Glossary
Music glossary
365 definitions · page 6 of 7.
- subject
- The main theme of a fugue.
- suite
- (I) A work consisting of a collection of dances, popular in the Baroque; (2) an abbreviated version of a longer work, for example, the suite from the film Star Wars.
- swing
- (I)A style of jazz playing whose flexible, improvised rhythms resist notation; (2) name used to describe big band jazz from the 1930s and 1940s.
- syllabic
- In plainchant, a style in which each syllable of text receives a single note.
- symphonic poem
- Same as Tone Poem.
- symphony
- A large orchestral composition in several movements- a dominant form of public music in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
- syncopation
- The accenting, within a well-defined meter, of weaker beats or portions of beats.
- synthesizer
- An electronic device that can create a wide variety of sounds in response to the user's instructions.
- system
- A group of staves connected by a brace, indicating that they are to be played simultaneously.
- tail
- The end of a theme.
- tailpiece
- The holder to which the strings are attached at the lower end of the body of a string instrument.
- tango
- A duple-meter dance from Argentina that was popular in Paris in the early twentieth century.
- tempo
- (Italian, "time") The speed of a piece of music, usually reckoned by the rate of its beats. tenor (1) The high male voice; (2) the second-lowest voice in a four-part texture; (3) the long-held voice in a medieval organum.
- ternary form
- A three-part musical structure (A-B-A) based on statement (A), contrast (B), and repetition (A).
- texture
- The musical weave of a composition, such as homophonic or contrapuntal
- thematic anticipation
- The Romantic practice of introducing fragments of a theme before presenting it in its entirety.
- thematic transformation
- A Romantic technique that preserves the essential pitch identity of a theme while altering its rhythm or character.
- theme
- A self-contained melodic idea on which musical works are frequently based.
- theme and variations
- Popular form in which a theme is followed by variations that preserve the phrase lengths and harmonization of the theme while varying its rhythms, melodies, and textures.
- through-composed
- A descriptive term for a song or an instrumental movement in which there is no largescale repetition.
- timbre
- (tam-burr) Same as tone color.
- time signature
- The two numbers that appear in a score immediately after the clefs. The upper number indicates how many beats each measure is to receive; the lower number indicates the value of the note that receives each beat.
- toccata
- An improvisatory style of keyboard music especially popular during the Baroque.
- tonality
- tonal A harmonic system in which triads are arranged hierarchically around a central triad called the tonic.
- tone
- A more general term for pitch or note.
- tone color (timbre)
- The acoustical properties of a sound, including its envelope and the distribution of overtones above the fundamental. tone poem (symphonic poem) A piece of orchestral program music in one long movement. tone row In serial music, the ordering of all twelve…
- tone duster
- The simultaneous sounding of adjacent pitches.
- tonic
- (1) The first degree, or central note, of the diatonic scale; (2) the triad built on this degree; (3) the key oriented around this degree. total serialist The application of serial techniques to all aspects of musical style.
- transcription
- An arrangement, usually for a solo instrument such as a piano, of an orchestral or vocal work.
- transition
- In a movement in sonata form, the unstable stage in an exposition that undertakes the modulation from the tonic to the new key.
- transpose
- transposition To move a passage (or section or entire work) from one pitch level to another.
- treble clef
- The clef (@) in the upper staff that shows pitches mostly above middle C.
- tremolo
- In string playing, repetitions of a tone produced by rapid alternation between up-and-down strokes of the bow.
- triad
- A chord consisting of three pitches constructed around intervals of interlocking thirds (on the white notes, this amounts to every other note).
- trill
- Musical ornament that consists of two notes a half step or a whole step apart played in rapid alternation.
- trio
- (1) A work for three performers; (2) the second section of a Baroque dance such as a minuet.
- trio sonata
- A Baroque sonata for two treble instruments and continuo, generally requiring four performers.
- triple meter
- The regular grouping of beats into threes, as in a waltz.
- triplet
- The grouping of three notes per beat, usually in contrast to the standard grouping of two notes per beat.
- tritone
- A dissonant interval consisting of three whole steps, known in medieval music as "the devil in music."
- trope
- An addition to the plainchant, usually in the form of new text set to either existing or new music.
- troubadors trouveres
- Poet/musicians, usually aristocratic, active in southern and northern France during the Middle Ages.
- troubadors, trouveres
- Poet/musicians, usually aristocratic, active in southern and northern France during the Middle Ages.
- tune
- A less formal term for a melody, especially a catchy melody.
- tutti
- (Italian, "all") The full ensemble.
- under-third cadence
- A fourteenth-century cadence, closely associated with Francesco Landini, in which the melody proceeds from the seventh to the sixth degree of the modal scale before rising a third to the tonic note.
- unequal-voiced counterpoint (non-imitative counterpoint)
- A musical texture in which independent voices of different character compete for attention.
- unison
- A descriptive term for music sung or played at the same pitch by two different voices or instruments.
- unit pulse
- A rhythmic technique in which meter is replaced by a focus on the shortest rhythmic value.
- upbeat
- A weak or unaccented beat that anticipates a strong downbeat.
- variation
- (1) Generally, an altered version of a rhythm, motive, or theme; (2) in theme and variations, each regular section following the theme, in which the phrase lengths and harmonization remain true (or close) to the theme while the rhythms, melodies, and…
- verismo
- A descriptive term for a realistic, often sensational, type of late-Romantic Italian opera, whose disreputable characters are caught up in lust, greed, betrayal, or revenge.
- vernacular dramas
- A sung monophonic play presented in the Middle Ages by roving minstrels, who freely mixed secular texts, instrumental music, and plainchant.
- verse
- One of two sections (verse and bridge) of many American popular songs, especially common in the sequence verse-verse-bridge-verse.
- vibrato
- On string instruments, small but rapid fluctuations in pitch used to intensify a sound.
- virtuosity
- In a composition, a focus on exceptional technical demands; in a performance, a focus on exceptional technical display.
- virtuoso
- A performer with exceptional technical skills.
- voice
- (1) The human voice; (2) an independent line in any polyphonic piece.
- walking bass
- A Baroque pattern in which a bass part moves steadily in constant rhythms.
- waltz
- A popular nineteenth-century dance in moderate to fast triple meter.