| Absolute music | Music that is entirely free of extra-musical references or ideas.
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| A cappella | Choral music without instrumental accompaniment.
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| Accent | A stress on a particular beat, note, or chord.
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| Acoustic | Non-electric, as in an instrument that has its own sound box and can be heard without the use of an amplifier.
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| Act | A large section of a play or an opera. An act can be complete in itself, or it might be composed of several scenes.
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| Ad libitum | Music to be played freely or even omitted depending on the performer's wishes.
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| Adagio | A leisurely tempo, literally, "at ease."
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| Aerophones | A general term for wind instruments in world music.
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| Aleatory | Music in which some aspect is decided by performers or someone else other than the composer, guaranteeing that every performance of the work will be different from any other performance. See also "chance music" and "indeterminacy."
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| Allegretto | A moderately fast tempo.
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| Allegro | A fast tempo, faster than Allegretto.
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| Allegro assai | Very fast and cheerful.
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| Allegro con brio | Fast, with vigor and spirit.
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| Allegro moderato | Moderately fast.
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| Allemande | A Renaissance and baroque dance that is fairly fast and in duple or quadruple meter.
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| Alternative rock | Late eighties and early nineties rock music that served as an alternative to the pop music commonly promoted on such places as MTV.
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| Alto | A low, female voice (also called contralto), or an instrument that is lower than a soprano instrument and higher than a tenor instrument.
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| Andante | A moderately slow tempo: literally, at a "walking" pace.
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| Andante con moto | A tempo that is a walking pace, with a sense of motion (con moto).
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| Anthems | Sacred choral compositions.
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| Arch form | A composition that comprises an odd number of sections, usually five, in which the first and last are related, the second and second to last are related (more if there are more than five), and the middle section stands alone, like the head stone of an arch.
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| Aria | A composition for solo voice and instrumental accompaniment.
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| Arioso | A vocal style midway between recitative and aria. Its meter is less flexible than that of recitative, but its form is much simpler and more flexible than that of an aria.
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| Arpeggio | A "broken" chord in which the tones are played one after another in rapid succession rather than simultaneously.
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| Articulation | The type of attack and release or decay of the sound of an individual note or chord.
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| Art rock | Rock music that has some characteristics also common in classical music. Some types of art rock have rock bands playing with orchestral instruments; other types have rock musicians playing large-scale multisectional works, such as those common in classical music.
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| Art song | A musical setting of a poem for solo voice and piano. The German words for song and songs, lied and lieder (plural), became the standard terms for this type of song.
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| Atonal | Lacking a recognizable tonal center or tonic.
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| Avant-garde | Very current, modern, and experimental.
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| Ballad (vocal) | A narrative poem set to music.
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| Ballade (instrumental) | A relatively large, free-form work. The term was apparently used first by Chopin.
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| Ballad opera | A dramatic work with spoken dialogue and popular songs that began in England during the middle 1700s. Ballad operas were the first musicals.
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| Ballett | A simplified version of a madrigal.
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| Baritone | A male voice or a musical instrument with a range below the tenor and above the bass.
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| Bass | The lowest male voice, or musical instruments that are low in pitch.
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| Bass clarinet | A large and low-sounding clarinet.
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| Bass drum | A large, low drum that produces an indefinite pitch.
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| Basso continuo | Continuous bass. A bass part performed by (1) a chordal instrument such as a keyboard instrument or a lute, and (2) a bass instrument such as a cello, viola da gamba, or bassoon that reinforces the bass line.
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| Bassoon | A low-sounding woodwind instrument that uses a mouthpiece with a double reed.
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| Beat | Regularly occurring pulsations that create the basic units of musical time.
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| Bebop | A jazz style that emphasizes small ensembles playing very active and complex music.
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| Bel canto | "Beautiful song." A vocal technique emphasizing beauty and purity of tone and agility in executing various ornamental details.
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| Binary form | A basic musical form consisting of two contrasting sections (AB), both sections often being repeated (AABB).
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| Blue notes | In blues and jazz, any of the notes produced by flatting the third, fifth, or seventh notes of a major scale.
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| Blues | A lamenting, melancholy song characterized by a three-line lyrical pattern in AAB form, a twelve-bar harmonic progression, and the frequent use of "blue notes."
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| Bongos | A pair of attached small drums that produce indefinite pitches.
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| Bridge | (1) In a musical composition, a section that connects two themes. (2) In popular music, the bridge is a section between repetitions of the main melody (AABA form, the "B" is the bridge).
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| British invasion | A term for rock music from Britain that first became enormously popular in the United States in and after 1964. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones led the "invasion."
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| Cadence | A point of rest at the end of a passage, section, or complete work that gives the music a sense of convincing conclusion. Also, a melodic or harmonic progression that gives the feeling of conclusion.
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| Cadenza | A section of music, usually in a concerto, played in an improvisatory style by a solo performer without orchestral accompaniment.
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| Call and response | A song style (found in many West African cultures and African American folk music) in which phrases sung by a leader alternate with responding phrases sung by a chorus.
