AMI Final handout
Final exam preview
There will be 50 multiple choice questions. About 40 will cover Chapters 13, 14 & 15 and about 10 will be cumulative. (Remember Hildegarde & Artemisia Gentileschi). Review the periods in order and reflect on what changes define these periods.
KEY IMAGES Ch 13
Realism KEY IMAGE: Manet, p. 352. know artist, title & style
§ “Realism in the arts aimed to give a truthful and objective representation of the social world, without illusion or imaginative alteration.” P. 351, emphasis added.
§ response to urban life
Impressionism KEY IMAGE: Monet, p. 370. know artist, title, date & style
§ 1874 exhibition
§ Monet, Renoir, Cassatt, Morisot, others (see p. 370-371)
§ “sought to capture fleeting effects of light and color” (p. 370-371)
§ used color theory
§ open air, rather than studio painting
§ direct application of unmixed colors
Post-Impressionism 1880-1890s
KEY IMAGE: Van Gogh p. 378. know artist, title & style
KEY IMAGE: Cezanne p. 376, (13.31 & 13.32) know artist & significance
§ extended impressionist techniques
§ various steps toward modernist painting
§ (some works) less spontaneous, more composed
§ the picture dissolves into planes, brushstrokes, etc. – a consciousness of artistic techniques
KEY IMAGES Ch 14 (know artist & title)
Expressionism, p. 395, Nolde
Abstraction, p. 396 Kandinsky
Picasso, primitivism & cubism, p. 388
Duchamp, Surrealism, Da-Da, p. 394 “The only thing that is not art is inattention.”
Be familiar with the “ism” list in box p. 397
Abstract –– considered apart from concrete existence; the genre of painting whose intellectual and affective content depends solely on intrinsic form (Amer Heritage Dict.). Roots of the term: removed from (as in “removed from concrete reality”); to pull away from
Abstract art – art which is either completely non-representational, or which converts forms observed in reality into patterns which are read by the spectator primarily as independent relationships, rather than with reference to the original source. – Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Art Terms
Key images of Ch 15:
p.
420, know artist & style (abstract expressionism) (still considered modernist)
p.
436, know artist, title & identify it as an earth work or link it with conceptual
art
p. 440, know artist, title & identify it as a multimedia installation
[post-modern]
Frank Gehry, architect,
post-modernist
know the list of traits of post-modernism, p. 431
RECOGNIZE the Stravinsky & Schoenberg examples from the textbook CD
KNOW facts in bold – the exam will identify the examples other than the Stravinsky & Schoenberg
Richard Wagner (1813-1883), prelude to the opera Tristan und Isolde (1865)
-- expanding use of unstable chromatic harmony over long spans of time
-- Wagner develops the idea of "leitmotif," in which a brief musical idea is associated with a character, idea, or object in an opera; this idea intensifies the interrelatedness of material in instrumental music in the 20th Century
-- opera expands in size: larger orchestra, longer operas (The Ring takes four evenings to perform)
-- sophisticated orchestration
-- opera is now continuous: the aria/recitative concept is replaced by "continuous melody"
-- Romantic nostalgia in the use of an ancient tale
-- ancient tale well-edited to project proto-psychological issues relating love, death, and desire; a notion of the sub-conscious before Freud?
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) – a section of Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du printemps) (1913; for very large orchestra) ON TEXTBOOK CD
-- a ballet with a story line written in part by an anthropologist
-- interested in primitive or exotic materials; what is behind the mask of civilization?
-- radically new: non-tonal, harsh unresolved dissonance, percussive, brilliant orchestral effects, extreme ranges, rhythmically and metrically very irregular and quite innovative
-- a riot (somewhat staged) at its premiere; much publicity ensues
-- Modernist: Inner order, outer chaos.
Arnold Schoenberg
Ø created alternate ways of organizing music; atonal (as is the textbook CD example) and serial (as in his Piano Concerto, described in the textbook)
Ø these ideas and techniques attracted a small but international group of composers, performers and theorists; relatively few use them today, but the intellectual methods are still widely influential
Ø modernist; expressionist
John Cage (1912-1992), Sonata II from Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano (19 pieces composed 1946-1948) video on YouTube of Sonata X video of Sonata IV being prepared
-- invented prepared piano (1935). The classic American crazy tinkerer (Cage loved to say, "My father was an inventor.") EXPERIMENTATION a key value in 20th Century music.
-- the unpredictability of the prepared piano and his study of Zen and Indian aesthetics lead him to develop chance (random) procedures as a compositional method or process
-- viewed by some as a charlatan or as important only because of his philosophy
-- many value his music and thought today (although many misinterpret his disciplined openness as a philosophy of "anything goes")
-- influenced by gamelan and other non-Western music
-- eventually came to be viewed as Post-Modernist because of his relinquishing of compositional control
Steve Reich, (b. 1936) – brief excerpt from Music for 18 Musicians (1976) video clip on YouTube
-- steady pulse a welcome break from the rhythmic complexity of Post-World War II concert music
-- diatonic but not tonal; sort of a return to modal music (Reich claims to be influenced by the music of Perotin)
-- process-oriented; the process should be audible
-- influenced by gamelan and polyrhythmic West African music (he studied in Ghana)
-- had to form his own ensemble to play his music because it requires an entirely different set of skills than those of conventionally trained "Classical" musicians
-- many early performances took place in art galleries, not concert halls
-- briefly lived in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late '60s/early '70s; part of the "Downtown" scene in New York City
-- Minimalist (although Reich hates the term) and therefore considered Post-Modern, but some modernist characteristics in his music (it is all about its “materials”)
May 2009
DC Meckler