Music Theory
The enharmonic notation of the pitch existing at 440hz (usually A4) in the context of the key of Gbb major.
Bbb
This rhythmic pattern, originating in sub-Saharan African bell patterns, was brought by Enslaved Africans to the Americas via the transatlantic slave trade, where it intermingled with European and Caribbean musical traditions and was popularized in Cuba. Now popular in most Latin music and most commonly played by a pair of cylindrical wooden sticks struck against one another.
The Clave
He famously wrote the entire overture to his opera Don Giovanni on the morning of its actual premiere, completing the masterpiece in just a few hours while nursing a massive hangover.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Modal vs. Atonal
Modal music centers around a specific home note, albeit a degree of the major scale that can feel atypical. Thus, it is still tonal (despite often lacking leading tones), whereas atonal music completely abandons the concept of a home note, utilizing all notes (and not necessarily limiting itself those of the Western chromatic scale) equally without any tonal center.
A traditional aboriginal instrument developed as an accompaniment to ceremonial dances, chants, and storytellings. Players utilize circular breathing techniques to produce an unbroken and continuous drone.
The Didgeridoo
This chord is built using three stacked minor thirds, resulting in a symmetrical structure such that all inversions result in the exact same intervals. Thus any one chord tone can be considered the root, as they all share the identical physical keys on a piano/keyboard. The spelling of the notes is strictly dictated by the musical key to make accurate theoretical sense in resolution.
The Fully-Diminished Seventh Chord (°7)
The Romantic era of music and art was largely a response to this influential 19th century technological development, as composers during this era despised the pollution, favoring untouched beauty in nature, and detested the use of workers as emotionless tools, celebrating human emotion, passion, and dreams.
The Industrial Revolution
He famously hated his most popular work, Clair de Lune, viewing it as an immature composition from his early years and refusing to publish it for 15 years.
Claude Debussy
Texture vs. Harmony
Texture describes how many independent layers of sound happen simultaneously and how they interact (e.g., a solo melody vs. multiple intertwining melodies, contrapuntal motion, etc.) whereas harmony refers to the specific combination of different pitches sounding at the exact same time. Both refer to the simultaneous elements of a musical piece, but texture refers more to rhythmic interactions and harmony refers more to pitch interactions.
A larger, lower pitched cousin of the oboe which is used in primarily in orchestras, though it does also make appearances in some small woodwind ensembles.
The English Horn
The chord formed by the four upper extensions of an Em13 chord.
Dmaj7
In 1913, Igor Stravinsky premiered this piece in Paris, where its harsh, aggressive score and primal rhythms were so shocking that they are famously remembered as causing a riot.
The Rite of Spring
He was a giant, physically towering at 6'6" and with hands so massive they could span the interval of a 13th on a piano (about a foot in length). Because he rarely smiled in photos, he earned the nickname "the six-foot scowl," though close friends and family reportedly knew him to be a warm person with a dry wit and a passion for fast cars and speedboats.
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Legatissimo vs Slurred
Both involve playing with a very smooth, connected sound, however, slurring usually indicates the phrase (one line under a slur intended to be one phrase, usually played in one breath, one bow stroke, etc.) while legatissimo is not indicative of any desired phrasing.
A traditional Chinese "pear-shaped" string instrument, adapted from Central Asian Lutes that traveled the Silk Road. Becoming a staple in the Tang Dynasty court ensembles, compositions for this instrument range from romantic, lyrical, and gentle (文), to intense, dramatic, and percussive pieces (武).
The Pipa
If you start on G and move up an augmented 4th, down a minor 2nd, down a major 2nd, and up an augmented 5th, which note do you land on?
F#/Gb
This historical movement put the Jazz Age in full swing. This period is characterized by the rising popularity and proliferation of jazz music, and allowed jazz greats like Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Louis Armstrong to rise to prominence, helped further this movement's cause of reclaiming the African-American identity after the damage caused by blackface and minstrel shows.
The Harlem Renaissance
He fell in love with his musical mentor's wife, and would continuously hide cryptographic ciphers of her name (using C-B-A-G#-A) directly into some of his compositions. After his mentor passed, this composer openly declared his love, despite her being fourteen years his senior.
Johannes Brahms
Tone vs Timbre
Timbre refers more to the unique, identifying quality or "color" of a sound that allows you to distinguish it from others (such as the sound of a violin versus the sound of a clarinet) and is determined by the physical material of the instrument, its shape, and the unique combination of the harmonic frequencies it uses to produce a sound (its overtone series). Tone is a broader, often subjective term usually used to describe the overall character of a sound. This is the part that is actively changed by musicians to elicit emotional response.
The brainchild of Giuseppe Verdi, who commissioned it in the late 19th century to achieve a brass instrument with a range between that of the tuba and the bass trombone. It features in Verdi's operas "Otello" and "Falstaff," and was soon taken up in many other Italian operas.
The Cimbasso
This scale, designed by Italian composer Adolfo Crescentini and famously used by Giuseppe Verdi, deliberately lacks standard perfect fourth and perfect fifth intervals, with formula:
1 – b2 – 3 – #4 – #5 – #6 – 7
The Enigmatic Scale
Unearthed in the 1950s at the archaeological site of Ugarit (on the Syrian coast), these 29 tablets of cuneiform script are the oldest substantially complete, playable notated song, a 3,400-year-old ode to the ancient Canaanite goddess Nikkal.
Hurrian Hymn No. 6
He was notoriously obsessed with coffee and consumed up to forty cups a day. He even composed a "Coffee Cantata", a comedic work about a father trying to cure his daughter's coffee addiction.
Johann Sebastian Bach
Glissando vs. Portamento
A glissando involves distinctly playing all the in-between notes while portamentos more subtly slide through the two written pitches (the written start and end notes) in a more seamless manner.
A relative of the clarinet with a warm, rich tone, an extensive tenor range, and a distinctively 'bent' or 'curved' shape. Championed by W. A. Mozart, who was among the first to feature it in some of his ensembles.
The Basset Horn