THEORY MIDTERM EXAM

Layering: Layering many instrumental parts, increasing density to create intensity

Works: Stravinsky Rite of Spring, Debussy

Juxtaposition: abrupt interruptions and overlaps of musical themes without clear sections of cadences
sudden changes in texture, density, rhythm
Works: Stravinsky Rite of Spring, Charles Ives

Superimposition: combining layers that have specific individual sounds

Works: Stravinsky Rite of Spring

Neo-classicism (compared to atonality & twelve-tone):

- Reviving elements of classical music such as balance, clarity and simplicity, working away from the emotionalism
and “formlessness” of late romanticism
- Avoid emotionalism associated with Romantic music: avoid strings, focus on winds, used metronome markings
rather than tempo markings associated with mood
- Can be neotonal - use of classical form in Schoenberg, Bartok, Stravinsky
Works: Stravinsky, Bartok, Schoenberg

Neo-tonality: using tones to form structure

Establishing a tonal center through repetition and assertion, not through traditional harmony
Works: Stravinsky

Arch form: A symmetrical form where all sections move toward a central movement and then appear in reverse
Sections don’t have to be repeated exactly, but share thematic material
Works: Bartok,

Expressionism:
- Austro-Germanic chromaticism in both melody and harmony 1909-20s
- Atonal, emphasis on chromatic scale and themes & motifs, not tonal center
- Darker and more extreme instrumental colors and registers
- More emotional, hot, anxiety, horror, obsession
- dark, contrasting, bright colors, sharper, germetric
Works: Wozzeck, Pierrot Lunaire

Sprechstimme: spoke, heightened inflection, combining speaking with singing

following the notated rhythms exactly, approximating written pitches
Works: Pierrot Lunaire

Developing variation: presenting a basic idea at the outset and continuously drawing out new variants of that idea, to
give music coherence and shape
Works: Schoenberg, Stravinsky

Atonality: No tonal center, dissonance unresolved

Not necessarily twelve-tone
Works: Schoenberg, Seeger, Webern, Bartok

Twelve-tone (compared to atonality):

A technique to create atonality developed by Schoenberg
Ensuring all 12 notes of the chromatic scale appear in equal frequency to avoid a tonal center
transposition, inversion, retrograde and retrograde inversions
Works: Webern, Schoenberg

Transcendentalism:
God in nature
Man = individual, self-reliant
Experience over logic
Humans are essentially good, have divine spark of creativity
All aspects of the universe relate
Works: Charles Ives - Piano Sonata No. 2, General William Booth
Debussy, Voiles:
Texture: Opening section has 3 juxtaposed layers
End of A section has melody colored by harmonization in octaves and augmented intervals
Scale types: whole tone scale in A section opening
pentatonic scale in B section
Impressionist aspects:
- Has no clear structure, neither ternary nor binary
- ends of phrases and sections disappear, unclear and ambiguous
- Ambiguous tonal centers, but has tonal centers
- modal & alternative scales
- music evokes moods through suggestion, connotation and indirection
- interruptions to avoid common progressions and harmonic practices - draws attention to individual musical ideas/
images that carry the structure and meaning

Stravinsky, Firebird:
How are scale types connect to ballet characters?
Non-human magician and firebird, secret “inner world”: chromatic & octatonic scales, dissonance
Humans: modal/pentatonic folk tunes
Infernal Dance of Kastche’s subjects: Octatonic scale
Rimsky-Korsakov taught him to use scales for characters

Stravinsky, Petrouchka:
What is the Petrouchka chord?
Polychord C over F#

Stravinsky, Symphony of Psalms:

How does Symphony of Psalms differ in style from Rite of Spring?
Historical references:
- Phrygian scale and chords
- Fugue with V, I and V entrances like Bach
- Vocal line imitating a liturgical chant, Latin religious work, Renaissance references
Use of triads and diatonic scales
simplified layers, less dense
staying in one time signature
has transitions and cadences vs juxtaposition of Rite of Spring

Discuss stylistic aspects of Symphony of Psalms Mvts I and II that make it a neo-classic work:
Form:
- Uses tones to form structure
- Uses forms found in classical music - e.g. Mvts 1 is a Prelude and Mvt 2 a Double Fugue - one for instruments, one
for voices
- Contrapuntal texture in choir
Moving away form Romanticism:
- Focuses on wind instruments and piano instead of strings - away from Romantic orchestration
- No mood-related tempo markings like “Andante” etc
- Uses staccatos and heavy accents to create percussive and repetitive rhythmic passages instead of just the long,
legato lines of Romantic period