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| Canon | A contrapuntal technique in which a melody in one part is strictly imitated by another voice or voices.
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| Cantata | A choral work, usually on a sacred subject and frequently built upon a chorale tune, combining aria, recitative, chorus, and instrumental accompaniment.
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| Castrato | A male singer who was castrated before puberty so that his voice would remain high. Castratos often sang hero roles in baroque operas and were hired by the Catholic Church, which did not want women to sing in the church services.
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| Celesta | A keyboard percussion instrument that strikes tuned steel bars and looks something like a small upright piano.
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| Cello | A large and fairly low-sounding member of the family of bowed string instruments. Because of its size, it rests on an end pin that sits on the floor. The instrument is held upright between the player's knees. Also called violoncello.
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| Chamber music | Music written for a small group of instruments, with one player to a part.
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| Chance music | See "aleatory."
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| Chanson | French for "song." A type of Renaissance secular vocal music.
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| Character pieces | Works portraying a single mood, emotion, or idea.
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| Chimes | A set of tuned metal tubes suspended vertically in a frame, and played by being hit with mallets. Their sound resembles that of church bells. Also called tubular bells.
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| Choir | A vocal ensemble consisting of several voice parts with four or five or more singers in each section. Also, a section of the orchestra comprising certain types of instruments, such as a brass choir.
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| Chorale | A German hymn, often used as a unifying theme for a cantata.
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| Chorale prelude | An organ composition based on a German hymn.
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| Chordophones | A general term for stringed instruments in world music.
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| Chord progression | A particularly distinctive series of harmonies, or chords.
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| Chorus, choir | A vocal ensemble consisting of several voice parts with four or five or more singers in each section. Also, a section of the orchestra comprising certain types of instruments, such as brass choir.
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| Chromatic | Designating melodic movement by half steps.
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| Chromatic scale | The scale containing all twelve tones within the interval of an octave.
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| Church modes | A system of eight scales forming the tonal foundation for Gregorian chant and for polyphony up to the baroque era.
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| Clavichord | A stringed keyboard instrument in common use during the Renaissance and baroque periods. It is softer than a harpsichord because its strings are hit with a tangent to sound instead of being plucked.
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| Clarinet | A high-sounding woodwind instrument that uses a mouthpiece with a single reed.
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| Clavier | A generic term for a keyboard instrument.
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| Coda | The concluding section of a musical work or individual movement, often leading to a final climax and coupled with an increase in tempo.
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| Codetta | The closing theme of the exposition in a sonata-form movement.
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| Collective improvisation | Several musicians improvising at the same time, creating a complex, polyphonic texture, often done in early New Orleans jazz.
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| Concertino | The solo instrument group in a concerto grosso.
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| Concert overture | A one-movement self-contained orchestral concert piece, often in sonata form.
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| Concerto | A work for one or more solo instruments and orchestra.
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| Concerto grosso | A multimovement work for instruments in which a solo group called the concertino and a full ensemble called the ripieno are pitted against each other.
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| Conductor | A person who directs a musical ensemble and who is responsible for all aspects of the performance of the ensemble.
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| Congas | Long, single-headed Afro-Cuban drums that produce indefinite pitches.
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| Consonance | A quality of an interval, chord, or harmony that imparts a sense of stability, repose, or finality.
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| Consort | A small group of Renaissance instruments. For example, a "recorder" consort is made up of recorders of various sizes, and a "viol" consort is made up of viols of various sizes. A "mixed" consort includes instruments of more than one instrumental type or family.
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| Continuo | See "basso continuo."
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| Contrabassoon | A very low-sounding woodwind instrument that uses a mouthpiece with a double reed.
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| Contrast | Something different from what came before.
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| Cool jazz | A restrained, controlled jazz style that developed during the late 1940s.
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| Council of Trent | A series of meetings of leaders of the Roman Catholic Church (1545–1563) to discuss church reforms following the Reformation. The decisions generated the Counter-Reformation (Catholic-Reformation).
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| Counterpoint | A musical texture consisting of two or more equal and independent melodic lines sounding simultaneously. See also "polyphony."
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| Counter-Reformation | See "Council of Trent."
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| Countersubject (of a fugue) | In a fugue, new melodic material stated in counterpoint with the subject.
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| Counter tenor | A male singer who develops his high vocal range (falsetto range) to be able to sing parts otherwise appropriate for a castrato or a woman.
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| Country rock | A rock style that began in the late 1960s that added country-styled vocals and instruments to what was otherwise a rock band.
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| Courante | A Renaissance and baroque dance with a moderate tempo and triple meter.
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| Cover recording | A recording made subsequent to the original recording of a particular song.
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| Crescendo | Music gradually gets louder.
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| Cue sheet | Musical directions used by early film directors to tell musicians when to play what music in order to fit music to the actions in the film.
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| Cyclic form | A unifying technique of long musical works in which the same thematic material recurs in succeeding movements.
