Musical Devices
Richard Wagner used this kind of theme or motive to represent a certain character, thing, event, or emotion.
Leitmotiv
One of the most widespread cultural phenomena in nineteenth-century Europe, this ideology inspired composers to write music representative of their ethnic heritage.
Nationalism
Syncopation is the defining trait of which turn-of-the-century musical genre?
Ragtime
Antonin Dvorak, Symphony No. 9, "From the New World"
The United States in the late 1800s
This composer was primarily a touring performer with an intense following: his fans collected memorabilia, wore his portrait, and kept his coffee grounds and locks of his hair.
Franz Liszt
This recurring musical theme represents the object of the narrator’s affections in Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique.
Idée fixe
This term generally describes music, art, and literature from the late nineteenth century through the twentieth century whose creators sought to offer something new and distinctive while maintaining strong links to past classics.
Modernism
Consumers of sheet music for the piano in the nineteenth century belonged mostly to these socioeconomic classes.
Middle and upper class
Dmitri Shostakovich, Symphony No. 5
The Soviet Union in the 1930s
Known as the "King of Ragtime," this composer began his career as a traveling pianist playing in dances, social clubs, and brothels.
Scott Joplin
This German composer of Lieder wrote piano accompaniment to enact a certain character or mood.
Franz Schubert
This musical technique is meant to evoke a place, people, or social setting that is (or is perceived or imagined to be) profoundly different from accepted local norms in its attitudes, customs, and morals.
Musical Exoticism
This nineteenth-century composer had such a massive following that his fans would make pilgrimages to his opera house in Bayreuth from all over the world.
Richard Wagner
Carl Maria von Weber, Der Freischütz
Berlin in the early 19th century
This composer developed his musical language not only from his formal training in the experimental classical style, but also from his background as arranger for W.C. Handy's dance band.
William Grant Still
In this system, a “row” of pitches might appear in “prime,” “retrograde,” or “inverted” form.
Serialism
Claude Debussy, the opera Salomé, and the modern-day tarot deck are all associated with this artistic movement.
Symbolism
This composer's "Americanist" style incorporates folksong, uses musical texture to depict wide, open space, and is meant to be accessible to a general audience.
Aaron Copland
Claude Debussy, Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune
France around the turn of the 20th century
This famous opera composer (on your final exam study list) was essentially in a role of service to a theater impresario, a librettist, and a performing cast.
Gioachino Rossini
Charles Ives is well-known for this compositional technique, in which the complete statement of the main theme is not heard until the end of the piece.
Cumulative Form
According to dictionaries in the U.S.S.R., this artistic technique was a “creative method based on the truthful, historically concrete artistic reflection of reality in its revolutionary development.”
Socialist Realism
This song, originally from a "Brechtian" opera by Kurt Weill, became a popular jazz standard and pop number in its own right.
"The Ballad of Mack the Knife"
Igor Stravinsky, Rite of Spring (where did it premiere?)
France in the early 20th century
Charles Ives's background as an insurance salesman probably gave him the idea to distribute this publication on potential buyers' doorsteps alongside his Piano Sonata No. 2, Concord, Mass., 1840–1860.
"Essays Before a Sonata"