Music Appreciation Pt 5 Ch 13-18

Antonin Dvorák’s music was first promoted by

Johannes Brahms.

Dvorák ___ quoted actual folk tunes in his compositions.

rarely.

In 1892, Dvorák went to ___, where he spent almost three years as director of the National Conservatory of Music.

New York.

Dvorák "found a secure basis for a new national [American] musical school" in the

African-American spirituals.

The popular character of Dvorák’s New World Symphony can be traced to the composer’s use of ___ often found in folk music.

syncopation, pentatonic scale, & modal scales.

Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet is a

concert overture.

At its premiere in 1870, Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Overture was

a dismal fail.

Nadezhda von Meck was

a wealthy benefactress who provided Tchaikovsky with an annuity.

Brahms created masterpieces in all the traditional forms except

opera.

The course of Brahms’s artistic and personal life was shaped by the influence of the composers

Robert & Clara Schumann.

Brahms’s musical trademarks included

the use of two notes against three.

Brahms’s works, though very personal in style, are rooted in the music of

Haydn, Mozart, & Beethoven.

Verdi’s later operas differ from his earlier ones in that they have

less difference between aria and recitative, greater musical continuity, & more imaginative orchestrations.

The soul of a Verdi opera is

expressive vocal melody.

The famous aria "La donna è mobile" is taken from Verdi’s opera

Rigoletto.

Verdi mainly composed his operas

to entertain a mass public.

Verdi’s first great success, an opera with strong political overtones, was

Nabucco.

Rigoletto, the title character in Giuseppe Verdi’s opera, is

a hunchbacked court jester.

Verdi studied music in ___, the city where Italy’s most important opera house, La Scala, is located.

Milan.

Verdi’s great comic masterpiece, written when he was seventy-nine, is

Falstaff.

Critics were often scandalized by the subject matter of Verdi’s operas because they

seemed to condone rape, suicide, & free love.

Puccini’s operas have lasting appeal because

he had a marvelous sense of theater, his melodies have short, memorable phrases & are intensely emotional, & he minimized the difference between aria and recitative, thus creating a continuous flow of music.

In La Bohème, who sings the aria "Che gelida manina" ("How cold your little hand is!")?

Rodolfo.

Puccini used melodic and rhythmic elements derived from Asian music in his operas

Madame Butterfly and Turandot.

An artistic trend of the 1890s, in which operas dealt with ordinary people and true-to-life situations, was known as

verismo.

Operas written by Puccini.

Manon Lescaut, La Boheme, Tosca, Madame Butterfly, & Turandot.

Puccini’s first successful opera was

Manon Lescaut.

La Bohème takes place in

Paris.

Mimi and Rodolfo meet for the first time in La Bohème because she has come to his door to ask for a

light for her candle.

In La Bohème, Rodolfo is a young

poet.

What following opera is considered an example of verismo?

Tosca.

The composer who had an overwhelming influence on the young Wagner was

Ludwig van Beethoven.

Wagner called his works music dramas rather than operas because

there is a continuous musical flow instead of traditional arias, recitatives, & ensembles; there are no breaks where applause can interrupt, & vocal line is inspired by the rhythms & pitch of the German text.

Wagner’s last opera was

Parsifal.

The librettos to The Ring of the Nibelung were written by

Wagner himself.

A short musical idea associated with a person, object, or thought, used by Wagner in his operas, is called

leitmotif.

Valhalla, in Wagner’s Ring cycle, is

the castle of the gods.

Wagner had an opera house built to his own specifications in

Bayreuth.

Wagner’s first successful opera was

Rienzi.

Operas composed by Wagner.

The Ring, Tristan & Isolde, Tannhauser, Parsifal, & Rienzi.