Music Listening (Twentieth Century) – Flashcards
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Composers in the twentieth century drew inspiration from
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Twentieth-century composers incorporated elements of folk and popular music within their personal styles because
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they were attracted to the unconventional rhythms, sounds, and melodic patterns.
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A great twentieth-century composer who was also a leading scholar of the folk music of his native land was
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Béla Bartók.
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Which of the following composers was not stimulated by the folklore of his native land?
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Anton Webern.
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Which of the following statements is not true? A. Modern composers drew inspiration from a wider historical range of music. B. The range of musical styles during the first half of the twentieth century was vast. C. Composers in the early twentieth century drew inspiration only from serious art music and their own intellect, ignoring popular and folk music. D. Western composers were more receptive and sympathetic to Asian and African cultures.
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Composers in the early twentieth century drew inspiration only from serious art music and their own intellect, ignoring popular and folk music.
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In twentieth-century music
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The glissando, a technique widely used in the twentieth century, is
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a rapid slide up or down a scale.
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Among the unusual playing techniques that are widely used during the twentieth century is the _______, a rapid slide up or down a scale.
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glissando
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In modern music
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A piano is often used in twentieth-century orchestral music to
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add a percussive edge.
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Which of the following is not an alternative to the traditional organization of pitch used by twentieth-century composers?
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Tonic- dominant harmonies
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The combination of two traditional chords sounding together is known as
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a polychord.
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A fourth chord is
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a chord in which the tones are a fourth apart, instead of a third.
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A chord made of tones only a half step or a whole step apart is known as
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a tone cluster.
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Striking a group of adjacent keys on a piano with the fist or forearm will result in
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a tone cluster.
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To create fresh sounds, twentieth-century composers used
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The technique of using two or more tonal centers at the same time is called
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polytonality.
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The absence of key or tonality in a musical composition is known as
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atonality.
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Using all twelve tones without regard to their traditional relationship to major or minor scales, avoiding traditional chord progressions, is known as
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atonality.
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The first significant atonal pieces were composed around 1908 by
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Arnold Schoenberg.
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The use of two or more contrasting and independent rhythms at the same time is known as
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polyrhythm.
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Ostinato refers to a
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motive or phrase that is repeated persistently at the same pitch throughout a section.
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Recordings of much lesser-known music multiplied in 1948 through
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the appearance of long-playing disks.
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Radio broadcasts of live and recorded music began to reach large audiences during the
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1920s.
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The first opera created for television was Gian-Carlo Menotti's
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Amahl and the Night Visitors.
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Composers from which area rose to importance during the Twentieth Century?
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Latin America.
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Which of the following countries did not produce an important composer in the Twentieth Century?
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Ecuador
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One of the most important teachers of musical composition in the twentieth century was
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Nadia Boulanger.
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The most influential organization sponsoring new music after World War I was
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the International Society for Contemporary Music.
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During the first quarter of the Twentieth Century many composers left Russia because of
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the violence of the Russian Revolution.
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Impressionist painting and symbolist poetry as artistic movements originated in
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France.
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The most important impressionist composer was
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Claude Debussy.
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The term impressionist derived from a critic's derogatory reaction to Impression: Sunrise, a painting by
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Claude Monet.
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When viewed closely, impressionist paintings are made up of
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tiny colored patches.
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Impressionist painters were primarily concerned with the effect of light, color, and
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atmosphere.
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The impressionist painters were particularly obsessed with portraying
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water.
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Which of the following is not considered a symbolist poet?
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Victor Hugo
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Which of the following statements is not true? A. Both impressionist painting and symbolist poetry were catalysts for many developments during the twentieth century. B. Symbolist writers emphasized the purely musical, or sonorous, effects of words. C. When viewed closely, impressionist paintings are made up of tiny colored patches. D. The impressionist painters were particularly obsessed with portraying scenes of ancient French glories.
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The impressionist painters were particularly obsessed with portraying scenes of ancient French glories.
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Many of Debussy's songs are set to poems by the symbolist poet
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Paul Verlaine.
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A dramatic turning point in Debussy's career came in 1902 when
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his opera Pelléas et Mélisande was premiered.
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Which of the following characteristics is not usually associated with impressionism?
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Clearly delineated forms
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Debussy's music tends to
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sound free and almost improvisational.
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Impressionism in music is characterized by
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a stress on tone color, atmosphere, and fluidity.
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In order to "drown the sense of tonality," Debussy
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A scale made up of six different notes each a whole step away from the next is called a ________ scale.
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whole-tone
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Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande is an almost word-for-word setting of the symbolist play by
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Maurice Maeterlinck.
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In which of the following areas did Debussy not create masterpieces?
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Symphonies
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The poem that inspired the Prelude to "The Afternoon of a Faun" was written by
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Stéphane Mallarmé.
