Modern Music and Sounds Free Essay Example

Perhaps the single most remarkable aspect of music in the twentieth century is that for the first time listeners could hear music when and where they wanted to hear it.

Debussy’s relationship to the artistic movement known as ________ helps give his music the quality of “suggesting rather than stating.”

Impressionism

Debussy’s works that are now recognized as masterpieces were

What type of harmonic language did Ives use to challenge notions of musical correctness?

tonal and atonal

How did Ives describe the nature of his “unanswered question”?

the perennial question of existence

What is one reason Charles Ives was able to write such dissonant music?

He held a day job in insurance so he could support his family and still compose music at his lessure.

What is the central point of action in the scenario of The Rite of Spring? a young woman is sacrificed to the gods to ensure the repeated return of Spring the following year

What is the name for a harmonic system that uses more than one tonal center?

Polytonal

Ragtime music was and became

a. was dance music b. became immensely popular with the young people c. was a foundation of jazz music d. all of the above.*

A hemiola is

A more complex type of syncopation than what is found in many other ragtime compositions.

“classic rags”

In 1916, Scott Joplin recorded “Maple Leaf Rag” on a piano roll (a long strip of paper) designed to be played on a player piano.

Blues songs were originally transmitted how?

orally without any formal notation.

The instrumentalists who created bebop wanted jazz to be treated as serious music for listening, rather than as frivolous entertainment for dancing.

What was the hallmark of Charlie Parker’s performance style? virtuosic soloing with lightning-fast technique

In Piano Study in Mixed Accents, the meter is irregular groupings of anywhere from two to eight notes

The melodic line in Crawford’s composition lacks a sense of harmony because it projects no sense of any tonal center

Ruth Crawford was the stepmother of Pete Seeger

In 12-tone composition, rows could be written all of the above.

Neoclassicism was an attempt to incorporate past styles into a contemporary idiom.

Tailleferre’s group of composers, Les six, sought to __________. separate their French style from any German influence

William Grant Still’s “A Black Pierrot” is based on the poetry of Langston Hughes

He leaves sonic space between instrumental parts, much like the open space of the American West.

The opening melody, and the one that keeps returning in “Hoe-Down,” is a traditional fiddle tune called

“Bonaparte’s Retreat”

Why was Copland not identified on the Ed Sullivan show in 1956 when his Lincoln Portrait was performed?

He was suspected of either being a communist or a communist sympathizer

How did Bartok’s ethnomusicological work affect his compositional style?

It allowed him to draw from the “uncontaminated” musical styles of folk cultures

Which orchestra commissioned Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra?

Boston Symphony Orchestra

In what ways is an operetta different from an opera?

An operetta uses spoken dialogue and is typically more light-hearted

Bernstein’s West Side Story can be characterized as a modern musical retelling of Romeo and Juliet.

In “Tonight,” Bernstein uses additive form to build emotional complexity by adding multiple characters and contrasting melodies

Which musical considers the aftermath of U.S. military involvement in Vietnam?

Miss Saigon

The term “prepared piano” refers to the insertion of various pieces of hardware into a piano to alter its sound.

The sound of the prepared piano has been compared to that of the Indonesian gamelan, a percussion ensemble whose timber Cage knew well from recordings.

Cage once declared which of the following? “Everything we do is music”

In Einstein on the Beach, a great deal of the text is recited, with limited singing.

Philip Glass is known for composing in a style known as minimalism, which can be described as a all of the above, a brief musical idea or group of  ideas is repeated and tried incrementally over a long plan of time, with a relatively slow rate of change.

“Knee Play 1” unfolds over a constantly repeated bass in the organ called a(n) ostinato

Blackboard Jungle

Chuck Berry developed a distinctive performance gimmick known as the Duck walk

Which television show began airing in 1957 and spread new records, artists, and dance styles across the country? American Bandstand

The backing texture of “Fight the Power” is made of up layers of vocal clips and sound fragments called Samples

What is the form of “Fight the Power” verse-chorus

Public Enemy’s records in the second half of the 1980s were groundbreaking for their politically charged, black nationalist sentiments

In the visual arts and architecture, …. favored clean, straight lines and functionality

Postmodern musical style combines modern and traditional elements