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| Cymbals | Circular metal plates that can be hit together or can be suspended and hit with a beater. They produce an indefinite pitch.
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| Da capo aria | An aria in ABA form; the original melody of A may be treated in a virtuosic fashion in the second A section.
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| Decrescendo | Gradually softer (same as diminuendo).
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| Development | In a general sense, the elaboration of musical material through various procedures. Also, the second section of a movement in sonata form.
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| Dies irae | "Day of wrath." A chant melody from the Middle Ages that represents death in music.
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| Diminuendo | Gradually softer (same as decrescendo).
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| Dissonance | A quality of an interval, chord, or harmony that gives a sense of tension and movement.
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| Dixieland | A jazz style based on the original "hot" jazz from New Orleans.
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| Dodecaphony | See "twelve-tone."
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| Double bass | The largest and lowest-voiced member of the bowed string family of instruments. Also called string bass. Because of its size, the player sits on a stool or stands.
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| Downbeat | The first, and often stressed, beat of a metric pattern of beats.
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| Drone | A long-held note or notes over or under which other music is played.
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| Duet | A piece of music for two players or singers.
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| Duple meter | A meter with two beats in each measure.
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| Dynamics | Relative degrees of loudness or softness.
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| Electronic | Music produced by such means as magnetic tape, synthesizer, or computer.
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| Embellished | A musical line that has been decorated by added notes or ornaments.
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| Embellishment | The practice of decorating musical lines by adding notes or ornaments.
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| English horn | A woodwind instrument with a pitch range between the oboe and the bassoon, and that uses a mouthpiece with a double reed.
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| Episode | In a fugue, a transitional passage based on material derived from the subject or based on new material, leading to a new statement of the subject.
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| Ethnomusicology | The study of non-Western (or "world") music.
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| Étude | A study piece concentrating on a single technical problem.
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| Exposition | The first section in sonata form, containing the statement of the principal themes. Also, the first section in a fugue, in which the principal theme or subject is presented imitatively.
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| Expressionism | An artistic school of the early twentieth century that attempted to represent the psychological and emotional experience of modern humanity.
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| Fantasia | An improvised piece characterized by virtuosity in composition and performance; popular during the Renaissance and baroque eras.
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| Fantasy overture | A single-movement orchestral piece based on a literary story, also called a concert overture.
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| Fermata | (U) A notational symbol indicating that a note is to be sounded longer than its normal time value, the exact length being left to the discretion of the performer.
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| Field hollers | Singing by African American field workers that influenced the development of early country blues styles.
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| Figured bass | A shorthand method of notating an accompaniment part. Numbers are placed under the bass notes to indicate the intervals to be sounded above the bass notes. See also "basso continuo."
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| Flamenco | A style of music, dance, and singing that originated with the Gypsies in southern Spain.
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| Flute | A high-sounding woodwind instrument that is played by blowing across a mouthpiece on the side of the instrument. Modern flutes are usually made of metal, but early ones were made of wood.
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| Folk-rock | Folk singing accompanied by amplified instruments and drums as they are generally used in rock music.
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| Form | The aspect of music involving the overall structuring and organization of music.
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| Forte (f) | A loud dynamic level.
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| Fortissimo (ff) | A very loud dynamic level.
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| Free jazz | A post-bebop jazz style that freely changed rhythmic patterns and disposed of repeating melodies in favor of free-flowing, improvised playing.
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| French horn | A medium-ranged, mellow-sounding brass instrument.
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| French overture | A popular type of introductory movement in baroque music that begins with a stately section using dotted rhythms (very long followed by very short notes) followed by a faster fugal section. Sometimes the dotted rhythms return at the end.
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| Front line | In jazz bands, the instruments that carry the melodic material.
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| Fuging tunes | Psalm or hymn melodies that are sung as canons or written to contain imitation, popular in Britain and the U.S. during the 1700s.
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| Fugue | A composition that uses imitative polyphony and is organized around the returns of a theme or subject and a countermelody (countersubject) that often appears with it. Fugues can have more than one subject, but a single one is more common.
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| Funk | A polyrhythmic form of rock music in which rhythms are much more important than the melodies sung or played with them.
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| Fusion | A style of jazz developed in the late 1960s that has been influenced by rock music through the inclusion of amplified instruments, short riffs (repeating melodies), and even beat subdivisions.
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| Gamelan | An Indonesian musical ensemble usually consisting of idiophones, metallophones, and sets of knobbed gongs. Membranophones, chordophones, aerophones, and voices can also be included.
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| Gangsta rap | Rap singing that stresses gang violence.
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| Gavotte | A baroque dance in duple meter danced to a moderate tempo.
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| Gigue | A Renaissance and baroque dance with a fast tempo and, usually, a sextuple meter.
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| Glissando | A rapid sliding up or down the scale.
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| Glitter rock | A theatrical style of 1970s rock music that stressed glamorous outfits and androgynous dress by male performers.
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| Glockenspiel | A percussion instrument with two rows of steel bars, each of which produces a definite pitch when struck by a mallet.
