Music 100 Final (20th Century Music)

-WWI influenced a wave of protest in the arts that could be heard in music. Composers began to distort music and even tried to shock the audiences. Melody became less important than a pulsating rhythm, an unusual texture, or a new sound

-great Russian composer who shocked audiences in Paris in 1913 with the performance of his “The Rite of Spring”. His music for this ballet used a percussive orchestra, irregular accents, polymetrical and polyrhythmical sections, ostinato figures and dissonant polychords. The story of the ballet shocked audiences because it dealt with the sacrifice of a young virgin who dances herself to death.

-invented a new method of composing music called the 12 tone row method (serialism). This music had no tonal center so it was atonal. The tone row could be played in its original order, it could be played backward (retrograde), upside down (inversion), or both backward and upside down (retrograde inversion). Two composers who followed Schoenberg in this style of composing were Alban Berg and Anton Webern.

structural principle according to which a recurring series of ordered elements which are used in order, or manipulated in particular ways, to give a piece unity.

-he was the most original and most ridicule and perhaps the greatest of American composers in the 20^th century. His music was way ahead of its time. He was the first to use quarter-tones (microtones) in his compositions and the first to use the collage effect (the playing of several different songs at the same time)

-another major American composer. He was very influential in est. what is now known as the “americana” sound.
-he felt the new sounds of atonality had little to offer most music lovers, so he decided to composer in a simple style that was more appealing to concertgoers.
-his most famous work is called “fanfare for the common man”. His music for the ballet “appalachian spring” featured the shaker tune “tis the gift to be simple.”

-a belief that art is for all, not just the elite few, and all art is of equal importance

-his composition “Poeme Electronique” is an early landmark of electronic music that features sounds created by a synthesizer and everyday sounds (such as the sound of a train, a siren, an organ, church bells, and the human voice).
-recording sounds such as this, then playing those sounds back during a live performance usually being somewhat distorted is known as musique concrete.
-We heard a work by Luciano Berio in class called “Visage” that featured a live female vocalist performing with a prerecorded tape recording of music concrete sounds

-eccentric American composer who inveted the prepared piano and was a champion of chance music (music left up to chance, known as aleatoric music).
-most famous work was known as 4'33”.

-This is a style of postmodern music that takes a small music unit and repeats it over and over.
-John Adams and Phillip Glass are 2 leading minimalists

-great American composer who wrote in Neo-Romantic (“going back to” romantic period) style
-most famous work is Adagio for Strings

-developed from the operetta (comic opera)
-Victor Herbert, Babes in Toyland
-Broadway musical = 1920s
-Sigmund Romberg's Student Prince
-romantic plots , choruses, appealing melodies, dances, comedy
-later, some based upon very serious literary pieces
-Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story is one of the first pieces to end in tragedy and Fiddler on the Roof
-Rogers and Hammerstein=Babes in Arms, My Funny Valentine, Oklahoma!, The King and I, The Sound of Music, etc
-Stephen Sondheim=Sunday in the Park With George, Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music, etc.
-Andrew Lloyd Weber=Jesus Christ Superstar, Tommy, Evita, Sunset Boulevard, Miss Saigon

-composer, conductor, pianist, televison personality
-loved the urban scene as seen in west side story
-musical based on romeo and juliet
-dramatic content, melodies, colorful orchestration, and vivacious dance delight audiences still today

-setting the mood
-emotional quality
-creates place and time
-underscoring=music comes from unseen source (orchestra)
-source music=music functions as part of the drama itself; radios in film, tv, concert hall, dance room
-John Williams and leitmotif= leading motives, jaws; two notes that warn the audience of the sharks presence, star wars