Music Listening (Twentieth Century)

In music, the early twentieth century was a time of

revolt and change.

Which of the following statements is not true?
A. The years following 1900 saw more fundamental changes in the language of music than any time since the beginning of the baroque era.
B. Twentieth-century music follows the same general principles of musical structure as earlier periods.
C. Twentieth-century music relies less on preestablished relationships and expectations.
D. After 1900 each musical composition is more likely to have a unique system of pitch relationships, rather than be organized around a central tone.

Twentieth-century music follows the same general principles of musical structure as earlier periods.

The most famous riot in music history occurred in Paris in 1913 at the first performance of

Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring.

All of the following composers worked in the early years of the twentieth century except

Hector Berlioz.

Composers in the twentieth century drew inspiration from

All answers are correct.

Twentieth-century composers incorporated elements of folk and popular music within their personal styles because

they were attracted to the unconventional rhythms, sounds, and melodic patterns.

A great twentieth-century composer who was also a leading scholar of the folk music of his native land was

Béla Bartók.

Which of the following composers was not stimulated by the folklore of his native land?

Anton Webern.

Which of the following statements is not true?
A. Modern composers drew inspiration from a wider historical range of music.
B. The range of musical styles during the first half of the twentieth century was vast.
C. Composers in the early twentieth century drew inspiration only from serious art music and their own intellect, ignoring popular and folk music.
D. Western composers were more receptive and sympathetic to Asian and African cultures.

Composers in the early twentieth century drew inspiration only from serious art music and their own intellect, ignoring popular and folk music.

In twentieth-century music

All answers are correct.

The glissando, a technique widely used in the twentieth century, is

a rapid slide up or down a scale.

Among the unusual playing techniques that are widely used during the twentieth century is the _______, a rapid slide up or down a scale.

glissando

In modern music

All answers are correct.

A piano is often used in twentieth-century orchestral music to

add a percussive edge.

Which of the following is not an alternative to the traditional organization of pitch used by twentieth-century composers?

Tonic- dominant harmonies

The combination of two traditional chords sounding together is known as

a polychord.

A fourth chord is

a chord in which the tones are a fourth apart, instead of a third.

A chord made of tones only a half step or a whole step apart is known as

a tone cluster.

Striking a group of adjacent keys on a piano with the fist or forearm will result in

a tone cluster.

To create fresh sounds, twentieth-century composers used

All answers are correct.

The technique of using two or more tonal centers at the same time is called

polytonality.

The absence of key or tonality in a musical composition is known as

atonality.

Using all twelve tones without regard to their traditional relationship to major or minor scales, avoiding traditional chord progressions, is known as

atonality.

The first significant atonal pieces were composed around 1908 by

Arnold Schoenberg.

The use of two or more contrasting and independent rhythms at the same time is known as

polyrhythm.

Ostinato refers to a

motive or phrase that is repeated persistently at the same pitch throughout a section.

Recordings of much lesser-known music multiplied in 1948 through

the appearance of long-playing disks.

Radio broadcasts of live and recorded music began to reach large audiences during the

1920s.

The first opera created for television was Gian-Carlo Menotti’s

Amahl and the Night Visitors.

Composers from which area rose to importance during the Twentieth Century?

Latin America.

Which of the following countries did not produce an important composer in the Twentieth Century?

Ecuador

One of the most important teachers of musical composition in the twentieth century was

Nadia Boulanger.

The most influential organization sponsoring new music after World War I was

the International Society for Contemporary Music.

During the first quarter of the Twentieth Century many composers left Russia because of

the violence of the Russian Revolution.

Impressionist painting and symbolist poetry as artistic movements originated in

France.

The most important impressionist composer was

Claude Debussy.

The term impressionist derived from a critic’s derogatory reaction to Impression: Sunrise, a painting by

Claude Monet.

When viewed closely, impressionist paintings are made up of

tiny colored patches.

Impressionist painters were primarily concerned with the effect of light, color, and

atmosphere.

The impressionist painters were particularly obsessed with portraying

water.

Which of the following is not considered a symbolist poet?

Victor Hugo

Which of the following statements is not true?
A. Both impressionist painting and symbolist poetry were catalysts for many developments during the twentieth century.
B. Symbolist writers emphasized the purely musical, or sonorous, effects of words.
C. When viewed closely, impressionist paintings are made up of tiny colored patches.
D. The impressionist painters were particularly obsessed with portraying scenes of ancient French glories.

The impressionist painters were particularly obsessed with portraying scenes of ancient French glories.

Many of Debussy’s songs are set to poems by the symbolist poet

Paul Verlaine.

A dramatic turning point in Debussy’s career came in 1902 when

his opera Pelléas et Mélisande was premiered.

Which of the following characteristics is not usually associated with impressionism?

Clearly delineated forms

Debussy’s music tends to

sound free and almost improvisational.

