Music Definitions o-z

Music Definitions and Terms

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z

Obbligato: an occasional but extended instrumental solo, often to accompany the vocal part in an aria.

Octave: the interval betWeen two notes six whole tones apart that bear the same name; thus, C natural to C natural. An augmented octave is C natural to C
sharp; a diminished octave, C natural to C flat.

Octet: a work for eight instruments.

Ode: a formal celebratory address to a person or on the subject of an abstract quality. There are several samples by Purcell, and the form was revived by
Schoenberg and Stravinsky in this century.

Open strings: the strings of a stringed instrument when played without being fingered.

Opera: a drama in which the actors sing and are accompanied by an orchestra. It was invented at the beginning of the 17th century in Italy as a court entertainment by composers such as Monteverdi, who Were attempting to revive classical Greek drama. By the end of the century it became a widespread public entertainment. In the first half of the next century, in the works of Handel and Alessandro Scarlatti, it was characterized by spectacle and vocal virtuosity. In the reforming spirit of Gluck and the operas of Mozart that folloWed, a new simplicity and psychological penetration entered into opera. In the 19th and 20th centuries, opera has been written by practically every major composer, and, in the hands of Wagner. became the focal point of some of the most advanced musical thinking of the day. Opera continues to fascinate composers, despite the complexity, difficulty, and expense of mounting new works.

Operetta: a light and perhaps short opera, often comic, usually with spoken dialogue instead of recitative. There are familiar samples by Jacques Offenbach, Johann Strauss, Arthur Sullivan, Franz Lehdr, and Sigmund Romberg.

Opus: literally, a work; shortened to Op., a convenient method of numbering a composer's works. Thus, Beethoven's Op. 111 is his last piano sonata.

Oratorio: an extended cantata on a sacred subject, such as Handel's Messiah, Mendelssohn's Elijah, or Sir William Walton's Belshazzar's Feast.

Orchestra: a large group of instrumentalists, at least some of whom are normally playing more than one to a part. Chamber orchestras may have only tWenty
players, but a large symphony orchestra may consist of more than a hundred players. The basic instruments that make up its regular membership have remained constant since the late 18th century, although the orchestra since then has been increasing steadily in size. Instruments are occasionally added and ultimately become a fundamental part of the orchestra. The clarinet was added in the last years of the 18th century; the trombone in the first years of the 19th; then the tuba, the harp, numerous percussion instruments, and so on.

Ornaments: formalized decorations of a melodic line, such as the trill or the mordent.

Ostinato: a repeated phrase.

Overture: an extended prelude to an opera also, the term for a Baroque suite or an independent orchestra] work, often on a literary theme. There are samples of the latter by Tchaikovsky, Berlioz, Elgar, and many others.

Pariando: a rhythmically free or even semi-spoken way of singing.

Parody: as in "parody mass," a work based on previous material, one of the three common techniques of composition in medieval and Renaissance sacred music.

Part: an individual voice, or instrument, in a piece; or a line in a contrapuntal work.

Partial: a harmonic given off by a note when it is sounded.

Partita: a Baroque suite of dances, adapted by Bach as a suite for keyboard instruments.

Part-song: an unaccompanied vocal work in harmonic style.

Pasodoble: a fast 1920s dance in 6/8 time.

Passacaglia: a set of variations over a repeating bass; virtually identical to the chaconne, but with a theme rather than a chord sequence in the bass. There is a celebrated example by Anton Webern.

Passe-pied: a French Baroque dance in triple time.

Pastorale: a theatrical piece, song, or instrumental piece on a pastoral theme or idyllic in character.

Pause: a held note, or a moment of silence.

Pedal: the foot-operated mechanisms on piano, organ, or timpani; also, the term for a long-held bass note.

Pentatonic scale: a five-note scale on which much folk music is based: the most common corresponds to the black keys on the piano.

Phrase: a single line of music, usually played or sung by a single musician in one real or metaphorical breath.

Piano: instruction to play softly, abbreviated p; more quietly, pianissimo, abbreviated pp.

Pitch: the frequency of a note; how high or deep it sounds.

Piu: more (for example, piu mosso, "faster").

Pizzicato: of stringed instruments, plucked rather than boWed.

Plainchant: unaccompanied church singing.

