The Final Review

We are near the end of the semester. The class' emphasis has been on knowledge acquisition through experience. This always presents a challenge to students used to textbook/lecture type of knowledge- based structures. The students have also been exposed to a new paradigm in which the professor is more of a facilitator in the creation of a safe, creative, learning environment, than a guardian of knowledge. This approach is also challenging as it is diametrically opposed to the systems of control to which students are generally exposed to from K through 12 grade.

Students have also being initiated in the phenomenological exercise of learning through their own perceptions. This blog has documented their reactions to the material they have witnessed in class. Despite the challenges, most students have responded with a self-directed, self-motivated, creative and responsible attitude towards their own learning. This review is an attempt at concretizing the course's knowledge base to make sure students end the semester with a solid conceptual foundation on the meaning of the Humanities. PLEASE, SEE BELLOW VOCAB

VOCABULARY

M U S I C

Atonality: in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key.

Avant-garde: new and unusual or experimental ideas, especially in the arts, or the people introducing them.

Baroque: relating to or denoting a style of European architecture, music, and art of the 17th and 18th centuries that followed mannerism and is characterized by ornate detail. In architecture the period is exemplified by the palace of Versailles and by the work of Bernini in Italy. Major composers include Vivaldi, Bach, and Handel; Caravaggio and Rubens are important baroque artists.

Chamber music: instrumental music played by a small ensemble, with one player to a part, the most important form being the string quartet which developed in the 18th century.

Dissonance: lack of harmony among musical notes.

Harmony: the combination of simultaneously sounded musical notes to produce chords and chord progressions having a pleasing effect.

hip-hop: also called hip-hop or rap music, is a music genre developed in the United States by inner-city African Americans in the 1970s which consists of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted.

Melody: a sequence of single notes that is musically satisfying.

Ragtime: music characterized by a syncopated melodic line and regularly accented accompaniment, evolved by black American musicians in the 1890s and played especially on the piano.

Rap: Major subgenre of hip-hop

Rhythm: a strong, regular, repeated pattern of movement or sound.

rock’n’roll: a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, from African American musical styles such as gospel, jump blues, jazz, boogie woogie, and rhythm and blues, along with country music.

Music Scale: In music theory, a scale is any set of musical notes ordered by fundamental frequency or pitch. A scale ordered by increasing pitch is an ascending scale, and a scale ordered by decreasing pitch is a descending scale.

Symphony: an elaborate musical composition for full orchestra, typically in four movements, at least one of which is traditionally in sonata form.

Sonata: a composition for an instrumental soloist, often with a piano accompaniment, typically in several movements with one or more in sonata form.

Sonata Form: a type of composition in three sections (exposition, development, and recapitulation) in which two themes or subjects are explored according to set key relationships. It forms the basis for much classical music, including the sonata, symphony, and concerto.

Syncopation: In music, syncopation involves a variety of rhythms which are in some way unexpected which make part or all of a tune or piece of music off-beat.

Toccata: a musical composition for a keyboard instrument designed to exhibit the performer's touch and technique.

Tone: a musical or vocal sound with reference to its pitch, quality, and strength.

T H E A T E R

Aside: An aside is a dramatic device in which a character speaks to the audience. By convention the audience is to realize that the character's speech is unheard by the other characters on stage. ... An aside is usually a brief comment, rather than a speech, such as a monologue or soliloquy.

Antagonist: a character who actively opposes or is hostile to the central character’s actions. It is most often found in melodramas.

Avant-garde: French word meaning new and unusual or experimental ideas, especially in the arts, or the people introducing them.

Catharsis: According to Aristotle, the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions in response to a tragedy.

Chorus: in Greek tragedy, a large organized group of masked actors/singers/dancers, especially one that comments on the moral implications of the play.

Comedy: one of the major genres to grow out of Greek theater; originally a short piece that followed the a trilogy of tragic plays in order to lighten the mood of the audience.

Commedia dell’arte: professional acting and pantomime troupe that performed in Italian streets beginning in the Renaissance; famous for its stock repertoire of comic types, such as the doddering old man who pursues a beautiful young woman.