Impressionism in music is characterized by

a stress on tone color, atmosphere, and fluidity.

In order to "drown the sense of tonality," Debussy

All answers are correct.

A scale made up of six different notes each a whole step away from the next is called a ________ scale.

whole-tone

Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Mélisande is an almost word-for-word setting of the symbolist play by

Maurice Maeterlinck.

In which of the following areas did Debussy not create masterpieces?

Symphonies

The poem that inspired the Prelude to "The Afternoon of a Faun" was written by

Stéphane Mallarmé.

The faun evoked in Debussy’s famous composition is a

creature who is half man, half goat.

The neoclassical movement in music roughly encompassed the years

1920-1950.

Which of the following statements concerning neoclassicism is not true?
A. Neoclassical composers reacted against twentieth-century harmonies and rhythms, and preferred to revive old forms and styles exactly as they were.
B. Neoclassical compositions use the musical forms and stylistic features of earlier periods, particularly of the eighteenth century.
C. Since many neoclassical compositions were modeled after Bach’s music, the term neobaroque might have been more appropriate.
D. Neoclassicism was an important trend in other art forms such as painting and poetry.

Neoclassical composers reacted against twentieth-century harmonies and rhythms, and preferred to revive old forms and styles exactly as they were.

Which of the following is not characteristic of neoclassicism?

Misty atmosphere

Neoclassical composers favored

clear polyphonic textures.

Neoclassical compositions are characterized by

forms and stylistic features of earlier periods.

Neoclassical composers modeled many of their works after the compositions of

Johann Sebastian Bach.

Neoclassicism was a reaction against

romanticism and impressionism.

The painter who designed the sets for Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, and who went through a phase that showed the influence of ancient Greek art, was

Pablo Picasso.

Igor Stravinsky, at the age of twenty-one, began to study composition privately with

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

Stravinsky’s life took a sudden turn in 1909, when he met the director of the Russian Ballet,

Sergei Diaghilev.

Sergei Diaghilev was a famous

ballet impresario.

The immense success of Stravinsky’s 1910 ballet ________ established him as a leading young composer.

The Firebird

The famous riot in 1913 was caused by the first performance of Stravinsky’s ballet

The Rite of Spring.

Stravinsky’s enormous influence on twentieth-century music is due to his innovations in

rhythm.

Which of the following ballets is not from Stravinsky’s Russian period?

Pulcinella

Stravinsky’s second phase is generally known as

neoclassical.

During the period about 1920 to 1951, Stravinsky drew inspiration largely from

eighteenth-century music.

In the 1950s Stravinsky dramatically changed his style, drawing inspiration from

Anton Webern.

In the 1950s Stravinsky dramatically changed his style to favor

the twelve-tone system.

The deliberate evocation of primitive power through insistent rhythms and percussive sounds is known as

primitivism.

Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring) is an example of

primitivism.

Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring is scored for

an enormous orchestra.

The expressionist movement in music and art flourished in the years

1905-1925.

The twentieth-century artistic movement that stressed intense, subjective emotion was called

expressionism.

Expressionism as an artistic movement was largely centered in

Germany and Austria.

Expressionism grew out of the same intellectual climate as Freud’s studies of

hysteria and the unconscious.

Twentieth-century musical expressionism grew out of the emotional turbulence in the works of late romantics such as

All answers are correct.

One of the immediate predecessors of expressionism was the composer

Richard Strauss.

Richard Strauss’s operas Salome and Elektra were known for their

chromatic and dissonant music.

The operas of Richard Strauss use chromaticism and dissonance to depict

perversion and murder.

Expressionist painters, writers, and composers used ______________ to assault and shock their audience.

deliberate distortions

Distortion is a technique used primarily in the __________ period.

expressionist

Which of the following statements is not true?
A. Twentieth-century musical expressionism grows out of the emotional turbulence in the works of late romantics like Wagner, Richard Strauss, and Gustav Mahler.
B. Expressionist artists favored pleasant subjects, delicate pastel colors, and shimmering surfaces.
C. A stress on harsh dissonance, an exploitation of extreme registers, fragmentation, and unusual instrumental effects are all characteristics of expressionistic compositions.
D. Expressionist painters reacted against French impressionism; they often used jarring colors and grotesquely distorted shapes to explore the subconscious.

Expressionist artists favored pleasant subjects, delicate pastel colors, and shimmering surfaces.

Expressionism is an art concerned with

social protest.

All of the following painters may be considered part of the expressionist movement except

Claude Monet.

The expressionists rejected

conventional prettiness.

Expressionist composers

avoided tonality and traditional chord progressions.

Schoenberg’s teacher was

himself.

Schoenberg’s first musical hero was

Johannes Brahms.

Schoenberg acquired his profound knowledge of music by

All answers are correct.

Alban Berg and Anton Webern were Arnold Schoenberg’s

students.

