Dictionary of Music - Birding America

258 naturalcould combine both folklore or history in its plot andfolk materials in its music; for example, Smetana’sThe Bartered Bride combines a plot based on anepisode from Bohemian peasant life with folk dancesand other elements of folk music. Grieg (in Norway),Dvořák (in Bohemia), and Sibelius (in Finland), onthe other hand, composed mostly songs and instrumentalworks that employed the musical idioms oftheir native lands, and Albéniz, Granados, and deFalla similarly used Spanish dance rhythms in theirworks. Other composers associated with nationalisminclude Moravia’s Janáček, Hungary’s Bartók andKodály, Rumania’s Enesco, Poland’s Szymanowski,Great Britain’s Elgar and Vaughan Williams, Brazil’sVilla-Lobos, Mexico’s Chávez, the United States’Grofé, Ives, and Copland, and, to a lesser extent,Denmark’s Niels Gade.Although other nineteenth-century composersalso used national material—Liszt in his HungarianRhapsodies and Chopin in his polonaises, for example—theydid so less with the aim of creating a“national” music than simply for the purpose of creatingmusic itself. The nationalist composers are distinguishedfrom these others by their intention tocreate “national” music and their emphasis on“national” materials.natural 1 A note that is neither raised by a sharpnor lowered by a flat. All the white keys of the pianorepresent natural notes. 2 The sign ♮ , which serves tocancel any sharp or flat present in the key signatureor appearing earlier in the same measure. 3 A termapplied to a horn or trumpet having no slide, keys, orvalves to alter its pitch. Such instruments can soundonly the notes of a single harmonic series.natural minor scale A scale in which the third,sixth, and seventh degrees are each one half tonelower than the corresponding degrees in the majorscale. (See also MINOR, def. 1.)natural toneNeapolitan sixthAnother term for OPEN TONE.See under SIXTH CHORD.neck In such stringed instruments as violins, guitars,lutes, and banjos, the narrow portion betweenthe instrument’s head (top) and its body, to whichthe fingerboard is attached.neighboring tone Also, auxiliary tone, embellishment,returning tone. A dissonant note one scalestep above or below any of the notes of a chord thatis preceded and followed by the note of the chord.For example, if the chord is G–C–E and the E movesto F or D and then returns, F and D are neighboringtones. Since F is higher than E, it would be termedthe upper neighboring tone; since D is lower than Eit would be termed the lower neighboring tone.fig. 161 p/u from p. 266neoclassicism A name given to a twentieth-centuryrevival of older musical forms and styles, particularlythose of the baroque and classic periods(1600–1800). Partly in reaction against the highlypersonal, dramatic, emotional character of late nineteenth-centuryromanticism, certain composersturned to earlier music for its detachment, its clarity,its lack of nonmusical considerations (a “program”or “story”), and relatively strict closed forms. Theyreplaced the huge nineteenth-century orchestra withthe chamber orchestras of earlier periods. Theyturned away from the great masses of sound, the dramaticclimaxes, to a calm, measured, balanced counterpoint,in which each voice-part could be clearlyheard. The precise manner in which this was accomplishedvaried from composer to composer. Fewneoclassicists—perhaps none at all—copied oldstyles and forms literally. Rather, they took elements,such as the form of the fugue, and transformedthem according to their own concepts ofrhythm, tonality, etc.The term “neoclassicism” was coined by FerruccioBusoni (1866–1924), an Italian-German pianistand composer who was actually more modern in hisideas than in his compositions. By the time ofBusoni’s death neoclassicism interested many composers,and it remained a highly influential movementthrough the 1930s and 1940s. Many young