Listening Quiz 3 Annotations copy PDF

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Annotations regarding the chosen pieces we are required to identify on a listening quiz. Contains summaries of the history behind each piece and certain sound qualities to listen for during the quiz....

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Listening Quiz #3 Annotations

Debussy – “Nuages” (Clouds) from Nocturnes Achille-Claude Debussy was a French composer who lived from 1862 to 1918. Through he did not like his title, he was and is often named the first impressionist composer, and was highly influential during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His early influences included Russian and far-eastern music, which allowed him to develop his own style of unorthodox harmony. His composition, Nocturnes, was an orchestral composition with three movements, completed in 1899. It is widely debated that Debussy could have possibly reused material from two previous works (another orchestral piece and a violin concerto) that he had abandoned after nearly completing them. Debussy describes first movement, “Nuages,” as a piece that “renders the immutable aspect of the sky and the slow, solemn motion of the clouds, fading away in grey tones lightly tinged with white.”

Schoenberg – “Pierrot Lunaire” Songs 18, 19, and 20 Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian-American composer who lived from 1874 to 1951. His music was considered modernist and atonal. After 1934, he immigrated to the United States in 1934. Schoenberg’s style of harmony and musical development has been one of the most influential musical expression in the 20th century. He is also known for developing the twelvetone technique, in which an ordered series of notes on the chromatic scale are manipulated. His work commonly avoids a dominating, omnipresent and/or centralized melody. His work, Pierrot Lunaire, was written in 1912 and is a collection of expressionist songs set to a German translation of poems by a poet named Albert Giraud. The vocal parts consist of dramatic, spoken word. When playing this piece, the ensemble usually consists of flute clarinet, violin, cello, a speaker and piano.

Arvo Pärt – “Spiegel im Spiegel” Arvo Pärt is an Estonian composer who was born in 1935. He is currently living and is of age 83. A composer of classical and religious music, Pärt is Estonian and uses a minimalist style that was inspired by Gregorian chant. Since 2011, Pärt has been the most-performing composer in the world that is still alive. His piece “Spiegel im Spiegel” (German, meaning “mirrors in the 1

mirror”) was written for a single violin and piano, and is considered chamber music. It is written in a style that Pärt invented called tintinnabular style, which means that a melodic voice operates over diatonic scales and an arpeggiated voice accompany each other. The name of the piece likely comes from the fact that tonic triads are repeated endlessly throughout the pieces with very small variations as though it were imitating a mirror.

Reich – “Piano Phase” Stephen Reich is an American composer who was born in 1936. He is known is one of the major pioneers of minimal music in the mid to late 1960s. Through both ensembles and/or tape loops, he would create phrasing patterns with his music and apply them to repetitive motifs in his music. Reich also composed three film soundtracks during his career. His influences include Baroque music as well as other minimalist artists. The piece, “Piano Phase” was composed in 1967 and was written for two pianos or a piano and a tape loop machine. During this piece, the performers play a repeated twelve-note melody while one of the players increases the tempo very slightly until different notes in sequence harmonize with each other.

Penderecki – “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima” Krzysztof Eugeniusz Penderecki is a Polish composer. He was born in 1933 and has composed four operas, eight symphonies and orchestral pieces, concertos, choral pieces with religious texts, and more. His highly dissonant “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima,” composed in 1960, is one of his most famous pieces and is written for a 52-instrument string orchestra. The piece utilizes a “sonoristic” technique which places more attention on timbre, articulation, and dynamics in order to create a freer musical form. After Penderecki composed it, he states that he was “struck by the emotional charge of the work…and decided to dedicate it to the Hiroshima victims.”

Ives – “Unanswered Question” Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer whose works are internationally renowned. He was born in Connecticut in 1874 and died at age 79 in 1954. In terms of his musical composing style, he is known to have combined popular American and church-music traditions that inspired him during his youth with European art music. In his compositions, he 2

used programs of experimental music and used musical techniques that include polytonality and quarter tones. His experimentation resulted in musical innovations that became more widely used during the 20th century. His work “Unanswered Question,” was never performed until 1946 and is scored for a string ensemble, a solo trumpet, and a woodwind quartet. Each of these groups use different and independent tempos, and are situated in a performance space such that they cannot see each other. The meaning of the piece consists of repetitions of various “questions,” responses, and answers posed and sent back by each of the instrumental groups.

Shostakovich – Symphony #8, Movement 3 Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Russian composer and pianist. He was born in 1906 (speculated up until 1909) and died in 1975. Considered one of the major composers of the 20th century, the polystylist first achieved fame in the Soviet Union but later had a contentious relationship with the Russian government. Even then, he still continues to receive accolades and awards. His music is characterized by a combination of various musical techniques: sharp contrasts, grotesque elements, contradicting tonality. His piece, Symphony #8, Movement 3, was written in 1943 and was first performed by the USSR symphony orchestra. It consists of five movements, and the symphony is scored for a large orchestra of flutes, piccolos, oboes, cor anglais, soprano clarinets, E-flat clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoons, contrabassoon, horns, trumpets, trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, tambourine, cymbals, snare drum, triangle, xylophone, tamtam, and strings.

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