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Terms and Definitions
Characteristics of Modern and Postmodern Music
Chromatic harmony: harmony utilizing chords built on the five chromatic notes of the scale in
addition to the 7 diatonic ones; producing rich harmonies
Impressionism and Impressionist Music (See textbook and lecture notes)
Modernism and Modernist Music (see textbook and lecture notes)
Tone cluster: a dissonant sounding of several pitches, each only a half step away from the other,
in a densely packed chord
Ostinato rhythms: the same motive played over and over at the same pitch level
Polychords: Two triads sound simultaneously, creates a harsh, biting sound
Expressionism (see textbook and lecture notes)
Atonal music: music without tonality; music without a key centre
Sprechstimme: (“speech voice”) which requires the performer to declaim the text more than
sing it
Postmodernism and Postmodern music (see textbook and lecture notes)
Musique concrète: music in which the composes works directly with sounds recorded on
magnetic tape, not with musical notation and performers
Chance Music: music that involves an element of chance (rolling the dice, choosing cards, etc.)
or whimsy on the part of the performers
Minimalism is a style of postmodern music, beginning in the early 1960s, that takes a very small
musical unit and repeats it over and over to form a composition