Matura History of Music flashcards

33 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Treble clef

The G clef, curling around the second line from the bottom of the staff, which is G4. It is used for higher instruments and voices such as violin, flute and soprano.

Key signature order of sharps

Sharps are added in the fixed order F, C, G, D, A, E, B. The last sharp is the leading tone, so one semitone above it names the major key.

Perfect authentic cadence

A cadence moving from dominant to tonic with both chords in root position and the tonic note in the highest voice. It gives the strongest sense of closure in tonal music.

Compound time

A metre whose upper numeral is 6, 9 or 12, meaning the beat divides into three. The felt beat is a dotted note, as in 6/8 with two dotted-crotchet beats per bar.

Figured bass 6/4

A figured-bass symbol for a triad in second inversion, with the fifth of the chord in the bass. It usually appears as a passing or cadential chord.

Gregorian chant texture

Plainchant is monophonic, unmeasured and modal, sung in Latin. Its melodies may be syllabic (one note per syllable), neumatic (small groups) or melismatic (many notes per syllable).

Ars nova

Fourteenth-century French polyphonic style marked by mensural rhythm, syncopation and isorhythm. Machaut's Messe de Nostre Dame is its most famous complete cyclic Mass.

Organum

Medieval polyphony that adds one or more voices to a plainchant. In organal style the chant notes are held long; in discant style the voices move together.

Mass Ordinary

The five texts sung at every Mass: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei. Composers set them as a unified cycle, unlike the changing Proper texts.

Renaissance imitation

A technique in which each voice enters with the same melodic idea in turn. It replaced tenor-based medieval structures and underlies the motet, Mass and madrigal.

Basso continuo

A Baroque accompaniment of a figured bass line played by a chordal instrument such as harpsichord or organ, plus a bass melody instrument. It defines Baroque texture.

Ritornello form

A Baroque form in which a recurring tutti refrain alternates with contrasting solo episodes. It structures Vivaldi's concertos and Bach's Brandenburg Concertos.

Da capo aria

A Baroque aria in ternary form: the singer performs the A section, then B, then returns to A and ornaments it freely. It dominates Italian opera seria.

Fugue subject and answer

The subject is the opening theme; the answer is its restatement in another voice, either real (exact transposition) or tonal (adjusted to stay in key).

French overture

A Baroque orchestral opening in two parts: a slow section with dotted rhythms and a fast imitative section. It precedes operas and suites by Lully and Bach.

Sonata form

A large form with exposition (themes in tonic then dominant or relative key), development (motivic working and modulation) and recapitulation (themes return in the tonic).

String quartet

A chamber ensemble of two violins, viola and cello, and the genre written for it. Haydn's op. 33 set is often cited as crystallizing the form.

Theme and variations

A form in which a theme is restated several times with changes of melody, harmony, rhythm or texture. It often serves as a slow movement or finale in Classical works.

Opera buffa

Italian comic opera with everyday characters, rapid recitative and ensemble finales. Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni are central examples.

Alberti bass

A broken-chord accompaniment pattern playing low, high, middle, high notes in repeated succession. It is typical of Classical keyboard writing and clarifies harmony.

Idée fixe

A recurring musical idea representing the beloved in Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique. It is transformed across movements, exemplifying programme music.

Lied

A German art song for voice and piano, often through-composed or strophic. Schubert and Schumann raised it to a major genre with piano parts of equal importance.

Symphonic poem

A single-movement orchestral work illustrating a literary or pictorial idea, developed by Liszt. It belongs to programme music rather than absolute music.

Leitmotif

A short musical idea associated with a character, object or idea, transformed as the drama unfolds. Wagner developed the technique in his music dramas.

Mazurka

A Polish triple-metre dance with accents often on the second or third beat. Chopin transformed it into a concert character piece with expanded harmony.

Twelve-tone method

Schoenberg's technique ordering all twelve pitch classes in a row, used in prime, retrograde, inversion and retrograde-inversion forms. It replaced tonal hierarchy in his atonal works.

Sonorism

A Polish school of the 1960s treating sound mass, texture and timbre as primary material. Penderecki's Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima is a landmark.

Aleatoric counterpoint

Lutosławski's technique in which players perform written lines independently, unsynchronized, producing chance-based vertical sonorities within a controlled framework.

Musique concrète

Electronic music built from recorded real-world sounds, edited and manipulated on tape. Pierre Schaeffer developed it in Paris after 1948.

Moniuszko's Halka

An 1858 Polish national opera with folk-inflected music and a tragic peasant heroine. It is regarded as founding the Polish national opera tradition.

Warsaw Autumn

An international festival of contemporary music founded in 1956. It introduced Polish audiences to postwar avant-garde works and showcased Polish composers abroad.

Transposing instruments

Instruments whose written pitch differs from sounding pitch. Clarinet in B-flat sounds a major second lower, horn in F a perfect fifth lower, double bass an octave lower.

Motivic transformation

Altering a motive while keeping its identity, through inversion, retrograde, augmentation, diminution or sequence. Tracing these changes reveals large-scale unity in a score.