Final Exam Study Guide: Music History III—Dr. Robert Vodnoy. Fall, 2009
Thursday, December 17, 2009, 12:00PM, JFAC 110
Take-home essay:Choose Brahms, Dvorak, or Tchaikovsky and write an essay in which you discuss the most important events in his life and how those events affected him as a composer. Do NOT write about the composer who was your composer project!!!
- Be able to match the composer and genre with the following works:
- Liszt
- Dvořák
- Tchaikovsky
- Brahms
- Orchestra work
- Chamber music
- Piano work
- Ballet
- Choral work
- Opera
___Rusalka
___Prometheus
___Pathetique Symphony
___Un sospiro
___1812 Overture
___Dumky Piano Trio
___Academic Festival Overture
___The Nutcracker
___Transcendental etudes
___Queen of Spades
___Rinaldo
___“American” Quartet
___Alto Rhapsody
___Symphony No. 9 (From the New World)
___Nuages gris
___Francesca de Rimini
___Orpheus
___Sleeping Beauty
___Tragic Overture
___Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel
___Les Preludes
___SwanLake
___Faust Symphony
___Ein Deutsches Requiem
___Eugene Onegin
- Questions regarding Franz Liszt:
- For whom did his father work?
- With whom did he study?
- What composer(s) and virtuoso performer(s) inspired him?
- With whom did he have notorious love affairs?
- Who was his most famous daughter?
- What famous people were part of the social circle within which Liszt circulated when he lived in Paris?
- What technique does Liszt use to unify the tone poem Les Preludes?
- Questions regarding Liszt’s Faust Symphony:
- To whom did Liszt dedicate this symphony?
- Which characters from Faust are referred to in each movement?
- What triad is used to form the theme of the introduction?
- What is formed by the sequence of triads in the theme?
- Questions regarding Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky
- From what disease did Tchaikovsky’s mother die?
- Where was Tchaikovsky educated as a civil servant? Where did he receive his musical education?
- What career did he first pursue?What instrument did Tchaikovsky play?
- What issue in his personal life troubled Tchaikovsky? How did he attempt to cope with them?
- Name Tchaikovsky’s three great ballets. What were the sources of the stories which inspired them?
- How many operas did Tchaikovsky compose? Name Tchaikovsky’s two great operas. Who wrote the novels upon which they are based?
- Name three of Tchaikovsky’s tone poems.
- How many symphonies did Tchaikovsky compose? What is the programmatic title of his last symphony?
- Who was his patroness? What was unusual about their relationship?
- What are the speculated circumstances surrounding Tchaikovsky’s death?
- What Viennese dance form did Tchaikovsky use extensively in his ballets?
- Questions regarding Symphony No. 4:
- What method does Tchaikovsky use to unify the symphony?
- What is unusual about the tonal structure of the first movement?
- What does the music which opens the symphony represent?
- Questions regarding the Symphony No. 6
- What is unusual about the “waltz” in second movement?
- What form and style is the third movement?
- What is the tempo of the somber finale?
- Questions regarding Johannes Brahms
- Who were some of Brahms’ closest friends?
- What did his father do?
- Who discovered him?
- What instrument did Brahms play?
- How many symphonies did Brahms compose?What are the names of his two overtures?What is the name of his largest choral work?In what genre did he never compose a work?In what genre did Brahms excel?
- Into what musical controversy what Brahms drawn? Who were his chief opponents?
- What is different about the 3rd movement of a Brahms symphony, compared to most Beethoven symphonies?
- In what ways can Brahms be seen as a conservative? As a progressive?
- Brahms worked on the editions of what three famous composers (one romantic and two Baroque composers)?
- Who saw Brahms as a progressive?
- Questions regarding Brahms’ Piano Quintet, Opus 34:
- For what other groups of instruments did Brahms compose this work before orchestrating it as a piano quintet? Who advised him to make it a piano quintet?
- Whose quintet did Brahms use as a model for this work?
- How many tonal areas are there in the exposition of the first movement? What keys are used?
- How does the work open?
- How does the recapitulation begin?
- What compositional technique does Brahms use in this work? Who coined this term?
- Questions regarding A German Requiem:
- How many movements does the Requiem have?
- From what source is the text derived?
- What soloists does the work use?
- To whom is it speculated that the work dedicated?
- Questions regarding Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 (for questions regarding the finale of this symphony, see the notes in the Norton Anthology):
- What is the form of the finale?
- From what three Baroque composers did Brahms derive direct inspiration for the finale?
- From what source did Brahms derive the ostinato?
- Which Beethoven symphony or symphonies does Brahms recall by using variations for a final movement?
- How does Brahms avoid harmonic monotony in the finale?
- How many variations are there?
- How does Brahms group the variations to create the impression of larger form? What form is it?
- Questions regarding Antonín Dvořák
- What was Dvořák’s nationality?
- What fellow countryman’s music and career inspired Dvořák?
- How many symphonies did he compose?
- What was his instrument?
- To what country did Dvořák travel in the 1890s to teach?
- How many concertos did Dvořák compose? For what instruments?
- Upon what epic poem is Dvořák’s ninth symphony loosely based? What types of music inspired its themes?
- How does Dvorak unify his ninth symphony?
- In a famous interview, where did Dvořák recommend that American composers should look for inspiration?
- What is the name of Dvorak’s most famous opera?
- Who were the following people?
Harry T. Burleigh
Alexander Pushkin
Joseph Joachim
Cosima Wagner
Nadezhda von Meck
Caroline Sayn-Wittgenstein
Clara Schumann
Jeannette Thurber
Countess Marie d’Agoult
Desirée Artot
Friedrich Wieck