Poco: little (for example, poco a poco crescendo, "getting louder little by little").

Polka: a fast 19th-century middle-European dance in duple time.

Polonaise: heroic or ceremonial Polish dance in triple time, transformed in the samples for piano by Chopin into a kind of ceremonial rhapsody.

Polyphony: the art of counterpoint, or combining melodies.

Polytonality: the combination of two or more keys simultaneously. TWentieth-century music has often used the technique-for instance, the simultaneous sounding of C major and F sharp major in Stravinsky's ballet Petrushka, or many samples by Milhaud.

Portamento: a mild glissando betWeen two notes for expressive effect.

Prelude: a short piece, originally preceding a more substantial work, for instance Bach's Preludes and Fugues; also, an orchestra] introduction to an opera not substantial enough to merit the term overture, or a short independent piano piece, often collected into sets, such as those by Chopin, Debussy, and Messiaen.

Presto: tempo marking, meaning "very fast."

Program music: music on a particular non-literary subject, usually with a narrative-for instance, some of Couperin's keyboard works, or Richard Strauss's symphonic poems.

Progression: a series of harmonies.

Punk: a fiery, high-speed variant of rock that values excitement and energy above technique.

Quadrille: a French 19th-century dance in duple time.

Quadruplet: a group of four notes played in the time normally occupied by three.

Quarter note: a note equal in time value to two eighth notes or four sixteenth notes; in Britain, it is called a crotchet.

Quartet: a work for four instruments, such as a string quartet, consisting of two violins, viola, and cello or, in opera, an ensemble for four singers.

Quasi: almost (for example, quasi forte, "almost loudly").

Quaver: the British term for an eighth note.

Quintet: a work for five instruments, such as a string quintet, consisting of two violins, two violas, and one cello, or two violins, one viola, and two cellos, or a wind quintet. for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn.

Quintuplet: a group of five notes played in the time normally occupied by three or four notes.

Quodlibet: a medley, or a polyphonic combination of Well-known tunes.

Raga: an ancient traditional melodic pattern or mode in classical Indian music; also, an instrumental improvisation based on a traditional raga, in which a melody is usually played over a pedal note without change of key.

Ragtime: a style of music with a characteristic syncopation in duple time, predating jazz but sharing some of its characteristics. Its most famous composer was Scott Joplin. Igor Stravinsky wrote two compositions based loosely on the style, Ragtime and Piano Rag Music.

Rallentando: getting sloWer.

Rap music: a form of pop music based on chanted street poetry and rhymes accompanied by a thumping rhythmic backbeat.

Recital: a concert by a soloist, with or without accompaniment. The term was invented by Liszt for his solo performances.

Recitative: a form of vocal writing in opera or concert works close to the manner of speech. It is rhythmically free, and simply accompanied either by a sinale keyboard instrument or by a small group of instruments. By the Classical period it had become a means of conveying information rapidly about the narrative, while arias and ensembles evoked the emotional states of the characters in a more expansive
manner and a more complex musical style. In the 19th century, the distinction betWeen recitative and melodic forms diminished, and in the operas of Wagner, the vocal style might be said to move freely betWeen the styles of recitative and aria. Since then, recitative has been occasionally used for special purposes, as in Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress and Berg's Lulu.

Reed: in wind instruments, the piece of cane that the player causes to vibrate by blowing through it, in order to produce sound.

Reel: i Scottish or Irish folk dance in duple time.

Refrain: a repeating phrase that occurs at the end of each verse in a song.

Reggae: Jamaican popular music, associated with Rastafarianisni, which achieved great popularity in the United States and Europe in the 1970s.

Register: a portion of the range of an instrument or voice; thus, the bottom octave of the clarinet is known as the chaltimeau register.

Relative major and minor: the major and minor keys that share the same key signature. Thus, E major is the relative major of C sharp minor, since both have four sharps.

Relative pitch: the ability to determine the pitch of a note in terms of its relationship to the notes that precede and follow it.

Repeat signs: the signs at the beginning and end of a section of music, indicating that the section in betWeen should be played twice.

Reprise: a repeat of some earlier material. normally after some different music has intervened.

Requiem: a mass for the dead in the Roman Catholic liturgy, although works that are not settings of the mass text may also be called requiems, such as those by Brahms, Delius, and Hans Werner Henze.