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| Gong | Large Asian metal percussion instrument that produces an indefinite pitch.
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| Grand opera | A type of Romantic opera that concentrated on the spectacular elements of the production.
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| Grave | A slow and solemn tempo.
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| Gregorian chant | A body of music to which the medieval Roman Catholic liturgy was sung, consisting of monophonic, single-line melodies sung without instrumental accompaniment.
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| Griots | African singers who memorized their tribe's history through their songs.
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| Ground bass | A bass line that constantly repeats a short melody.
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| Grunge rock | A punk-related style of rock music of the 1980s and 1990s based in Seattle, Washington.
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| Guitar | A plucked stringed instrument with a fingerboard that exists in both acoustic and electric versions.
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| Hard bop | A late bebop jazz style popular during the middle 1950s.
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| Hard rock | A blues-based rock style popular in the 1970s and after that uses repeating riff patterns in the bass and fuzztone guitar timbres but that is not as powerful as heavy metal.
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| Harmony | A composite sound made up of two or more notes of different pitch that sound simultaneously.
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| Harp | A plucked string instrument with strings stretched vertically in a triangular frame.
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| Harpsichord | A plucked stringed keyboard instrument in common use during the Renaissance and baroque periods. The sound of plucked strings is much crisper than that of other keyboard instruments that produce their tones by tangents or hammers hitting the strings.
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| Heavy metal | A blues-based rock style popular in the 1970s and after that uses repeating riff patterns in the bass, fuzztone guitar timbres, and stage sets and performer images that stress power or horror.
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| Heterophony | Performance of a single melody by two or more individuals who add their own rhythmic or melodic modifications.
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| Homophony | Music in which a single melody predominates, while the other voices or instruments provide harmonic accompaniment.
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| Hymn | Religious songs that usually praise God.
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| Idée fixe | A single, recurring motive; e.g., in Berlioz's Symphony fantastique, a musical idea representing the hero's beloved that recurs throughout the piece.
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| Idiophones | A general term for solid percussion instruments in world music that are struck together, shaken, scraped, or rubbed to create their sound.
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| Imitation | The repetition, in close succession and usually at a different pitch level, of a melody by another voice or voices within a contrapuntal texture.
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| Impressionism | A late nineteenth-century artistic movement that sought to capture the visual impression rather than the literal reality of a subject. Also, in music, a style belonging primarily to Claude Debussy, characterized by an emphasis on mood and atmosphere, sensuous tone colors, elegance, and beauty of sound.
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| Improvisation | The practice of "making up" music and performing it on the spot without first having written it down.
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| Incidental music | Music written to accompany a play.
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| Indeterminacy, aleatory, or chance music | Music in which the composer sets out to remove the decision-making process from his or her own control. Chance operations, such as throwing dice, are employed to obtain a random series of musical events.
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| Industrial rock | A 1980s and after rock style that expresses anger at an industrial society. It is usually very loud and includes synthesized sounds and distorted vocals.
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| Interval | The distance in pitch between any two tones.
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| Jazz | Improvisatory music based on African American musical traditions. Jazz developed into many styles through the twentieth century and beyond and has come to be widely popular all over the world.
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| Jazz rock | Music played by rock bands that include horn sections that play in a swing jazz style.
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| Jongleurs | Medieval street musicians who sang, played instruments, and sometimes acted in plays.
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| Key | Tonality; the relationship of tones to a central tone, the tonic.
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| Key signature | The group of sharps or flats placed at the beginning of each staff to indicate which notes are to be raised or lowered a half step. The particular combination of sharps or flats indicates the "key" of a composition.
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| Largo | A very slow and broad tempo.
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| Legato | "Linked, tied," indicating a smooth, even style of performance, with each note connected to the next.
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| Leitmotif | "Leading motive." A musical motive representing a particular character, object, idea, or emotional state. Used especially in Wagner's operas.
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| Lento | A slow tempo.
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| Libretto | The text of an opera or similar extended dramatic musical work.
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| Lied (Lieder, plural) | German for "song." See "art song."
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| Lining out | A way of leading Protestant hymn singing by having a leader, often the minister, sing or speak a line, which is then repeated by the congregation.
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| Liturgy | The text of the Roman Catholic Mass (reenactment of the Last Supper) service, also used by some Protestant religions.
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| Lute | A stringed instrument with a fingerboard and bowl-shaped body popular during the Renaissance and baroque periods in Europe.
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| Lyric opera | A type of French Romantic opera that relied on beautiful melodies for its effect.
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| Madrigal | A polyphonic vocal piece set to a short poem; it originated during the Renaissance.
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| Major scale | A scale having a pattern of whole and half steps, with the half steps falling between the third and fourth and between the seventh and eighth notes of the scale.
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| Marimba | A percussion instrument with tuned wooden bars that produce a hollow sound when struck by mallets and resonators under each bar.
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| Mass | The most solemn service of the Roman Catholic Church. The parts of the Mass most frequently set to music are the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Benedictus, and Agnus Dei.
