Western Music History Flashcards
7 cards from real BM or BMus Bachelor of Music practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 7 Western Music History flashcards as text
Which compositional technique, developed by Arnold Schoenberg around 1921, organizes pitch material using all twelve chromatic tones in a fixed series?
Answer: Twelve-tone serialism
Schoenberg's twelve-tone method uses a tone row of all twelve chromatic pitches as the basis for melodic and harmonic organization.
The 'Mannheim school' of the mid-18th century was noted for contributing which orchestral technique?
Answer: Orchestral crescendo and controlled dynamic nuance
The Mannheim orchestra under Johann Stamitz pioneered the orchestral crescendo and precise ensemble dynamics that influenced Classical symphonic style.
Béla Bartók's use of 'Bulgarian rhythm' or 'aksak' refers to which rhythmic characteristic?
Answer: Additive meters with asymmetric beat groupings such as 5+3+3+2+3
Bartók systematically collected and employed asymmetric folk rhythms from Bulgaria in works like his 'Mikrokosmos' and string quartets.
The term 'musique concrète' refers to the practice of:
Answer: Composing with recorded and manipulated real-world sounds
Pierre Schaeffer coined 'musique concrète' in 1948 for music assembled from recorded sounds of the physical world, manipulated on tape.
In the context of Renaissance counterpoint, 'fauxbourdon' (or faburden) refers to:
Answer: A technique of adding parallel sixths and octaves below a chant melody
Fauxbourdon is an early 15th-century technique where a chant melody appears in the top voice, harmonized with parallel sixths and octaves below, implying 6-3 chords.
The Second Viennese School is comprised of which three composers?
Answer: Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern
The Second Viennese School refers specifically to Arnold Schoenberg and his two most influential pupils, Alban Berg and Anton Webern.
Claude Debussy's harmonic language is often described as 'impressionistic' due to his use of which harmonic device?
Answer: Unresolved ninth chords, whole-tone scales, and parallel chord motion
Debussy's use of parallel, unresolved chords, whole-tone and pentatonic scales, and avoidance of functional harmonic resolution created a floating, coloristic harmonic language.