Resonance: the phenomenon by which several strings tuned to pitches that are harmonically related will vibrate even if only one of the strings is struck. Thus, if a note is struck on a piano, with the strings undamped, the strings tuned to pitches that belong to the harmonic series of that note will also vibrate.

Rest: a period of silence within a piece of music. The diverse lengths of rests correspond to note lengths.

Rhapsody: a musical composition of irregular form, and having a dramatic, improvisatory character, usually either for a solo performer or a soloist with orchestra.

Rhythm: the element of music pertaining to time and expressed as grouping of notes into accented and unaccented beats, of beats into measures, etc.

Ricercar: an elaborate polyphonic or imitative instrumental composition of the Renaissance or Baroque period.

Riff: a repeating motif or refrain in a modern pop song or jazz piece.

Rigaudon: a fast 17^th-century dance in duple or quadruple time, of French origin.
Pitardando (ritenuto) - slowing down, perhaps for less time or less forcefully than would be implied by rallentando.

Ritornello: a passage that returns repeatedly in a rondo-like form-. also, a tutti passage in a concerto.

Rococo: a short-lived musical style that occurred roughly betWeen the end of the high Baroque and the beginnings of the Classical period, most often applied to the music of such French composers as Couperin, Claude Daquin, and Rameau. Often characterized as trivial, ornamental, or lightWeight, it is sometimes called the gallant style.

Rondo: a musical form in which the principal theme is repeated several times, with short sections based on different themes (called episodes) in betWeen each restatement of the opening theme; sometimes one or more of the episodes is also
repeated, a common pattern being ABACABA. The rondo was often used for the final movements of Classical sonata-form works.

Root: the principal note of a triad or triad-derived chord.

Round: a canon in which the melody is sung by two or more voices in strict imitation (i.e., using the same notes) of the original statement, and in which all the
parts repeat continuously. (See Canon.)

Rubato: literally, "robbed." A style in which the strict tempo is temporarily loosened by either speeding up or slowing down.

Rumba: a lively Cuban dance, in quadruple time, divided into a characteristic 3 + 3 + 2 pattern of eighth notes.

Saltarello: a fast Italian dance in 6/8 time.

Samba: a fast, syncopated Brazilian dance in duple time, based on an Afro-Brazilian ring dance.

Sarabande: originally a fast triple dance, by the 17th century it had become a grand slow dance, regularly featuring in Baroque dance suites.

Scale: the successive notes of a key or mode.

Scat singing: a style of jazz singing with nonsense syllables, popularized by Cab Calloway in the 1920s.

Scherzando: jokingly, or in scherzo style.

Scherzo: a fast movement in triple time that replaced the minuet in sonata-form works from the beginning of the 19th century on. Unlike the minuet, it was never a dance, and is normally faster and more elaborate in structure, replacing the ABA of
the minuet with an ABABA form. Later, scherzi Were written as independent works, by Chopin and other composers.

Scordatura: retuning the strings of a stringed instrument, either to obtain notes ordinarily below the range of the instrument (Berg wrote B naturals below the loWest C for the violoncello in his Lyric Suite) or to produce an unusual tone color (the solo violin in Mahler's Fourth Symphony is retuned up a whole tone to harshen its sound).

Score: the full copy of all notes to be played in a musical work. This may be in the form of a large "full score," or a reduced "miniature score," or a "vocal score" for use in rehearsal (with instrumental parts reduced to a piano part).

Seguidilla: a fast Spanish dance in triple time.

Semibreve: the British term for a whole note.

Semiquaver: the British term for a sixteenth note.

Semitone: normally, the smallest notated pitch difference in Western music-for instance, G to G sharp.

Sempre: always, or still (for example, sempre piano, "still quietly").

Senza: without (for example, senza sordo, "without mute").

Septet: a composition for seven players.

Sequence: a successive transposition and repetition ol' a phrase at different pitches.

Serenade: a somewhat lighthearted piece, either a song or an instrumental work in several movements, such as those by Mozart, Brahms, or Schoenberg.