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| Mazurka | In Romantic music, a small piano piece based on the Polish dance form. Prominent in the works of Chopin.
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| Measured rhythm | Regulated rhythm in which precise time values are related to each other.
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| Measures | Units of time organization consisting of a fixed number of beats. Measures are separated from one another by vertical bar lines on the staff.
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| Melisma | Several notes sung to a single syllable of text.
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| Melismatic | Designating a melodic phrase in which one syllable of text is spread over several notes.
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| Melody | A basic musical element consisting of a series of pitches of particular duration that sound one after another.
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| Membranophones | A general term for drums in world music.
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| Mensural notation | A system of notating the length of time a given note is to be held.
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| Metallophones | An idiophone with a row of tuned metal bars that are struck with mallets.
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| Meter | The organization of rhythmic pulses or beats into equal, recurring groups.
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| Mezzo forte (mf) | A moderately loud dynamic level.
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| Mezzo piano (mf) | A moderately soft dynamic level.
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| Mezzo soprano | A female voice between the ranges of soprano and alto.
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| Microtones | Intervals smaller than a half step.
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| Minimalism | A late-twentieth-century movement that seeks to return music to its simplest, most basic elements. It is characterized by a very steady beat and gradually changing repeating figures.
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| Minnesingers | Medieval German poet-singers.
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| Minor scale | A scale having a pattern of whole and half steps, with the half steps falling between the second and third and between the sixth and seventh tones of the scale.
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| Minstrels | Medieval wandering street musicians and entertainers.
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| Minuet and trio | A form employed in the third movement of many classical symphonies, cast in a stately triple meter and ternary form (ABA).
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| Moderato | A moderate tempo.
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| Modified-strophic form | A song structure that varies the regularity of the repeated melodies of strophic form by having some verses sung to a new melody.
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| Modulation | Gradual or rapid change from one key to another within a composition.
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| Monody | A type of accompanied solo song that evolved in Italy around 1600 in reaction to the complex polyphonic style of the late Renaissance. Its principal characteristics are (1) a recitative-like vocal line and (2) an arioso with basso continuo accompaniment.
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| Monophony | A musical texture consisting of a single melodic line without accompanying material, as in Gregorian chant.
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| Motet | A polyphonic choral work set to a sacred text.
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| Motive | A short melodic or rhythmic theme that reappears frequently throughout a work or section of a work as a unifying device.
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| Movement | Independent section of a longer composition.
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| MTV | Cable Music Television.
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| Musicals | Dramas that are told through a series of songs, usually with spoken dialogue between the songs.
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| Music drama | Richard Wagner's term for his operas.
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| Musique concrète | "Concrete music." A musical style originating in France about 1948; its technique consists of recording natural or "concrete" sounds, altering the sounds by various electronic means, and then combining them into organized pieces.
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| Mute | A device used to soften or change the tone quality of an instrument. Mutes can be clamped to the bridge of bowed string instruments. Mutes for brass instruments are cone shaped and fit into the instrument's bell.
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| Naturalism | A literary movement of nineteenth-century France that realistically depicted the lives of working-class people.
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| Neoclassicism | In music of the early twentieth century, the philosophy that musical composition should be approached with objectivity and restraint. Neoclassical composers were attracted to the textures and forms of the baroque and classical periods.
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| New Orleans jazz | The first jazz to be recorded and, therefore, the root of later jazz styles.
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| Nonet | Chamber music for nine players.
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| Note | A symbol used to notate a pitch and its duration. "Note" is also used to identify a pitch or a tone.
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| Oboe | A high-sounding woodwind instrument that uses a mouthpiece with a double reed.
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| Octave | An interval between two pitches in which the higher pitch vibrates at twice the frequency of the lower. When sounded simultaneously, the two pitches sound very much alike.
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| Octet | Chamber music for eight players.
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| Opera | A drama set to music and made up of vocal pieces such as recitatives, arias, duets, trios, and ensembles with orchestral accompaniment, and orchestral overtures and interludes. Scenery, stage action, and costuming are employed.
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| Opera buffa | Italian comic opera.
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| Opera comique | A type of French Romantic opera distinguished by its use of spoken dialogue rather than sung recitative. Though called "comique," many operas in this form had serious plots.
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| Opera seria | Italian opera with a serious (i.e., noncomic) subject.
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| Operetta | Short, small-scale operatic works popular during the 17th and 18th centuries.
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| Opus | "Work." The term is usually followed by a number that identifies the particular work in the catalogue of music by a composer.
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| Oratorio | An extended choral work made up of recitatives, arias, and choruses, without costuming, stage action, or scenery.
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| Orchestra | An ensemble of instruments consisting mainly of strings, but also usually including woodwinds, brass, and percussion. The size and particular instrumentation of an orchestra depends on the needs of the composition to be performed.
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| Orchestration | The arrangement of a musical composition for performance by an orchestra. Also, utilization of orchestral instruments for expressive and structural purposes.
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| Ordinary (of the Mass) | The sections of the Mass that stay the same throughout the church year. They are the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei.
