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Medieval/Renaissance
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100
A polyphonic choral work with sacred words that is not part of the liturgy.
What is a motet?
100
The instrumental refrain in an aria or the recurring tutti sections in a concerto.
What is a ritornello?
100
This form consists of an exposition, development, and recapitulation.
What is sonata-allegro or sonata form?
100
A group of Lieder that are meant to be performed together.
What is a song cycle?
100
This technique with an Italian name was used by Stravinsky in the Rite of Spring to build sections out of static, repeating fragments.
What is ostinato?
200
The melodic base, often from chant, around which a polyphonic piece was composed.
What is a cantus firmus?
200
The Italian term that refers to the second "A" of an ABA' aria.
What is the da capo?
200
This type of symphonic movement typically has the form A-B-A in which each larger section is diagrammed in rounded binary form (e.g. A = ||: a :|| ||: b a' :|| ).
What is the minuet and trio?
200
The Italian opera term that means "beautiful singing."
What is bel canto?
200
This kind of "singing" was used in Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire as well as in the opera of his student, Alban Berg.
What is Sprechstimme?
300
The type of early polyphony that involved one line holding a long note while other line(s) played in quicker rhythms above this foundation.
What is organum?
300
A fugue is an example of the most highly structured and learned kind of this.
What is counterpoint?
300
This composer taught both Mozart and Beethoven, and is supposed to have passed the spirit of Mozart down to Beethoven after Mozart's death.
Who was Haydn?
300
In Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique," this is the melody that undergoes thematic transformation.
What is the idee fixe?
300
This musical "ism" was focused on nature imagery, symbolism, shimmery orchestral textures, modal melodies, and loose forms.
What is Impressionism?
400
The most important church in Rome, source of the phrase "a cappella."
What is the Sistine Chapel or Cappella Sistina?
400
An Italian word for very rapid singing, often in Baroque opera arias.
What is coloratura?
400
This form, often found in the second movement of a symphony, presents several iterations of the same basic thematic structure and chord progression with successive characteristic alterations and elaborations in melody, mode, ornamentation, etc.
What is a theme and variations?
400
Instrumental music that explicitly tells a story.
What is program music?
400
Copland's Appalachian Spring uses this Shaker tune in a theme-and-variations form to depict rural American life in a romanticized fashion.
What is Simple Gifts?
500
The French composer who also wrote extensive poetry, e.g. Rondeaux.
Who was Machaut?
500
This genre features soloists, an orchestra, and a chorus, and is often built around iterations of a chorale theme from Lutheran hymn books.
What is a cantata?
500
In a double-exposition first movement form in a Classical concerto, what happens differently in the harmonic progression of the first (tutti) exposition vs. the second (solo) exposition?
What is a missing modulation?
500
A German music drama in which all the art forms are ideally equal and synthesized together.
What is the Gesamtkunstwerk (the collective work of art)?
500
The composers of this kind of music do not determine all the parameters in advance, such that much of the performance is left to chance or choice.
What is aleatoric music?