Music - CLEP Humanities

The clarinet is a woodwind instrument, and produces sound like all woodwind instruments, by the player blowing through a reed and controlling the sound by opening and closing valves with his or her fingers. Every other instrument listed in some way uses a keyboard, or in the case of the organ, multiple keyboards.

Bluegrass is a form of folk music developed in the middle of the twentieth century, primarily in Appalachia. The musical form developed around string instruments, which were available and primarily used in square and barn dances in the region. The clarinet, a wind instrument, is the only instrument listed that is not a key element of bluegrass ensembles.

Jazz was born in nightclubs in cities throughout the south in the early twentieth century. A common problem for early jazz groups was an inability to be heard, and many advancements in amplifying sound were made because of jazz. As such, quieter acoustic string instruments like the mandolin never made a dent in jazz.

In the 1913 Paris Ballet season, the Russian artists Igor Stravinsky, a composer, and Vaslav Nijinsky, a choreographer, debuted the ballet The Rite of Spring. The extremely avant-garde nature of the piece nearly caused the audience to riot. Stravinsky's score played with every convention in music at the time, including rhythm, melody, and dissonance.

Frederic Chopin was a Polish-born composer of the Romantic Era, who was a child prodigy on the piano and began composing in his teens. As an adult, he moved to Paris, France, and became a well known composer of works for the piano, both solo and as a featured member of an ensemble.

The mandolin is the most famous member of the "mando" family that also includes the mandola and mandocello, among other instruments. The instruments in this family all have double courses of four strings, meaning that each string is paired with an exact twin, that is the same size and tuned to the same note. A mandolin is tuned just like a violin, while the mandola and mandocello are tuned like the viola and cello, respectively.

Tchaikovsky's 1880 masterpiece commemorates the Russian defense of the French invasion of 1812 during the Napoleonic Wars. Anachronistically, though, both anthems Tchaikovsky used to represent each army were not used during the 1812 invasion. Napoleon had banned "La Marseillaise" in 1805, and "God Save The Tsar" was not even written in 1812.

Stephen Foster (1826-1864) is considered the "Father of American Music" for his many famous and influential compositions, including "Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair," "My Old Kentucky Home," "Camptown Races," and "Oh, Susanna." Despite Foster's immense fame both at the time and in the years since, he was actually part of a broader popular music explosion thanks to sheet music's development. Among the other popular songs of the time was Daniel Decatur Emmet's "Dixie," from 1859.

Brass instruments, while deriving their name from the material they are usually made from, are not defined by the material from which they are composed. Instead, brass instruments are united by the the way air enters the instruments, and are each further controlled by a limited number of valves. A saxophone, despite its construction, is a woodwind due to its use of reeds and a series of tone holes the player can open and close.

Developed in the ninth and tenth centuries in Western Europe, Gregorian chants are a simple, monophonic form of music used as sacred music by monks in the Catholic tradition. Gregorian chants helped spread the Latin Rite of Roman Christianity by having a common, uniform musical style for worship. Among certain monastic orders, the Gregorian chant is still a common form of worship.

Johann Sebastian Bach was the most significant and well-known composer of the Baroque Era, which stretched from 1600 to 1750. Bach's signature elements—strong counterpoint, involved harmonies, and complex melodies—were extremely typical of Baroque music in general.

"Baroque" generally refers to the symphonic and orchestral music composed between 1600 and 1750, which now forms a large core of the classical music canon. Baroque music is defined stylistically by heavy ornamentation, intense orchestrations, and a focus on tonality, harmony, and counterpoint. Some of the significant composers of the Baroque period are Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Antonio Vivaldi, Georg Philipp Telemann, Johann Pachelbel, and Henry Purcell.

The Brandenburg Concertos are widely considered the pinnacle of Johann Sebastian Bach's musical compositions. Presented to the Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt in 1721, the six concertos are the perfect exemplar of Baroque composition, featuring layered harmonies of various instruments in an ornate contrapuntal orchestration. The Concertos most likely took years to compose, and were only fully completed in 1721.

Johann Sebastian Bach is the composer most closely associated with the Baroque period. Bach's music, with its complex counterpoint melodies and harmonies, multilayered instrumentation, and formal structure, stands as representative of the entire era. Bach's music was seen as a high point of the Baroque era, and my of his works inspired developments away from Baroque music.

In order to identify which singers can sing which part in classical music, human voices are divided into various parts. The highest, and typically most showy, is the soprano, a category usually reserved for the highest female registers. A soprano is usually the lead part and takes some of the most impressive solo work.

"Allegro" is one of the many Italian words that can be placed above a staff on sheet music, to indicate at what tempo a piece should be played. "Allegro" indicates a brisk pace, and for the musician to play the piece brightly. Usually, a tempo marker is given for an entire piece, but sometimes multiple tempo markers can be given throughout a piece.

The "classical symphony" features four separate movements: a sonata, or up-tempo section; an adagio, or slow movement; a minuet, or 3/4 dance section; and another up-tempo piece. This format was developed in the late eighteenth century by composers such as Mozart and Haydn. Nonetheless, despite its typical form, a symphony does not always have to adhere to such a strict format.

The concertmaster is the leader of the musicians in an orchestra, and in some smaller ensembles takes the place of a conductor in controlling the pace, rhythm, and timing of a piece. The concertmaster is almost always a violinist, and sits in the front row of the orchestra, so the audience can clearly see him or her.

The modern piano was developed from the Baroque harpsichord, which plucked instead of hammered the strings in the soundboard. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, particularly fueled by Romantic compositions, the piano was made to both be larger and sound larger. Around this time, the keyboard was expanded to include 88 keys, to give it a full 7 1/3 octaves, where the standard for a piano remains today.

The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra was conceived as a multi-media piece to educate children about orchestra music. Benjamin Britten's adaptation of the work of Henry Purcell, however, showed such great arrangements and inventiveness of instrumentation that it was immensely popular as an orchestral piece and record.