Matura History of Music cheat sheet

Staff: five lines and four spaces; a treble clef (G clef) curls around the second line from the bottom, which is G4; a bass clef (F clef) dots around the fourth line from the bottom, which is F3.

Middle C (C4) sits on the first ledger line below the treble staff and on the first ledger line above the bass staff.

Key-signature order of sharps: F C G D A E B; order of flats: B E A D G C F. The last sharp is the leading tone of the major key; the next-to-last flat names the major key.

Interval quality depends on the major-scale degree: seconds, thirds, sixths and sevenths are major or minor; fourths, fifths and octaves are perfect, augmented or diminished.

Triad construction: major = root + major third + perfect fifth; minor = minor third + perfect fifth; diminished = minor third + diminished fifth; augmented = major third + augmented fifth.

Simple and compound time: the upper numeral gives beats per bar, the lower numeral the beat value; 6/8, 9/8 and 12/8 are compound (dotted beat), 2/4, 3/4 and 4/4 are simple.

Scale types to identify by ear and score: major, natural/harmonic/melodic minor, whole-tone, pentatonic, modal (Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian), octatonic.

Cadence rules: authentic (V–I), plagal (IV–I), half (ends on V), deceptive (V–vi); a perfect authentic cadence has both chords in root position and the tonic in the top voice.

Figured bass: 6 = first inversion triad, 6/4 = second inversion triad, 7 = seventh chord root position, 6/5 = first inversion seventh, 4/3 = second, 4/2 = third.

Surviving ancient Greek music theory: tetrachord species, the Greater and Lesser Perfect Systems, and the three genera (diatonic, chromatic, enharmonic); actual notated melodies are few (e.g. the Seikilos epitaph).

Plainchant (Gregorian chant) is monophonic, modal, unmeasured and orally transmitted; its melodic styles are syllabic, neumatic and melismatic.

The eight church modes pair authentic (I, III, V, VII) with plagal (II, IV, VI, VIII) forms; finalis and ambitus distinguish them.

Office hours use antiphons, responsories and hymns; the Mass Proper (introit, gradual, alleluia/tract, offertory, communion) changes by feast, the Ordinary (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei) does not.

Ars nova (14th c.) is marked by mensural notation and isorhythm; Machaut's Messe de Nostre Dame is the earliest complete polyphonic Mass by a named composer.

Notre Dame organum: Leoninus and Perotinus; discant style sets syllable against syllable, organal style holds long tenor notes under florid upper voices.

Renaissance imitation and points of imitation replace the medieval tenor-based structures; cantus firmus and paraphrase techniques persist in Mass cycles.

Renaissance genres: motet, Mass, chanson, madrigal, frottola, villancico; instrumental ricercare, canzona and dance pairs derive from vocal models.

English and Franco-Flemish schools: Dunstaple's contenance angloise (thirds and sixths), then Ockeghem, Josquin, Gombert and Palestrina's smooth, dissonance-controlled counterpoint.

Basso continuo: a figured bass line played by a chordal instrument (harpsichord, organ, lute) plus a bass melody instrument; it is the defining texture of the period.

Monody and the seconda prattica: solo voice with continuo, expressive dissonance and text-driven declamation, arising around 1600 in Florence's camerata circle.

Opera's founding works: Peri's Dafne (1598, lost) and Euridice (1600); Monteverdi's L'Orfeo (1607) and L'incoronazione di Poppea (1643).

Ritornello form structures the Baroque concerto grosso and solo concerto: recurring tutti refrain alternating with episodic solo passages.

Fugue anatomy: subject, answer (real or tonal), countersubject, episode, stretto; the exposition presents voices in turn.

Dance-suite order (standardized by Bach): allemande, courante, sarabande, gigue, with optional galanteries (minuet, gavotte, bourrée, polonaise).

National idioms: French overture (slow dotted section then fugal fast section), French ornamentation (agréments); Italian cantabile and da capo aria (ABA).

Tonal harmony consolidates: functional major/minor keys, circle-of-fifths progressions, and equal temperament gradually adopted for keyboard instruments.

Late Baroque masters: Bach (Brandenburg Concertos, WTC, B minor Mass), Handel (Messiah, Water Music), Vivaldi (L'estro armonico), Rameau, Telemann, Scarlatti.

Sonata form: exposition (first theme, transition, second theme, closing), development, recapitulation, optional coda; tonal contrast is between tonic and dominant (or relative major).

Standard four-movement plan: sonata-allegro, slow movement (theme and variations, ABA), minuet/scherzo with trio, rondo or sonata-rondo finale.

The string quartet (two violins, viola, cello) becomes the chamber ideal; Haydn's op. 33 set (1781) is often cited as crystallizing the genre.

Theme and variations, rondo and sonata-rondo forms dominate finales; double-variation alternates major and minor versions.

Symphony expands: Haydn's 104 and Mozart's late symphonies establish orchestral balance; wind writing becomes independent, not merely doubling strings.

Mozart's operatic types: opera buffa (Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte), opera seria (Idomeneo), Singspiel (Die Zauberflöte).

Beethoven bridges Classicism and Romanticism: expanded development sections, motivic economy (Fifth Symphony), programmatic Pastoral Symphony, choral finale of the Ninth.

Harmonic language stays diatonic and periodic; phrase structure is symmetric (antecedent–consequent), with clear cadences and Alberti-bass accompaniment.

