A RHYTHMIC DEVICE - Hemiola

A rhythmic device which has been used throughout musical history, the HEMIOLA gives the impression that a piece of music in triple time (with three beats in a bar) changes briefly to duple time (two/four beats in a bar), without the time signature actually changing. This can be achieved by placing accents on beats of the bar which are not normally strong ones, through tied notes or simply by grouping notes in a particular way.

It can work the other way round too - when a piece in duple time briefly seems to go into triple time.

The first track on this playlist is in triple time, but at around about 48 seconds in, it sounds as if there are three bars of duple time - this is a HEMIOLA (and it reoccurs several times throughout the piece, as you'll hear if you listen to it all).

The HEMIOLA in track 2 is heard for the first time around about 1'14.

TWO 20th CENTURY HARMONIC DEVICES...

Arguably the biggest development in C20 Western Music was Schoenberg's rejection of conventional TONAL HARMONY and invention of his SERIAL method of composition. Some C20 composers however used other harmonic techniques which were pretty much new as well, amonst them two that are concepts in Higher and Advanced Higher Music:

MICROTONE

This refers to any interval that is smaller than a semitone (in conventional TONAL HARMONY, as well as SERIAL HARMONY, the smallest interval used is a semitone.) Here are the opening bars of the first piece on the playlist, Szymanowski's 'Mythes'. Notice how he uses an upside down 'flat' symbol to represent a quarter-tone, and listen to the effect it produces:

While the microtones are used sparingly in 'Mythes', alongside more conventional TONALITY, the Czech composer Alois Hába wrote pieces that rely entirely on MICROTONES (eg. track 2). He even invented new instruments in order to  play these compositions.

MICROTONES can also be heard in some traditional music from Eastern Europe as well as in Arabic music and some Asian music (eg. tracks 5&6)



POLYTONALITY

This is the use of two or more keys at the same time. Here are two examples:

At the start of Milhaud's 'Botafogo' (track 1), the right hand of the piano is playing in F# major, while the left hand plays in F minor.

The prologue of Britten's opera 'Billy Budd' (track 2) features lower strings playing in E flat, and upper strings playing a CANON in C major.

20th CENTURY - Musique Concréte

Recorded sounds which are transformed using simple editing techniques such as cutting and re-assembling, playing backwards, slowing down and speeding up.

This became possible with the advent of tape machines - the first track in this playlist (Etude aux Chemins de Fer) is one of the earliest examples, manipulating recordings of a steam train.

It was by using tape machines  eg. Track 4 (Come Out) that Steve Reich struck upon the idea of phasing that he used in his later minimalist compositions; when he started the same recording on two different tape machines and they gradually went out of sync as they were running at slightly different speeds.

The use of a recording from the Tokyo underground system at the start of 'Twilight World' (Track 5) could also be regarded as MUSIQUE CONCRETE. Another example from Pop Music is the start of Pink Floyd's 'Money', where cash machines are heard in a rhythmic OSTINATO (but you can't get Pink Floyd tracks on Spotify!)

20th CENTURY - Aleatoric

Music composed by using chance procedures (eg. by rolling a dice - alea means 'dice' in Latin), or in which compositional decisions are left to the performer (eg. if the performer has to interpret a graphic score instead off conventional notation, or they have to choose when to start or begin a particular passage). Perhaps the most famous example is John Cage's 4'33 in which the performer or performers sit in silence for four minutes thirty-three seconds; partly, the idea is that whatever ambient noise is heard in the performing space constitutes the music.

20th CENTURY - Minimalism

MINIMALISM is a Twentieth Century style which developed in the USA in the 1960s. It is very repetitive, being based on simple rhythmic and melodic figures which are constantly repeated with very slight changes each time. 

Unlike some C20 music it tends to feature CONSONANT, rather than DISSONANT, HARMONY. 

Like IMPRESSIONISM and ROMANTIC music, it is a style which is used quite often in film and tv music.

Key composers include Steve Reich and Philip Glass. 

20th CENTURY - Neoclassical

From about 1929 onwards this style in music came about when composers reacted against ROMANTICISM and wanted to return to the structures and styles of earlier periods but still use DISSONANT TONAL and even ATONAL harmonies. In orchestral music, they tended to write for smaller orchestras, more like those of the CLASSICAL period (listen, for example, to the clear textures and small orchestra in the third track in the playlist, from Prokofiev's 1st Symphony). 

NB. It wasn't just CLASSICAL forms and styles that were used eg. Stravinsky's 'Dumbarton Oaks' (track 1 in the playlist) is written in the style of a CONCERTO GROSSO, which is of course a BAROQUE form. Another examples is the use of HARPSICHORDS in Poulenc's 'Concert Champetre' (track 4).

Stravinsky and Prokofiev were prominent composers of this style, although both wrote in other styles throughout their careers.

20th CENTURY - Serial

SERIAL composition is a technique developed by Arnold Schoenberg. One of his aims was to break away from the long-established system of TONALITY (with KEY SIGNATURES, CADENCES etc.). To do this, he based his compositions on TONE ROWS, consisting of the 12 notes of the CHROMATIC SCALE arranged in a particular order. Each note appears only once in the TONE ROW. The TONE ROW is then manipulated to produce the composition.

Ways of manipulating this basic musical material (the TONE ROW) included:

RETROGRADE: the TONE ROW played backwards

INVERSION: A mirror image of the TONE ROW (if you played it with the TONE ROW itself, it would create CONTRARY MOTION

These two techniques could be combined to create a RETROGRADE INVERSION.

