Western Music History Periods 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 Periods flashcards as text
The Burgundian school of the early 15th century was influential for developing which characteristic texture?
Answer: Three-voice texture with the melody in the top voice
Burgundian composers like Dufay and Binchois favored three-voice texture with the main melody in the uppermost voice, influencing subsequent European polyphony.
The madrigal, a defining Renaissance secular genre, is associated primarily with which two countries?
Answer: Italy and England
The madrigal flourished first in Italy during the 16th century and was adopted enthusiastically in England by composers such as Morley, Weelkes, and Wilbye.
The Baroque concerto grosso contrasts which two forces?
Answer: A small group of soloists (concertino) and the full ensemble (ripieno)
The concerto grosso alternates between the concertino (a small group of soloists) and the ripieno or tutti (the full orchestra), exploiting contrast of texture and volume.
Classical-era composers generally avoided which harmonic practice that later became common in Romantic music?
Answer: Extended chromatic modulations to remote keys within a movement
While Classical composers modulated to closely related keys, the frequent and extended excursions to remote chromatic keys became a hallmark of the Romantic era.
Which Romantic genre consists of a set of songs unified by a narrative or poetic theme, intended for performance as a complete cycle?
Answer: Song cycle (Liederkreis)
A song cycle (Liederkreis) is a collection of art songs linked by a unified text, narrative thread, or poetic theme, such as Schubert's 'Winterreise.'
Minimalism in late 20th-century music is characterized by:
Answer: Gradual transformation of simple patterns through repetition
Minimalism uses slowly evolving, repetitive musical patterns, gradual additive or subtractive processes, and steady pulse, as exemplified by Reich, Glass, and Riley.
The term 'musique concrète,' coined by Pierre Schaeffer in 1948, describes music that:
Answer: Uses recorded real-world sounds manipulated and assembled on tape
Musique concrète uses recorded sounds from the environment (voices, machinery, nature), which are then edited, layered, and transformed on magnetic tape.