Parts of the Test: Multiple Choice / Matching / Listening (knowns and unknowns) Short Answer /
Short Essay; Grand Essay
Listening IDs: titles will be provided, the 4 unknowns must be identified as 19th or 20th-century
Main Units: INTRO TO 19TH-C MUSIC & CENTURY-SPANNING INFLUENCES / GERMAN
LIED/ 19TH-C PIANO AND PIANO MUSIC / BERLIOZ’S PROGRAMMATIC SYMPHONY /
WAGNER AND VERDI / INTRO TO 20TH-C MUSIC & “CRISIS” / DEBUSSY / STRAVINSKY /
SCHOENBERG / INTRO TO MUSIC IN AMERICA/ AMERICAN CLASSICAL MUSIC: PRE-
AND POST-1945 / JAZZ / ROCK
Focus on: special terms; main influences covered in class (musical, nonmusical); definitions of
style and/or concept behind each featured selection (e.g., Schubert’s Lied, programmatic
symphony, music drama vs. Italian opera; 2-3 opera characters from each, 12-bar blues,
12-tone row
Short Essay and Grand Essay
1. Know terms and style concepts necessary to compare and contrast: early 20th-c
modernists AND Verdi and Wagner (Dr. Haas’s choice)
2. Be prepared to comment on some new gains in your listening expertise, based on
listening during or after class
Guiseppe Verdi
- Born in Le Roncole, a small town in the Duchy of Parma.
- Integral in the process of Italian unification (while he was only slightly political, his music
nonetheless was used by those who supported political independence from Austrian-Hapsburg
rule)
- Served in the Italian senate for one term (Viva VERDI= Long Live Victor Emmanuel, king of
Italy)
- Composed 28 operas (the majority of which are still performed)
- Like Berlioz, Verdi loved literature and used Shakespeare as a source for his operas Macbeth,
Otello, and Falstaff.
- Preserved traditional “Italian values” that were developed by Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini and
expanded the bel canto (beautiful singing) style.
, - Ensembles (as we will see later) and choruses would reemerge as important narrative
moments.
- Unlike Wagner, Verdi usually divided up each act into recitatives, arias, ensembles, and
choruses—like the composers in the Classical and Baroque eras. The orchestra never
competes with the voice as a narrative agent (as opposed to Wagner).
Richard Wagner
- dresden, germany (1813-1883), family connected to theater, early career as an opera
conductor, forced political exile as revolutionary (1849), triumphant, return to the new united
germany in 1876 as an honored citizen
- unappealing political and social views, pro-german, anti foreign and anti semitic groups,
influential in 19th century, shaped 20th century music, foundation for soundtrack composition
- operatic concerns: romantic love plots are too superficial, overemphasis on singers and
virtuosity, text music and drama are not well integrated, 19th century lacked true drama
- solutions: used german mythology (odin, wotan, thor, loki) for plots, let music flow for an entire
act instead of choppy movements, one artist in charge of libretto, music, drama, invention of the
leitmotif to unify everything, expansion of the size and roles of the orchestra (creates a world
like a sound track does, create special sounds for things in that world, what consequences are
there for the singers)
- leitmotif is a music motif (similar to the motif in Beethoven's 5th), leading motive, stirs up
emotion as it connects to an important element in the drama (theme to universal, jaws, space
odyssey)
- rhine river (french horn, proud), ring of power (woodwinds, cunning), wotan (trombone),
brunnhilde, magic sleep, magic sword (supernatural)
- the ring of the nibelungs: wotan, siegmund/sieglinde (mortal children), brunhilde (goddess
daughter and protector and trusted confidante), rhinegold opera (through a series of thefts and
treaties, wotan squirt a ring made from the rhine gold, which he then must give away to pay off a
debt) the valkyrie opera (he is prevented from stealing the ring back directly, but a child of his
can), out of wedlock, becomes father by a human mother to the twins siegmund and sieglinde
who are separated at birth, thrusts a magic sword into a tree that only siegmund can pull out,
when s and s hook up, his goddess wife orders that they be put to death and wotan sends his
goddess daughter brunnhilde down to do the deed?
