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Giuseppe Verdi; 19th century Italian opera; Violetta, a high class prostitute, has mixed desires after being diagnosed with tuberculosis (between freedom and love for 1 man); 3 types of melody used (declamatory, virtuosic, lyrical), corresponding to the emotions of the characters; accompanied recitative (when contemplating choices) and virtuosic singing (when opting for pleasure); mirrors Verdi's life (living with a woman, but not married)

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La Traviata

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syllabic, simple melody (La Traviata)

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declamatory melody

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mellismatic, high notes, difficult runs (La Traviata)

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virtuosic melody

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slower tempo, longer and smooth notes, mostly syllabic, sustained (La Traviata)

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lyrical melody

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La Traviata; 19th century; Italian; La Traviata mirrors his own life (unwed couple living together); wrote operas; sought to reform political conventions through his art

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Giuseppe Verdi

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Richard Wagner; 19th century German music drama; parts of a cycle of 4 operas that traces the fate of a magic ring that has supreme powers of both good and evil; Wotan, the chief of all gods, takes away the godlike powers of his daughter, Brunnhilde, for using them on a human couple; he encloses her in a deep sleep and surrounds her with a ring of fire (created by Loge) that can only be crossed by someone who has no fear of his spear; rhythmically fluid melodies (no periodic phrase structure); many Leitmotifs (Loge, Wotan's spear, sleep, the sword, Fate)

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The Valkyrie ("Wotan's farewell")

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a brief musical phrase or idea connected dramatically to some person, event, or idea in the drama; meant to lead our minds in a way to help us understand what we see happening on stage; The Valkyrie (unstable nature of Loge represented by a theme that darts around and avoids any clearly defined shape; steady, confident, downward striding figure in the brass associated with Wotan's spear; descending, chromatic line played softly by winds and high strings associated with sleep; loud, bright, confident theme like a fanfare associated with the sword that Siegfried uses to shatter Wotan's spear; brief, open ended, rather questioning phrase associated with Fate and the idea of destiny)

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Leitmotif

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a type of harmony or melody that incorporates many more notes than occur naturally in the scale or key area on which a work is based; scale produced by playing all half steps (on the piano, all adjacent black and white keys); Leitmotif in The Valkyrie associated with sleep

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chromatic

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The Valkyrie; 19th century; operas full of social and political ideas; controversial composer (some considered his music ear splitting noise); German

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Richard Wagner

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Romanticism; program music; range of each musical element available to composers grew; Industrial Revolution made it possible to manufacture goods (instruments) in mass quantities in large factories; music enabled people to express political sentiment; nationalism; music publishers could distribute their music on a global basis for the first time because of increased mobility on both land and sea

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19th century

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great advances in technology; greater access to different kinds of music led to diverse musical tastes; Modernism; music helped bridge the divide between races (segregation); gamelan ensembles (globalization of music)

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20th century

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an instrumental work that is in some way associated with a story, event, or idea (19th century)

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program music

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a movement that was fascinated with imagination, individual emotion, and longing and was influenced by the literary genre of romance, which was free of structural or narrative conventions (19th century)

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Romanticism

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in music, the use of melodies, rhythms, harmonies, or instruments that reflect the musical practices of a particular nation (19th century)

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nationalism

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a spirit that took hold in all the arts in the early 20th century, representing a quest for novelty that far exceeded any such drive in the past and an abolishment of tradition; "stream of consciousness" (no visible/audible story line); shocked listeners at first

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Modernism

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an Indonesian musical ensemble consisting primarily of a variety of pitched gongs and xylophones; the conductor or leader of the ensemble often plays the double headed drum; includes many percussion instruments; music has what Western ears often perceive as a floating, nondirectional quality that operates outside the conventions of Western harmony; brought from Indonesia to various places worldwide in the 20th century (globalization)

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gamelan

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Claude Debussy; 20th century program music (title means waves or sails, and the music has a muted timbre, no development or conclusion in appearance and disappearance of melodies, unresolved harmonies, and no established sense of meter in rhythm); impressionism; written for piano; gamelan; fragments of themes that are altered every time they return (represents a succession of slowly changing images); duple meter (no pattern of accent on a certain beet); whole tone scale; nondirectional form (vague sense of overall ABA form in climax)