When Schoenberg arrived in the United States after the Nazis seized power in Germany, he obtained a teaching position at

UCLA.

Schoenberg’s third period, in which he developed the twelve-tone system, began around

1921.

An eerily expressive kind of declamation midway between song and speech, introduced during the expressionist period, is

Sprechstimme.

Schoenberg developed an unusual style of vocal performance, halfway between speaking and singing, called

Sprechstimme.

The ordering of the twelve chromatic tones in a twelve-tone composition is called a

All answers are correct.

Which of the following terms is not used to describe the special ordering of the twelve chromatic tones in twelve-tone composition?

Polychord

The text of A Survivor from Warsaw

All answers are correct.

A Survivor from Warsaw used three languages: English, German, and

Hebrew.

When he was nineteen, Alban Berg began to study music privately with

Arnold Schoenberg.

Which of the following statements is not true?
A. Typical of expressionist composers, Berg scored his opera Wozzeck for a small chamber orchestra.
B. The vocal line in Berg’s opera Wozzeck includes speaking, shrieking, Sprechstimme, distorted folk songs, and melodies with wide leaps that are difficult to sing.
C. Though written in the early 1830s, Georg Büchner’s play Woyzeck is amazingly modern in its starkly realistic dialogue and disconnected scenes.
D. A novel feature of Berg’s opera Wozzeck is that the music for each scene is a self-contained composition with a particular form or of a definite type.

Typical of expressionist composers, Berg scored his opera Wozzeck for a small chamber orchestra.

Which of the following is not a composition by Alban Berg?

Gurrelieder

Georg Büchner’s play Woyzeck was written in the

1830s.

The vocal lines in Wozzeck include

All answers are correct.

Anton Webern

earned a doctorate in music history from the University of Vienna.

Webern’s melodic lines are

"atomized" into two- or three-note fragments.

Anton Webern’s twelve-tone works contain many examples of

strict polyphonic imitation.

Webern’s Five Pieces for Orchestra are scored for

a chamber orchestra of eighteen soloists.

Béla Bartók’s principal performing medium was

the piano.

From 1907 to 1934 Béla Bartók taught __________ at his alma mater, and gave recitals throughout Europe.

piano

Béla Bartók was a leading authority on

peasant music.

Béla Bartók evolved a completely individual style that fused folk elements with

All answers are correct.

The melodies Béla Bartók used in most of his works are

original themes that have a folk flavor.

While not rejecting any influence, Béla Bartók emphasized that the strongest influence on his music was

Hungarian.

Béla Bartók’s ______________ are widely thought to be the finest since those of Ludwig van Beethoven.

string quartets

While remaining within the framework of a tonal center, Béla Bartók often used _________ in his music.

all of these

Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra

All answers are correct.

Charles Ives’s father was a(n)

bandmaster.

After graduating from Yale, Charles Ives

went into the insurance business.

During most of his lifetime, Charles Ives’s musical compositions

accumulated in the barn of his Connecticut farm.

Charles Ives’s music contains elements of

All answers are correct.

Which of the following compositions is not by Charles Ives?

An American in Paris

Charles Ives’s large and varied output includes works in many genres, but not

operas.

Putnam’s Camp, Redding, Connecticut, is a movement from Charles Ives’s

Three Places in New England.

Putnam’s Camp, Redding, Connecticut, is a child’s impression of

a Fourth of July picnic.

Putnam’s Camp, Redding, Connecticut, illustrates Charles Ives’s technique of quoting snatches of familiar tunes by presenting fragments of

Yankee Doodle.

George Gershwin grew up in

New York, New York.

Gershwin left high school at the age of fifteen to

become a pianist demonstrating new songs in a publisher’s salesroom.

Gershwin’s first piano teacher was

himself.

Which of the following musicals is not by George Gershwin?

Funny Girl

Which of the following works is not by George Gershwin?

The Desert Song

The Gershwin song that became a tremendous hit in 1920 was

Swanee.

George Gershwin usually collaborated with the lyricist

Ira Gershwin.

Porgy and Bess is a(n)

opera.

Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue opens with

a solo clarinet.

"Harlem Renaissance" was the name

sometimes given to a flowering of African American culture during the years 1917-1935.

William Grant Still

played the violin in the university string quartet while a college student.

After serving in the navy and a brief return to studies at Oberlin College, William Grant Still moved to New York where he

made band arrangements and played in the orchestras of all-black musical shows.

As a result of his studies in composition with composers from two opposing musical camps, the conservative George Whitefield Chadwick and the modernist Edgard Varèse, Still

turned away from avant-garde styles and wrote compositions with a uniquely African American flavor.

William Grant Still’s works in African American style, such as his Afro-American Symphony of 1931, were

performed to critical acclaim in New York.

As a composer, William Grant Still

wrote film scores, concert works, operas, and band arrangements.

