Avant-garde
Music trying to overthrow established aesthetics by pushing technical and expressive means (includes total serialism, free jazz, indeterminacy, prepared piano)
Ex: Babbit, Philomel
Sun Ra, “Outer Nothingness”
Cage, Sonatas and Interludes
Bebop
smaller combos, focuses on soloing via asymmetrical melody and extended virtuosity
Ex: Parker and Gillespie, “Ko-Ko”
Monk, “Misterioso”
Chorus (in jazz)
a statement of the harmonic progression of the opening tune, over which 1+ instruments plays variants or new musical ideas
Ex: Hardin, “Hotter Than That”
Parker and Gillespie, “Ko-Ko”
Ellington, “Koko”
Monk, “Misterioso”
Collage
Borrowing materials from another source and putting them within a “classical” music setting (popular, religious, or folk music)
Ex: Copland, Appalachian Spring, “Variations on Tis the Gift to be Simple”
Still, Afro-American Symphony
Concept album
An album arranged with a specific theme or narrative in mind
Ex: The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
cuatro
Latin American instrument, similar to a ukulele, but different tuning system (top note taken down an octave), different playing techniques
Ex: Simon Diaz, “Flor de Mayo”
most of the other Venezuelan music
Cuatro rhythm
The basic rhythm consists of eighth-quarter-eight-quarter, etc.
Other rhythm consists of 2 eights followed by an eighth rests (allowing the rhythm to be divided into either 2 or 3 units)
Ex: Ricardo Sepeda, “Sentir Zuliana”
or most of the other Venezuelan music
Elektronische Musik
music based on sounds produced or modified through electronic means
Ex: Babbitt, Philomel
English Folk Song Society
English composers who came together to “preserve” the folk song tradition because they thought it was decaying, members included Holst and Vaughan Williams
Ex: Vaughan Williams, “The Tunning of Elinor Rumming” from Five Tudor Portraits
electroacoustic music
composed, generated or effected through electronic and computer manipulation
Ex: Babbitt, Philomel
Lanksy, Notjustmoreidlechatter
Exoticism
writing music that evokes other lands and cultures
Ex: Bizet, Carmen
Marschner, Der Vampyr
Experimentalism
embracing artistic autonomy and pushing artistic boundaries by exploring new techniques, sounds, and styles without necessarily regarding the audience, using self-consciously “modern” styles
Ex: Ives, “General William Booth Enters Into Heaven”
Expressionism
Emancipation of dissonance, avoiding traditional forms to express deep personal feeling/emotion
Ex: Schoenberg, Pierrot Lunaire
Berg, Wozzeck
Free jazz
Performers given reign in elements that might include tonality, tune, and chord sequences, collective improvisation
Ex: Sun Ra, “Outer Nothingness” from The Heliocentric World of Sun Ra, Vol. 1
Gesamtkunstwerk
“total work of art”, composer controls it all, everything under unification
Ex: Wagner, Die Walkure
Historicism
Celebrating the past, privileging it over the present
Ex: Verdi, Quattro Pezzi Sacri
Brahms, Symphony No. 4, 4th mvmt
Impressionism
Evokes moods and imagery through colorful harmony and instrumental timbre
Ex: Debussy, Trois Nocturnes, “Nuages”
Indeterminacy
The composer leaves certain elements of the music unspecified or semi-specified and up the choice of the performer(s)
Ex: Cage, Music of Changes
Cage, 4′ 33″
Klangfarbenmelodie
Melody made by shifting elements of a chord slowly over time via voicings and other methods
Ex: Webern, Symphony
Minimalism
Materials to a minimum, procedures simplified so what’s going on is immediately apparent, constant pulse and many repetitions of patterns
Ex: Glass, Songs from Liquid Days
Glass, Glassworks
Lansky, Notjustmoreidlechatter
Modernism
Breaks with the immediate past/contemporaries while still rooted in tradition
Ex: compositions by Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Bartok
Music drama
Wagner’s term for his operas, always Gesamtkunstwerk, used elements like leitmotivs
Ex: Wager, Die Walkure
Musique concrete
Created by using recorded sounds and manipulating them, working “concretely” from the music