- chromatic harmony and german expressionism influenced others
20th Century Music
- time of questioning and change (science, psychology, philosophy, economics, religion, politics)
- vienna, austria (city of haydn, mozart, beethoven)
- gustav mahler, austrian bohemian, 1860-1911, appointed director of vienna’s state opera and
philharmonic, briefly the conductor of both the new york philharmonic and the metropolitan
opera, powerful interport and advocate of wagner’s music, connected to his ethnic jewish and
bohemian roots, various radically new trends and ideas
Short Essay; Grand Essay
Listening IDs: titles will be provided, the 4 unknowns must be identified as 19th or 20th-century
Main Units: INTRO TO 19TH-C MUSIC & CENTURY-SPANNING INFLUENCES / GERMAN
LIED/ 19TH-C PIANO AND PIANO MUSIC / BERLIOZ’S PROGRAMMATIC SYMPHONY /
WAGNER AND VERDI / INTRO TO 20TH-C MUSIC & “CRISIS” / DEBUSSY / STRAVINSKY /
SCHOENBERG / INTRO TO MUSIC IN AMERICA/ AMERICAN CLASSICAL MUSIC: PRE-
AND POST-1945 / JAZZ / ROCK
Focus on: special terms; main influences covered in class (musical, nonmusical); definitions of
style and/or concept behind each featured selection (e.g., Schubert’s Lied, programmatic
symphony, music drama vs. Italian opera; 2-3 opera characters from each, 12-bar blues,
12-tone row
Short Essay and Grand Essay
1. Know terms and style concepts necessary to compare and contrast: early 20th-c
modernists AND Verdi and Wagner (Dr. Haas’s choice)
2. Be prepared to comment on some new gains in your listening expertise, based on
listening during or after class
Guiseppe Verdi
- Born in Le Roncole, a small town in the Duchy of Parma.
- Integral in the process of Italian unification (while he was only slightly political, his music
nonetheless was used by those who supported political independence from Austrian-Hapsburg
rule)
- Served in the Italian senate for one term (Viva VERDI= Long Live Victor Emmanuel, king of
Italy)
- Composed 28 operas (the majority of which are still performed)
- Like Berlioz, Verdi loved literature and used Shakespeare as a source for his operas Macbeth,
Otello, and Falstaff.
- Preserved traditional “Italian values” that were developed by Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini and
expanded the bel canto (beautiful singing) style.
, - Ensembles (as we will see later) and choruses would reemerge as important narrative
moments.
- Unlike Wagner, Verdi usually divided up each act into recitatives, arias, ensembles, and
choruses—like the composers in the Classical and Baroque eras. The orchestra never
competes with the voice as a narrative agent (as opposed to Wagner).
Richard Wagner
- dresden, germany (1813-1883), family connected to theater, early career as an opera
conductor, forced political exile as revolutionary (1849), triumphant, return to the new united
germany in 1876 as an honored citizen
- unappealing political and social views, pro-german, anti foreign and anti semitic groups,
influential in 19th century, shaped 20th century music, foundation for soundtrack composition
- operatic concerns: romantic love plots are too superficial, overemphasis on singers and
virtuosity, text music and drama are not well integrated, 19th century lacked true drama
- solutions: used german mythology (odin, wotan, thor, loki) for plots, let music flow for an entire
act instead of choppy movements, one artist in charge of libretto, music, drama, invention of the
leitmotif to unify everything, expansion of the size and roles of the orchestra (creates a world
like a sound track does, create special sounds for things in that world, what consequences are
there for the singers)
- leitmotif is a music motif (similar to the motif in Beethoven's 5th), leading motive, stirs up
emotion as it connects to an important element in the drama (theme to universal, jaws, space
odyssey)
- rhine river (french horn, proud), ring of power (woodwinds, cunning), wotan (trombone),
brunnhilde, magic sleep, magic sword (supernatural)
- the ring of the nibelungs: wotan, siegmund/sieglinde (mortal children), brunhilde (goddess
daughter and protector and trusted confidante), rhinegold opera (through a series of thefts and
treaties, wotan squirt a ring made from the rhine gold, which he then must give away to pay off a
debt) the valkyrie opera (he is prevented from stealing the ring back directly, but a child of his
can), out of wedlock, becomes father by a human mother to the twins siegmund and sieglinde
who are separated at birth, thrusts a magic sword into a tree that only siegmund can pull out,
when s and s hook up, his goddess wife orders that they be put to death and wotan sends his
goddess daughter brunnhilde down to do the deed?
- chromatic harmony and german expressionism influenced others
20th Century Music
- time of questioning and change (science, psychology, philosophy, economics, religion, politics)
- vienna, austria (city of haydn, mozart, beethoven)
- gustav mahler, austrian bohemian, 1860-1911, appointed director of vienna’s state opera and
philharmonic, briefly the conductor of both the new york philharmonic and the metropolitan
opera, powerful interport and advocate of wagner’s music, connected to his ethnic jewish and
bohemian roots, various radically new trends and ideas
