Tone cluster
Chord made up of tones only a half step or a whole step apart, used in music after 1900.
Polytonality
Approach to pitch organization using two or more keys at one time, often found in twentieth-century music.
Atonality
Absence of tonality, or key, characteristic of much music of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
impressionism
Musical style which stresses tone color, atmosphere, and fluidity, typical of Debussy (flourished 1890–1920).
serialism
use of the techniques of the twelve-tone system to organize rhythm, dynamics, and tone color.
neoclassicism
Musical style marked by emotional restraint, balance, and clarity, inspired by the forms and stylistic features of eighteenth-century music, found in many works from 1920 to 1950.
Diaghilev
Important person in Stravinsky’s life. Asked Strav to orchestrate piano pieces by Chopin as a ballet music for the Russian ballet in 1909. Firebird was created in 1910
expressionism
Musical style stressing intense, subjective emotion and harsh dissonance, typical of German and Austrian music of the early twentieth century.
Petrushka
Stravinksi’s 2nd ballet in 1911.
primitivism
Evocation of primitive power through insistent rhythms and percussive sounds.
Klangfarbenmelodie (tone-color melody)
Succession of varying tone colors serving as a musical idea in a composition, used by Schoenberg and his followers.
Sprechstimme
In German, speech-voice; a style of vocal performance halfway between speaking and singing, typical of Schoenberg and his followers.
Horatio Parker
Charles Ives conservative musical teacher at Yale.
Philosophy of Unanswered Questions
depicts the search for the meaning of life
Nadia Boulanger
world renowned teacher in Paris, who taught Philip Glass. She also taught Elliot Carter
Porgy and Bess
(1935) An American musical that combines musicals and operas. Written by George and Ira Gerswhin. similar to Bernstein’s West Side Story
Martha Graham
Great modern dancer and choreographer, where Appalachian Spring was originated as a ballet score.
minimalism (minimalist music)
Music characterized by steady pulse, clear tonality, and insistent repetition of short melodic patterns; its dynamic level, texture, and harmony tend to stay constant for fairly long stretches of time, creating a trance-like or hypnotic effect; developed in the 1960s.
Aleatoric music
Chance music

20th-century music in which chance or indeterminate elements are left for the performer to realize. The term is a loose one, describing compositions with strictly demarcated areas for improvisation according to specific directions and also unstructured pieces consisting of vague directives, such as “Play for five minutes.”

ionisation
an entire piece of music written entirely for percussion by Edgar Varese.
Lorca
Spanish poet who’s poems were the inspiration for Crumb’s Ancient Voices of Children
3 Composers who won a Pulitzer prize
Winton Marsalis, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Ives, Gerswhin,
Texture
both homophonic and contrapuntal textures employed and a variety
within a single composition.
Tonality
major -minor system retained by some composers, but methods of
establishing tonal centers altered. Other composers employed atonal
systems including serialism.
Rhythm
Complex rhythms; rhythmic patterns used; frequent absence of well-
defined beat; and frequent changes of meter
Harmony
High dissonance levels; mew methods of chord construction in
addition to triadic harmony
Tone color
Instruments sometimes played in extreme registers; unusual
instruments and instrumental groupings
Melody
sometimes derived from short melodic motives; melodies are
often not easy to sing due to extreme range and melodic intervals.
Dynamics
Extremes employed and rapid dynamic fluctuations.
Ensembles
Wide variety in size of ensembles from very small to gigantic.
New Organizational Procedures include serialism (twelve-tone)
General stylistic trends
Post Romanticism, Impressionism, primitivism,
neoclassicism, and Expressionism
Vocal styles
Combination of ordinary speaking, conventional singing, and
Sprechstimme