Serial music: a way of writing music in which unity is supplied by basing the entire composition on a short series of notes in which no pitch is repeated until all are used once. Invented by Arnold Schoenberg in the 1920s as a way of ordering atonal
music, the series originally consisted of the tWelve tones of the octave (called a tone row). The series may be transposed to any other pitch, may be played backward, in inversion, or backward and in inversion to generate forty-eight separate forms from a single series. Schoenberg's pupils Alban Berg and Anton Webem refined the technique. Webem worked with series divided into three or four identical segments, to give the illusory sense that the work is written on a three- or four-note series. Berg used more than one series in each piece; in his opera Lulu. each character is identified by a particular series. In later developments, after World War 11, Olivier Messiaen extended the technique to apply to non-pitch elements such as rhythm and dynamic levels; and Igor Stravinsky, in his late works, often used series of feWer than tWelve notes.

Sextet: a work for six players (for example, a string sextet, consisting of two violins, two violas, and two cellos).

Sforzando: a strong accent; written

Shake: a trill.

Shanty: a sailors' song.

Sharp: a sign indicating that the pitch of a note should be raised by a semitone.

Siciliano: a fairly slow dance with swaying rhythm in compound time, usually 6/8 or 12/8.

Skiffle: hybrid of folk music and jazz played on improvised, nontraditional domestic instruments, such as washboards, jugs, etc.

Slide: a glissando or portamento; or the moving part of a trombone.

Slur: a curve over notes to indicate that a phrase is to be played legate.

Sonata: an instrumental work for a soloist or two players. In early samples by Domenico Scariatti. the piece is in one movement, but in general a sonata is in three or four movements. The first movement is normally in sonata form, folloWed by a slow movement. In a four-movement sonata, the third movement is usually a scherzo or minuet (although sometimes this is the second movement, preceding
the slow movement). The sonata ends with a more extended last movement, usually at a fast tempo. This is the structure that many sonatas follow, although the departure of many of Beethoven's piano sonatas from the model suggests its limitations. Sonatas have been written more or less constantly from the late 18th century onward, and are still being written; there are distinguished samples by
such contemporary composers as Pierre Boulez, Jean Barraque, and Elliott Carter.

Sonata form: the musical form that evolved in the later years of the 18th century, used in almost every large-scale work-symphonies, quartets, piano concertos, and even ensembles in operas-Well into the 19th century and beyond. Sonata form refers
primarily to the organization of themes and harmonic relationships within a single movement, the general structure of which consists of an exposition, a development section, and a recapitulation. The exposition (which may be preceded by an introduction, usually in a slow tempo) presents the primary themes in the main key and a second group of themes in a subordinate key or keys, and a partial developments the entire exposition may be repeated, perhaps in different form (for instance, in a concerto, the exposition mav be played first by the orchestra alone and then again with a soloist). In the development section, any portion of one or more themes from the exposition may be presented with new or related material in any order and in any combination, moving through different keys but eventually returning to the original key of the movement. The recapitulation sets out the themes
ol'the exposition in the same order as the exposition, but in somewhat different form, such as presenting both the primary and second group of themes in the main key; a short concluding passage, called a coda, may follow. This three-part structure is also known as ABA form. The sonata form lasted so long and produced so many masterpieces principally because it was capable of great variation.

Sonatina: a short sonata, sometimes with the implication that it is not too difficult to play, such as those by Muzio Clementi; there are also elaborate samples, not for beginners, by Maurice Ravel, Jean Sibelius, and, most notably, Ferruccio Busoni.

Song cycle: a sequence of songs, perhaps on a single theme, such as Mahler's Kindertotenlieder, or with texts all by one poet, for instance Debussy's Fetes
Galantes, or having a continuous narrative, such as Schumann's Dichterliebe.

Soprano: the highest female voice.

Sordino: a mute.

Sostenuto: sustained, often with a suggestion of playing quietly or more slowly.

Soul: the pop refinement of church-based, African-American gospel music.

Soundboard: the part of a piano that amplifies the sound.

Spiccato: a type of bowing on stringed instruments in which the bow is alloWed to bounce rather than be drawn across the string.

Spirito: liveliness.

Staccato: abbreviated and detached notes.

Staff: the horizontal lines on which notes are set down; in modem notation, there are five lines on each staff.

Steel band: an ensemble of beaten oil drums, played like tuned percussion instruments, originating in the Caribbean.

