chapter 38 The Late Twentieth Century
MULTIPLE CHOICE
1. Tan Dun and Paul McCartney share an interest in and have appropriated techniques and ideas from
a.
Arnold Schoenberg.
d.
Steve Reich.
b.
Nirvana.
e.
Arvo Pärt.
c.
John Cage.
2. Works as diverse as the musical Rent and John Corigliano’s Symphony No. 1 were artistic responses to the subject
of
a.
race relations.
d.
economic disparity.
b.
the Holocaust.
e.
religious persecution.
c.
AIDS.
3. Fusion jazz of the 1970s is so-called because it synthesizes
a.
jazz harmonies and playing styles with elements of rock and roll and rhythm-and-blues.
b.
Baroque and Classic formal schemes with the improvisatory techniques of jazz.
c.
African polyrhythms and percussion sounds with traditional jazz sonorities.
d.
jazz standards of the 1920s and 1930s with modernist harmonies.
e.
traditional jazz instrumentation with a more relaxed, easy-listening rhythmic quality.
4. The mission of the Art Ensemble of Chicago was to
a.
encourage the composition of new works for string quartet.
b.
encourage hybrid genres of pop, classical, and jazz styles.
c.
pursue the same research mission as IRCAM.
d.
perform serious, experimental jazz for an audience of connoisseurs.
e.
encourage the performance of non-Western musical styles and genres in the United States.
5. All of the following works are operas EXCEPT
a.
The Ghosts of Versailles.
d.
Nixon in China.
b.
Kristallnacht.
e.
The Voyage.
c.
Licht.
6. Institutions such as the Meltdown Festival and Bang on a Can were established to create forums for
a.
performances of the works of academically affiliated composers.
b.
revivals of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century repertoires.
c.
performances of the latest electronic compositions.
d.
performances representing diverse, current Western and world musical traditions.
e.
spontaneous improvisations by audience members.
7. World beat is
a.
the commercial genre of African popular musics that are promoted to international audiences.
b.
the name of an ethnomusicology journal.
c.
a European pop music genre heavily influenced by Roma and Eastern European folk music.
d.
a classical concert genre that fuses traditional European forms and instrumental sounds with non–
Western melodic and rhythmic features.
e.
the commercial genre of recordings made by Western classical musicians of recent non-Western
works, especially those by Asian composers.
8. Paul Simon, Kevin Volans, and Steve Reich are each influenced by
a.
neoclassicism.
d.
African music.
b.
total serialism.
e.
Broadway musicals.
c.
medieval compositional techniques.
9. Crucial elements of early hip-hop include all the following EXCEPT
a.
sampled recordings.
d.
communal participation.
b.
dancing.
e.
acoustic instruments.
c.
improvised lyrics.
10. Disco developed in the
a.
1950s in popular Mediterranean resorts frequented by wealthy Europeans.
b.
1960s as a genre of dance music in Latino nightclubs in Los Angeles.
c.
1970s in dance clubs in New York frequented by African Americans, Latinos, and gay men.
d.
1940s in South American cities like Buenos Aires and São Paolo in clubs frequented by the
working class.
e.
1980s as a form of electronic dance music created by disc jockeys who wanted to expand their
activities to music production.
11. Indie rock achieved commercial prominence and popularity in the 1990s in large part because of the success of
grunge rock bands from
a.
Amsterdam.
d.
New York.
b.
Los Angeles.
e.
Seattle.
c.
San Francisco.
12. Minimalism in music originated as a
a.
reaction against the intellectual and technical complexity of much modernist music in the mid–
twentieth century.
b.
way of promoting the synthesis of Western compositional techniques and materials with world
music.
c.
way of incorporating the newest advances in electronics and acoustics into musical composition.
d.
way of restoring the familiar techniques and expressive gestures of nineteenth-century Romantic
music.
e.
rejection of pedantic compositional techniques in favor of spontaneous, untrained improvisation.
13. Steve Reich’s musical style and technique underwent a shift in the 1980s from
a.
serialism to minimalism.
b.
minimalism to postminimalism.
c.
electronic composition to neo-Romanticism.
d.
indeterminacy to total serialism.
e.
indeterminacy to spectralism.
14. The gates in John Adams’s piano work Phrygian Gates refer to
a.
the Phrygian cadences that conclude each movement of the composition.
b.
the gates of the archaeological ruins of Mycenae in Greece, which inspired the composition.
c.
the change from the scalar collection of pitches used in one passage to a different collection in the
subsequent passage.
d.
the passages of indeterminacy that separate the fully notated sections of the music.
e.
nothing specific; it is part of an evocative title for an abstract composition.
15. MIDI is
a.
a French institute for the advanced study of acoustics and musical sound.
b.
the technology for translating digitally encoded parameters of music into audio sound.
c.
the title of a 1976 album of electronic music by John Zorn.
d.
a tape recording technology that briefly preceded the advent of CD technology.
e.
a percussion ensemble work by Philip Glass.
16. In the course of the 1960s and 1970s, each of the following composers turned away from serial techniques to adopt
new styles and techniques except
a.
Milton Babbitt.
d.
Arvo Pärt.
b.
David del Tredici.
e.
George Rochberg.
c.
John Taverner.
17. Tristan Murail, Gérard Grisey, and Jonathan Harvey were important exponents of the techniques of
a.
European avant-garde jazz.
d.
tintinnabuli style.
b.
minimalism.
e.
spectralism.
c.
neo-Romanticism.
18. All the following composers are important representatives of minimalist musical styles EXCEPT
a.
John Adams.
d.
La Monte Young.
b.
Philip Glass.
e.
Brian Ferneyhough.
c.
