Unit 3: 20th Century Music and Impressionism

(1900-2000)Variety in formsenres, everything is possible, experimentaion, dissonance

Notes that sound nice together

Notes do not sound nice together, sense of tension

Based on impressionist art, noteclusters, use of tone color, unusual scales, static harmony

1862-1918, impressionist composer, best known for character piece

Piece of music avoids maintaining a tonic (20th century music)

two or more tonal keys at the same time

Two contrasting rhythms at the same time

A piece of music has one meter for a certain amount of time, then shifts to another meter

Irregular number of beats per measure

Multiple meters are occuring at the same time in different parts

1882-1971 Best known for ballet, Rite of Spring

Compositional technique in which a specific series of notes is used repeatedly in order to avoid a sense of tonality (12 tone rows)

Performance technique in vocal music. Singer speaks the pitches

Inventor of 12 tone system, best known for serialism

Experimentation with instrumentation

Anything is possible

best known for impressionism