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!!!

  1. Be able to match the composer and genre with the following works:

  1. Liszt
  2. Dvořák
  3. Tchaikovsky
  4. Brahms
  5. Orchestra work
  6. Chamber music
  7. Piano work
  8. Ballet
  9. Choral work
  10. 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

  1. 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?
  1. 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?
  1. 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?
  1. 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?
  1. 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