Bartók:
Three types of Musical Influences:
1. 19th century Austro-Germanic music - studied Wagner and Strauss in Budapest
2. Eastern European folk music - nationalist movement in Hungary
3. 20th century composers - Debussy, Stravinsky, Schoeberg

Use of symmetry and inversion in works

- Use of arch form and palindromes very common
- Building to climax and then going through the music backwards, with retrogrades and inversions

Explain the overall form for String Quartet No. 5 and discuss the form for Mvt I and II or IV.
Overall Form:
Arch form, symmetrical

Movement I:
Arch form within sonata form (3 themes return in recap opposite order in inversion)
ABCDCBA

Movement II
ABCBA Adagio molto,
Variation of Movement I

Explain the formal design for movement I of Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste -where/how does it reach its
peak?
Slow Fugue in arch form, symmetrical, palindrome
Circle of 5ths - each entrance alternatives between ascending and descending circles of 5ths, meet in the middle at E
Fibonacci series = bar numbers and phrase proportions of entrances
grows louder, higher, lower, denser, until climax (m 56), then unwinds

What happens in the final third of the movement?

Discuss the use of arch form in Movement III

Slow arch form, ABCBA with the Fugue Theme from Movement one between each section
Tonal centers are symmetrical: A, C, F#, C, A for the movements, C - A and A - F# are mirrors of each other
For each movement there is a “opposite pole” note that is one tritone from the tonal center of that movement
build up, peak, wind down
At the peak, last segment of twisting theme is transformed into a transposed, modified retrograde

Schoenberg:
atonal stylistic techniques found in Op. 11 No. 1 and Pierrot Lunaire: Nacht.
Op. 11 No. 1:
No tonal center - use of motives or pitch sets with related intervallic content, e.g. 0, 1, 4 prime form
chromatic statement & development in an old-fashioned way (motifs and themes)
m2’s and m3’s patterns like a mosaic
Atonal Harmony: Schoenbergian chord: 4ths and TTs

Pierrot Lunaire: Nacht:

Atonal, no tonal center

Moth motif on E-G-Eb creates a sense of “home base” even though harmonies are atonal

Use of extended instrumental and vocal techniques in Nacht, How is it portraying giant insects blotting out the sun?
Sul ponticello - harsher sound in cello
Sprechstimme, Verschlungen “devoured" 3 sung notes = important
flutter tongue clarinet - insects blocking sun
Unusual passacaglia - set of imitations and variations over a repeated bass ostinato - moth motif + chromatic descent
Rising minor 3rd followed by descending min 3rd - motive that keeps returning in variations, inversions and
retrogrades.
shape of motif = wings of the moths
Increases in frequency, overlapping - symbolizing moths blotting out the sun

Berg, Wozzeck:
Social drama
- Main characters = military people
- About lower & middle class, no heroes, tragedy, about the sadness of life
- Marxist social revolutionary playwright Georg Buchner

Leitmotifs:
The Captain: baroque keyboard suite - old, out of time
Marie: military sounds, lullaby, Marie as Mother
Military Fanfare leitmotif, Folk Song leitmotif
Character Studies:
Hunter: hunting song, 3 chords - 19th century
Doctor: passacaglia/chiconne made of 12 notes, 21 variations of those notes - absurd experiments & reality
Atonality used for Wozzeck’s hallucinations, psychosis and growing alienation

Form
Symmetrical, Berg edited play to make 3 Acts 5 scenes each
5 Character Studies, Act II a Symphony in 5 movements, Act III as 6 inventions
Each scene follows a certain traditional form, e.g. Baroque suite, rhapsody, passacaglia, rondo…

Inventions in Act III scenes 2 and 3

Scene 2: Invention on one tone B Elemental variations on 1 note
B in octaves when Marie is stabbed, Marie = B
Scene 3: Invention on a rhythm when Wozzeck is in the Tavern
Tavern - rhythmic figure holds together scene
Piano in tavern: distorted expressionist folk tunes

How is Scene 2 and 3 connected? Orchestral interlude?

