modernism
a movement in the 20th century where French artists and writers abandoned the grandiose subjects and expressions of Romanticism; wanted to capture on canvas the freshness of their first impressions and were fascinated with the continuous change in the app
symbolism
a parallel movement to modernism where poets sought to evoke poetic images through suggestion rather than description, through symbol rather than statement
futurism
a movement whose manifesto of 1909 declared its alienation from established institutions and its focus on the dynamism of 20th century life
dadaism
an art movement founded in Switzerland after 1918;he concept of art as something to reverently admired; absolute absurd works
surrealism
a movement which explored the world of dreams; included Salvador Dali
expressionism
the international counterpart to French impressionism; preferred digging down to the depths of the psyche; started with paintings; music moved on to the Second Viennese School; music favored hyperexpressive harmonies, extraordinarily wide leaps in the mel
neoclassicism
a movement which preferred earlier eras; tried to rid music of the story-and-picture meanings favored in the nineteenth century; preferred absolute music; attention was on craftsmanship and balance
primary intervals
octaves, fourth, and fifth notes
whole tone scale
the entire spectrum in the chromatic scale; built entirely of intervals without half steps; is a fluid sequence of pitches the lacks the pull toward a tonic
parallel chords
a technique employed by expressionist composers which experimented with new tone combinations; created an effect of hovering between tonalities
impressionism
a movement that marked the 20th century; placed emphasis on program music, tone paintings, and nature worship; incorporated primary intervals, parallel movements, dissonance, the whole tone scale, and musicians focused on the sound and timbre of instrumen
Claude Debussy
the most important French composer of the early twentieth century; went to the Paris Conservatory when he was 11; won the Prix de Rome by age 22; died of cancer; helped establish the French song as a national art form; embraced indirection; created mood p
polyrhythm
the simultaneous use of several rhythmic patterns
melody
was affected greatly in the 20th century; composers rejects the neatly balanced phrase repetitions of earlier music; this element is fundamentally vocal in character; no longer a primary element
polychords
also referred to as "skyscraper" chords; they brought increased tension and dissonance to music and allowed the composer to incorporate polyharmony
polytonality
an element which heightened the contrast of two keys by presenting them simultaneously; was a radical departure from the basic principle of traditional harmony
atonality
doing away with tonality altogether
serialism
a method which is based on a particular arrangement of the twelve chromatic tones called a tone row; is the unifying idea for a composition and the source for all the melodic and harmonic events that take place in it
Igor Stravinsky
a composer who loved studying music despite his parents' desire for him to study law; his ballet The Rite of Spring nearly started a riot people disliked it so much; became an American citizen during the second world war; his other famous ballets were The
The Rite of Spring
one of Stravinsky's three ballets; stands as one of the landmarks in twentieth-century symphonic literature; the size of the orchestra is monumental as well as harsh and loud; colors constantly change; the energetic interaction between rhythm and meter is
Second Viennese School
Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern
Sprechstimme
literally "spoken voice"; a style used by Schoenberg in which they vocal melody is spoken rather than sung on exact pitches and in strict rhythm
Klangfarbenmelodie
literally "tone-color melody"; a technique used by Schoenberg where each note of a melody is played by a different instrument, creating a shifting effect that evokes of the moonbeams in the poems he based his song cycle Pierrot Lunaire on
Arnold Schoenberg
founder of the Second Viennese School; with each work he wrote, he stepped farther away from the idea of tonality; his method of composing with twelve tones firmly established him as a leader of contemporary musical thought; the war interrupted his creati
Alban Berg
born into a musical environment and was heavily influenced by Arnold Schoenberg; was called to war despite physical impairments; his works as well as the other twelve tone composers' were banned in Germany; died on Christmas Eve by a bug bite; probably th
twentieth-century nationalism
an idea that has been long established but differed in the fact that composers approached traditional music with a scientific spirit, prizing the ancient tunes precisely because they departed from the conventional mold; phonograph helped with this
ethnomusicology
the study of music in its cultural and global context; people took recording equipment into the field
Bela Bartok
a Hungarian nationalist composer; toured the remote villages of his country with Kodaly in order to preserve the folk songs; was troubled by the war so he moved to NYC and did not like it there; suffered from leukemia in his final years; his harmony can b
Carl Orff
one of the few composers who remained active during the Nazi regime in Germany; studied piano and cello at a very young age; founded a school for music and dance based on gymnastics and movements which was closed by the Nazis but his program lives on; his
John Philip Sousa
America's most famous bandmaster who conducted the US Marine Band; known as "The March King
Charles Ives
the first great American composer of the twentieth century; his father was a Civil War bandmaster; studied music at Yale but chose another career because he believed his music would not be sufficient; was head of the largest insurance agency in the countr
William Grant Still
