Module 6: What do you hear?
Listening Practice
This guide is to help you recognize the audio examples and prepare for the Module 6 Listening Quiz.
The Language of Progressive Modernist Music. The following examples present characteristic aspects of twentieth-century modernist music:
The absence of a steady pulse. In this example from Pierre Boulez's Eclat (1965), the solitary, sporadic events seem to float freely, unanchored by meter or pulse.
Lack
of harmonic resolution and the expanded use of dissonance. In
this example from Henry Cowell's short piano piece "Tiger" (1930), the harmony is dissonant throughout the excerpt and does not resolve.
The use of noise within compositions. In this example from George Crumb's string quartet "Black Angels" (1970), the composer asks the players to play traditional instruments (violin, viola, cello) in non-traditional ways to create a harsh, metallic noise.
Twentieth-Century Compositional Styles: The “-isms”: The following examples present excerpts highlighting important features of key twentieth-century compositional styles.
Impressionism. Ravel’s “Lever du Jour” (“Daybreak”) from Daphnis and Chloe features lush harmony and colorful orchestration to evoke the atmosphere of a sunrise in a mythological world.
Expressionism. The song “Moondrunk” from Arnold Schoenberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire” presents a disjointed melodic figure and a disembodied theatrical style of singing called “Sprechstimme” to suggest extreme psychological states.
Primitivism. “The Rite of Spring,” Igor Stravinsky uses irregular rhythms, lots of percussion, and harsh dissonances to depict the sounds of prehistoric pagan ritual music.
Minimalism. Minimalist music, like Steve Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians” features simple melodic ideas repeated again and again and again over consonant harmony and a steady pulse.
Electronic Music. The twentieth century witnessed the birth of electronic music. Composers like Karlheinz Stockhausen create compositions featuring sounds that were produced by electronic means.