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20th Century Music History
Assorted terms related to the history of mid-20th Century music.
32
Music
Undergraduate 2
05/10/2010

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Term
Arnold Schoenberg's dates?
Definition
1874-1951
Term
Charles Ives' dates?
Definition
1874-1954
Term
Igor Stravinsky's dates?
Definition
1882-1971
Term
Edgard Varèse's dates?
Definition
1883-1965
Term
Olivier Messiaen's dates?
Definition
1908-1992
Term
John Cage's dates?
Definition
1912-1992
Term
Pierre Boulez's dates?
Definition
1925-
Term
Karlheinz Stockhausen's dates?
Definition
1928-2007
Term
Modes of limited transposition
Definition
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.
Term
Essays Before a Sonata
Definition
Written by Charles Ives.  Describes his rationale for the Concord Sonata and its relationship to Transcendentalism.
Term
Technique de mon langage musical
Definition
Written by Olivier Messiaen.  A comprehensive overview of the composer's musical technique.
Term
Klangfarbenmelodie
Definition
A tone-color-melody.  A melody that is divided among several instruments or groups of instruments.
Term
Tone cluster
Definition
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
Term
Aleatorism
Definition
The technique of using chance to generate music.  Most associated with Cage and Lutoslawski.
Term
Darmstadt
Definition
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.
Term
Formalized Music
Definition
Written by Iannis Xenakis.  Extremely obtuse, the book describes many of the composer's musical ideas.
Term
Minimalism
Definition
A style of music most associated with Reich, Glass, and Adams, and America in general.  Marked by repetitive and complex rhythms and tonal harmonies. 
Term
Serialism
Definition
A style of music associated with Stockhausen, Boulez, and Pousseur.  This is an outgrowth of the 12-tone music of Webern.
Term
Sogetto cavato
Definition
A musical technique invented by Josquin des Prez that uses solmization syllables to assign pitches to text.
Term
Inversion
Definition
Multiple musical meanings, but most used to describe the reordering of a set, whether this set is an interval, chord, or neither.
Term
Genesis of a Music
Definition
Written by Harry Partch.  Describes his musical technique, which is noted for its microtonality.
Term
I Ching
Definition
An ancient Chinese text that provides a system for divining religious truths.  Used by Cage to determine musical outcomes.
Term
Sine wave
Definition
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.
Term
Collage
Definition
A musical technique that uses snippets of older music.  Used by Ives and Berio, among others.
Term
Dodecaphony
Definition
Harmony that makes use of all twelve pitches and in which there is no tonal center.  Serialism and dodecaphony are nearly equivalent terms.
Term
Matrix
Definition
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.
Term
Retrograde
Definition
To write a musical idea in reverse.  Especially relevant to serial music where rows are often retrograded.
Term
Musique concrète
Definition
Early electronic music that was comprised exclusively of recorded sounds that have been manipulated.  Originated in France with the help of Pierre Schaeffer.
Term
Prepared piano
Definition
A piano which has been physically altered to produce different timbres.  Invented by Cage, who often used nails, screws, and washers between the strings.
Term
Le Corbusier
Definition
French architect and designer for whom Xenakis worked.  Together, they designed the influential Phillips Pavilion for the Brussels World Fair.
Term
The tape recorder was first available in _____.
Definition
1948
Term
World War II began in ____ and ended in ____.
Definition
1939 and 1945, respectively.
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