Because they are based on musical material in which each note is given equal importance, as opposed to traditional tonal music in which some notes (eg. the key note) are more important than others, SERIAL compositions often sound very DISSONANT and are ATONAL. This depends on the TONE ROW, though - much of Berg's Violin Concerto, a  SERIAL composition sounds TONAL (see track one in the playlist).

Key composers initially were Schoenberg himself and Berg and Webern, although many Twentieth Century composers used SERIAL techniques to a greater or lesser extent in their music.

20th CENTURY - Sprechgesang

SPRECHGESANG (also known as 'Sprechstimme') is a technique used in vocal music where the singer is required to use the voice in an expressive manner half-way between singing and speaking. The rhythm and variations in pitch are notated by the composer.

It appears in a number of pieces by Schoenberg and Berg (early 20th century), of which four examples are given in this playlist.

LATE ROMANTIC

This is music of the late 19th century and early 20th century which retains the dramatic intensity of earlier 19th century music.  The music is characterised by the use of large instrumental forces, increasingly complex harmony and large-scale compositions. Key composers include Mahler, Richard Strauss and Rachmaninov.

IMPRESSIONIST

This is music written in the period around 1890-1920 (most prominently in France), so it kind of overlaps with Romanticism and some 20th Century music. Key composers are Debussy and Ravel. 

The term Impressionist is borrowed from Art (think of paintings by Monet, Renoir, Cezanne etc.); some, but not all, Impressionist music can have what the SQA call 'a rather blurred and vague outline', a bit like the paintings. 

Some uses WHOLE TONE and PENTATONIC scales (eg. track 1). 

Incidentally, a lot of film music makes use of IMPRESSIONIST techniques (the same can be said for ROMANTIC music).

ROMANTIC (c.1820-1900)

A general playlist, with several examples of ROMANTIC music. During this period, the standard line up for an orchestra became larger and incorporated more percussion and brass instruments than before as well as often featuring harp(s). 

Romantic music tends to be very expressive and dramatic, and is often PROGRAMMATIC. For more information, see previous posts.

ROMANTIC - Programme Music/Leitmotiv

While there are some examples of PROGRAMME MUSIC earlier in musical history, it was in the ROMANTIC period that it became very common.

Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique is a good example, telling the story of an artist's doomed love for an unattainable woman, ending in her murder and the artist's going to Hell, in the form of a SYMPHONY (albeit in 5 movements rather than the CLASSICAL 4). It is also typically ROMANTIC in its themes of extreme emotion, Nature (the third movement represents a scene in the countryside, including a thunderstorm) and the Supernatural (in Hell, the artist witnesses a witches' sabbath.)

One more typically ROMANTIC concept: Berlioz uses a LEITMOTIV to represent the artist's beloved: in this excerpt, it is heard on the clarinet at 2.15. The excerpt comes from the second movement, which represents a ball, hence the waltz rhythms.

ROMANTIC - Tone Poem/Nationalism/Programme Music

Many composers continued to write SYMPHONIES during the ROMANTIC era, which tended to be on a larger scale (both in terms of length, and the size of orchestra needed to play them) than CLASSICAL SYMPHONIES.

In addition, a new large-scale orchestral form developed, known as the TONE POEM or SYMPHONIC POEM. This is an orchestral piece in a single movement (as opposed to the multiple movements of the SYMPHONY), which tells a story or paints a picture in music. Such pieces can therefore be described as PROGRAMME MUSIC, which is a common feature of much ROMANTIC music.

The TONE POEMS in this playlist also illustrate another feature of ROMANTIC music, particularly later in the era: NATIONALISM. Many composers, particularly if their country was ruled by another country (eg. Czechs ruled by Germans), would use music to assert their national pride and patriotism. They might, for example, base an OPERA on a national folk story (eg. Dvorak's 'Rusalka'), or include folk tunes in a Tone Poem. 

All of the TONE POEMS in this playlist are either inspired by folk stories, or use folk tunes from the composers' respective countries.

ROMANTIC - Lied/Song Cycle

The LIED is a song for solo voice and piano, with German words, which developed during the ROMANTIC era. Key composers were Schubert and Schumann, and later in the era Brahms and Wolf.

A common feature is that the piano has equal importance with the voice - it's not just an accompaniment, but adds to the drama and/or the meaning of the words. For example listen to the first song on this playlist, "Erlkonig", in which a father carries his sick child on horseback through a stormy night while the child is menaced by a an evil spirit, and note the way the piano portrays the galloping horse and the gusty wind. When the father arrives home, the child is dead, and the music portrays this too in its sudden lack of rhythmic movement.

Many LIED were published in collections, linked by a common theme or by the fact that all the words were written by the same poet. These larger scale works consisting of several LIED, are known as SONG CYCLEs. The last eight tracks on this playlist are an example, Schumann's Frauenliebe und Leben.

Scherzo

Beethoven and Schubert were key figures in the development of late CLASSICAL style and early ROMANTIC style. One of their innovations in SYMPHONIES was to replace the third movement MINUET & TRIO with a similar triple-time movement known as the SCHERZO. SCHERZOS are also heard in CHAMBER music, as in this first example, and SONATAS. 
Like the MINUET & TRIO they are in triple time (three beats in a bar) and tend to be even more lively. In Italian, Scherzo means 'joke', so they're normally quite lighthearted.




Here's a playlist with further examples of SCHERZOs by Beethoven and Schubert. 

Past Papers for Higher Music candidates

Past papers are available on the SQA website.  This will be helpful for you to look at as you can see the paper layout, viewing literacy, grid and bubble questions.

http://www.sqa.org.uk/sqa/40678.html