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| Organ | Originally a wind instrument in which sets of pipes are controlled by a keyboard that sends air from a blower into the pipes. Electronic organs that can imitate the sound of pipe organs are also common in the twenty-first century.
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| Organum | The earliest type of medieval polyphonic music.
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| Overture | The orchestral introduction to a musical dramatic work.
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| Passion | A musical setting of the story of the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
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| Pedal board | The organ keyboard for bass lines played by the organist's feet.
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| Pentatonic scale | A five-tone scale. Various pentatonic scales are commonly employed in non-Western music.
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| Phrase | A portion of a melody that can sound complete or incomplete. An incomplete-sounding phrase makes the listener want to hear another phrase that completes the melody.
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| Phrasing | Musical units consisting of several measures.
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| Pianissimo (pp) | A very soft dynamic level.
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| Piano | A stringed instrument played by a keyboard that causes hammers to hit the strings.
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| Piano (p) | A soft dynamic level.
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| Pianoforte | An eighteenth- or early-nineteenth-century piano.
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| Piano, four hands | Two players playing one piano at the same time.
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| Piano quartet | Usually, a work for one piano and strings. Can be four pianos, but that is rare.
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| Piano quintet | Usually, a work for one piano and strings. Can be for five pianos, but that is rare.
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| Piano trio | Usually, a work for one piano with violin and cello. Can be for three pianos, but that is rare.
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| Piccolo | A small, high-pitched flute.
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| Pitch | The highness or lowness of a musical tone, determined by the frequency of vibration of the sounding body.
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| Pitch range | The span from low to high pitches that an instrument or a voice can produce.
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| Pizzicato | A performance technique in which stringed instruments, such as the violin, are plucked with the fingers instead of bowed.
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| Plainchant | See "Gregorian chant."
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| Polonaise | In Romantic music, a small piano piece based on the Polish dance form.
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| Polyphony | Many voices. A texture combining two or more independent melodies heard simultaneously; generally synonymous with counterpoint.
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| Polyrhythms | Two or more contrasting and independent rhythms used at the same time.
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| Polytonality | The simultaneous use of two or more different keys.
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| Prelude | A free-form piece that may introduce another piece or stand alone.
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| Première | The first or most eminent performance of a work.
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| Prepared piano | A piano with the sound altered by the insertion of items such as bolts, screws, pencils, cloth, and even paper on or between the strings.
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| Prestissimo | A tempo that is as fast as possible.
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| Presto | A very fast tempo.
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| Primitivism | In music, the use of frenzied, irregular rhythms and percussive effects to evoke a feeling of primitive power, as in Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring.
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| Program music | Instrumental music associated with a nonmusical idea, this idea often being stated in the title or in an explanatory program note.
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| Program symphony | A symphony with a story line or other type of program.
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| Proper (of the Mass) | The sections of the Catholic Mass that change with the church year. The proper is generally not set to music because each text is used so seldom.
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| Protestantism | Religions that "protested" against the Church of Rome (later called the Roman Catholic Church) during the Renaissance and broke away from it in what was called the Reformation.
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| Psalms | The sacred poems from the book of Psalms in the Bible.
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| Punk rock | An angry and rebellious rock style that began in New York and Detroit during the late 1960s and moved on to London and then the rest of the United States; characterized by a fast, throbbing pulse and monotone shouted vocals.
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| Quadruple meter | A meter in which each measure has four beats.
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| Quadruple stops | Bowed stringed instruments played to sound all four strings together.
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| Quartet | Chamber music for four players.
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| Quintet | Chamber music for five players.
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| Quintuple meter | A meter in which each measure has five beats.
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| Raga | An ancient melodic pattern employed in Indian music.
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| Ragtime | A composed music of the 1890s, usually for piano.
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| Rap | A style of contemporary popular music that employs a rhythmically spoken text delivered over a funk or related musical background.
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| Realizations | Keyboard or lute parts that have been taken from figured bass lines to play basso continuo parts in baroque music.
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| Recapitulation | The third section of sonata form, which restates the themes from the exposition.
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| Recitative | A form of "singing speech" in which the rhythm is dictated by the natural inflection of the words.
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| Recorders | A wooden end-blown flute-type instrument common during from the Middle Ages through the baroque.
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| Repetition | Music is played again, or repeated.
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| Refrain | Text and/or music that is returned to or repeated within a larger piece of music.
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| Registration (on an organ) | The combination of stops or registers chosen by an organist for the performance of a work.
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| Rhythm | The element of music that encompasses all aspects of musical time.
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| Rhythm and blues | A form of African American popular music that blends elements of jazz and the blues.
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| Rhythm section | In jazz or rock bands, the instruments that supply the harmonic and rhythmic accompaniment.
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| Ripieno | The full ensemble in a concerto grosso.
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| Ritornello | "Return." A characteristic form for the first and sometimes the last movement of the baroque concerto grosso. The thematic material given to the ripieno returns between the passages played by the soloists.