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The faun evoked in Debussy's famous composition is a
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creature who is half man, half goat.
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The neoclassical movement in music roughly encompassed the years
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1920-1950.
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Which of the following statements concerning neoclassicism is not true? A. Neoclassical composers reacted against twentieth-century harmonies and rhythms, and preferred to revive old forms and styles exactly as they were. B. Neoclassical compositions use the musical forms and stylistic features of earlier periods, particularly of the eighteenth century. C. Since many neoclassical compositions were modeled after Bach's music, the term neobaroque might have been more appropriate. D. Neoclassicism was an important trend in other art forms such as painting and poetry.
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Neoclassical composers reacted against twentieth-century harmonies and rhythms, and preferred to revive old forms and styles exactly as they were.
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Which of the following is not characteristic of neoclassicism?
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Misty atmosphere
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Neoclassical composers favored
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clear polyphonic textures.
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Neoclassical compositions are characterized by
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forms and stylistic features of earlier periods.
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Neoclassical composers modeled many of their works after the compositions of
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Johann Sebastian Bach.
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Neoclassicism was a reaction against
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romanticism and impressionism.
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The painter who designed the sets for Stravinsky's Pulcinella, and who went through a phase that showed the influence of ancient Greek art, was
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Pablo Picasso.
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Igor Stravinsky, at the age of twenty-one, began to study composition privately with
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Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
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Stravinsky's life took a sudden turn in 1909, when he met the director of the Russian Ballet,
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Sergei Diaghilev.
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Sergei Diaghilev was a famous
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ballet impresario.
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The immense success of Stravinsky's 1910 ballet ________ established him as a leading young composer.
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The Firebird
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The famous riot in 1913 was caused by the first performance of Stravinsky's ballet
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The Rite of Spring.
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Stravinsky's enormous influence on twentieth-century music is due to his innovations in
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rhythm.
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Which of the following ballets is not from Stravinsky's Russian period?
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Pulcinella
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Stravinsky's second phase is generally known as
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neoclassical.
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During the period about 1920 to 1951, Stravinsky drew inspiration largely from
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eighteenth-century music.
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In the 1950s Stravinsky dramatically changed his style, drawing inspiration from
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Anton Webern.
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In the 1950s Stravinsky dramatically changed his style to favor
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the twelve-tone system.
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The deliberate evocation of primitive power through insistent rhythms and percussive sounds is known as
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primitivism.
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Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring) is an example of
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primitivism.
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Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring is scored for
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an enormous orchestra.
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The expressionist movement in music and art flourished in the years
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1905-1925.
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The twentieth-century artistic movement that stressed intense, subjective emotion was called
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expressionism.
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Expressionism as an artistic movement was largely centered in
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Germany and Austria.
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Expressionism grew out of the same intellectual climate as Freud's studies of
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hysteria and the unconscious.
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Twentieth-century musical expressionism grew out of the emotional turbulence in the works of late romantics such as
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One of the immediate predecessors of expressionism was the composer
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Richard Strauss.
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Richard Strauss's operas Salome and Elektra were known for their
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chromatic and dissonant music.
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The operas of Richard Strauss use chromaticism and dissonance to depict
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perversion and murder.
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Expressionist painters, writers, and composers used ______________ to assault and shock their audience.
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deliberate distortions
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Distortion is a technique used primarily in the __________ period.
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expressionist
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Which of the following statements is not true? A. Twentieth-century musical expressionism grows out of the emotional turbulence in the works of late romantics like Wagner, Richard Strauss, and Gustav Mahler. B. Expressionist artists favored pleasant subjects, delicate pastel colors, and shimmering surfaces. C. A stress on harsh dissonance, an exploitation of extreme registers, fragmentation, and unusual instrumental effects are all characteristics of expressionistic compositions. D. Expressionist painters reacted against French impressionism; they often used jarring colors and grotesquely distorted shapes to explore the subconscious.
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Expressionist artists favored pleasant subjects, delicate pastel colors, and shimmering surfaces.
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Expressionism is an art concerned with
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social protest.
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All of the following painters may be considered part of the expressionist movement except
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Claude Monet.
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The expressionists rejected
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conventional prettiness.
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Expressionist composers
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avoided tonality and traditional chord progressions.
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Schoenberg's teacher was
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himself.
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Schoenberg's first musical hero was
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Johannes Brahms.
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Schoenberg acquired his profound knowledge of music by
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Alban Berg and Anton Webern were Arnold Schoenberg's
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students.
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When Schoenberg arrived in the United States after the Nazis seized power in Germany, he obtained a teaching position at
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UCLA.
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Schoenberg's third period, in which he developed the twelve-tone system, began around
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1921.
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An eerily expressive kind of declamation midway between song and speech, introduced during the expressionist period, is
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Sprechstimme.
