Question 1
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Key Idea
A synthesizer shapes sound electronically instead of relying on a vibrating acoustic body.
Contemporary Music Quiz
20th-21st century experimentation and new genres.
Answer five questions about Contemporary Music and get instant feedback.
Question 2
What kind of music can use sounds that never come from a physical instrument?
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Key Idea
Electronic music often builds sound from scratch with synthesizers, shaping waveforms like sine and sawtooth, then transforming them with filters and effects into entirely new textures.
Question 3
What treated traditional harmony as optional rather than required?
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Key Idea
Modernist composers like Schoenberg and Stravinsky chased new colors through atonality, bitonality, and sharp dissonance, letting structure come from rhythm, timbre, or forms like the 12-tone row.
Question 4
Film music often uses leitmotifs, short themes linked to a character or idea.
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Key Idea
Many blockbuster scores use character leitmotifs that shift with the plot, like John Williams transforming themes across Star Wars to signal growth, danger, or hidden connections.
Question 5
Modernism in music often pursued "art for art's sake" through ...
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Key Idea
In works like Webern's Symphony, Op. 21, strict serial organization turns tiny motives into an entire sonic architecture, making the form itself the expressive subject.
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