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Voiles from Preludes

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an artistic movement focused more on sensations, perceptions, and light than on the direct representation of objects; used by critics of the early 20th century to describe harmonies, melodies, and forms they considered indistinct (Voiles)

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impressionism

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a scale with only whole steps and no half steps; eliminates any sense of a tonal center (Voiles)

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whole tone scale

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a system of organizing pitches (both melodies and harmonies) around a central note, as opposed to atonality (a system with no tonal center)

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tonality

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a scale consisting of whole and half steps

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diatonic scale

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2 half steps (on a piano, skips exactly 1 white or black key)

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whole step

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the smallest distance between 2 adjacent notes on a piano (white or black)

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half step

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Voiles from Preludes; regarded as the first great composer of the 20th century; impressionism; French; master of orchestration

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Claude Debussy

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Charles Ives; 20th century; performed by 3 contrasting groups of instruments: strings (violins, violas, cellos, double basses), solo trumpet (interjects strings at 5 different points), and wind quartet (2 flutes and 2 clarinets that respond to the trumpets "questions," each time with a different "answer"); tonal and atonal harmony contrasted by timbres and textures (polytonality); the little dissonance in the piece (strings) is resolved

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The Unanswered Question

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a style of writing that establishes a central note (the tonic) as a harmonic and melodic center of gravity, which in turn creates the potential for a strong sense of resolution and closure

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tonal music

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a style of writing that establishes no harmonic or melodic center of gravity; without a tonic, all notes are of equal weight and significance

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atonal music

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the sound of notes that clash, either harmonically or melodically, and do not seem to belong together; a relative concept (what was dissonant in one era is later perceived as consonant)

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dissonance

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the sound of notes together that out ear finds naturally right; a relative concept that can change over long periods of time (like dissonance)

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consonance

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The Unanswered Question; 20th century; American; music was rarely performed or published during his lifetime; modernist

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Charles Ives

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Igor Stravinsky; 20th century Russian ballet (folkloric/traditional); tonal center is hard to find (often more than 1); polytonal; pentatonic scale; extremely irregular rhythms offset by frequently used ostinato figures; mega orchestra (variety of instruments/timbres); through composed form

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Rite of Spring

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the juxtaposition of 2 conventional harmonies in a way that creates a new dissonance (Rite of Spring, The Unanswered Question)

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polytonality

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a scale consisting of 5 tones (Rite of Spring)

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pentatonic scale

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a short pattern of notes repeated over and over (Rite of Spring)

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ostinato

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the story line of a ballet; presented by the dancers; shapes the form of the music directly; represents pagan Russia and is unified by the idea of the great surge of creative power of spring; 2 parts (The Adoration of the Earth and The Great Sacrifice)

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scenario

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a form in which each section has its own music, with very little or no repetition between sections (Rite of Spring)

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through composed

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Rite of Spring; 20th century; Russian; neoclassicism; modernist; polytonality

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Igor Stravinsky

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a style of composition in the years after World War I (20th century) that, although distinctly modern, drew on older (particularly 18th century) uses of melody, harmony, rhythm, and form; Igor Stravinsky, Germaine Tailleferre (Concertino for Harp and Orchestra), Aaron Copeland ("Hoe Down" from Rodeo)

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neoclassicism

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Germaine Tailleferre; 20th century; neoclassicism; rondo form (main theme has clear antecedent and consequent phrases and a clear tonal center; second melody is less symmetrical, but has distinct phrases; third melody is the subject of a fugue and has no distinct phrases); minimal dissonance; glissando; sense of clarity and playfulness, witty, light hearted

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Concertino for Harp and Orchestra

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a continuous ("gliding") melodic motion up or down that goes by so fast we almost cannot hear the individual notes (Concertino for Harp and Orchestra)

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glissando

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Concertino for Harp and Orchestra; French woman composer; 20th century

