Music History IV—Dr. Robert Vodnoy
Spring, 2008
Test 2 Study Guide
Take-home essay question:
Choose one of the following works and write a 350-500 word essay about it which: 1)
describes the work in detail including its literary or programmatic background 2) explains
its importance in music history, and 3) explains its position/importance in the composer’s
creative life. Please double-space your typed essay and use citations for any quotations or
borrowing of ideas. All of these works are written about in some detail in our text.
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Strauss—Don Quixote
Musorgsky—Coronation Scene from Boris Gudonov
Puccini—La Bohéme, Act I, che gelida manina to the end of the act
Mahler—Symphony No. 4
1. Be able to match the following titles to the composer who wrote the work:
Don Quixote
Pictures at an Exhibition
Salome
Scheherazade
Boris Gudonov
La Boheme
Russlan and Lyudmila
Ariadne auf Naxos
Gianni Schicchi
Das Lied von der Erde
Madama Butterfly
Pelleas et Mellisandre
Tosca
Der Rosenkavalier
How to Be Modern Composer of Genius without Being a Musician
Cavalleria rusticana
Goethe-Lieder
Polovtzian Dances
Das Knaben Wunderhorn
I Pagliacci
Turandot
The Golden Cockerel
Principles of Orchestration
A Life for the Czar
Elektra
Suore Angelica
2. Bruckner questions:
a. What instrument did Bruckner play?
b. With whom did Bruckner study?
c. Who were other famous pupils of Bruckner’s teacher?
d. Whose music influenced him? Which particular works?
e. How many symphonies did Bruckner compose?
f. In what other genre did he compose?
g. What are some of the musical characteristics of Bruckner symphonies?
h. Where did he teach?
i. What is a Ländler?
3. Know the basic details of Hugo Wolf’s life, including where he was born, what
disease he suffered from, etc.
4. In what genre did Wolf excel?
5. Who was Wolf in love with? What are the circumstances of their love affair?
6. Who wrote the poems which Wolf often set to music?
7. What are the basic circumstances of Gustav Mahler’s life, including his
religion(s), his wife, etc?
8. How did Mahler meet his wife? What did she do?
9. What were some of the opera houses in which Mahler conducted?
10. How many symphonies did he compose?
11. What family tragedy occurred?
12. Where did Mahler conduct after leaving Vienna?
13. What illness caused Mahler’s death?
14. Upon what is “Das Lied von der Erde” based?
15. What is progressive tonality?
16. Be able to identify the titles of Mahler’s song cycles.
17. Who was Richard Strauss’s father?
18. From whom did Strauss learn about Wagner’s music?
19. Who was Strauss’s wife?
20. Briefly summarize the conflict in which Strauss found himself embroiled with the
Nazi Party? Did Strauss act responsibly? How did the rise of Nazism affect
Strauss’s extended family?
21. Be able to name the important tone poems of Strauss.
22. Who was:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
g.
h.
i.
j.
Melanie Köchert
Nadia Boulanger
Hugo von Hoffmansthal
Stephan Zweig
Friedrich Nietzsche
Anton Rubinstein
Alma Schindler
Pauline de Ahna
Garabaldi
Otto von Bismarck
23. Upon what is Till Eulenspiegel based?
24. Upon what is the opera Salomé based?
25. Be able to name the important operas of Strauss.
26. Why did Strauss have to change librettists for his opera “Daphne”?
27. Who unified the German states into the German Empire of the 19th century?
28. What country dominated the northern part of the Italian peninsula before 1850?
The southern part?
29. What royal family led the Austro-Hungarian Empire?
30. What Royal family held the monarchy in post-Napoleonic France?
31. Who was Mikhail Glinka?
32. Who were the Mighty Five? Be able to:
a. name the members of the group
b. who the founder and leader of the group was
c. the occupation of each member
d. discuss the aesthetic principles which they followed
33. From what did Musorgsky suffer?
34. Who wrote the play upon which “Boris Gudonov” is based?
35. What was the Societé Nationale de Musique? Who founded it?
36. When and why was the Paris Conservatoire founded?
37. What was the verismo?
38. Who was the most important Italian opera composer after Verdi?
39. What composer sought the advice of Sigmund Freud for his marital problems?
40. What scandal affected the Puccini family?
41. What caused Puccini’s death?
42. What is the basic story of La Bohème?
43. What is the basic story of Tosca?
44. Which Puccini opera was left incomplete at the time of his death?
45. For what instrument was Pictures at an Exhibition originally composed?
46. What original compositional technique did Musorgsky use in “Pictures” to unify
the piece? What circumstances inspired its composition? How many pictures did
he use?
47. Besides being a composer, what else did Rimsky-Korsakov do/write which
secured his importance in music history?
48. Be able to write out a whole tone scale and an octatonic scale starting on a given
pitch.
49. Into what two strains is pre-impressionistic French music divided? What
composer typified or led each strain or faction?
50. Who were the most prominent students of Gabriel Faure?
There will be no listening on this test.