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:
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F.
G.
H.
I.
J.
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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
Swan Lake
Faust Symphony
Ein Deutsches Requiem
Eugene Onegin
2.
Questions regarding Franz Liszt:
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3.
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:
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To whom did Liszt dedicate this symphony?
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Which characters from Faust are referred to in each movement?
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What triad is used to form the theme of the introduction?
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What is formed by the sequence of triads in the theme?
Questions regarding Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky
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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?
4.
Questions regarding Johannes Brahms
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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?
5.
Questions regarding Antonín Dvořák
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6.
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