chapter 39 The Twenty-First Century
MULTIPLE CHOICE
1. YouTube and Twitter played an important role in immediately disseminating real-time images and testimony about
the events of the
a.
first U.S.–Iraq Gulf War.
b.
Arab Spring.
c.
terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
d.
New Year’s Eve of the millennium.
e.
fall of the Berlin Wall.
2. One of the most important emerging sources of finance for musical projects in the last decade is
a.
crowdsourcing.
d.
corporate sponsorship.
b.
academic patronage.
e.
private patronage.
c.
government grant programs.
3. An amateur musician who wishes to distribute video of a recital on the Internet would most likely
use which of the following platforms?
a.
YouTube
d.
Twitter
b.
Spotify
e.
Pandora
c.
iTunes
4. File downloading services in the 1990s and early 2000s were inhibited or even ceased operating mainly because of
a.
Internet bandwidth constraints.
d.
censorship.
b.
copyright issues.
e.
limited inventory of audio files.
c.
the prohibitive cost of Internet access.
5. The most widespread and profound effect that the Internet has had on musical creativity is arguably
a.
increased involvement of untrained amateurs.
b.
changes in the training of professional musicians.
c.
a decline of musical taste and standards.
d.
decreased interest in historical repertoires.
e.
increased uniformity of musical style across repertoires and performers.
6. Currently, popular musicians make a significant portion or majority of their income from
a.
downloads of audio files.
b.
sales of CDs and DVDs.
c.
printed sheet music and arrangements of their music.
d.
teaching.
e.
live performances.
7. The splintering of the pop music audience in the first decades of the twenty-first century can be attributed to
a.
the erosion of the pop music market by an expanding classical music audience.
b.
the proliferation of listening options enabled by communications technologies.
c.
the growing number of music consumers isolated by lack of access to the Internet.
d.
the decline of live pop music performances.
e.
copyright enforcement by large music producers and recording companies.
8. One of the important figures in the disco revival of the last decade has been
a.
Madonna.
d.
Jay-Z.
b.
Kelly Clarkson.
e.
Jennifer Higdon.
c.
Maria Schneider.
9. The aesthetics of the mashup are most nearly approximated in
a.
Josquin’s Missa pange lingua.
b.
the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
c.
Vivaldi’s Le quattro stagioni.
d.
the first act finale of Mozart’s Don Giovanni.
e.
Wagner’s prelude to Tristan und Isolde.
10. Examples of digital audio workstation packages include all the following EXCEPT
a.
Audacity.
d.
Reason.
b.
GarageBand.
e.
SoundCloud.
c.
Pro Tools.
11. Which of the following acronyms designates a format used to compress digital audio files by removing their
inaudible frequencies?
a.
MIDI
d.
WAV
b.
DAW
e.
MP3
c.
FLAC
12. Bootleg is another term for
a.
spectralism.
d.
digitization.
b.
mashup.
e.
streaming.
c.
fusion.
13. The Internet has given users powerful advantages in all the following matters EXCEPT
a.
distribution of video files.
d.
artist copyright protections.
b.
musical collaborations.
e.
publication of scores.
c.
distribution of audio files.
14. The Grey Album is historically significant because it was
a.
Macy Grey’s first Kickstarter-financed recording project.
b.
an important example of a mashup that combined sounds from rap and 1960s pop into a single
audio product.
c.
an innovative digital reconstruction of the Broadway musical Grey Gardens released as a free video
download.
d.
a highly successful collaboration between Yo-Yo Ma and the Afghan Youth Orchestra to assist war
victims in Afghanistan.
e.
the first of the post-punk revival albums of the new millennium.
15. A popular music mashup may be regarded as postmodern when its
a.
source compositions are stylistically incongruous and their combination is ironic.
b.
source compositions are distorted and unrecognizable.
c.
source compositions are in similar styles and as a result almost indistinguishable.
d.
source compositions are works that are perceived as low culture and inconsequential.
e.
prevailing harmonic idiom is highly dissonant.
16. Both Uri Caine and Osvaldo Golijov
a.
have used works by composers such as Bach and Verdi to create modern stylistic fusions.
b.
were self-taught musicians.
c.
began their careers as pop musicians.
d.
incorporate hip-hop as a central stylistic element of their works.
e.
began their careers as total serialists in the mold of Boulez and Babbitt.
17. Signs of change in the classical orchestral world were seen in the period 2008–2010, during
which orchestral ensembles and the number of their performances dropped by approximately
________ percent.
a.
4
d.
50
b.
15
e.
75
c.
30
18. All the following are causes of fundamental changes in classical musical culture in the last
decade EXCEPT
a.
world economic conditions.
b.
spreading Internet connectivity.
c.
declining numbers of amateurs studying classical music.
d.
declining concert attendance.
e.
cross-fertilization of Western and non-Western genres.
19. Jaufré Rudel is
a.
a character in L’amour de loin.
b.
the composer of The Enchanted Island.
c.
a character in Ainadamar: Fountain of Tears.
d.
the composer of The Grey Album.
e.
the composer of Caténaires.
