Arnold Schoenberg’s dates?
1874-1951
Charles Ives’ dates?
1874-1954
Igor Stravinsky’s dates?
1882-1971
Edgard Var;se’s dates?
1883-1965
Olivier Messiaen’s dates?
1908-1992
John Cage’s dates?
1912-1992
Pierre Boulez’s dates?
1925-
Karlheinz Stockhausen’s dates?
1928-2007
Modes of limited transposition
Discovered by Messiaen, these are seven scales for which there are fewer than twelve transpositions.  The whole-tone and octatonic scales are the first two.
Essays Before a Sonata
Written by Charles Ives.  Describes his rationale for the Concord Sonata and its relationship to Transcendentalism.
Technique de mon langage musical
Written by Olivier Messiaen.  A comprehensive overview of the composer’s musical technique.
Klangfarbenmelodie
A tone-color-melody. ;A melody that is divided among several instruments or groups of instruments.
Tone cluster
A set of pitches that are very close to one another. ;Most often, the pitches are no more than a half step apart and have fixed registers
Aleatorism
The technique of using chance to generate music. ;Most associated with Cage and Lutoslawski.
Darmstadt
A town in which a music festival has met since World War II. ;This music festival was the meeting point of many avant-garde composers.
Formalized Music
Written by Iannis Xenakis. ;Extremely obtuse, the book describes many of the composer’s musical ideas.
Minimalism
A style of music most associated with Reich, Glass, and Adams, and America in general.  Marked by repetitive and complex rhythms and tonal harmonies. 
Serialism
A style of music associated with Stockhausen, Boulez, and Pousseur.  This is an outgrowth of the 12-tone music of Webern.
Sogetto cavato
A musical technique invented by Josquin des Prez that uses solmization syllables to assign pitches to text.
Inversion
Multiple musical meanings, but most used to describe the reordering of a set, whether this set is an interval, chord, or neither.
Genesis of a Music
Written by Harry Partch.  Describes his musical technique, which is noted for its microtonality.
I Ching
An ancient Chinese text that provides a system for divining religious truths.  Used by Cage to determine musical outcomes.
Sine wave
A simple wave which produces an equally simple tone.  In early electronic music studios, it was one of the few non-recorded building blocks available.  Today, it is still considered the fundamental wave for synthesis.
Collage
A musical technique that uses snippets of older music.  Used by Ives and Berio, among others.
Dodecaphony
Harmony that makes use of all twelve pitches and in which there is no tonal center.  Serialism and dodecaphony are nearly equivalent terms.
Matrix
A matrix is constructed to aid in composing and analyzing serial music.  It lists all of the possible transpositions, inversions, retrogrades, and retrograde inversions of a given row.
Retrograde
To write a musical idea in reverse.  Especially relevant to serial music where rows are often retrograded.
Musique concrète
Early electronic music that was comprised exclusively of recorded sounds that have been manipulated.  Originated in France with the help of Pierre Schaeffer.
Prepared piano
A piano which has been physically altered to produce different timbres.  Invented by Cage, who often used nails, screws, and washers between the strings.
Le Corbusier
French architect and designer for whom Xenakis worked.  Together, they designed the influential Phillips Pavilion for the Brussels World Fair.
The tape recorder was first available in _____.
1948
World War II began in ____ and ended in ____.
1939 and 1945, respectively.