Ex: Parmerud, “Alias”
Harrison, “Unsound Objects”
Nationalism
Celebration of one’s country via arts, music, literature
Ex: Smetana, The Moldau
Prokofiev, Alexander Nevsky
Neo-Classicism
Looking back to elements of the past, reviving/imitating/evoking classical (or Baroque) styles and genres, gets away from elements of program music, mixes in melodic/harmonic styles endemic to 20th entry, may or may not use new/unusual ensembles/orchestration
Ex: Prokofiev, Classical Symphony
New Orleans style jazz
individual solo instruments (clarinet, trumpet/coronet, trombone, piano, banjo, drums, bass/tuba possible), focuses on soloing
Ex: Hardin, “Hotter Than That”
Pastoralism
Evokes elements of the countryside, elevation of rural ideas and folk musics into art/concert music
Ex: Vaughan Williams, “The Tunning of Elinor Rumming” from Five Tudor Portraits
Bartok, Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta
Pointillism
atomizing a musical line amongst different instruments/registers
Ex: Webern, Symphony
Pop music
Term coined in 1950s for music reflecting tastes and styles popular with teen/young adult audience, rock and roll w/ arrangements beyond traditional ensembles, often gendered as “feminine”
Ex: The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Populism
Playing music for the audience’s listening pleasure, representing ordinary people’s needs through music to which they can relate
Ex: Copland, Appalachian Spring
Still, Afro-American Symphony
Post-modernism
Rejection of strict overarching metanarrative, blurs boundaries between high and popular art, take something that people know and deconstructs to reify it
Ex: Crumb, Black Angels
Prepared piano
Altering sounds on the piano by inserting objects into the strings to widen the sound palette
Ex: Cage, Sonatas and Inteludes, “Sonata V”
Primitivism
Evoking children, primitive cultures, savages, and things of the like because it is believed that these are closest to the truth, raw emotion
Ex: Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring
Quotation
Use of material from another source within a composition
Ex: Copland, Appalachian Spring
Crumb, Black Angels
Realism
Type of 19th-century opera presenting normal people in everyday situations, often framed by brutal/sordid events
Ex: Bizet, Carmen
Riff
Short melodic ostinato, 2-4 bars long, can be repeated intact or varied to accommodate an underlying harmonic pattern
Ex: Ellington, “Koko”
Rock and roll
1950s, mixture of rhythm of blues and country along w/ Tin Pan Alley song forms and gospel ornamentation, especially influenced by things in the South and African-Americans
Ex: Chuck Berry, “Johnny B. Goode”
Rock music
1960s forward, consolidation of earlier rock and roll with emphasis on youth audience, “authenticity”, and amplification, thought of as “masculine”
Ex: Rolling Stones, “I Wanna Be Your Man”
Sprechstimme
singer half-sings, half-speaks the melodic line
Ex: Schoenberg, Pierrot Lunaire
Berg, Wozzeck
swing
choirs of instruments (saxophones, trumpets, trombones, rhythm), focuses on soloing/riffs, dancing basically required
Ex: Ellington, “Koko”
Tone row
In 12-tone music, a method of organizing the 12 pitch classes that is used to generate the musical content
Ex: Babbitt, Philomel
Berg, Wozzeck
Webern, Symphony
Total serialism
Application of principles of 12-tone method to music parameters other than pitch, including duration, intensities, and timbres
Ex: Babbitt, Philomel
twelve-tone music
20th century form of atonality based on ordering the 12 notes of the chromatic scale into a row that may be manipulated according to certain rules
Ex: Webern, Symphony
Wagnerism
Adoring Wagner and thinking he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread
(Being an ardent lover/follower of Wagner’s music and theories of composition)
May compose using Wagner’s methods, including leitmotivs, unending melody/orchestration techniques, or chromaticism
Ex: Debussy, Trois Nocturnes, “Nuages”
Elgar, The Dream of Gerontius