The most prominent minimalist composers are John Adams, Louis Andriessen, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and La Monte Young. Others who have been associated with this compositional approach include Michael Nyman, Howard Skempton, John White, Dave Smith and Michael Parsons.
Aaron Copland based his musical style on one of the most important American contributions to music, namely.
Serialism is
based on a “series†of notes that determines the development of the composition.
A Worked Example of Serialism
- No note should be repeated until all 12 notes of the note row have been played.
- The order of the series remains the same throughout the composition, except for some allowed changes.
The inversion form is the melodic inversion of the original, all intervals written upside down, all interval directions changed. The Retrograde inversion is created by writing all of the notes of the inversion in reverse order. One can use modulo 12 arithmetic to describe any form of a row.
Serialism is a broad designator referring to the ordering of things, whether they are pitches, durations, dynamics, and so on. Twelve-tone composition refers more specifically to music based on orderings of the twelve pitch classes.
Aleatory music, also called chance music, (aleatory from Latin alea, “diceâ€), 20th-century music in which chance or indeterminate elements are left for the performer to realize.
The basic order for any one composition came to be known as its basic set, its 12-tone row, or its 12-tone series, all of which terms are synonymous. The basic set for Schoenberg's Wind Quintet (1924) is Eâ™â€“G–A–B–C♯–C–Bâ™â€“D–E–F♯–Aâ™â€“F; for his String Quartet No. 4 (1936) it is D–C♯–A–Bâ™â€“F–Eâ™â€“E–C–Aâ™â€“G–F♯–B.
As such, twelve-tone music is usually atonal, and treats each of the 12 semitones of the chromatic scale with equal importance, as opposed to earlier classical music which had treated some notes as more important than others (particularly the tonic and the dominant note).
Chromaticism, (from Greek chroma, “colourâ€) in music, the use of notes foreign to the mode or diatonic scale upon which a composition is based.
The term Process Music (in the minimalist sense) was coined by composer Steve Reich in his 1968 manifesto entitled "Music as a Gradual Process" in which he very carefully yet briefly described the entire concept including such definitions as phasing and the use of phrases in composing or creating this music, as well as
Though the music is atonal, it does not employ Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, which he did not use until 1921. Pierrot lunaire is among Schoenberg's most celebrated and frequently performed works.
While serial music is not necessarily atonal, it is highly associated with it. For example, if our row consists of notes strictly from C Major, the piece could have a clear tonic note of C. Yet serialism typically uses a twelve-tone row, abandoning any attempt at tonality.
La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass, all born in the mid-1930s. You just studied 61 terms!
Program music, instrumental music that carries some extramusical meaning, some “program†of literary idea, legend, scenic description, or personal drama. It is contrasted with so-called absolute, or abstract, music, in which artistic interest is supposedly confined to abstract constructions in sound.
His works in this style, Expressionistic pieces like “Erwartung,†sound as if they were conceived almost through harmonic free association. Instead of the old tonal hierarchy, or his short-lived experiment in harmonic free-for-all, Schoenberg specified that the 12 pitches be put in an order, or row.
The all-interval twelve-tone row is a tone row arranged so that it contains one instance of each interval within the octave, 0 through 11. The "total chromatic" (or "aggregate") is the set of all twelve pitch classes. An "array" is a succession of aggregates. The term is also used to refer to lattices.
Serialism is another term for the twelve-tone method. The transposition of pitches in a twelve-tone composition is called the tone row.
Who wrote the libretto to Wozzeck? Why were Berg's works banned in Germany during WWII? Twelve-tone works were alien to the spirit of the Third Reich. Wozzeck is sung in which language?
Klangfarbenmelodie (German for "sound-color melody") is a musical technique that involves splitting a musical line or melody between several instruments, rather than assigning it to just one instrument (or set of instruments), thereby adding color (timbre) and texture to the melodic line.
One tool analysts create to analyze a twelve-tone composition is a twelve-tone matrix, which shows all 48 row forms in a 12-by-12 grid. One would continue with each transposition of the prime form until the matrix is complete.
Why did Schoenberg leave Berlin in 1933? He found a better job in Vienna. He left after Adolf Hitler came to power. He was offered a position at the Royal College of Music in London.
Sprechstimme, (German: “speech-voiceâ€), in music, a cross between speaking and singing in which the tone quality of speech is heightened and lowered in pitch along melodic contours indicated in the musical notation.
Retrograde inversion is a musical term that literally means "backwards and upside down": "The inverse of the series is sounded in reverse order." Retrograde reverses the order of the motif's pitches: what was the first pitch becomes the last, and vice versa.
Composers always use TONE ROW when composing music in the Serialism style. Composers always use TONE ROW when composing music in the Serialism style.
The three central figures of musical expressionism are Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) and his pupils, Anton Webern (1883–1945) and Alban Berg (1885–1935), the so-called Second Viennese School.
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian-American composer who created new methods of musical composition involving atonality, namely serialism and the 12-tone row. He was also an influential teacher; among his most significant pupils were Alban Berg and Anton Webern.