Stop: a device that controls the different sets of pipes (or strings) for each note on an organ (or harpsichord), enabling the player to temporary change the tone color.

Stretto: in fugue, the overlapping of the same theme or motif by two or more voices a few beats apart; also, more loosely, an accelerando, with the suggestion of an approaching close.

Suite: a loose collection of instrumental pieces. In the Baroque period, dances as in B.ich's instrumental and orchestral suites; in the 19th and 20th centuries, a series of character pieces, as in Holst's suite The Planets, or a set of excerpts from i larger work, e.g., the suites from Grieg's music for Peer G.Ynt or Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe suites.

Swing: a form of big-band jazz, popular in the 1930s and '40s. with a strong element of massed effects and less improvisation than in earlier forms of jazz.

Symphonic poem: a single-movement orchestral work with a narrative or a literary theme. Invented by Franz Liszt. it was taken up by such composers as C6sar Franck and, most notably, Richard Strauss, whose long and complex symphonic poems Were popular and influential before World War 1.

Symphony: a three- or four-movement orchestral work, sometimes with choir, normally in sonata form. Early sinfonias Were single-movement overtures; but by the middle of the 18th century, such composers as Karl Stamitz Were writing elaborate
symphonies in several movements. In the hands of Haydn, Mozart. and Beethoven, the symphony attained enormous depth, balance, and variety of expression, ensuring that it remained a common form for composers. The Romantic period both continued the Classical tradition of the symphony-in the works of Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms - and initiated a new kind of symphony with
an implied or actual program, such as Beethoven's Sixth Symphony and the symphonies of Berlioz, Tchaikovsky, and Mahler. TWentieth-century composers have continued to write symphonies, and from Jean Sibelius and Carl Nielsen to Witold Lutoslawski and Peter MaxWell Davies, they have continually reconsidered and reinvented the form.

Syncopation: placing the strong beat on what are normally the Weaker beats in a bar. Thus, in a normal four-beat bar, the accents would lie, in order of strength, 1423. A syncopated bar would place the strongest accent on the second or fourth beat, or even, as in the rumba, on beats which lie betWeen the normal quarter-note beats.

Synthesizer: an electronic machine for producing artificial sounds and tones with any desired characteristic or quality, often recorded directly onto magnetic tape for future performance through amplifiers.

System: a combination of two staves or more on which all the notes to be played simultaneously in different registers or on different instruments are vertically aligned.

Tablature: a system of notation for plucked stringed instruments, for instance lute or guitar, in which the notes are indicated by means of the finger position required.

Tango: a slow ballroom dance of Argentine origin in quadruple time, similar to the Cuban habanera.

Tarantella: an Italian folk dance in rapid 6/8 time, characterized by light, quick hops and turns.

Temperament: tuning. Instruments may be tuned to the exact pitches of a specific key, which would make the intervals betWeen different pairs of semitones not
precisely equal; or, as has normally been the case since the 17th century, they may be tuned so that the interval betWeen B and C is the same as the interval betWeen C and C sharp, etc. This system, known as equal temperament, is necessary if modulations from the original key are to be possible.

Tempo: speed.

Tenor: the highest natural male voice.

Tenuto: a marking that means "held," indicating that the note should be sustained for its full value, and even a little more.

Ternary form: a simple, common three-part form, in the pattern ABA-that is, consisting of a first section, then a second, contrasting section, folloWed by a repetition of the first section.

Tessitura: the overall range of an instrumental or, more commonly, a vocal part.

Theme: a melodic or, occasionally, harmonic idea used as a fundamental unit in a musical form; also called sulliect.

Tie: a curved line indicating that two separate notes should be played as a single note, the length of which is the same as the sum of the length of the two individual notes.

Timbre: the tone "color" of an instrument, voice, or register.

Time signature: the two numbers that indicate the number of beats per bar of a piece of music, given at the beginning of the first staff or system of staves, and whenever the number of beats changes. The loWer number shows the length of note assigned one beat (i.e., 2 as the loWer number refers to half notes, 4 refers to quarter notes, 8 to eighth notes, etc.) and the upper number shows how many of those notes are in a single bar. Thus, 3/4 means three quarter notes to the bar; 5/16 means five sixteenth notes. and so on.

