Tonality

Whether a piece is a major or minor, atonal or model

Major - Happy

Minor - Sad

Atonal - Doesn't sound like it has a key (no home key)

Modal - System used before scales were created. modes are like scales.

Music for Voices

Vocal range (pitch order):

• Treble voice - boys unbroken voice

• Soprano - highest female voice

• Mezzo Soprano - medium vocal range

• Contralto (alto) -  lowest female voice

• Counter-tenor - high male voice

• Tenor - medium to high range for male voice

• Baritone - medium to low male voice

• Bass - lowest male voice

Types of solo songs:

Lied (plural is "lieder") German songs, singing poetry accompanied by piano. Like a duet between piano and vocalist.

Aria is a solo song that is part of a larger piece, either and opera or an oratorio 

Opera is a play that is sung

Oratorio is a large scale piece (orchestra, choir and instruments) based on a sacred subject, unlike opera it's strictly a musical piece

concerto

concerto's were where an orchestra played to accompany instrument parts that played the main tune, sometimes a group of soloists.
Classical concerto included a lot of woodwind instruments, concerto's were written for instruments like the flute, where the flute would lead the piece with an orchestra accompanying.
This is a concerto written for the flute, by Mozart

A cocnerto from the

20th century music

Serialism - uses every single note in an octive (chromatic scale) put the notes in a random order, called the serial. Schoenberg. Play the notes and then play it backwards. Then used in retrograde order, this was where every other note change in the order would be inverted. Here is an example:

Minimalism -Short repeated phrases and figures over a steady beat creating a hypnotic effect. Steve Reich is a famous composer of this style. Here is an example:

Electronic music - Composers used sounds produced electronically. Early developments of the keyboard. Were able to record sound. Stockhausen is famous for this style. Here is an example:

Atonal music - No familiar key center. The chords that were used sounded unrelated. Here is an example:

Aleatoric music - also called chance music. Included undetermineded sections where the performer would have to improvise the part And fit the direction of the music. The movement of the improvisation was determined by growing dice to see how the music will go. Here is an example:

ROMATIC PERIOD

The Romantic period started in 1820 and lasted until 1910

Romantic symphony - they lasted from 20 - 45 minutes, unlike classical symphonies they didn't follow strict rules on how they were supposed to sound. They used much larger orchestra's and were a lot more expressive using a lot of harmonisation, Rythmic patterns and dynamics. They could flow how the composer wanted it to so that they could tell stories that they were often inspired by things outside of music.Used a lot more instruments and often lasted more than 4 movements.

Dissonance - used classy sounds, Things like noes from outside the key, to be able to give their music emotion. Broke the rules from the classical period. Beethoven was the first to use this.

Virtuoso - a performer who excels in technical ability; fanciest, most complicated instruments playing, playing the instruments to best of it's ability. Liszt was an amazing virtuoso pianist who wrote pieces for the piano.

Tone poems - Composers would read a novel or look at a painting, things like this and then turn it into a piece of music.

Programme music - often from a piece of writing, where a composer read some writing and wrote an instrumental piece from it. Longer than tone poems.

Impressionism - Late in the romantic era that gave a feeling to their music instead of describing it. changes in

Opera - stories from history and myths retold through drama and music forming an expressive style. They lasted a long time can go to 3 hours. They covered all form of disaster and went to the extreme emotions, showed death war and Implimented the gods into the story, used the large orchestra including lots of brass instruments.

Wagner, Liszt, Schumann and Mahler were composer that were around in the Romantic period.
Here is an example from each of their compositions;
Wagner

Liszt

Schumann

Mahler

Classical period

CLASSICAL PERIOD

 The classical period lasted from 1750 until 1810

Symphony: A large orchestral piece, split into 3 chunks, which follows certain rules to give it a rigid structure.
Section 1: Was written in a sonata allegro form.
Section 2: Changed key from the first section, and included a strong melody line.
Section 3: Was written in Rondo form, and was a lot livelier.
This is an example of a Symphony from the Classical period:

Diatonic music means that all of the notes that are used stay within the key. In this time of music it was seen as unacceptable to make clashing sounds.

Phrases were where the composers would have made even length sections, the phrases ended as if you were taking a breath in the song.


Concerto would be a soloist, accompanied by an orchestra playing a piece of music.

Mozart, Haydn and Schubert were three composers from the Classical period, here is an example of each of their music:
Mozart

 

Haydn

schubert

Ground bass is a simple repeating bassline that continue the whole way through a piece of music whilst the melody changes over the top, pachabels canon is a good example of ground bass in music,

Figured bass - Composers wrote the melody of their compositions and the basic bassline, they left out the bassline harmonies, so they wrote numbers underneath the bassline in the gaps, the person playing the bassline (usually on a harpsichord) would have to improvise the gaps of the bassline, using the numbers as a guideline telling them what Chords to use.
Continuo - The part that is played with by the harpsichord, icludes a bassline and a harmony.
Concerto grosso - There is a large group of instrumentalists, playing with a small group of instrumentalists contrasting with each other, sometimes they play at the same time, sometimes they imitate each other. Concerto gross means "Big concert" in italian.
A string quartet is a group of four instrumentalists , two violins, a viola and a cello. This is an example of a string quartet

Vivaldi, Purcell, bach - These were three composers from the Baroque period here is an example of each composers music;
Vivaldi Four seasons - Autumn

Purcell Chacony in G minor

Bach - Brandenburg Concerto #3