Steve Reich.
19. Alfred Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1 is a good example of
a.
minimalism.
b.
polystylism.
c.
total serialism.
d.
electronic music.
e.
the integration of electronic music with acoustic live performance.
20. A confluence of modernist musical processes, minimalism, and Romantic virtuosity is best
illustrated by
a.
Miles Davis’s recordings of the 1970s.
b.
John Williams’s film scores.
c.
Astor Piazzolla’s nuevo tango works.
d.
Ligeti’s piano etudes.
e.
Charles Dodge’s electronic compositions.
21. The dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc led composers like Arvo Pärt and
Alfred Schnittke to
a.
immigrate to the United States.
b.
experiment with compositional techniques like serialism.
c.
turn their compositional efforts to electronic music.
d.
stop composing.
e.
devote themselves entirely to sacred compositions.
22. Stravinsky had an especially strong influence on the music of
a.
Brian Ferneyhough and Tristan Murail.
b.
Sofia Gubaidulina and Kevin Volans.
c.
Louis Andriessen and John Tavener.
d.
Philip Glass and Steve Reich.
e.
Laurie Anderson and Terry Riley.
23. In his works from the 1970s and later, Arvo Pärt used a compositional style heavily influenced by
a.
medieval chant and early chant polyphony.
b.
Baroque church cantatas.
c.
eighteenth-century concerted masses.
d.
the chromaticism of Wagner.
e.
Schoenberg’s serial techniques.
24. P. D. Q. Bach is the nom de plume of
a.
Joan Towers.
d.
John Zorn.
b.
Peter Schickele.
e.
Andrew Lloyd Weber.
c.
George Rochberg.
25. David del Tredici was defensive about his Final Alice because he believed that
a.
his fellow composers would condemn its lack of atonal and other modernist techniques.
b.
he would be accused of writing music that was too complex for the juvenile subject matter of the
work.
c.
audiences would reject it as an unoriginal, derivative work.
d.
its use of advanced serial techniques would be seen as pretentious and outdated.
e.
the appeal of its overtly romantic qualities would mark him as a sellout to commercial success.
TRUE/FALSE
1. Despite the plethora of communication technologies available in the late twentieth century,
musical cultures have largely remained isolated and distinct, without influencing each
other significantly.
2. Jazz performance and composition has largely escaped the preservationist, archival fate of
classical music.
3. The growing diversity of late-twentieth-century musical styles and genres has led to the
abandonment of the notion of musical classics, a concept too closely tied to elite genres of
art music.
4. Since the 1980s, academic music programs have expanded their curricula to include scholarly investigation of
popular music genres such as rap and dance music.
5. The Kronos Quartet is exceptional in being one of the few ensembles in the late twentieth
century to completely eschew performing historical repertoire in order to focus on new music.
6. Popular music in the later twentieth century saw a gradual convergence of styles and genres
into one universal style.
7. Hip-hop emerged in the 1970s in African American urban youth culture as dance music that
relied on the sampling of soul, funk, and disco recordings.
8. Disco, rap, and New Wave music were all popular genres that at their origins were closely
connected to African American culture.
9. American rap music has been appropriated by musical cultures in Europe and in many places in the developing
world.
10. In postminimalism, the musical materials and procedures of a composition are more diverse
and the expressive content more pronounced than in minimalism.
SHORT ANSWER
1. In 1989, the fall of the ________ marked the beginning of the collapse of the Communist Bloc.
2. Astor Piazzolla drew on the Argentinian dance genre of ________ as a fundamental element of his music.
3. The process of creating new compositions by patching together digital chunks of previously recorded music is
known as ________.
4. The hard-driving musical style of 1970s groups like the Sex Pistols, characterized by raw, unskilled sounds rather
than virtuosity and smooth production values, is known as ________.
5. At the center of the plot of the film Saturday Night Fever was the musical genre known as ________.
6. The style of art and music that emerged in the 1960s and that deploys a few constructive elements in repetitive
patterns, with little or no expressive intention, is known as ________.
7. The technique of performing the same melodic material at slightly different tempi in different voices so that
different vertical sonorities gradually form and disperse is known as ________.
8. Composers like Terry Riley explored repetitive patterns produced by tape ________, short segments
of magnetic tape spliced so as to play the same sounds repeatedly when fed through a tape
recorder.
9. Music whose sonorities are derived from analyses of the wave constructions of musical sounds
and their reconstitution is known as ________.
10. The postmodern practice of mixing historical and current musical styles and techniques in a single composition is
known by the term ________.
MATCHING
Match each work to its composer.
a.
Sweeney Todd
d.
Rent
b.
O Superman
e.
The Perfect Stranger
c.
Smalltalk
1. Jonathan Larson
2. Stephen Sondheim
3. Paul Lansky
4. Laurie Anderson
5. Frank Zappa
Match each musician to the performer or ensemble associated with him.
a.
Frank Zappa
d.
Elvis Costello
b.
Philip Glass
e.
Tristan Murail
c.
Paul Simon
6. Ladysmith Black Mambazo
7. Pierre Boulez
8. Brodsky Quartet
9. Ravi Shankar
10. Ensemble L’Itinéraire
ESSAY
1. How did globalization and cross-cultural exchange affect composition in the late twentieth century? What kinds of
new genres, styles, and techniques emerged as a result of these forces? Discuss a range of composers and works that
illustrate these effects and their significance.
2. How did musical-historical consciousness affect the work of composers of art music and vernacular music in the late
twentieth century? How and why did composers in this period engage with older repertoires, styles, and techniques,
and assimilate them to their music? Discuss a variety of composers and works that demonstrate the impact of the
past on this recent repertoire.