Toccata: a fast keyboard piece, exploiting rapidity of performance, runs, and repeated notes.

Tonality: the system of major and minor keys.

Tone: in American usage, a pitch; also the interval of a major second.

Tone row: See Serial music.

Tonguing: in wind instruments, the articulation of a note or group of notes by the silent sounding of the consonant t or k.

Tonic: the fundamental note of a key; also, the triad formed on that note.

Transcription: the rewriting of a piece of music for instruments other than those for which it was originally written.

Transition: a bridging passage betWeen sections in a composition.

Transposition: changing the pitch of a piece of music up or down a given interval. so that the internal relationships remain precisely the same.

Treble: the upper half of an entire vocal or instrumental range, as opposed to bass; also, the highest voice in choral singing.

Tremolo: the rapid repetition of a note, or the rapid slurred alternation betWeen two notes.

Triad: the basic form of three-note chord on which all diatonic harmony is based; it consists of a tonic plus the notes that lie a major (or minor) third and a perfect fifth above it.

Trill: the quick repeated alternation betWeen a note and the note a semitone or whole tone above or occasionally below it.

Trio: a work for three instruments; also, the middle, contrasting section of a minuet or a scherzo.

Triplet: a group of three notes to be played in the time normally taken by two.

Triple time: a time with three beats in the bar.

Tritone: the interval of the augmented fourth or diminished fifth, equivalent to three whole tones.

Trope: an addition to or extension of the standard plainchant.

Troppo: part of a tempo marking, meaning "too much"; for example, Allegro ma non troppo means "fast but not too fast."

Troubadours: court poet-musicians of southern France, northern Spain, and northern Italy during the Middle Ages, often of noble family themselves.

Tune: a melody.

Tuning: the raising or loWering of the pitch of an instrument. or its strings, to produce correct intonation.

Turn: a formal ornamentation of the notes around a principal note.

Tutti: a passage for the whole ensemble, or for the orchestra without a soloist in a concerto.

Una corda: the muting (or damping) mechanism on a piano.

Unison: more than one instrument or voice playing the same notes simultaneously.

Upbeat: the beat before a strong beat; also, the conductor's signal immediately before the first entry.

Valves: on brass instruments, the pistons that alter the pitch by changing the length of the tube through which air passes.

Variation: a musical form consisting of a series of progressively developed versions of a complete self-contained theme, either an original one or, as is
common, a preexisting theme. Variation form is a very widespread form in Classical slow movements. as in Beethoven's Seventh Symphony.

Verismo: a style of Italian opera from the last decade of the 19th century in which the setting is contemporary to the composer's own time, the manner is, to some extent, realistic, and the characters are drawn from everyday life. Verismo operas, of which the most famous is I Pagliacci (1892) by Ruggiero Leoncavallo, are often
strongly melodramatic.

Vibrato: a rapid undulation in the pitch of a note, or of two contiguous notes, made by an instrumentalist or a singer to increase the expressiveness of a passage.

Virtuoso: an instrumentalist or singer of great technical skill.

Vivace: a tempo marking meaning "lively."

Vivo: a tempo marking meaning "with life."

Vocalise: a vocal style of singing without words, or occasionally, a work for voice without words.

Voice: one of two or more parts in polyphonic music.

Voluntary: a piece for organ played before, during, or after a church service.

Waltz: a dance in triple time of Austrian and Bavarian origin, popular throughout Europe in the 19th century and afterwards, especially the Viennese waltzes of Johann Strauss, Sr. and Jr. The waltz was often incorporated into symphonic works in the place of a scherzo, and independent concert waltzes Were written by such composers as Schubert, Chopin, Brahms, Richard Strauss, and Ravel.

Whole note: a note equal in time value to two half notes or four quarter notes; in Britain it is called the semibreve.

Whole-tone scale: a six-note mode that consists only of whole-tone steps (for example, C, D, E, F sharp, G sharp, A sharp), instead of the combination
of whole tones and semitones in other modes.

Word painting: in vocal music, a passage that imitates some external element referred to in the words at that point.

Yodeling: a folk-singing style switching from falsetto to normal voice and back again; common in Switzerland and the Tyrol.

Zarzuela: traditional Spanish comic opera, from the 17th to the 19th century, that has spoken dialogue instead of recitative.

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