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Trends
Techniques
Composers
Famous Works
Potpourri
100
This primarily French trend is known for a stress on tone color and atmosphere, and fluidity in rhythm.
What is Impressionism?
100
A motive or phrase that is repeated persistently at the same pitch throughout a section.
What is ostinato?
100
The most important Impressionist composer.
Who is Claude Debussy?
100
He wrote "Fanfare for the Common Man".
Who is Aaron Copland?
100
His string quartets are widely thought to be the finest since those of Ludwig van Beethoven.
Who is Bartok?
200
This style of composition is characterized by a steady pulse, clear tonality, and insistent repetition of short melodic patterns.
What is Minimalism?
200
A combination of two traditional chords sounding together.
What is a polychord?
200
He composed the first significant atonal pieces around 1908.
Who is Arnold Schoenberg?
200
Bartok's most popular work, it gets its name because it treats the individual orchestral instruments in a soloistic manner.
What is "Concerto for Orchestra"?
200
The most famous composer ever from Argentina.
Who is Astor Piazzolla?
300
Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss wrote music in this style, which was a transition between the 19th and 20th Centuries.
What is Post-Romanticism?
300
The opposite of consonant.
What is dissonant?
300
He was a successful composer, pianist, and conductor who wrote the score for "West Side Story".
Who is Leonard Bernstein?
300
He wrote the text to "A Survivor from Warsaw".
Who is Arnold Schoenberg?
300
An unusual style of vocal performance, halfway between speaking and singing.
What is Sprechstimme?
400
Composers of this style were reacting against Impressionism and Romanticism, and modeled their works after J.S. Bach.
What is Neoclassicism?
400
A five-tone scale.
What is pentatonic?
400
She is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer, currently on the faculty of Florida State University.
Who is Ellen Taaffe Zwilich?
400
The premiere of this piece in Paris in 1913 incited a riot.
What is Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring"?
400
The complete rejection of a tonal center.
What is atonality?
500
The method of atonal composition in which composers use a tone row to create melody and harmony.
What is Serialism?
500
The technique of using two or more tonal centers at the same time.
What is polytonality?
500
George Gershwin's usual lyricist.
Who is Ira Gershwin?
500
John Cage's best-known work for prepared piano.
What is "Sonatas and Interludes"?
500
Using twelve-tone (serial) techniques to organize rhythm, dynamics, tone color, etc.
What is total serialism?