interest in the work of the 'Blaue Reiter' especially by Kandinsky's thinking. He published an article in the yearbook Der blaue Reiter (1912), which also included songs by him, Berg and Webern. Moreover, a work such as Schoenberg's Five Orchestral Pieces (1909) bears comparison with Expressionist painting in its lack of conventional logic, its emotional turbulence, and its bewildering variety of colors and shapes. Kandinsky's influence on Schoenberg's work is evident in practical terms in the case of Die glückliche Hand (1910-13; staged 1924), which follows the painter's requirements for 'stage composition' in music, words, and light. Following the Expressionist belief that the artist must be true to his vision in its wholeness, Schoenberg not only composed the text and music of Die glückliche Hand but also designed the costumes, the setting, and an elaborate lighting scheme. Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire (1912) is characteristic of Expressionist art in the violence of its gestures and in its deep psychological penetration, exposing feelings of longing, abandonment, and murderousness that border on insanity.

(German: "music for use" Utility music), also called utility music, music intended, by virtue of its simplicity of technique and style, primarily for performance by the talented amateur rather than the virtuoso. It is a modern reaction against the intellectual and technical complexities of much 19th- and 20th-century music, complexities that exalt the professional virtuoso and exclude the amateur from active participation. The purpose of Gebrauchsmusik, then, is to provide the nonprofessional musician with a composition suitable for impromptu, nonvirtuoso performance. In a sense, Gebrauchsmusik can be traced back to the simple keyboard and lute pieces of the Renaissance, as well as to the chamber music of the Baroque and Classical eras. The term itself is a child of the 20th century, however, and most Gebrauchsmusik represents a species of neoclassicism (the use of old genres, but with contemporary techniques). The leading exponent of the Gebrauchsmusik movement was Paul Hindemith, who probably coined the term but later disavowed it. Johan Sebastian Bach's church music was cited as the earliest example, and later practitioners included Kurt Weill.

The name given by Schoenberg and Berg to a polyphonic part in a passage of 12-note or other rigorously non-tonal music that is of primary importance; Nebenstimme, 'subsidiary part', is applied to a part of secondary importance. In performance, Hauptstimmen and Nebenstimmen are to be treated as important melodic lines and articulated more prominently than other, accompanimental parts. In Schoenberg's and Berg's scores they are indicated by bracket-like signs attached to the letters H and N. To these Berg added a sign attached to HR, for Hauptrhythmus, to indicate a prominent recurring rhythmic motif; similarly he used a sign attached to CH to mark off sections of the chorale melody used in the second movement of his Violin Concerto.

Known as the Book of Changes is one of the oldest of the Chinese classic texts. The standard text originated from the ancient text transmitted by Fei Zhi between 50 BC-10 AD of the Han Dynasty. This book heavily influenced the music of John Cage, who based on the teachings of this book, composed indeterminate music that utilized chance operations. An example if this is Cage's Music of Changes (1951) in which the performer tosses coins to choose from charts of pitches, durations, intensities and other sound aspects.

Term used in graphic art from 1874 to describe the work of Monet, Degas, and Whistler, whose paintings avoid sharp contours but convey an 'impression' of the scene painted by means of blurred outlines and minute small detail. It was applied by music by composers such as Debussy (e.g. La Mer) in a similar impressionistic manner, conveying the moods and emotions aroused by the subject rather than a detailed tone‐picture. Some of the technical features of musical impressionism included new chord combinations, often ambiguous as to tonality, chords of the 9th, 11th, and 13th being used instead of triads and chords of the 7th; appoggiatura used as part of the chord, with full chord included; parallel movement in a group of chords of triads, 7ths, and 9ths, etc.; whole‐tone chords; exotic scales; use of the modes; and extreme chromaticism.

refers to a musical technique that involves distributing a musical line or melody to several instruments, rather than assigning it to just one instrument, thereby adding color (timbre) and texture to the melodic line. The term was coined by Arnold Schoemberg and explained on his treatise Harmonielehre (1911), where he discusses the creation of "timbre-structures." Schoenberg and Anton Webern are particularly noted for their use of the technique, Schoenberg most notably in the third of his Five Pieces for Orchestra (Op. 16), and Webern in his Op. 10.

French Center for Electroacoustique music founded in 1970 had Pierre Boulez as his president and many others related to the field of contemporary and Electroacoustique Music. IRCAM is also involved in the development of MusicSynthesis Free Software besides of hosting music courses emphasizing the performance and composition of contemporary music. These classes give composers the skills to create the technology end of a piece for ensemble and electronics and how to make their "patch" more efficient and elegant using Max/MSP.