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Schoenberg developed an unusual style of vocal performance, halfway between speaking and singing, called
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Sprechstimme.
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The ordering of the twelve chromatic tones in a twelve-tone composition is called a
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Which of the following terms is not used to describe the special ordering of the twelve chromatic tones in twelve-tone composition?
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Polychord
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The text of A Survivor from Warsaw
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A Survivor from Warsaw used three languages: English, German, and
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Hebrew.
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When he was nineteen, Alban Berg began to study music privately with
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Arnold Schoenberg.
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Which of the following statements is not true? A. Typical of expressionist composers, Berg scored his opera Wozzeck for a small chamber orchestra. B. The vocal line in Berg's opera Wozzeck includes speaking, shrieking, Sprechstimme, distorted folk songs, and melodies with wide leaps that are difficult to sing. C. Though written in the early 1830s, Georg Büchner's play Woyzeck is amazingly modern in its starkly realistic dialogue and disconnected scenes. D. A novel feature of Berg's opera Wozzeck is that the music for each scene is a self-contained composition with a particular form or of a definite type.
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Typical of expressionist composers, Berg scored his opera Wozzeck for a small chamber orchestra.
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Which of the following is not a composition by Alban Berg?
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Gurrelieder
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Georg Büchner's play Woyzeck was written in the
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1830s.
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The vocal lines in Wozzeck include
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Anton Webern
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earned a doctorate in music history from the University of Vienna.
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Webern's melodic lines are
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"atomized" into two- or three-note fragments.
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Anton Webern's twelve-tone works contain many examples of
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strict polyphonic imitation.
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Webern's Five Pieces for Orchestra are scored for
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a chamber orchestra of eighteen soloists.
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Béla Bartók's principal performing medium was
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the piano.
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From 1907 to 1934 Béla Bartók taught __________ at his alma mater, and gave recitals throughout Europe.
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piano
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Béla Bartók was a leading authority on
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peasant music.
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Béla Bartók evolved a completely individual style that fused folk elements with
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The melodies Béla Bartók used in most of his works are
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original themes that have a folk flavor.
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While not rejecting any influence, Béla Bartók emphasized that the strongest influence on his music was
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Hungarian.
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Béla Bartók's ______________ are widely thought to be the finest since those of Ludwig van Beethoven.
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string quartets
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While remaining within the framework of a tonal center, Béla Bartók often used _________ in his music.
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all of these
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Béla Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra
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Charles Ives's father was a(n)
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bandmaster.
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After graduating from Yale, Charles Ives
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went into the insurance business.
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During most of his lifetime, Charles Ives's musical compositions
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accumulated in the barn of his Connecticut farm.
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Charles Ives's music contains elements of
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Which of the following compositions is not by Charles Ives?
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An American in Paris
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Charles Ives's large and varied output includes works in many genres, but not
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operas.
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Putnam's Camp, Redding, Connecticut, is a movement from Charles Ives's
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Three Places in New England.
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Putnam's Camp, Redding, Connecticut, is a child's impression of
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a Fourth of July picnic.
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Putnam's Camp, Redding, Connecticut, illustrates Charles Ives's technique of quoting snatches of familiar tunes by presenting fragments of
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Yankee Doodle.
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George Gershwin grew up in
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New York, New York.
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Gershwin left high school at the age of fifteen to
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become a pianist demonstrating new songs in a publisher's salesroom.
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Gershwin's first piano teacher was
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himself.
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Which of the following musicals is not by George Gershwin?
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Funny Girl
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Which of the following works is not by George Gershwin?
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The Desert Song
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The Gershwin song that became a tremendous hit in 1920 was
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Swanee.
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George Gershwin usually collaborated with the lyricist
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Ira Gershwin.
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Porgy and Bess is a(n)
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opera.
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Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue opens with
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a solo clarinet.
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"Harlem Renaissance" was the name
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sometimes given to a flowering of African American culture during the years 1917-1935.
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William Grant Still
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played the violin in the university string quartet while a college student.
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After serving in the navy and a brief return to studies at Oberlin College, William Grant Still moved to New York where he
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made band arrangements and played in the orchestras of all-black musical shows.
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As a result of his studies in composition with composers from two opposing musical camps, the conservative George Whitefield Chadwick and the modernist Edgard Varèse, Still
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turned away from avant-garde styles and wrote compositions with a uniquely African American flavor.
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William Grant Still's works in African American style, such as his Afro-American Symphony of 1931, were
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performed to critical acclaim in New York.
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As a composer, William Grant Still
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wrote film scores, concert works, operas, and band arrangements.
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William Grant Still's Afro-American Symphony
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uses a blues theme in the first movement which reappears as a unifying thread in various transformations in the three later movements.
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William Grant Still's opera dealing with the Haitian slave rebellion is
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Troubled Island.