20. The prognosis by some writers that classical music is a dying art form is based largely on their observation that
a.
availability and accessibility of classical recordings and videos are declining.
b.
standards of performance quality are declining.
c.
music consumers are indifferent to classical genres and their performance.
d.
classical music audiences are shrinking and aging, and performing institutions are suffering
financial hardship.
e.
the breadth of repertoire performed by classical musicians is shrinking.
21. A characteristic twenty-first-century synthesis of spectralism and medieval modality is evident in
a.
Jeremy Sams’s The Enchanted Island.
b.
Kaija Saariaho’s L’amour de loin.
c.
Freelance Hellraiser’s A Stroke of Genie-Us.
d.
Jennifer Higdon’s blue cathedral.
e.
Erykah Badu’s Baduizm.
22. Recent developments in audio technology raise challenges that threaten to obviate or at least
redefine the long-standing Western concept of musical
a.
style.
d.
influence.
b.
expression.
e.
notation.
c.
authorship.
23. Golijov’s music is heavily inflected with the sounds of his native
a.
Azerbaijan.
d.
Turkey.
b.
Russia.
e.
Poland.
c.
Argentina.
24. John Adams’s On the Transmigration of Souls was composed as a(n)
a.
commemoration of the victims of the 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and other
sites.
b.
setting of the medieval Eastern Orthodox liturgy for the Feast of the Ascension.
c.
modern reinterpretation of Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem.
d.
oratorio based on passages from Plato’s Phaedo.
e.
commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
25. Thomas Adès’s Violin Concerto is notable for its revival of the
a.
thick, lush textures of Brahms.
b.
simple melodic figures of early minimalism.
c.
serene and contemplative qualities of late Beethoven.
d.
prepared piano techniques of John Cage.
e.
pianistic virtuosity and textures of Liszt.
TRUE/FALSE
1. Music today has unprecedented distribution in part because nearly 90 percent of the world’s population is now
connected by cell phone networks.
2. Because of the interest generated by online listening and downloading of music, record companies have seen a
paradoxical increase in CD sales as consumers seek out music they like.
3. Postmodern juxtapositions and historical displacements of musical styles are ubiquitous in art
music of the early twenty-first century but absent from popular music, which has resisted such
abstract intellectual tendencies.
4. The Internet has made radio largely obsolete.
5. Europe is the region of the world where the European classical tradition remains most vibrant and demographically
widespread.
6. The worldwide economic recession in the first decade of the twenty-first century reduced
support for classical music institutions in the United States but did so even more sharply in
Europe, which was once a bastion of classical musical culture.
7. Opera has been the first of the classical genres to recede from the current music scene because
of its high cost and outdated mode of presentation.
8. A distinctive feature of current trends in musical composition and consumption is the synthesis
of diverse styles, a process notably absent in earlier periods of music history.
9. With the emergence of innumerable, complex methods of composition since 2000, formal
music education in notation and performance techniques has become an indispensable
component in the training of anyone wishing to produce music today.
10. Despite Internet connectivity that makes the same music available to all listeners at all times,
people know less and less music in common because the audience is so fragmented into
niche markets.
SHORT ANSWER
1. ________ became the youngest person to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2013.
2. Prominent musicians have used the crowdsourcing platform called ________, similar to Kickstarter,
to solicit investments in musical projects.
3. A musical work produced by extracting audio fragments or layers from two or more recordings and combining them
into a single new audio composition is called a(n) ________.
4. A recent genre of music that combines new styles of hip-hop and world music with revived 1960s soul music,
rhythm-and-blues, and jazz is known as ________.
5. Artists such as Kelly Clarkson achieved initial fame thanks to appearances on the televised competition called
________.
6. The term ________ refers to the continuous transfer of data (as audio or video material) for immediate processing or
playback, often on a personal computing device.
7. Many streaming music services enlist ________ to match music with listeners’ preferences.
8. Caroline Shaw’s ________ is a fusion of Baroque, medieval, American, and non-Western elements with the modern
classical tradition.
9. The ongoing Venezuelan government-sponsored program of classical music training for disadvantaged youth is
called ________.
10. The opera Doctor Atomic is about the physicist ________.
MATCHING
Match each institution or platform to the composer associated with it.
a.
International Bach Academy
d.
IRCAM
b.
Patreon
e.
Deutsche Grammophon
c.
Curtis Institute
1. Maria Schneider
2. Kaija Saariaho
3. Tori Amos
4. Tan Dun
5. Jennifer Higdon
Match each musical movement to the composer associated with it.
a.
disco revival
d.
post-punk revival
b.
neo soul
e.
postminimalism
c.
spectralism
6. Lauryn Hill
7. Lady Gaga
8. The Strokes
9. Kaija Saariaho
10. John Adams
ESSAY
1. Does the Western classical music tradition remain viable and distinct? Does it remain coherent even as it assimilates
and transforms other musical traditions? Or has it exhausted its musical resources and techniques and come to the
end of its development in the early twenty-first century? Has it been assimilated into a new, broader tradition? Is the
very notion of a tradition now irrelevant? Cite evidence from composers and works studied in this chapter to support
your answers to these questions.
2. How has technology altered the traditional relationships among composer, performer, and audience? What new
genres, techniques, and styles reflect changes in these relationships? Discuss a variety of composers, works, styles,
and techniques that demonstrate the changes you think are important.