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Germaine Tailleferre

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Aaron Copeland; 20th century; ballet that captured the sound of the American West; neoclassicism; a cowgirl wins the heart of the Head Wrangler when she trades her cowboy outfit for a dress at the big Saturday night dance; opening melody is a traditional folk tune called "Bonaparte's Retreat;" jaunty, disjunct melody in the middle of the movement is another traditional fiddle tune called "McLeod's Reel;" varying orchestration throughout (sonic layers in which each instrumental grouping projects its own identity); duple meter throughout; rondo form

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"Hoe Down" from Rodeo

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"Hoe Down" from Rodeo; 20th century; American

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Aaron Copeland

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Leonard Bernstein; 20th century; modern day retelling of Romeo and Juliet, in which the feuding "families" of Tony and Maria are urban gangs (the Jets and the Sharks); musical; operetta; opens as a choppy, fast paced melody over an ostinato bass with strong syncopations (gangs ready to fight); soaring, lyrical melody by Tony and Maria (love); Anita sings the same melody as the Jets and Sharks; additive form; moves from homophony to polyphony; postmodernism

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"Tonight" from West Side Story

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a spoken drama with a substantial amount of singing ("Tonight" from West Side Story)

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musical

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Italian for "small opera;" a 19th century stage work that incorporated both singing and spoken dialogue, typically on a comic, lighthearted, or sentimental subject; a precursor to the American ("Broadway") musical

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operetta

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a compositional technique in which nothing disappears, but new layers are constantly added ("Tonight" from West Side Story)

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additive form

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"Tonight" from West Side Story; 20th century; American; conductor, composer, pianist, and educator; postmodernist

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Leonard Bernstein

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Phillip Glass; 20th century; opera with very little singing and no plot (mostly recited text); 4 acts introduced and connected by a series of "Knee Plays;" built around a series of recurring images (a train, a trial, a spaceship in a field); minimalism; organ, chorus, and speakers; standard, simple harmony (3 chords); series of variations on a series of short melodic fragments (theme and variations); varied/altered rhythms; divided voices (chorus) and added spoken voices

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"Knee Play 1" from Einstein on the Beach

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in music, a style in which a brief musical idea or group of idea is repeated and varied incrementally over a long span of time, with a relatively slow rate of change ("Knee Play 1" from Einstein on the Beach)

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minimalism

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"Knee Play 1" from Einstein on the Beach; 20th century; American; minimalist

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Phillip Glass

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John Cage; 20th century; aleatory music; said to consist of 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence, but there are really many sounds involved; even the 1 element of the work that might seem constant (its length) is subject to variability each time the piece is performed; inspired by "white paintings" (musical equivalent of a "blank" canvas)

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4'33''

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music composed using elements of change (4'33')

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aleatory music

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4'33'; 20th century; American; avoided the traditional stance of the composer as an omnipotent creator of a small musical world; did not see himself as a high priest of art but rather as a facilitator between listeners and sounds; profoundly influenced by Zen Buddhism; wrote a series of works for "prepared piano" (a piano whose strings were outfitted with such everyday objects as screws, rubber bands, and coins, producing a range of odd timbres); some saw genius in his works, others charlatanism, but all were provoked by them to rethink the nature of music and its relationship to the world around us

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John Cage

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Tania León; 20th century; mixes rhythms of a Cuban popular dance (repeated melodic rhythmic figure in the bass line) and atonal harmonies of European modernism (other instrumental lines); postmodernism; all percussion instruments (includes piano), but some pitched and others nonpitched; guaguancó (a rumba style dance to a syncopated rhythmic pattern, which is played by the lower register of the piano); vacuno (a pelvic thrust by the man toward the woman, who both encourages and avoids these thrusts); rhythm repeated by the piano is tonal, and the other instruments are atonal; sectional form (introduction, central guaguancó, coda)

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A la Par (Guaguancó)

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a style in music and the other arts, beginning in the mid 20th century, in which modern and traditional elements are combined (A la Par, Guaguancó, "Tonight" from West Side Story)

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postmodernism

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a form in which each verse or half verse receives its own material (A la Par, Guaguancó)

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sectional form

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A la Par (Guaguancó); 20th century; Cuban; pianist, composer, conductor

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Tania León

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