Composers in the twentieth century drew inspiration from
folk and popular music from all cultures, European art music from the Middle Ages through the nineteenth century, & the music of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
The combination of two traditional chords sounding together is known as
a polychord.
Among the unusual playing techniques that were widely used during the twentieth century is the ___, a rapid slide up or down a scale.
glissando.
Who were some of the composers that were stimulated by the folklore of their land.
Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, & Charles Ives.
A chord made of tones only a half step or a whole step apart is known as
a tone cluster.
The absence of key or tonality in a musical composition is known as
atonality.
One of the most striking elements of twentieth-century music that is used to generate power and excitement is
rhythm.
The use of two or more keys at one time is known as
polytonality.
A motive or phrase that is repeated persistently at the same pitch throughout a section is called
ostinato.
In twentieth-century music, melodies are often difficult to sing because
of the wide leaps & rhythmic irregularity.
One of the most important teachers of musical composition in the twentieth century was
Nadia Boulanger.
The best-known American ensemble created in the 1930s by a radio network to broadcast live music was the
NBC Symphony Orchestra.
The most influential organization sponsoring new music after World War I was
the International Society for Contemporary Music.
Recordings of much lesser-known music multiplied in 1948 through
the appearance of long-playing disks.
The first opera created for television was Gian-Carlo Menotti's
Amahl and the Night Visitors.
Radio broadcasts of live and recorded music began to reach large audiences during the
1920s.
In order to drown the sense of tonality, Debussy
turned to the medieval church modes, borrowed pentatonic scales from Javanese music, & developed the whole-tone scale.
The poem which inspired the Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun was written by
Stéphane Mallarmé.
At the Paris International Exhibition of 1889 Debussy was strongly influenced by the
performances of Asian music.
Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande is an almost word-for-word setting of the symbolist play by
Maurice Maeterlinck.
As a result of his trips abroad, Debussy developed a lifelong interest in the music of
Russia.
The faun evoked in Debussy's famous composition is a
creature who is half man, half goat.
Debussy's music tends to
sound free and almost improvisational.
A painter who went through a neoclassical phase, and who designed sets for Stravinsky's first neoclassical work, was
Pablo Picasso.
Neoclassical composers favored
tonality.
Characteristics of neoclassicism.
balance, restraint, & clarity.
Neoclassicism was a reaction against
romanticism & impressionism.
Neoclassical compositions are characterized by
forms and stylistic features of earlier periods.
A more appropriate term for "neo-classicism" might be
neo-Baroque.
The famous riot in 1913 was caused by the first performance of Stravinsky's ballet
The Rite of Spring.
In the 1950s Stravinsky dramatically changed his style, this time drawing inspiration from
Anton Webern.
Stravinsky's second phase is generally known as
neoclassical.
Stravinsky's composition teacher was
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
Stravinsky's Rite of Spring is scored for
an enormous orchestra.
Sergei Diaghilev was the director of the
Russian Ballet.
Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring) is an example of
neoclassicism.
During the period from about 1920 to 1951, Stravinsky drew inspiration largely from
eighteenth-century music.