the most important musical voice in the Harlem Renaissance movement; favored blues as source material for his music; built a reputation as an arranger for radio and musical theater but continued his classical music studies as well; parents were educators;
Appalachian Spring
perhaps Aaron Copland's best known ballet; he collaborated with Martha Graham who also danced the lead in the ballet; contains the early American song Simple Gifts; was performed at Barack Obama's inauguration ceremony
Aaron Copland
one of America's greatest contemporary composers; famous for his three ballets-Billy the Kid, Rodeo, and Appalachian Spring; also wrote film scores; studied with Nadia Boulanger and he was her first full-time American pupil; possibly the most recognized c
mestizos
people of mixed Spanish and Amerindian ancestry; they are the majority in Latin American countries today
Homage to Federico Garcia Lorca
a chamber orchestra suite written b Silvestre Revueltas; it honored the death of Lorca who was executed by a firing squad for being openly homosexual and anti-Fascist; the last movement Son refers to a traditional Mexican dance; the Mexican tradition cele
Silvestra Revueltas
a Mexican nationalist composer, also a child prodigy; became an alcoholic; had Spanish influences; known for mestizo realism
mariachi band
a string orchestra with both bowed and stringed instruments as well as vihuelas; became urban when trumpets and other instruments were incorporated; wear costumes when they perform
New York City
the cultural center of America; the heart of the theater district soon moved here
Tin Pan Alley
writers and publishers of popular music, many of whom set up business in Manhattan
the 1920s
a period of time which witnessed the growth of radio and film; known for prohibition, women's rights to vote, a relatively prosperous time, and the Harlem Renaissance
jazz
a music created mainly by African Americans around the turn of the twentieth century as they blended elements drawn from African musics with the popular and art traditions of the West; was born in New Orleans through the fusion of African-American element
ragtime
originally an African-American piano style that gained popularity in instrumental ensemble arrangements by Scott Joplin
Scott Joplin
known as the "King of Ragtime"; he was one of the first black American to gain importance as a composer; his Maple Leaf Rag is perhaps the best-known rag ever composed and sold over a million copies; was an active teacher, composer, and performer in New Y
strains
sixteen-measure phrases; this is used in Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag
blues
an American form of folk music based on a simple, repetitive, poetic-musical structure; the term refers to a mood as well as a harmonic progression, which is usually twelve to sixteen bars in length; this style of music is a fundamental form in jazz
blue note
a slight drop in pitch on the third, fifth, or seventh tone of a scale
Louis Armstrong
the most important single force in the development of early jazz styles; invented swing as well as scat singing; placed great emphasis on improvisation
scat singing
a music style in which syllables without meaning are set to an improvised vocal line; Ella Fitzgerald elevated this to an art form
chorus
in jazz, this is a single statement of melodic-harmonic pattern, like a twelve-bar blues progression
Billie Holiday
also known as "Lady Day"; the daughter of a guitar player and prostitute; people think she also worked as a prostitute after she left home; began performing at clubs where eventually Benny Goodman discovered her; she was on of the first black singers to b
swing
also referred to as big band; occurred during the Great Depression; a well known composer of this era is Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington
a gifted jazz pianist and an unrivaled jazz orchestration; his most famous recording is Take the A Train; big band led him to become the master of orchestration; considered a jazz master because of his multi-faceted compositions
bebop
a style of music which dealt with invented words that mimicked the two-note trademark phrase of the style
fusion
a style of music that arose combining jazz improvisation with amplified instruments and the rhythmic pulse of rock
Coltrane, Marsalis, and Davis
three musicians who helped jazz evolve and maintain popularity
American musical theater
a genre which developed from the comic opera; this established itself as America's unique contribution to world theater; this was America's claim to fame; early pieces of this genre were often silly and depended on romantic plots
Porgy and Bess and West Side Story
two musical works which were ahead of their time in both serious subject matter and in compositional technique
Stephen Sondheim
a composer of musicals who brought the genre to new levels of sophistication; wrote Sweeney Todd and Into the Woods
George Gerschwin
one of the most gifted American composers of the twentieth century; he was drawn to vernacular styles and was able to span the gap between jazz, pop, and classical genres; worked as a song plugger for a Tin Pan Alley publisher; his lyricist was his brothe
Leonard Bernstein
promoted classical music to the general public more than any other figure in American music history; a composer, conductor, educator, pianist, and television personality; the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants; entered Harvard at seventeen; was assistant co
underscoring
a type of music for film that occurs when music comes from an unseen source, often an invisible orchestra
source music
a type of music for film that functions as part of the drama itself; the music is literally played from a source (radio, band, etc.)
John Williams
an American composer who is often credited with the revival of the grand symphonic film score; had a string of major successes in movies; began writing for television in the 50s (Gilligan's Island); also written classical works such as fanfares for the Ol