Music Composition Advanced Flashcards
Grade 12 · Music · Flashcards
Key terms and techniques for advanced music composition including harmony, form, counterpoint, and orchestration.
Flashcards
- Modal Interchange
- Borrowing chords from a parallel mode (e.g., iv minor in a major key) to create emotional color without modulating.
- Altered Dominant
- Dominant 7th chord with ♭9, ♯9, ♯11, or ♭13 extensions that intensify tension before resolution to the tonic.
- Neapolitan Chord (♭II)
- A major chord built on the flattened second scale degree; typically appears in first inversion before the dominant.
- Sonata Form
- Exposition (themes presented in tonic + dominant) → Development (harmonic instability) → Recapitulation (themes return in tonic).
- Through-Composed
- Form with no repeated large-scale sections; each part presents entirely new material.
- Canon
- Contrapuntal technique where a second voice imitates the first at a fixed time delay and exact pitch interval.
- Parallel Fifths
- Two voices moving by the same interval of a fifth simultaneously — forbidden in Renaissance/Baroque counterpoint.
- Orchestration
- Distributing musical material among specific instruments for idiomatic playability and timbral blend.
- Doubling
- Two or more instruments playing the same pitch or melodic line to reinforce volume or blend timbres.
- Twelve-Tone Serialism
- Schoenberg's technique using all 12 chromatic pitches in a fixed row, treating them as equal without tonal hierarchy.
- Voice Leading
- Movement of individual melodic lines through a progression using small, smooth intervals to create seamless harmonic flow.
- Pedal Point
- A sustained or repeated pitch (usually in the bass) held while harmonies change above it, creating tension and eventual resolution.
Get a personalized course on Music Composition Advanced built around your child.