Glossary

Music glossary

365 definitions · page 5 of 7.

punk: A descriptive term adopted by the most rebellious heavy metal bands and their followers.
quarter tone: Half a semitone.
quartet: (1) A piece for four singers or instrumentalists; (2) a group of four singers or instrumentalists.
quintet: (1) A piece for five singers or instrumentalists; (2) a group of five singers or instrumentalists.
ragtime: A type of popular American music, usually for piano, that arose around 1900 and contributed to the emergence of jazz.
range: The pitch distance between the lowest note and the highest note of an instrument, a composition, or an individual part.
recapitulation: The third principal section of a movement in sonata form whose function is to resolve the harmonic conflicts set up in the exposition and development.
recitative: A flexible style of vocal delivery employed in opera, oratorio, and cantata and tailored to the accents and rhythms of the text.
reduction: The compression of a complex, multi-stave score onto one or two staves.
reed: In wind instruments such as the clarinet and oboe, a small vibrating element made of cane that serves as all (double reed) or part (single reed) of the mouthpiece.
register: The relative location within the range of a voice or an instrument, such as "the piercing upper register of the oboe. "
resolution: A move from a dissonance to a consonance.
rest: (I) In music, a brief silence; (2) in musical notation, a sign indicating such a silence.
retransition: In sonata form, the passage that leads from the harmonic instability of the development to the stability of the recapitulation.
retrograde: Playing a theme backward.
rhythm: (1) The pattern in time created by the incidence and duration of individual sounds; (2) used more loosely to refer to a particular rhythm, for example, "a dotted rhythm." rhythm & blues (R&B) A term coined in 1949 to describe the heavily rhythmic urban blues…
rhythmic background: The subdivisions of beats within a regular meter.
rhythmic foreground: The regular beats provided by meter.
ripieno: The largest of the two instrumental groups in a Baroque concerto grosso.
ritard: ritardando Slowing down the tempo.
ritornello: (Italian, "the little thing that returns") A recurring theme in eighteenth-century arias and concertos.
ritornello form: Baroque instrumental form based on recurrences of a ritornello.
rock'n'roll(rock): Style of popular vocal music, often for dancing, that developed in the United States and England during the 1950s, characterized by a hard, driving duple meter and amplified instrumental accompaniment. Currently the most widespread musical style in the world.
rondo: A musical form in which a main theme alternates with other themes or sections, for example, A-B-A-C-A.
round: A simple sung canon in which all voices enter on the same note after the same time interval.
rubato: "Robbed" time; the subtle pressing forward and holding back the tempo in performance.
sampling: The capacity of a synthesizer to extrapolate from a single example a homogeneous timbre over a wide pitch range.
scale: An array of fixed, ordered pitches bounded by two notes an octave apart. The common Western scales contain seven notes; in non-Western cultures, scales may contain fewer or more than seven notes.
scherzo: (Italian, "joke") A faster, often humorous transformation of a minuet, introduced into symphonies by Beethoven.
score: The complete musical notation of a composition, especially for an ensemble; the individual parts are lined up vertically.
scoring: The process of orchestration.
secondary area: In a movement in sonata form, the theme or group of themes that follows the transition and establishes the new key in the exposition.
semitone: Same as halfstep.
sequence: (1) The repetition of a musical idea at progressively higher or lower pitches; (2) a form of medieval chant.
sequencing: On a synthesizer, programming a series of sounds.
serialist: The technique, introduced by Schoenberg, of basing a composition on a series, or tone row. Boulez and others have extended serialism to rhythm and timbre.
shape: The interrelationship through time of the parts or sections of a piece. Standardized shapes are commonly referred to as forms.
sharp: In musical notation, a sign (#) indicating that the note it precedes is to be played a half step higher.
simple meter: A meter in which the main beats arc subdivided into twos, such as 2/4 or 3/4.
Singspiel ("sung play"): German folk or comic opera in which arias, ensembles, and choruses arc interspersed with spoken dialogue.
Singspiel (sung play): German folk or comic opera in which arias, ensembles, and choruses arc interspersed with spoken dialogue.
slur: (1) In musical notation, a curved line connecting notes that are to be played legato; (2) in performance, the playing of legato.
sonata: A chamber work in several movements; in the Baroque, typically for three parts (the continuo part normally requiring two instruments); in later periods, for one or two instruments.
sonata form: A musical form or style, originating in the eighteenth century, based on successive stages of stability, tension, and resolution; the most influential form developed during the age of tonality.
sonata-concerto form: A hybrid of Baroque ritornello form and sonata form often used in the Classical concerto.
sonata-rondo form: A synthesis of sonata and rondo forms, especially popular in finales of Classical instrumental works.
song cycle: A collection of poems set to music and tied together by mood or story line.
sonority: A general term for sound quality, either of a brief moment or of an entire composition.
soprano: (1) The high woman's (or boy's) voice; (2)the highest voice in a polyphonic texture.
spinning-out: A translation of the German Fortspinnung, in reference to the single-minded use in Baroque music of a brief motive to generate a long, continuous phrase.
Sprechstimme: A vocal delivery, developed by Schoenberg, intermediate between speech and song.
staccato: In musical notation, a dot placed above a notehead to indicate that it is to be played crisply, with a short duration of sound.
staff: (plural, staves) In musical notation, the five horizontal lines on which one or more voices are notated.
stem: In musical notation, the vertical line attached to a notehead.
stop: On the organ, hand-operated levers that activate different means of sound production, thereby varying the tone color.
string quartet: (1) Ensemble consisting of two violins, viola, and cello; (2) a work composed for this ensemble.
strings: Family of bowed or plucked instruments in which thin strings are stretched over a wooden frame.
strophic form: Vocal form in which each stanza of a poem is set to the same music. structure A term often used in music to mean shape or form.
style: The result of the interaction among rhythm, melody, harmony, texture, color, and shape that gives the music of a particular period or composer its distinctiveness.
subdominant: (1) The fourth degree of the diatonic scale- (2) the triad built on this degree; (3) the key oriented around this degree.