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The flowering of African American culture called the "Harlem Renaissance" spanned the years
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1917-35.
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Each movement of William Grant Still's Afro-American Symphony is prefaced by lines from a poem by
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Paul Laurence Dunbar.
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Aaron Copland was born in
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Brooklyn, New York.
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In 1921 Copland went to France, where he was the first American to study composition with
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Nadia Boulanger.
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In 1925, after Copland returned from France, American music meant
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jazz.
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In 1925, and for a few years afterward, Copland's music showed the influence of
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jazz.
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Aaron Copland's name has become synonymous with American music because of his use of
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Which of the following works was not composed by Aaron Copland?
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An American in Paris
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Which of the following works was not composed by Aaron Copland?
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Concord Sonata
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n example of Copland's use of serialist technique is
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Connotations for Orchestra.
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In addition to his compositions, Copland made valuable contributions to music in America by
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Appalachian Spring originated as a
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ballet score.
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Appalachian Spring originated as a ballet score for the great modern dancer and choreographer
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Martha Graham.
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Copland depicted "Scenes of daily activity for the Bride and her Farmer-husband" in Appalachian Spring through
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five variations on the Shaker melody Simple Gifts.
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Alberto Ginastera, one of the most prominent Latin-American composers of the 20th century, was born in
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Argentina.
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One of Ginastera's early works, Estancia Suite, is
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nationalistic and uses Argentinean folk material, including popular dances.
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Ginastera's Estancia Suite was originally conceived as a
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ballet
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Alberto Ginastera's Estancia Suite uses a large orchestra and is in___ movements.
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four
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The last movement of Ginastera's Estancia Suite, titled "Final Dance: Malambo", makes use of an form.
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AA'B
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In 1945 Ginastera moved to the United States where he had the opportunity to study with the well known American composer
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Aaron Copland.
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Since World War II, musical styles have
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taken many new directions and changes.
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Composer John Adams believes that today's composers can draw from
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a wide variety of styles and periods.
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All of the following are major developments in music since 1950 except the
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continued composition of symphonies in the classical style.
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Composers began to shift from tonality to the twelve-tone system because
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they discovered it was a compositional technique rather than a special musical style.
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The twelve-tone composer whose style was most imitated in the 1950s and 1960s was
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Anton Webern.
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Serialism is a compositional technique in which
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a series of rhythms, dynamics, or tone colors could serve as a unifying idea
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Twelve-tone compositional techniques used to organize rhythm, dynamics, tone color, and other dimensions of music to produce totally controlled and organized music are called
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serialism.
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A major composer associated with the serialist movement is
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Milton Babbitt.
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All of the following are proponents of serialism except
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John Cage.
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In chance, or aleatory music the composer
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chooses pitches, tone colors, and rhythms by random methods.
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An example of aleatoric music is
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John Cage's Imaginary Landscape No. 4 for twelve radios.
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Minimalism as an artistic movement was a
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reaction against the complexity of serialism and the randomness of chance music.
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Which of the following characteristics is not true of minimalist music?
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A fast rate of change
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Minimalist music is characterized by
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a steady pulse, clear tonality, and insistent repetition of short melodic patterns.
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Which of the following is not primarily known as a minimalist composer?
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George Crumb
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Minimalist music grew out of the same intellectual climate as minimalist art, which features
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simple forms, clarity, and understatement.
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Many composers since the mid-1960s have made extensive use of quotations from earlier music as an attempt to
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improve communication between the composer and the listener.
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Since 1950 many composers have returned to
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tonal music.
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Composers who have returned to the use of tonality have been called
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"new Romantics".
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Some works composed since 1945 are both
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tonal and atonal.
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Intervals smaller than the half step are called
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microtones.
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Around 1940, John Cage invented the prepared piano, a(n)
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grand piano whose sound is altered by objects such as bolts, screws, rubber bands, pieces of felt, paper, and plastic inserted between the strings of some of the keys.
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Ionisation, the first important work for percussion ensemble, was composed by
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Edgard Varèse.
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Edgard Varèse's Poème électronique
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All answers are correct.
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Ellen Taaffe Zwilich is a
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Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer.
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Ellen Taaffe Zwilich won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her composition
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Symphony No. 1.
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Ellen Taffee Zwilich's Concerto Grosso 1985 is an example of
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quotation music.
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Which of the following compositions was not composed by John Adams?
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Einstein on the Beach
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John Adams's Short Ride in a Fast Machine is scored for a
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large symphonic orchestra and two synthesizers.
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Elliott Carter's complex & highly dissonant style may be attributed in part to the influence of his former mentor
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Charles Ives.
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Elliott Carter's composition Shard is written for
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solo guitar.
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Elliott Carter's technique of using many precisely regulated changes in the speed of the music in order to give it a felling of fluidity is known as
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tempo modulation.
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