Expanded harmony: chromaticism, augmented-sixth chords, distant modulations, unresolved sevenths and ninths; tonal centres loosened toward late-Romantic dissolution.

Character pieces for piano: Schubert's impromptus, Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words, Schumann's Carnaval, Chopin's nocturnes, ballades, mazurkas and polonaises.

Song cycles: Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, Schumann's Dichterliebe and Frauenliebe und -leben; strophic and through-composed settings.

Programme music: Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique (idée fixe), Liszt's symphonic poems, Strauss's tone poems; the opposite pole to absolute music.

National schools: Russian (Glinka, the Mighty Handful, Tchaikovsky), Czech (Smetana, Dvořák), Norwegian (Grieg), Finnish (Sibelius), Spanish (Albéniz, Granados).

Opera traditions: Italian bel canto (Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti) then Verdi; French grand opéra and lyric opera; German music drama (Wagner, leitmotif, Tristan chord).

Orchestration grows: valved horns, expanded percussion, larger string sections; Berlioz's Treatise on Instrumentation codifies the new palette.

Late Romantic/post-Romantic: Bruckner and Mahler symphonies, Brahms's classical forms with dense motivic development, Wolf's Lieder, Puccini's verismo.

Debussy and Ravel: whole-tone and pentatonic scales, parallel (planing) chords, timbral colour over functional harmony; Impressionism label is contested.

Expressionism/Second Viennese School: Schoenberg's free atonality then twelve-tone method (ordered row, prime/retrograde/inversion/retrograde-inversion), Berg, Webern.

Rhythm and folk sources: Stravinsky's Rite of Spring (1913) uses changing metres and ostinato; Bartók and Kodály collect folk material.

Neoclassicism: Stravinsky's Pulcinella, Hindemith's Gebrauchsmusik, Les Six; return to Baroque/Classical forms with modern harmony.

Serialism after 1945: Boulez, Stockhausen, Nono extend the row to rhythm and dynamics; total serialism; later aleatory and open form (Cage, Lutosławski).

Notation innovations: graphic scores, proportional notation, extended instrumental techniques (flutter-tongue, col legno, harmonics, prepared piano).

Electronic and electroacoustic music: musique concrète (Schaeffer), elektronische Musik (Cologne), tape, synthesizers, live electronics and computer-assisted composition.

Minimalism and its aftermath: Reich, Glass, Riley, Adams (phase shifting, additive process, repetitive cells); post-minimalism and spectralism (Grisey, Murail).

Twentieth-century Polish and Central European strands: Lutosławski's aleatoric counterpoint, Penderecki's sonorism (Threnody), Górecki, Panufnik, Kilar.

Mikołaj z Radomia and the 15th-century Ars nova manuscript (c. 1440) are among the earliest surviving Polish polyphonic sources.

Golden Age (16th c.): Wacław z Szamotuł's motets, Mikołaj Gomółka's Melodie na Psałterz polski (1580) to Kochanowski's psalms, and the organ tablatures of Jan of Lublin.

Baroque: Mielczewski and Zieleński (Offertoria, Communiones, 1611) write concertato church music; the chapel orchestras of the magnates cultivate Italian style.

Chopin (1810–1849) fuses Polish dance idioms (mazurka, polonaise) with expanded harmony and rubato; his ballades and scherzos are novel large forms.

Moniuszko's Halka (1858) founds Polish national opera; Stanisław Moniuszko's songbook Śpiewnik domowy is a domestic staple.

Młoda Polska (Young Poland): Karłowicz's symphonic poems, Szymanowski's Stabat Mater, Król Roger and mazurkas; Paderewski as pianist and statesman.

Post-1945: Lutosławski (Concerto for Orchestra, Musique funèbre, aleatoric counterpoint), Penderecki (Threnody, St Luke Passion), Górecki (Symphony No. 3), Bacewicz, Panufnik.

Later generations: Kilar (film and sacred works), Penderecki's later neo-Romantic style, Meyer, Mykietyn, and the Warsaw Autumn festival (from 1956) as a gateway to new music.

First listening pass: identify performing forces (voices, instruments), texture (monophonic, homophonic, polyphonic, heterophonic) and likely period from style markers.

Second pass: mark the metre, tempo and key; count bars of the opening phrase to infer periodicity (4- or 8-bar units suggest Classical/Romantic; asymmetrical suggests medieval or 20th c.).

Score reading order: clefs and key signature, then time signature, then rhythmic values; read outer voices before inner parts.

Transposing instruments: clarinet in B♭ sounds a major second below written pitch; horn in F a perfect fifth below; double bass sounds an octave below written pitch.

Cadence spotting in a score: look for the bass motion V–I (authentic), IV–I (plagal), ending on V (half), V–vi (deceptive); check the soprano's final note.

Texture cues in a score: identical rhythms across staves = homophonic; staggered entries of the same motive = imitative polyphony; sustained tenor with moving upper lines = cantus firmus.

Formal mapping: label sections by letter (ABA, AABA, rondo ABACA) and mark where the key changes; a return of the opening material in the tonic signals recapitulation or ternary return.

Motivic analysis: reduce a theme to its intervals (e.g. rising fourth, falling third) and trace transformations - inversion, augmentation, diminution, sequence - through the piece.

Timbre and dynamics as evidence: continuo plus ritornello indicates Baroque; Alberti bass and periodic phrasing indicates Classical; dense chromaticism and large orchestra indicates Romantic.