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| Rockabilly | A 1950s rock style that combined elements of "hillbilly" country music with rock music. It is characterized by a strong back beat (accenting of beats two and four in a four-beat pattern), a slapping bass, and an energetic tempo.
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| Rondo | An extended alternating form often employed in the fourth movement of classical symphonies; generally spirited and playful in character.
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| Round | A contrapuntal technique in which a melody in one part is strictly imitated by another voice or voices. See also "canon."
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| Rubato | "Robbed." A term indicating that a performer may treat the tempo with a certain amount of freedom, shortening the duration of some beats and correspondingly lengthening others.
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| Sarabande | A Renaissance and baroque dance that is fairly slow and in triple meter, often using dotted rhythms (long, short, long, short note values).
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| SATB chorus | A four-part group of singers that include sopranos, altos, tenors, and basses. The chorus can include women on the higher two parts and men on the lower ones, or it can be all men or men with boys singing the high parts.
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| Saxophone | A woodwind instrument that uses a mouthpiece with a single reed and is made of brass. Saxophones come in many sizes and pitch ranges.
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| Scat singing | A jazz vocal style in which the singer uses nonsense syllables in the place of words.
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| Scene | A subsection of an act in a play or opera.
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| Scherzo | Literally, "joke." A sprightly, humorous instrumental piece, swift in tempo; developed by Beethoven to replace the minuet.
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| Secular | Nonreligious
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| Septet | Chamber music for seven players.
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| Sequence | The repetition of a motive or melody at different pitch levels.
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| Serialism | See "twelve-tone."
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| Sextet | Chamber music for six players.
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| Sextuple meter | A meter in which each measure has six beats.
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| Side drum | A drum with two heads, the bottom of which has snares or metal wires that can be tightened to rattle against that head when the upper head is hit. Also called a "snare drum."
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| Sight sing | Sing by looking at musical notation instead of having memorized the music in advance.
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| Sinfonia | A short instrumental introduction to a baroque choral work.
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| Singspiel | German comic opera that employed spoken dialogue.
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| Solo concerto | A multimovement baroque work that differs from concerto grosso in that the concertino consists of only one instrument.
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| Solo sonata | A sonata for one instrument with continuo accompaniment.
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| Sonata | An instrumental work consisting of three or four contrasting movements.
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| Sonata da camera | "Chamber sonata." A baroque instrumental work, essentially a dance suite.
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| Sonata da chiesa | "Church sonata." A baroque instrumental work in four movements (slow-fast-slow-fast).
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| Sonata form | A musical form encompassing one movement of a composition and consisting of three sections—exposition, development, and recapitulation—the last often followed by a coda.
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| Sonata rondo | The form of a movement that shares characteristics of both the sonata and the rondo forms. It usually has an A section that returns as it would in a rondo, but it also has a development section such as that found in a movement in sonata form.
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| Song cycle | A series of art songs that tell a story.
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| Soprano | A high, usually female, voice. Also, the high instrument in an instrumental family.
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| Soul music | A 1960s term for music based on African American gospel singing styles.
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| Southern rock | A 1970s style that stressed the blues, along with elements of country music and texts about pride in the American South.
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| Sprechstimme | Literally, "speech voice." A vocal technique in which a pitch is half sung, half spoken. Developed by Arnold Schoenberg.
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| Staccato | "Detached." Indicating a style of performance in which each note is played in a short, crisp manner.
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| Staff | A graph-like structure consisting of five lines and four spaces. Each line and each space represents a different pitch.
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| Stops (on an organ) | Rows of organ pipes that are activated by the player pulling the knob that opens them and then playing the keyboard.
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| String quartet | A chamber ensemble consisting of a first and a second violin, a viola, and a cello; also, the form which is a sonata for these instruments.
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| Strophic | Designating a song in which all verses of text are sung to the same music.
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| Swing | A big-band jazz style particularly popular for dance music during the 1930s through the middle 1940s.
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| Subject (of a fugue) | In a fugue, the principal theme, introduced first in a single voice and then imitated in other voices, returning frequently during the course of the composition.
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| Suite | A series of instrumental movements, each based on a particular dance rhythm.
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| Syllabic | Designating a musical phrase in which each syllable of text is given one note.
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| Symbolism | A subtle French poetic style from the late nineteenth century that stressed the sound and color of the words and suggested rather than clearly outlined the meaning or story behind the text.
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| Symphonic poem | See "tone poem."
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| Symphony | A sonata for orchestra.
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| Syncopation | A deliberate disturbance of the normal metrical pulse, produced by shifting the accent from a normally strong beat to a weak beat.
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| Synthesizer | An electronic instrument that can duplicate almost any sound and can be used to create entirely new sounds.
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| Tala | One of the ancient rhythmic patterns employed in Indian music.
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| Tambourine | A single-headed drum with metal discs loosely set in the frame. The instrument is hand-held and shaken or struck to produce an indefinite pitch.
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| Techno | A highly electronic rock style that developed out of disco and hip-hop, popular during the 1980s and after.