Music continues until end of Act - scene transitions
B natural when Wozzeck kills Marie - constant obsession over B
As Marie dies, her motifs play and fade away: her lullaby she sings, military strings motif, strings motif portraying
motherhood

How is this work typical of Expressionism in terms of musical style and general aesthetics?
- Atonal, emphasis on chromatic scale and themes & motifs, not tonal center
- Themes of anxiety, horror, obsession, psychosis
- Darker and more extreme instrumental colors and registers

Ives:
identify general stylistic traits found in a page of music from Piano Sonata No. 2, movement III and General William
Booth

Piano Sonata No. 2:

- Movements named after Transcendentalists
- American Artist - Artist can “contain multitudes” and contradict himself - consonance vs dissonance, differing styles
reflect the totality of experience - simplicity, complexity, coherence, contradiction
- Transcendentalism - Humans are essentially good, divine spark of creativity (Beethoven 5th motif, enlightenment)
All aspects of universe relate
Experience over logic - vastly different quotes
- Drawing from his life: Church tune quote, Church bells - small town, Tormented ragtime
- Chromaticism: stacks of 3rds & 4ths, clusters, polychords, Bitonality
- Layers
- Juxtaposition

General William Booth:

- Quotes: Church hymn - There is a Fountain filled with Blood
Cumulative form - constant quotes of fragments of hymn until full hymn in end
- Motifs: March chromatic Drum beat pattern in piano
whole tone scale when marchers arrive at Heaven
lassies playing banjos - banjo type rhythms
Handel-esque rhythm for Hallelujahs
Trumpets mentioned - piano bugle-esque
Jesus came: calm, slow, diatonic
Juxtaposition, Transcendentalism - Accompaniment changes to describe different people entering into Heaven
Chromaticism: clusters in piano

How are Ives’ textures similar to those of Stravinsky?

Quotations
Use of layers
Bitonality - like Stravinsky’s Polychords
Juxtaposition
Polychords
Multiple tempos, Polyrhythms - similar to Stravinsky’s constant rhythmic switches

Seeger:
structure of movement IV of String Quartet
Arch form, palindrome - latter half is retrograde 1 step higher

compare the style of movement IV to the neo-classic style and 12-tone techniques
Emphasis on form and counterpoint = neoclassical - arch form, dissonant counterpoint
symmetry: violin solo gets longer, strings get shorter, latter half is retrograde 1 step higher
Not 12-tone, no retrograde, inversion or transposition
She uses her own serial technique with a 10-note rotation technique for the lower strings part

Varèse, Ionisation:
how does this work relate to Varèse’s overall aesthetics?
Focused on rhythm and timbre , not melody, harmony or pitch
Transformation of sound materials into abstract, integrated formal structures
Working with different sound materials, 13 percussionists: sleigh bells, sirens, anvils, guiros, temple blocks, whip,
lion’s roar
Metamorphosis of timbre - collision, transmutation, repulsion, penetration
“sound mass” - blocks of sound, focuses on density, register and timbre NOT pitch and texture
non-linear, non-narrative form
Variation through contras, expansion and accumulation

Church modes:
Ionian: Major
Lydian: #4
Mixolydian: b7

Aeolian: Natural Minor

Dorian: #6
Phrygian: b2
Locrian: b2, b5
Lydian-Mixolydian: #4, b7
Dorian-Phrygian: b2, #6

Alternative scales:
Pentatonic Major: 2.2.3.1
Pentatonic Minor: 3.2.2.3.
Octatonics: H, W or W, H (8 notes) (symmetrical)
Whole tone: 6 notes, all 2.2.2.2.2.2. (symmetrical)

New chord types:

Tone cluster: cluster of notes
Whole tone chord: cluster with M2s
Secundal Chords: 2s, 7ths
Split Third Chord: Triad with both M3 and m3 (4 notes)
Quartal/Quintal Chord: 4ths and 5ths
Tertian Sonoroties: 7 (1.3.5.7), 9 (1.3.7.9), 11 (1.7.9.11), 13 (1.3.7.13)
Polychord: combination of 2 or more chords
Notate in lead sheet notation e.g. D/F#, C/G - indicate two chords

Normal form: condensed, ascending

Prime form: smallest interval first

1 = m2
2 = M2
3 = m3
4 = M3
5 = P4
6 = TT
7 = P5
8 = m6
9 - M6
10 = m7
11 = M7
12 = 8ve

Inversions, Retrograde, Transpositions - never repeat a note

I.D. scales: tonal center must be emphasized in piece

Webern Piano pieces: sung one has retrograde, piano one has no retrograde but changes hands