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Music app. info from quiz #6

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Schoenberg
-Born in Vienna
-Considered to be one of the most important composers of the 20th century
-Studied violin
-A self-taught composer, very innovative
-1899: Transfigured Night
-Stayed tonal until 1910, when he started to work in expressionist period (extension of tonality. Focuses on everything but tonal)
-Two most important students were Webern and Berg. The three of them make up 2nd Viennese School.
o Each student took one element of Schoenberg’s style and personalized it.
o Berg wrote Wozzeck (expressionist), Lulu (12-tone), and Lyric Suite.
Stravinsky
Had three periods of composition, each with a unique style.
o Born near St. Petersburg
o Grew up in a musical environment (father was the leading bass at the imperial opera)
o Student of Rimsky-Korsakov
o Experimented with rhythm and new instrumental combinations
o Noticed by a famous Russian dance impresario named Serge Diaghilev
Stravinsky’s primitive period (1910-1914):
 Diaghilev commissioned him to compose three works for the ballet
• The Firebird
• The Rite of Spring
• Petrushka (about putting on a clown face)
o write "The Rite of Spring – Scenes of Pagan Russia" (1913)
Polyism
o Have polymeter or polyrhythm
o Lots of different instruments playing against each other
o Mixed meter 2/4, 6/8, 2/4, 2/2
o Polytonality: two or more melodies playing simultaneously
 Copeland, Charles Ives
The Rite of Spring – Scenes of Pagan Russia (1913)
 Used in Disney’s Fantasia
 A two-part ballet
 About Pagan, primitive cults
 Interaction between rhythm and meter
 Started a historic riot when it was first performed because of shocking nature
Background information about Neo-classicism
o Composers: Stravinsky, Copeland
o Emulated composers of the early 18th century
o Preferred absolute music
o Had an objective style
o Structured, but had unexpected elements
o Polytonality, mixed meter
o Chromaticism
o Lots of theatre music
Two main trends of the twentieth century
Expressionism and Neo-classicism
Background information about the twentieth century (music qualities, mindsets)
• Paradigm shift resulting form Psychology
o Self-conscious, Started thinking about ourselves more deeply
 Idea of sub-conscious
o Freud, Jung = prominent thinkers
o Looking at the interior instead of the exterior (i.e. impressionism)
• Music
o Uses dissonance
o Chromatic
o Melody is adjunct
Stravinsky: his three periods
Three periods:
Period I: primitivism, Rusian (1910-1913)
- wrote the firebird, petrushka, and rite of spring
- rhythm
- unusual, chromatic scales.
- Polytonality
- Russian folk music
- Lots of percussion and drums

Period II: Neoclassical (1914-1951)
- Classical traits: absolute, clarity of texture, balance of form. Refined.
- Dissonance
- Wrote a lot for winds

