MUSIC 120 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Modest Mussorgsky, Georges Bizet, Claude Debussy
- Wrote large orchestral works as well
- Is credited with inventing the symphonic tone poem
Frederic Chopin
- Wrote nearly exclusively for piano
- Was never attracted towards grandiose orchestral works
- Wrote "Mazurka in B-Flat Minor"
- Came to France from Poland, having been brought up in Warsaw & educated at the
city's Music Conservatory
- Wrote in Tempo Rubato
- Pervasive use of rubato is a stylistic fingerprint
Giuseppe Verdi
- Wrote "Nabucco" chorus - a lamentation sung by the "enchained Israelites"
- "Rig(oletto), Trov(atore), & Trav(iata)" - three monumental Verdi operas
- Verdi's ~26 operas are the most numerous by an single composer represented in the
standard operatic repertoire
- Wrote "La Donna e Mobile"
- Often wrote passages of arioso - a vocal idiom with a lyrical quality like an aria, but
usually having a through-composed form, like a recitative
Richard Wagner
- As both artist & man remains a lightning rod for controversy
- Rejected by operatic establishment, became conductor, stage designer & director,
impresario, & librettist
- Conceptualized "Musical Drama" - "Gesamtkunstwerk"
- Wrote "Tristan und Isolde" (Musical Drama)
- Wrote "The Ring of the Nibelung" ("Der Ring des Nibelungen"
- With back from "Mad" King Ludwig, spent seven years finishing "Gotterdammerung"
in addition to founding a theater in the Bavarian town Bayreuth
Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky
- Russian composer
