Post-1900s Era (1900-2010)

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    John Philip Sousa

    innovator of the US wind bands and famous for is marches. he attempted operas with little to no success.
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    Charles Ives

    moat of his works were not known untill the 10950's. his father shaped his music style, harmonies in the "wrong key", playing tunes in two different keys, etc. Known for polytonality, polyrhythms, polymeters, and limited tonality.
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    Robert Nathaniel Dett

    Helped found the National Association of Negro Musicians in 1919
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    Luigi Russolo

    Italian painter and composer who built experimental musical instruments and wrote "The Art of Noise" for them. he created his own type of notations for the sounds these instruments made as well.
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    Florence Price

    American African American woman
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    Nadia Boulanger

    taught most of the 20th century composers except George Gershwin who she refused to teach. she was a composer herself but she preferred to help others "find their voice".
  • Semper Fidelis

    one of John Philip Sousa's famous marches. I've played it before it was a typical march.
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    Blues

    American genre derived from Black American performance traditions that used bent pitches (blues pitches). the text is often about hardships of love gone wrong.
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    Sergei Prokofiev

    Russian composer who wrote incidental music, film music, etc. an example of one of his works is "Peter and the Wolf"
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    Paul Hindemith

    German composer who wrote for practicing musicians
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    William Grant Still

    first American black composer to have an opera performed by a major ensemble and the first to conduct a major symphony orchestra. he blended African American idioms with symphonies, operas, and ballets
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    Henry Cowell

    American composer who supported Ives and was John Cage's teacher. He was one of the innovators of indeterminate music. he also coined the term tone cluster
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    George Gershwin

    American composer who worked in Hollywood. he fused Jazz and pop music. Wrote Rhapsody in Blue!
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    Duke Ellington

    Swing composer and his real name was Edward Kennedy Ellington. composed hundreds of tunes, film scores, etc. but was mostly known fir his jazz tunes.
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    Aaron Copland

    composer who wrote in many genres but not a lot of works. he wrote mostly tonal music but did write a few atonal works. his style was filled with folk songs and folk idioms, mixed meters, and as little notes a possible so very open intervals.
  • The Unanswered Question

    written by Charles Ives that was not published till 1940. The trumpet (or substituted instrument) asks the same question though the piece and the woodwinds answer with increasing agitation.
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    Elliott Carter

    American composer and teacher for 50 years.
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    Olivier Messiaen

    Serialist French composer known for incorporating bird songs into his music and had religious themes in them.
  • “The Tides of Manaunaun”

    one of Cowell's ground breaking pieces that used tone clusters.
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    John Cage

    American composer who used indeterminacy.
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    Billie Holiday

    Female jazz singer who broke the racial barriers by performing with white bands. Also known for her renditions of blues songs.
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    Milton Babbitt

    American composer interested in computer music. he wrote an artical that was titled “The Composer as Specialist” but was published as “Who Cares if You Listen?”
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    Jazz

    American musical style that got its roots from west African music, call and response singing, 19th century African American ceremonial and work music. there are many types of jazz music such as New Orleans style, Dixieland Jazz, and scat singing.
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    Leonard Bernstein

    composer of West Side Story which was complex music compared to the rest of the musicals being made at the time.
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    György Ligeti

    Hungarian composer interested in clusters of sounds in orchestra an choir music. a piece he wrote called A Space Odyssey became well known much later after it was written.
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    Pierre Boulez

    The most important composer of the French avant-garde
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    Luciano Berio

    modern Italian composer and helped establish the electronic studio
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    Karlheinz Stockhausen

    German composer who innovated electronic music and other types of experimental music
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    Great Depression

    the biggest stock market crash in history that left millions of people unemployed and nearly half the banks failed.
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    George Crumb

    American composer known for his anti- Vietnam war ideals. Created a new spatial notation to accommodate his musical innovations.
  • stereo sound

    created by Alan Dower Blumlein
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    Henryk Górecki

    an extremely successful composer whose style consisted of slow harmonic movement, Neo-tonality, and clusters
  • Porgy and Bess

    first opera to have a completely black cast. an American folk Opera written by Gershwin.
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    Swing

    highly improvisational style of jazz known as big band groups who played in this style.
  • Peter and the Wolf

    a character piece written by Sergei Prokofiev where the instruments all played a different character and a narrator told the story of that the piece was portraying
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    WW2

    second world war
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    Musique Concrete

    the use of natural sounds like water dripping of, a cat's meow, instruments, etc. and recording it manipulating its sound to be used for making music.
  • Attack on Pearl Harbor

    Japanese attacked Pear Harbor via kamikaze
  • Appalachian Spring

    A ballet written by Aaron Copland for Martha Graham who was the lead dancer and choreographer. It portrays a pioneer celebration in spring around a newly-built farmhouse in the Pennsylvania hills
  • First Computer

    the thing was huge!
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    Bebop

    alternative, "cool" style of jazz made for younger listeners. known by the upper chord tones such as the ninth, eleventh and thirteenths. some of the prominent performers are Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, etc.
  • “A Black Pierrot”

    inspired by Arnold Schoenberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire”. was rejected and never succeeded. its harmony was chromatic and the piece was considered through composed with a blues influence.
  • Aleatoric muisc

    the music making is left completely to chance such as rolling a die to determine the notes, then rolling a die to determine rhythm, etc.
  • Indeterminate music

    music that is totally left to three types chance. the first being aleatoric music. the second focused mostly on the composition of the music being left to chance. the third being a different type of notation letting the players interpretation being the "chance".
  • Electronische Musik

    electronic music developed in Germany which led to our modern synthesizer
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    Rock and Roll

    aimed for the teenage listeners. Blended the musical styles of jump blues, honky-tonk, and an edgy attitude to create a new genre
  • Tape music

    electronically produced sounds for music.
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    Vietnam war

    also known as the Second Indochina War. It was communist North Vietnam and the Viet Cong against South Vietnam and the United States.
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    minimalism

    using the smallest amount of pitches, rhythms, and chords repeatedly over a long period of time to make music. basically the opposite of maximalism.
  • Cassette tapes

    created and replaced records
  • internet started its development

    the beginnings of what would eventually become what we know as the modern internet.
  • Ancient Voices of Children

    a song cycle of five songs and two instrumental interludes about poems by Federico Garcia Lorca
  • Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI)

    Enables computer interactions with synthesizers and sequences.