Trend between the 1920's-1950's in which composers sought to return to aesthetic precepts associated with the broadly defined concept of "classicism", namely order, balance, clarity, economy, and emotional restraint. Neoclassicism was a reaction against the unrestrained emotionalism and perceived formlessness of late romanticism and experimental ferment of the first two decades of the twentieth century. The neoclassical emphasized rhythm and on contrapuntal texture, an updated or expanded tonal harmony, and a concentration on absolute music as opposed to Romantic program music. In form and thematic technique, neoclassical music often drew inspiration from music of the baroque and classical periods. Prokofiev's Symphony No. 1 in D major (Op. 25), known as the Classical Symphony, was composed in 1917 and mimics the style of Haydn. This work is the pre-cursor to the neo-classical movement. The movement officially started in France with Stravinsky who effectively began the musical revolution with his Ballet Pulcinella (1920) followed by Bach-like Octet for Wind Instruments (1923) and Symphony of Psalms (1930). Another movement of neo-classicism started in Germany with Paul Hindemith's opera Mathis der Maler (Matthias the Painter) in 1935.

It is a succession of eight notes within the octave in which tones and semitones, or semitones and tones, alternate. The scale came into regular use during the 20th century, especially as a means of establishing an exotic atmosphere in Russian Romantic music, to denote Magical or Spiritual characters on his Operas. Rimsky-Korsakov's opera Kashchey the Immortal, (1902) is a great early example. Stravinsky also adopted the octatonic scale in his works Firebird, Petrushka, and Rite of Spring and so did Bartók (Mikrokosmos). Messiaen also used the octatonic scale and labeled it as his second mode of limited transposition. Octatonic scales are highly used in improvisation in Jazz and are sometimes referred to as the diminished scale.

is music using microtones—intervals of less than an equally spaced semitone. Microtonal music can also refer to music which uses intervals not found in the Western system of 12 equal intervals to the octave. Julian Carillo helped develop this idea in 1895 while experimenting on his violin. Around 1900, Carillo named this new technique sonido 13 (thirteenth sound) and wrote the first composition using this technique in 1922 called Preludio a Colón. Harry Partch was also another major composer who used this system during the 1920s and 1930s and created his own instruments to produce these scales.

It is a term, borrowed from the visual art movement of the same name, applied to a style of composition that originated in the USA in the 1960s. It was a reaction to Aleatory Music (leaded Cage) and total serialism (Stockhausen and Boulez). The pioneers were La Monte Young and Terry Riley, quickly followed by Steve Reich and Philip Glass. Stasis and repetition replaced the melodic line, tension and release, and climax of conventionally tonal music. Loops, phasing, stasis, and tonality were all prominent features, used differently by each composer. Young's Trio for Strings (1958), with its long-drawn-out chords and static harmony, is considered the first minimalist work. Steve Riley's In C (1964), for an unspecified number of instruments, is a collection of tonal fragments which each performer can repeat in any octave any number of times, emphasizing the collective nature of the group. Glass's early works Music in Fifths, (1969) use an additive-subtractive process causing the repeated melodic sequence to change gradually over time. Reich's Music for Pieces of Wood layered repeating ostinato rhythms. The influence of Reich and Glass was felt over a wide range of music, notably rock and popular dance music.

Monsieur Croche was pseudonym under which Debussy wrote much of his incisive and outspoken music criticism, which appeared in a range of journals and newspapers. He created this pseudonym while he was the editor of the Revue Blanche in 1901. He published a selection of articles as Monsieur Croche antidilettante.

Music quotation is a technique in which composers make use or "borrow" main themes or fragments of music from other authors and apply to their music. Composers such as Haydn, Beethoven and Brahms made use of this technique. A famous example comes from Berlioz's "Dream of a Witches' Sabbath" from his Symphony Fantastique in which he quotes Dies Irae, a 13th century hymn. 20th century composer Charles Ives has been known as the composer who explored and mastered this technique. One of his masterpieces General Willian Booth Enters into Heaven (1914) is an example of this technique.