William Grant Still’s Afro-American Symphony

uses a blues theme in the first movement which reappears as a unifying thread in various transformations in the three later movements.

William Grant Still’s opera dealing with the Haitian slave rebellion is

Troubled Island.

The flowering of African American culture called the "Harlem Renaissance" spanned the years

1917-35.

Each movement of William Grant Still’s Afro-American Symphony is prefaced by lines from a poem by

Paul Laurence Dunbar.

Aaron Copland was born in

Brooklyn, New York.

In 1921 Copland went to France, where he was the first American to study composition with

Nadia Boulanger.

In 1925, after Copland returned from France, American music meant

jazz.

In 1925, and for a few years afterward, Copland’s music showed the influence of

jazz.

Aaron Copland’s name has become synonymous with American music because of his use of

All answers are correct.

Which of the following works was not composed by Aaron Copland?

An American in Paris

Which of the following works was not composed by Aaron Copland?

Concord Sonata

n example of Copland’s use of serialist technique is

Connotations for Orchestra.

In addition to his compositions, Copland made valuable contributions to music in America by

All answers are correct.

Appalachian Spring originated as a

ballet score.

Appalachian Spring originated as a ballet score for the great modern dancer and choreographer

Martha Graham.

Copland depicted "Scenes of daily activity for the Bride and her Farmer-husband" in Appalachian Spring through

five variations on the Shaker melody Simple Gifts.

Alberto Ginastera, one of the most prominent Latin-American composers of the 20th century, was born in

Argentina.

One of Ginastera’s early works, Estancia Suite, is

nationalistic and uses Argentinean folk material, including popular dances.

Ginastera’s Estancia Suite was originally conceived as a

ballet

Alberto Ginastera’s Estancia Suite uses a large orchestra and is in___ movements.

four

The last movement of Ginastera’s Estancia Suite, titled "Final Dance: Malambo", makes use of an form.

AA’B

In 1945 Ginastera moved to the United States where he had the opportunity to study with the well known American composer

Aaron Copland.

Since World War II, musical styles have

taken many new directions and changes.

Composer John Adams believes that today’s composers can draw from

a wide variety of styles and periods.

All of the following are major developments in music since 1950 except the

continued composition of symphonies in the classical style.

Composers began to shift from tonality to the twelve-tone system because

they discovered it was a compositional technique rather than a special musical style.

The twelve-tone composer whose style was most imitated in the 1950s and 1960s was

Anton Webern.

Serialism is a compositional technique in which

a series of rhythms, dynamics, or tone colors could serve as a unifying idea

Twelve-tone compositional techniques used to organize rhythm, dynamics, tone color, and other dimensions of music to produce totally controlled and organized music are called

serialism.

A major composer associated with the serialist movement is

Milton Babbitt.

All of the following are proponents of serialism except

John Cage.

In chance, or aleatory music the composer

chooses pitches, tone colors, and rhythms by random methods.

An example of aleatoric music is

John Cage’s Imaginary Landscape No. 4 for twelve radios.

Minimalism as an artistic movement was a

reaction against the complexity of serialism and the randomness of chance music.

Which of the following characteristics is not true of minimalist music?

A fast rate of change

Minimalist music is characterized by

a steady pulse, clear tonality, and insistent repetition of short melodic patterns.

Which of the following is not primarily known as a minimalist composer?

George Crumb

Minimalist music grew out of the same intellectual climate as minimalist art, which features

simple forms, clarity, and understatement.

Many composers since the mid-1960s have made extensive use of quotations from earlier music as an attempt to

improve communication between the composer and the listener.

Since 1950 many composers have returned to

tonal music.

Composers who have returned to the use of tonality have been called

"new Romantics".

Some works composed since 1945 are both

tonal and atonal.

Intervals smaller than the half step are called

microtones.

Around 1940, John Cage invented the prepared piano, a(n)

grand piano whose sound is altered by objects such as bolts, screws, rubber bands, pieces of felt, paper, and plastic inserted between the strings of some of the keys.

Ionisation, the first important work for percussion ensemble, was composed by

Edgard Varèse.

Edgard Varèse’s Poème électronique

All answers are correct.

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich is a

Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer.

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her composition

Symphony No. 1.

Ellen Taffee Zwilich’s Concerto Grosso 1985 is an example of

quotation music.

Which of the following compositions was not composed by John Adams?

Einstein on the Beach

John Adams’s Short Ride in a Fast Machine is scored for a

large symphonic orchestra and two synthesizers.

Elliott Carter’s complex & highly dissonant style may be attributed in part to the influence of
his former mentor

Charles Ives.

Elliott Carter’s composition Shard is written for

solo guitar.

Elliott Carter’s technique of using many precisely regulated changes in the speed of the music in order to give it a felling of fluidity is known as

tempo modulation.