Presentation modern music in western history

21 century music

1. 20
th
Century Music
Higher

2. Impressionism –
late 1900s

3. Impressionism
Often programmatic (descriptive)
Chords used for expression
Discords merge into further discords
Parallel Chords
Use of unusual scales
–Modal
–Pentatonic
–Whole tone
L'apres midi d'une
faune -Debussy

4. Whole Tone Scale
A scale made up of whole tones
Whole Tone Scale

5. Minimalism –1950s +

6. Minimalist
Ideas repeated over and over
Sounds very simple
Changes happen gradually
Steve Reich –
Six Marimbas

7. Neo Classical
Dissonance
Instrumentation
Unusual harmonic changes
Stravinsky -Pulcinella

8. Musique Concrete

9. Musique Concrete
Recorded Natural Sounds
Edited using techniques such as:
–Cutting and re-assembling
–Playing backwards
–Slowing down
–Speeding up
Pierre Schaeffer -Apostrophe

10. Musical
A play which has speaking, singing
and dancing
Performed on a stage.
In recent years the musical has seen a
revival and may now deal with very
dramatic stories and contain no
dialogue.

11. Jazz Funk
a sub-genre of jazz music.
a strong rhythmic ‘groove,’ above
which instrumentalists improvise solo
passages.
will typically consist of drum kit, bass
guitar, rhythm guitar and synthesiser,
emerged during the 1970s with
features being similar to disco.
Herbie
Hancock -
Chameleon

12. Soul
developed in the southern states of America
grew in popularity throughout the 1960s
a combination of gospel, bluesand country
music,
its gritty sound reflected what was
happening socially in America at that time
Marvin Gaye –Heard it
through the Grapevine

13. Serialism
Devised by Schoenberg
Arrangement of 12 notes of chromatic
scale
Tone row
–None should appear out of order
–A note may be immediately repeated
–Any note may appear in any octave
Berg –Violin
Concerto

14. Tone Row
Original form
Retrograde (in reverse order)
Inversion (turned upside down)
Retrograde Inversion (backward and upside
down)

15. Harmonics
Harmonics can be produced by a
number of instruments.
By lightly touching the string of a
bowed stringed instrument at certain
points for example, a high eerie sound
is produced.
On a guitar or harp these have a bell-
like quality.
EXAMPLE

16. Polytonality
Two or more keys played or sung at the
same time
The melody might be in the key of C major
whilst the accompaniment might be in E
major
Bartok
Ives
Holst
Stravinsky
Jesus Must Die from
Jesus Christ Superstar

17. Cross Rhythms
The effect of two notes being played
against three
The effect that occurs when the
accents in a piece of music are
different from those suggested by the
time signature
–4/4 time into 3+3+2 quavers
VISUAL EXAMPLE

18. Note Clusters
A group of notes played on a keyboard
instrument with the palm of the hand
or even with the forearm

19. Irregular Metres
Groupings of notes change, but the
underlying pulse remains constant.
Groupings of two and three produce
irregular accents and metres
Destroy the feeling of a regular down
beat by changing the time signature
frequently
MONEY

20. Sprechgesang
A technique used in vocal music
Half-way between singing and
speaking
Schoenberg, Pierrot
Lunaire

21. Hemiola
A rhythmic device giving the
impression of a piece of music
changing from duple (2) to triple (3)
time
vice versa
Sometimes placed at the end of a
piece to act as a kind of Rallentando.
EXAMPLE