Musique concrète was developed in Paris in 1948 by Pierre Schaefer and Pierre Henry. They altered pre-existing tape recordings by chopping them up and placing them in an abstract order. They used recordings of instruments and voices but mainly sounds that were recorded from nature and the "real world", which prior to the futurism movement of the early 1900's was not considered music. Fist concrete music composition was Etude aux Chemins de Fer composed by Pierre Schaeffer in 1948. Musique concrète formed a new type of music called acousmatic music in which the music is intended for loudspeaker listening and only exists in recorded form, also called tape music. In 1951 Schaeffer and Henry, along with the engineer Jacques Poullin, established the Groupe de Recherche de Músique Concrète (Research Group on Concrete Music). GRMC established the first purpose-built electroacoustic music studio attracting many other notable composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Edgard Varese, Pierre Boulez, and Iannis Xenakis.

The name given by Skryabin to the chord made of two different sets of quartal chords: One altered: C-F#-Bb and the second above it: E-A-D. It appeared in his work as early as 1903, in the Fourth Piano Sonata, but became famous by its use in the tone poem Prometheus op.60 (1911), for which reason it is sometimes called the 'Promethean chord.' In his late piano music, particularly the last five sonatas, Skryabin used similar chord formations as a basic element of his harmony, and also extended the mystic chord to 'horizontal' scales. This may also have influenced the composing of Bartok, which was characterized by the use of quartal melodies and harmonies, seen in both the Miraculous Mandarin (1924) and Concerto for Orchestra (1943)

A movement in music which began during the 19th century marked by emphasis elements mostly folksongs, folk dances, folk rhythms or on subjects for operas and symphonic poems which reflected nature, life or history. It burgeoned alongside political movements for independence, such as the European Revolutions of 1848, and as a reaction to the dominance of German music. Haydn was an early 'nationalist' in his use of folk‐song in many works. A good example is his Piano trio No. 39 in G major (1795) which uses a Hungarian style. Chopin used Polish dance rhythms and forms in his mazurkas (written between 1825-49) and his Rondo a la Krakowiak in F major (1828). Mikhail Glinka's opera A Life for the Tsar (1836) began the nationalist movement in Russia, which was sustained by many others such as Mussorgsky and Rimsky‐Korsakov. Liszt expressed the Hungarian spirit in his works, and this spirit was later intensified by Bartók and Kodály. Other examples of nationalist composers Dvořák in Bohemia; Grieg in Norway, Sibelius in Finland, Albéniz in Spain, Villa‐Lobos in Brazil, Holst and Vaughan Williams in England, and Copland, Gershwin, Ives, and Bernstein in the USA

In music parallel harmony, also known as harmonic parallelism, harmonic planing or parallel voice leading, is the parallel movement of two or more lines (or voice leading). Claude Debussy was the first notable composer to use this technique extensively and can be seen in his Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun) (1894) and La Cathédrale engloutie (The Sunken Cathedral) (1910). Other examples after Debussy include Maurice Ravel's Daphnis and Chloë Suite No. 2 (1913), Richard Strauss's Elektra (1909), and Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire (1912). Also a Jazz Improvising technique called "Sliding-slipping" can also be considered a Planing technique.

Music pointillism is derived from the neo-impressionism painting technique in which small, distinct dots of pure color are applied in patterns to form an image. Artist, Gorges Seurat developed this technique in 1886. Musical pointillism is a phrase or piece containing short musical gestures distributed at different pitch levels throughout the ensemble. The different musical notes made in seclusion, rather than in a linear sequence, give a sound texture similar to the pointillism technique in visual art. This results in a melodic line that utilizes more timbres and color. The German term for pointillism is Klangfarbenmelodie (sound, color, melody), which was coined by Arnold Schoenberg in his text on harmony, Harmonielehre (1911), where he discusses the creation of "timbre-structures." Schoenberg and Anton Webern are particularly noted for their use of the technique, Schoenberg most notably in the third of his Five Pieces for Orchestra (Op. 16), and Webern in his Op. 10.

Polytonality represents simultaneous presentation of more than two tonalities in a polyphonic texture, hence an extension of Bitonality. The musical use of more than one key simultaneously is polytonality also polyharmony. Bitonality is the use of only two different keys at the same time. Polyvalence is the use of more than one harmonic function, from the same key, at the same time. The use of Polytonality has been mostly credit to 20th century composers, such as Charles Ives's Fugue in Four Keys (ca. 1902), (Psalm 67 1898-1902), Bartók (Fourteen Bagatelles, op. 6, 1908), and Stravinsky (Petrushka, 1911).

