Area of Study 4: Western Classical Tradition since 1910
What's covered
Key facts
Experimental and atonal music
Atonal music has no tonal centre or home key; Schoenberg's early atonal works (from around 1908) treat all twelve chromatic notes as equal.
Minimalism and modern styles
Minimalism uses repeated short patterns (cells) that change gradually over time.
Set study: Bartók Hungarian Pictures
'Bear Dance' is chordal, with pedal notes providing a rhythmic drone underneath, and a near-constant quaver ostinato rhythm, mostly in the strings.
Experimental and atonal music
Experimental 20th-century music explores atonality, dissonance and unusual timbres.
Minimalism and modern styles
Minimalist techniques include phasing, layering and additive rhythm.
Set study: Bartók Hungarian Pictures
'An Evening in the Village' has two sections, each repeated, giving A B A1 B1 A2; the A sections are Lento Rubato and the B sections Allegretto.
Experimental and atonal music
Music technology (electronic and sampled sound) is central to much music since 1910.
Minimalism and modern styles
Steve Reich and Philip Glass are leading minimalist composers.
Set study: Bartók Hungarian Pictures
Hungarian folk music shapes the scales and modes, melodic shapes and rhythms of Hungarian Pictures, and the main melody of 'Swineherd's Dance' is an actual folk tune that Bartók collected in Tolna County in 1907.
Minimalism and modern styles
AQA Area of Study 4 covers the Western Classical Tradition since 1910: modern art music, minimalism and experimental styles.
Practice questions with answers
A taste of the 18 questions in this topic, answers marked. Sign up to practise the full set with spaced repetition.
Experimental 20th-century art music often explores?
- ✓Atonality, dissonance and unusual timbres
- •Only Classical-period minuets
- •Only major-key folk dance tunes
- •Only standard 12-bar blues forms
AQA's Area of Study 4 covers art music from which period?
- •Only medieval times
- •Only the 1800s
- •Only the Baroque era
- ✓Since 1910
Bartók's AQA set work draws its scales, melodies and rhythms from which folk tradition?
- ✓Hungarian folk music
- •Irish folk music
- •Russian church music
- •Spanish flamenco music
Much music since 1910 makes central use of?
- ✓Music technology and electronic sound
- •Only a cappella voices
- •Only acoustic harpsichords
- •Only natural brass instruments
Minimalist music is built mainly from?
- •A single long melody never repeated
- •One sustained chord throughout
- •Random unrelated noises only
- ✓Short repeated patterns that change gradually
Which movement's main melody did Bartók collect in Tolna County in 1907?
- •An Evening in the Village
- •Bear Dance
- •Slightly Tipsy
- ✓Swineherd's Dance
Three minutes a day. Knowledge that sticks.
Practise all 18 Area of Study 4: Western Classical Tradition since 1910 questions with spaced repetition, so what you revise today is still there in the exam. Free to use, no card needed.