Conventions: rules governing a given style of theater, such as fourth-wall verisimilitude or bare stage.

Dues ex machine: in Greek teater, a god character who lowered to the stage and resolves the action to audience’s  satisfaction; now any contrived ending.

Exposition: dialogue in a play that gives the background of the story and the relevant history of the characters.

Expressionism: form of avant-garde drama, introduced by German theaters during the 1920s, in which characters and sets are symbolic.

Farce: genre of comedy involving the actions of two-demensional stock characters, improbable situations, slapstick and improbable resolutions of plot complexities.

Hubris: Greek term meaning “arrogance” the common tragic flaw of protagonists in Greek tragedy.

Image: a technique used to a great effect by Shakespeare, in which something complex is communicated swiftly by being called something else that is easily understood and is usally visual as well.

Melodrama: form of theater that resembles but is not legitimate tragedy; dealing with a conflict between two-dimensional characters often the very good and the very bad.

Naturalism: (in art and literature) a style and theory of representation based on the accurate depiction of detail. In acting technique, the imitation of people as they actually are.

Neoclassicism: the revival of a classical style (the formalism of early Greece and Rome) or treatment in art, literature, architecture, theater or music in the seventeenth century.

Parody: an imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect.

Proscenium: the part of a theater stage in front of the curtain.

Protagonist: the leading character or one of the major characters in a drama, movie, novel, or other fictional text.

Recognition scene: The moment or scene in a play, etc., in which a principal character experiences a sudden revelation or enlightenment through the recognition of another character's true identity.

Satire: the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule in comedy to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.

Soliloquy: an act of speaking one's thoughts aloud when by oneself or regardless of any hearers, especially by a character in a play.

Subtext: what is implied but not spoken in a dramatic line

Theater of alienation: dramatic genre associated with the work of Bertolt Brecht; it highlights the artificiality of theater to prevent the audience from becoming emotionally involved in a story and the characters instead of concentration on the play’s ideas.

Theater of Cruelty: dramatic genre that affects the audience through emotional shock, in recent years overwhelming the audience with blood and gore.

Tragedy: One of the two major forms of drama, focusing on the downfall of a protagonist due to a serious character flaw.

Unities: convention of classical and neoclassical theater requiring the playwright to set the action in one place, have it occur during the time the audience is actually sitting in the theater, and limit the action to one central plot.

Verisimilitude: technique of making scenery and dialogue look and sound like real life; developed during the latter part of the nineteenth century but still dominant in today’s theater.

Well-made playr: also developed in the nineteenth century and using verisimilitude in scenery and dialogue, but the tight, carefully crafted plot structure does not resemble the flow of real life.

T H E M U S I C A L S T A G E: 

OPERA, MUSIC DRAMA, DANCE

En Pointe: term used in ballet to indicate standing on one’s toes.

Flamenco: type of dance originating in Andalusia, Spain, involving very precise foot movements and hand clapping, accompanied by a guitar.

Jete: A leap in ballet

Leitmotif: a musical theme associated with a particular character or a force, such as gate or a curse, and repeated throughout the work.

Libretto: the dialogue and lyrics of an opera or musical; also the book or script.

Music drama: a musical work in which the libretto is as strong as the music, and the equivalent of a great stage drama.

Music comedy: a genre of the musical stressing the song, which are sometimes easily removed from what is usually silly plot that may nonetheless have serious undertones.

Musical play: a genre of the musical with a strong plot, much dialogue, developed characters and songs that flow from the dramatic situation.

Opera: the plural of opus, Latin for “work;” a genre of music with sung dialogue that is interspersed with melodic arias and duets.

Operetta: a lighter version of opera, featuring melodic arias and duets that have little to do with the scene, and with a melodramatic and sentimental libretto that is usually an excuse for having the music.

Pas de deux: French phrase meaning “step of two”; a dance duet, usually slow, set to melodious accompaniment.

Pirouette: a spinning movement, executed by the dancer balancing on one foot while the body spins around rapidly.

Plie: ballet training movement in which the feet are extended horizontally with the heels touching, and the torso is slowly lowered into a squat position.

Recitative: dialogue in an opera that is sung; distinct from the aria or duet, which is more melodic.