Rows, series and serials refer to the compositional techniques created by Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg. The use of the word "serial" was first introduced in French by René Leibowitz (1947) as an alternative translation of the German Zwölftontechnik Twelve-tone technique or Reihenmusik (row music). Row and series are interchangeable terms that refer to a non-repetitive ordering of a set of pitch-classes, typically of the twelve notes in musical set theory of the chromatic scale, though both larger and smaller sets are sometimes found. Olivier Messiaen developed "Total Serialism" in which other aspects of music are serialized (dynamics, durations etc.).

In contrast to more traditional musical textures, sound mass composition "minimizes the importance of individual pitches in preference for texture, timbre, and dynamics as primary shapers of gesture and impact." Developed from the modernist tone clusters and spread to orchestral writing by the late 1950s and 1960s, sound-mass obscures the boundary between sound and noise. Techniques which may create or be used with sound mass include muted brass or strings; flutter tonguing, wide vibrato, extreme ranges, and glissandos. Composers and works include Karlheinz Stockhausen's Gruppen for three orchestras (1955-57), Krzysztof Penderecki's Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima (1959), and György Ligeti's work Atmosphères (1961).

Literally "Speaking voice" or "Speak singing," a type of vocal delivery somewhere between speech and song, with an eerie, bizarre quality. Schoenberg was the first composer to make this technique famous, however he learned it from composer Engelbert Humperdinck, who called it Sprechgsesang, a type of enunciation intermediate between speech and song. This technique is closely related to the operatic recitative manner of singing (in which pitches are sung, but the articulation is rapid and loose like speech), however sprechstimme is closer to speech than operatic recitative. Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire (1912) is an excellent example and in the forward Schoenberg explains that the indicated rhythms should be adhered to, but that whereas in ordinary singing a constant pitch is maintained through a note, here the singer "immediately abandons it by falling or rising. The goal is certainly not at all a realistic, natural speech. Alban Berg adopted the technique and asked for it in parts of his operas Wozzeck and Lulu.

Refers to an Article written by Jim Sampsel in which he describes transitional composers of the early 20th Century era. He describes two types of composers: 1. Composers involved in the "Tonal Expansion" of tonality (those from within) who are part of the German-Austrian Heritage Wagner, Strauss, Mahler and ultimately, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern (2nd Viennese School). 2. Composers involved in the "Tonal Modification" from outside of the above mentioned centers, Composers such as Debussy, The Russias (Korsakov> Stravinsky>Bartók>, Busoni, Skriabin, Liszt etc.) Because they brought "outised" elements such as Gamelan Music,whole tone, octatonic, pentatonic, polymodal chromaticism.

A group of adjacent notes sounding simultaneously. Keyboard instruments are particularly suited to their performance, since they may readily be played with the fist, palm or forearm. Clusters were used first by Charles Ives who learned the technique from his father George. Later on Cowell used it in written music in The Tides of Manaunaun for piano (1912). Notable studies in cluster playing include Stockhausen's Klavierstück XI and Ligeti's Volumina for organ. Orchestral clusters have become commonplace since the mid-1950s.

Twelve-tone technique is a method of musical composition devised by Arnold Schoenberg during the early 1920's and was adopted by composers of the Second Viennese School (Alban Berg and Anton Webern). It was preceded by "freely" atonal pieces of the early 20th century. This technique is a means of ensuring that all 12 notes of the chromatic scale are sounded as often as one another in a piece of music while preventing the emphasis of any single tone through the use of tone rows, an ordering of the 12 pitches. All 12 notes are thus given more or less equal importance, and the music avoids being in a key. The technique was influential on composers in the mid-twentieth century. Schoenberg's Funf Klavierstucke (Pieces for Piano) Op. 23 was the first piece to use this method as a deliberate compositional structure

Is a scale in which each note is separated from its neighbors by the interval of a whole step. The whole tone scale has no leading tone and because all tones are the same distance apart, "no single tone stands out, [and] the scale creates a blurred, indistinct effect". This effect is especially emphasized by the fact that triads built on such scale tones are augmented. Use of the melodic whole tone scale can be traced at least as far back as Mozart, in his Musical Joke, for strings and horns. In the 19th century Russian composers went further with melodic and harmonic possibilities of the scale, often to depict the ominous. Examples include Mikhail Glinka's opera Borodin's Prince Igor and Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade. Claude Debussy and other impressionist composers also often used whole tone scales, (Debussy's Voiles, Preludes, Book I, no. 2) The scale is also used extensively in modern jazz writing such as Wayne Shorter's composition "JuJu".