Period III: Serial (1951-death)
Sprechstimme
(spoken voice)
- melody is spoken rather that sang on exact pitches and on strict rhythm. Results in a weird but effective vocal line.
Klangfarbenmelodie
(Timbre, color, melodie; a.k.a. tone-color melody)
= uses pitches and rhythms to create sense of melody. Each note of a melody is played by a different instrument.
Pointilism
- Goes hand in hand with Klangfarbenmelodie. Doesn’t have smooth, melodic sound
Pierrot Lunaire, No. 18
- By Schoenberg
- Date: 1912
- Genre: song cycle
- Medium: solo voice and five instrumentalists
o Pierrot is the clown. He’s a mezzo-soprano.
- Text: 21 poems from albert giraud’s Pierrot Lunaire, all in rondeau form; cycle organized into 3 parts.
- No. 18: The Moonfleck
o Pierro finds a piece of dirt on his coat and he can’t get it off (like Macbeth)
- based on Comedy of the Arts
- Sprechstimme used against fast, solo dissonant accompaniment
- Complex contrapuntal structure, with canonic treatment
- Musical and poetical refrain
- Flickering effects created by instruments, playing independently from vocal parts.
Serialism
(a.k.a. Twelve-Tone Method)
- devised by Schoenberg
- method of composing with twelve equal tones.
- Tone row: particular arrangement of the twelve chromatic tones. The tone row is the unifying idea and basis for a particular composition.
- Principle, inversion, retrograde (see written notes)
- Creates more control for composer, inhibits performer’s expressiveness.
Bela Bartok (1881-1945)
- Father was a director of agriculture.
- Studied at the Budapest Royal Academy
- Hungary had a rise in nationalism due to the fall of Hapsburg.
- Died of Leukemia
Wrote the Concerto for Orchestra
Concerto for Orchestra
- Date: 1943
- Genre: orchestral concerto
- Has five movements
o Introduction
o Game of Pairs
o Elegia
o Interrupted Intermezzo
o Pesante/Presto
- Each section of the orchestra gets a solo.
- main message is that they cannot be held down/crushed
- Incorporates lots of Hungarian themes = very nationalistic.
Charles Ives
- (1874-1954)
- used dissonance, put consonant works together, juxtaposes different tunes
- characterized by Americana sound
- Created new tuning systems (two pianos tuned ¼ tone apart)
- wrote The Things Our Fathers Loved
o a child reminiscing about music of the past
o very Americana, patriotic
- Carl Stalling wrote cartoon music, inspired by Ives
Aaron Copland
- (1900-1990)
- grew up in Brooklyn, a first generation American
- his parents were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe
- homosexual
- One of the first composers to study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, a famous Parisian composer
- Music based on cowboy westerns and jazz (African music)
- Wrote a lot of ballets
- Worked with Martha Graham
o Wrote Billy the Kid for her
- Wrote lots of symphonic works: concertos, symphonies
o Wrote Fanfare for the Common Man
-Written for the civilians during WWII, in light of many fanfares being written for military men
Billy the Kid
- By Copland
- Date of work: 1938
- Genre: orchestral suite from ballet
- Basis: story of the outlaw William Bonney (Billy the Kid)
- About Billy’s mother being killed by a gunshot in a fight.
- Has six sections
- Extensive use of percussion
- a ballet
- polytonality, dissonance
- mixed meter
John Cage
- 1912-1992
- Composer of music and a philosopher
- Invented the “prepared piano” in 1938
o Weaves various objects between the piano strings  turned the piano into a percussion instrument
- Studied with Cowell at San Francisco State University
- Percussion ensemble: wrote the first pieces for them
- One of the first people to use Indeterminancy/Alleatory music: means chance
- One of the first people to use graphic scores
- Wrote music for dance
- One of the first people to write using electronic media
- Explored the role of silence
o Wrote 4’33”
Basic definition of minimalism
repetitive melodic, rhythmic, harmonic patterns, with slowly changing variations
American Minimalism
- small amounts of musical material
- repetition, with gradual change
- influenced by
o eastern spirituality (Buddhism, Hinduism)
o meditation
o trance
- Steve Reich
o Phasing
o Different – electronic sampling
- John Adams
o From Berkeley
o A major composer
o Wrote road runner
- Terry Riley
o Composed In C
Arvo Part
o Born 1935. From Estonia, lived in the Soviet Union. He was a major representative of spiritual minimalism
o Tintinnabulation = His own style. Sounds like the ringing of bells
o Influenced by medieval music and the Eastern orthodox church
Post-Modernism
- came out on the Dada movement (anything is art, don’t need context)
- juxtaposition of unrelated aesthetic concepts
- look at anything as beautiful, a movement away from formalism
- John Zorn
o King of post-modern composition
o Played at the “Knitting Factory”
Joan Tower
-Wrote Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, a feminist version of Copland's work
-mostly wrote concertos
-Born 1938 in New York
-founded the Da Capo players
-used serialism in her earlier works
Spiritual Minimalism
a music inspired by religious beliefs, expressed in simple, endless chains of modal/tonal progressions. Deeply meditative music. Arvo Part and John Taverner were the major representatives of this style.

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