Glossary
Music glossary
365 definitions · page 1 of 7.
- a cappella
- Music for voices alone, without instrumental accompaniment.
- a tempo
- At the original tempo.
- Absolute music
- Instrumental music with no explicit pictorial or literal associations. As opposed to program music.
- accelerando
- Getting faster.
- accent
- A conspicuous, sudden emphasis given to a particular sound, usually by an increase in volume.
- accidental
- A notational sign in a score indicating that a specific note is to be played as a flat, sharp, or natural. The most common accidentals (flats and sharps) correspond to the five black notes in each octave of the keyboard.
- accompaniment
- The subordinate material or voices that support a melody.
- acoustics
- (1) the science of sound; (2) the art of optimizing sound in an enclosed space.
- adagio
- Quite slow tempo.
- allegro; allegretto
- Fast tempo; slightly fast tempo
- alto
- (1) The lowest adult female voice; (2) the second-highest voice in a four-part texture.
- andante; andantino
- Moderately slow (walking) tempo; a little faster than andante.
- antiphon
- Originally, a plainchant that framed the singing of a psalm. The term derives from the early practice of singing psalms "antiphonally"- that is, with two or more alternating choirs.
- appoggiatura
- A strong-beat dissonance that resolves to a consonance; used as an expressive device in much tonal music.
- aria
- In opera or oratorio, a set piece, usually for a single performer, that expresses a character's emotion about a particular situation.
- arioso
- A singing style between aria and recitative.
- arpeggio
- A chord whose individual notes are played successively rather than simultaneously.
- arrangement
- An orchestration of a skeletal score or a reorchestration of a finished composition.
- ars nova
- The "new art" of fourteenth-century France; refers to the stylistic innovations, especially rhythmic, of composers around 1320.
- art song
- A song focusing on artistic rather than popular expression.
- articulation
- The manner in which adjacent notes of a melody are connected or separated.
- atonality; atonal
- The absence of any sense of tonality.
- augmentation
- The restatement of a theme in longer note values, often twice as long (and therefore twice as slow) as the original.
- avant garde
- In the art, on the leading edge of a change in style.
- ballad opera
- A popular eighteenth-century English dramatic form characterized by spoken dialogue on topical themes interspersed with popular folk songs.
- ballata
- A type of fourteenth-century italian secular song, similar to the French virelai.
- ballet
- The theatrical presentation of group or solo dancing of great precision to a musical accompaniment, usually with costumes and scenery and conveying a story or theme.
- bar
- Same as measure.
- baritone
- Adult male voice of moderately low range.
- basic set
- The underlying tone row in a serial composition.
- bass
- (1) The lowest adult male voice; (2) the lowest voice in a polyphonic texture.
- bass clef
- The clef in the upper staff that shows pitches mostly below middle C
- basse danse
- A popular Renaissance court dance for couples.
- blue note
- In blues singing or jazz, the deliberate offpitch lowering of certain pitches.
- blues
- (I)A form of African-American folk music, characterized by simple, repetitive structures and a highly flexible vocal delivery; (2) the style of singing heard in the blues.
- bow
- In string playing, a bundle of bleached horsehairs stretched tautly between the ends of a wooden stick. To produce a sound, the bow is drawn over one or more of the strings.
- branle
- A high-stepping Renaissance group dance.
- brass
- A family of instruments with cup-shaped mouthpieces through which the player blows into a series of metal tubes. Usually constructed of brass or silver.
- bridge
- (1) A passage connecting two sections of a composition; (2) on string instruments, a small piece of wood th I at holds the strings above the body.
- cadence
- cadential The musical punctuation that separates phrases or periods, creating a sense of rest or conclusion that ranges from momentary to final.
- cadenza
- An improvised passage for a soloist, usually placed within the closing ritornello in a concerto movement.
- canon
- (1) Strict imitation, in which one voice imitates another at a staggered time interval; (2) a piece that uses canon throughout, such as "Row, Row, Row Your Boat."
- cantata
- A Baroque genre for voice(s) and instruments on a sacred or secular poem, including recitatives, arias, and sometimes choruses.
- cantus firmus
- ("fixed melody") A pre-existing plainchant or secular melody incorporated into a polyphonic composition, common from the twelfth through the sixteenth centuries.
- castrato
- A male singer castrated during boyhood to preserve his soprano or alto vocal register. Castratos played a prominent role in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century opera.
- CD-ROM
- Compact disc-read only memory. A compact-disc technology that enables a personal computer to access digitally text, still images, moving pictures, and sound.
- celesta
- A small keyboard instrument invented in 1886 whose hammers strike a series of resonating steel plates to produce a bell-like but veiled sound. Used by composers from Tchaikovsky to Boulez.
- cell
- In certain twentieth-century compositions,a brief, recurring musical figure that does not undergo traditional motivic development.
- chamber music
- Music played by small ensembles, such as a string quartet, with one performer to a part.
- chance music
- A type of contemporary music in which some or all of the elements, such as rhythm or the interaction among voices, are left to chance.
- chanson
- (French, "song") The most popular form of secular vocal music in northern Europe during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. character piece A short Romantic piano piece that expresses a single overall mood. choir (1) A vocal ensemble with more…
- chorale
- (1) A German hymn, especially popular in the Baroque; (2) a polyphonic setting of such a hymn, such as those by J. S. Bach.
- chord
- A group of three or more pitches sounded simultaneously.
- chordal style
- An alternate term for homophony. chorus (1) Same as choir; (2) each varied repetition of a 12-bar blues pattern; (3) the principal section of an American popular song, following the verse(s).
- chromatic
- A descriptive term for melodies or harmonies that use all or most of the twelve degrees of the octave.
- chromatic scale
- The pattern that results when all twelve adjacent semitones in an octave are played successively.
- clef
- In musical notation, a symbol at the beginning of a staff that determines the pitches of the lines and spaces. The most common clefs are treble (4) for indicating pitches mostly above middle C and bass (9;) for indicating pitches mostly below middle C.
- closing area
- In a movement in sonata form, the final stage in an exposition or recapitulation that confirms the temporary or home key with a series of cadences.
- coda
- The optional final section of a movement or an entire composition.
- combinatorial
- A descriptive term for tone rows in which the second half is a transposed version of the first half.