Exam Listening Journal

[Dana]

       I'm going to be taking entrance exams for grad school at the end of August, and one of the exams is a listening exam. It'll be a "drop-the-needle" kind of test, and all I have to do is identify the work (there will also be several examples where I have to identify the style, form, and likely era of an unknown composition). There's a fair number of standard works on the list which I already know, but there's also a lot of stuff I'm totally unfamiliar with (most of it 20th century), and since a few people have taken an interest in the list, I thought to start this thread. The full list is below...

Bach Brandenburg concerto 5
        B-minor Mass
Bartok 5th String Quartet
Beethoven Piano Sonata 26
               String Quartet Op.59/1
               Eroica Symphony
Berio Sinfonia
Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique
Brahms Ein Deutsches Requiem
          Piano Quartet 1
          Violin Concerto
Carter Concerto for Piano and Harpsichord
Crumb Ancient Voices of Children
Debussy Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun
Frescobaldi Toccata Prima
Gabrieli Sacrae Symphonaie
Handel Flavio Aria
Haydn Die Schopfung
Josquin Missa Pange Lingua
Liszt B-minor Piano Sonata
Mahler Das Lied von der Erde
Messiaen Quartet for the End of Time
Mozart Le Nozze de Figaro Act II
          Prague Symphony
Prokofiev Piano concerto 3
Puccini La Boheme Act III
Rodrigo Guitar Concerto
Schoenberg Five Pieces for Orchestra
                 Pierrot Lunaire
Schubert Die Schone Mullerin
Stravinsky Histoire du Soldat
               Petrouchka
Strauss Don Juan
Tchaikovsky Symphony No.6
Varese Ionisation
Wagner Tristan und Isolde

[Dana]

      The first thing I've given some serious time to is the Liszt Piano Sonata. Wow! I've never given much thought to solo piano music, but this is like a symphony for solo piano! Amazing!

[some guy]

Doesn't look like the graduate school has very high expectations.

I hope they rely heavily on the "identify the style, form, and likely era of an unknown composition" part of it, though how they know what you don't know is beyond me!!

[DavidW]

Well an entrance exam is not the true test, it's just a simple weeding out test in case an undergrad college did not give them an education at all.  It happens all of the time, there are many schools that fail to educate, and inflated gpa's compound the problem.  My entrance exam in physics had only undergrad level problems, yet the majority of students failed it the first time.

The Quals are when Dana gets to sweat.

[Dana]

      The more I listen to this Liszt Piano sonata, the more it astounds me. It has harmonic stuff in it that I've rarely heard before, is technically incredible without being showy, and has a thematic form that would make Mahler proud.

Doesn't look like the graduate school has very high expectations.

How do you mean? Do you mean that it doesn't have very many standard works on it (only one Beethoven symphony, no Brahms symphonies, etc)?

[Taxes-]

Yes, the liszt sonata is revelatory, such an amazing work. Time seems to pass so rapidly when listening to it, I'm always sad when I realize that it's already over .

I've never done those kind of examinations and I haven't even heard a lot of the compositions in the list, but this seems very doable to me. The works are pretty evenly spaced between the eras, the styles, the instrumentation and the forms, so with a bit of common sense it shouldn't be too hard to narrow the selection to one or two pieces at most.

[DavidW]

That's actually going to be my next cd purchase.  I must admit that I listened to Lizst once casually more than a decade ago and that's it.  I've decided to right that wrong with Richter/Kondrashin PC 1, 2 and the Piano Sonata.