At the Ballet
Listening Example: Name this ballet and the year that it premiered. Bonus point: what was notable about the premiere?
Rite of Spring (Augurs of Spring), 1913; there was a "riot" in the theater.
Listening Example: Name this ballet and the name of this excerpt. Bonus point: what ethnic group originated the dance this is based on?
The name for the type of pitch organization in Berg's Wozzeck.
Atonal or twelve-tone rows.
An early electronic musical instrument which is played by waving the hands over two metal rods
Theremin
Listening Example: Name this composer and the artistic/musical movement associated with this piece. Bonus Point: describe what this movement was intended to show
Prokofiev, Socialist Realism; idealized depictions of the Soviet Revolution under Stalin's regime
Listening Example: Name this ballet and its composer. Bonus Point: name the year this ballet premiered.
Copland, Appalachian Spring (Tis a Gift to Be Simple); 1944
Name the scale made of eight notes in an alternating whole/half step pattern which Debussy uses to denote otherness
Octatonic
Listening Example: Name this piece and the year it was composed. Bonus point: what does the B natural at the end of this scene symbolize?
Wozzeck, 1922; evil/murder
Listening Example: Name this piece and its composer. Bonus point: what is the term for a piano which has objects placed in specific spots on its strings to alter its sound?
John Cage, Sonata I; prepared piano
A modern art movement which depicted inner psychological states and believed music should tell the ugly, violent truth. Bonus point: name one of the composers associated with this movement
Expressionism, or the Second Viennese School; Schoenberg, Webern, or Berg
A type of ballet where the dancers' movement expressed character, emotion, and action, and was meant to bring more realistic portrayals to the ballet
Ballet d'action
Listening Example: name this piece and its composer. Bonus point: name the year this piece was composed.
Debussy "Nuages" or "Clouds;" 1899
Listening Example: Name this piece and its composer. Bonus point: what was the composer representing in this piece?
Bartok, Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta; the angry mob/the rise of fascism
Listening Example: Name this piece and its composer. Bonus point: name the 3 "instruments" for which this piece is composed.
John Cage, Imaginary Landscape #1; muted piano, suspended cymbals, and two turntables playing radio test signals as sliding glissandi
A coalition of working- and middle-class, leftist parties; specifically, the American Communist and Socialist parties in the 1940s formed one of these
Popular Front
Listening Example: name the ballet and the scene. Bonus point: what real-life people do the fictional characters represent?
Nutcracker Battle; Clara and the Nutcracker represent the Russians; the mice represent French soldiers and/or Russian Jews
Listening Example: Name the composer and one quoted song in this piece.
Mahler Symphony 1, movement 3; Frere Jacques, The Two Blue Eyes of My Love, Czardas (Hungarian folk dance) or Klezmer (Jewish traditional music)
A type of singing which is close to speech, which Berg uses in Wozzeck
Sprechstimme
Listening Example: name this piece and its composer. Bonus point: what is the name for the crunchy groups of notes created by the micropolyphony in this piece?
Ligeti, Lux Aeterna; tone clusters
An Italian movement in the early 20th century which believed that noise, modern technology, and the sounds of war should be celebrated as art music.
Futurism
Russian Tsar who brought the ballet to Russia in an effort to Europeanize the country
Peter the Great
What is the music/culture Debussy encountered at the World's Fair in 1889 that he appropriated as inspiration in many of his pieces?
Javanese Gamelan
The radical break in 1945 between the past and the present in the wake of WWII, after which the avant garde became a place to explore music separate from politics and emotion (supposedly)
Stunde Null, or the Zero Hour
Name the type of music, also called chance music, in which the composer relinquishes control over their piece to pre-determined outcomes like the I Ching or computer programs
Indeterminacy
A series of music summer courses sponsored by the CIA in the American sector of occupied Germany where composers like John Cage, Györgi Ligeti, and others studied and taught total serialism
The Darmstadt School