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| Te Deum | A text that praises God.
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| Tempo | The speed at which a piece of music moves.
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| Tenor | A high, male voice, or an instrument that is lower than an alto and higher than a bass instrument.
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| Ternary form | A musical form that consists of three sections, ABA, in which the final section (A) is a repetition of the first section (A), and the middle section (B) contrasts with A.
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| Texture | The relationship between the melodic and harmonic aspects of a piece of music. The principal classifications in most Western music are monophony, homophony, and polyphony.
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| Theme | A musical idea that serves as a starting point for development of a composition or section of a composition.
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| Theme and variations form | A form based on a single theme and its subsequent repetition, with each new statement varied in some way from the original.
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| Theme transformation | The practice of varying a single theme or melody through the different sections of a piece; this procedure was used especially in Romantic tone poems.
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| Through-composed form | A term applied to songs in which new music is used for each successive verse.
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| Timbre | The characteristic tone quality of a musical sound as produced by a specific instrument or voice, or by a combination of instruments or voices.
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| Timpani | Tuned drums each of which has a single head stretched across a kettle-like body. The pitch of each drum is controlled by the player. Also called "kettledrums."
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| Toccata | A baroque keyboard piece full of scale passages, rapid runs and trills, and massive chords.
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| Tom-tom | Cylindrical-shaped drums, usually found in sets of assorted sizes that produce indefinite pitches.
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| Tonality | The relationship of tones to a central tone called the tonic. See also "key."
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| Tone cluster | A chord produced by playing a large group of adjacent notes on the piano with the flat of the hand. The resulting sound is dense and indistinct.
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| Tone color, timbre | The characteristic quality, or "color," of a musical sound as produced by a specific instrument or voice, or by a combination of instruments.
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| Tone poem, also symphonic poem | A single-movement programmatic work, relatively long and very free in form, usually involving a dramatic plot or literary idea.
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| Tone row | See "twelve-tone."
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| Tonic | The tonal center. The tone that acts as a musical home base, or point of rest and finality, in a piece of music.
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| Transcription | An arrangement of a composition for a medium other than that for which it was originally written.
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| Tremolo | Fast repeated notes.
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| Triad | A three-note chord in which each note is the interval of a third from the next closest note.
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| Triangle | A triangular-shaped metal percussion instrument that is struck by a metal bar to produce an indefinite pitch.
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| Trill | A musical ornament in which two adjacent notes quickly alternate between one another.
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| Trio | Chamber music for three players.
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| Trio sonata | A sonata for two instruments with continuo accompaniment.
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| Triple meter | A meter in which each measure has three beats.
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| Triplet | Three notes fitted into the time in which only two of those notes would normally fit.
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| Trombone | A brass instrument that is played with a slide and produces a medium- to low-pitch range.
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| Troubadours | Medieval poet/singers from southern France. They were often people of noble rank who would not perform in public but would sing to family members and friends.
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| Trouvères | Medieval poet/singers from northern France. Like troubadours, they were often people of noble rank who would not perform in public but would sing to family members and friends.
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| Trumpet | A brass instrument with a high-pitch range.
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| Tuba | A large brass instrument with a low-pitch range.
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| Tutti | "All," or the entire ensemble.
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| Twelve-tone, also serialism and dodecaphony | A system of composition developed by Arnold Schoenberg that consists of arranging the twelve pitches of the chromatic scale in a particular order (known as a tone row, series, or set).
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| Unison | Two notes that are the same pitch, or two or more instruments or voices producing the same pitches at the same time.
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| Upbeat | One or more unaccented beats that precede the accented downbeat. Also called "pickup."
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| Variation | A modified version of something previously performed in which some elements of the original remain.
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| Verismo | "Realism." An Italian operatic point of view favoring realistic subjects taken from everyday, often lower-class, life.
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| Vernacular | The everyday spoken language.
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| Vibrato | A slight fluctuation in pitch that increases the "warmth" of a tone.
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| Viola | A bowed string instrument slightly larger and lower-sounding than the violin.
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| Violin | A high-sounding bowed string instrument, the neck of which is held by the player's left hand, and the tail rests beneath the player's chin.
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| Viols | Fretted, bowed string instruments commonly used during the Renaissance and Baroque periods.
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| Virtuoso | A performer with complete technical control of the playing of his or her musical instrument.
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| Vitaphone | A recording system invented during the mid-1920s to allow previously recorded music to play simultaneously with a film.
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| Vivace | A fast and "vivacious" tempo.
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| Volume (dynamics) | Relative degrees of loudness or softness.
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| Wind ensemble | An orchestral type of concert band made up primarily of woodwind, brass, and percussion instruments. Also called "symphonic band" or "concert band."
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| Word painting | Representation of the literal meaning of a text through musical means.
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| Work songs | Rhythmic songs sung by African American workers while they worked. This type of singing was influential on the development of country blues styles.
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| Xylophone | A pitched percussion instrument with tuned wooden bars that produce a hollow sound when struck by mallets.
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