American Styles

On the quiz tomorrow I will ask you to identify the musical style of each piece and the famous musician who developed that style.

1. Folk Songs

1. Bluegrass

1. Blues
1. Bessie Smith

1. Ragtime
1. Scott Joplin

1. Dixieland Jazz
1. Jelly Roll Morton
2. Louis Armstrong
3. Duke Ellington 

Nationalist Composers

Tchaikovsky - Russia
"Finale" from the 1812 Overture
Note: I will be playing this piece starting at the 3:00 mark

Edvard Grieg - Norway
Peer Gynt Suite "In the Hall of the Mountain King"

Jean Sibelius - Finland
Finlandia

Antonin Dvorak - Czech
New World Symphony 2nd Movement

Richard Wagner - Germany
"The Ride of the Valkyries" from Die Walkure

Fryderyk Chopin - Poland
Revolutionary Etude

 Composing a song is like cooking a recipe. Today we are going to get an idea of the musical flavors that the New German School was interested in.

1. Form (what are we going to make?)
1. Vocal Forms
1. Operas
1. Big story, big voices, big orchestra, big sets, big costumes, dramatic acting
2. Wagner coined the idea of a complete musical work or a Musical Drama 
3. Leitmotif - a short musical theme used to introduce a character. A good example of a leitmotif is Darth Vader's Theme from Star Wars. 
2. Instrumental Forms
1. Piano Forms
1. Concerto
1. Piano soloist plus orchestra
2. Etudes
1. Short pieces by Chopin and Liszt meant to show off their skills
2.  Revolutionary Etude by Chopin
3. Rhapsodies
1. A form of piano music in which the composer can do literally whatever he or she wants, made popular by Liszt.
2.  Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2 by Franz Liszt
4. Nocturne
1. A musical composition that is inspired by or attempts to evoke the night. Chopin’s nocturnes are the most famous.
2. Chopin Nocturne op. 9 no. 1 
2. Orchestral Forms
1. Symphonies
1. Beethoven elevated the Symphony to the supreme form for a composer.
2. After his death no one could come up with anything as revolutionary or powerfully emotional as Beethoven’s symphonies and most did not even attempt to write symphonies.
3. Berlioz was the only acception and managed to created beautiful, richly original symphonies like his Symphonie Fantastique. 
4.  “March to the Scaffold” from Symphonie Fantastique 
2. Tone Poems
1. Liszt reacted to the fear surrounding the attempt to create a symphony that would surpass Beethoven by creating a new genre of orchestral music, the Tone Poem
2. A tone poem is a piece of orchestral music, usually in a single movement that illustrates or evokes the content of a poem, short story, novel, painting, landscape, or other non-musical source.
3. it seeks, like opera, a union of music and drama.
2. Tonality (flavors)
1. Music at this time is becoming increasingly atonal, or chromatic.
2. What is tonality?
1. Tonality is a heirarchy of notes, intervals, and chords that sound more or less stable, or pleasant to the ears.
2. Do is the most stable note
3. Consonance: chords or intervals that sound stable or pleasant to the ears
4. Dissonance: chords or intervals that sound unstable or unpleasant to the ears
5. Diatonic: 
1. Notes contained within the do-based scales (do is pronounced doe)
6. Chromatic: 
1. Notes that fall outside the do-based scales
7. Comes from the greek word chroma for color
3. Instruments (ingredients)
1. Piano
1. The most important composition tool.
2. The most popular and lucrative solo instrument of the time period.
3. Berlioz some how got by without knowing how to play.
2. Voice
1. Roles for operatic voices are becoming increasingly dissonant and difficult
2. The number of people who have the natural talent and the skill to fulfill the requirements of the roles decrease quite sharply during this time