(See related pages)
A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | R | S | T | U | V | W | Z
A
Absolute music: Music created for its own sake without extramusical connotation. Examples include such genres as the sonata, symphony, concerto, and string quartet as well as preludes, fugues, etudes, and other works whose titles point to only form or function. Also see program music.
Accent: A stress or emphasis on a particular tone.
Acculturation: The blending of cultures. The process by which one culture assimilates or adapts to the characteristics and practices of another.
Acoustics: The science of sounds and the physical basis of music.
Aerophone: A wind instrument. The sound-producing agent is air set in vibration either within the body of the instrument or outside the instrument. (See the appendix, p. 336.)
Aesthetics: The study of the emotional and expressive aspects of music.
Airplay: The number of times a popular song is broadcast on radio. Airplay can generate record sales and can contribute to making a song a hit.
Americanist music: Concert art music written in a style immediately recognizable as American. Ives, Copland, and other American nationalistic composers frequently incorporated familiar patriotic, folk, and religious tunes, as well as elements of jazz and popular music, into their classical compositions. Also see nationalistic music.
Aria: A lyrical song found in operas, cantatas, and oratorios. It may comment on the text presented in a recitative that precedes it. Also see recitative.
Arrangement: A setting (rescoring) of a piece of music for a genre or an ensemble for which it was not originally intended, such as a pop song arranged for big band or an orchestral piece arranged for wind ensemble.
Art music: Music that is formal, sophisticated, urban, and appreciated by an educated elite. It is music derived from a cultivated tradition based largely on notated music. A certain amount of musical training is needed in order to create and perform art music.
Art song: Also see miniature.
Assimilation: The process whereby immigrant groups gradually adopt the characteristics of the host society. Also the process by which a primitive culture is modified by contact with an advanced culture.
Atonality: The avoidance of tonal centers and tonal relationships in music. It results in highly chromatic, dissonant music without traditional, functional chord progressions, modulations, and tuneful melodies. Dissonances stand alone and are not resolved to consonances as in traditional music.
Avant-garde composers: Experimental composers who are in the forefront of musical developments and are leaders in the development of new and unconventional musical styles. They experiment with untried techniques, forms, timbres, or concepts in devising new approaches to composition, new aesthetic notions, or a new language for expressing music.
B
Ballads: Songs with a story having a beginning, middle, and end. The music is strophic and may have many stanzas. A ballad singer is a storyteller.
Ballet: Stage production featuring formal, stylized dance performances with a story or a unified theme. It has, at times, been part of opera but also developed popularity as an independent genre in the nineteenth century.
Bar: See meter.
Basso continuo: Also see continuo.
Bebop: A combo jazz style that emerged in the 1940s. It is characterized by high energy, virtuoso solo improvisation, complex rhythmic patterns, and more novel and chromatic harmonies than were used in previous styles. Also see combo.
Big band jazz: Music for a large jazz ensemble, usually from 12 to 20 musicians. It is notated music that may be original compositions but more frequently are arrangements of preexisting songs. Arrangements are scored for the brass section (trumpets and trombones), the sax section, and the rhythm section. Also see chart (sense 2).
Binary: See form.
Black gospel : See gospel music.
Bluegrass: A style of country music that combines a return to the rural, folk traditions of hillbilly music and the urban, commercial music that is part of our national, popular culture. Typical bluegrass instrumentation includes the acoustic guitar, fiddle, mandolin, bass fiddle, and banjo—no electric instruments.
Blues: A style of music that has exerted considerable influence on jazz, rhythm and blues, soul, rock, and other forms of recent American popular music. The word blues can refer to a three-line poetic stanza, a 12-bar musical structure with a specific chord progression, a scale having the flatted blues notes, or a melancholy, soulful feeling.
Boogie woogie: A piano jazz style popular in the late 1920s and 1930s. It is characterized by a left-hand ostinato figure underlying a rhythmically free and highly syncopated right-hand melodic texture. Most boogie-woogie pieces are based on the standard, 12-bar blues chord progression.
Bossa nova: A popular music of Brazilian origin that is rhythmically related to the samba but with complex harmonies and improvised jazzlike passages.
Break: A stop of the music in a jazz piece during which a soloist improvises, usually for two bars. A break occurs at the end of a phrase, providing transition to the next phrase.
Bridge: The “b” phrase of an a a b a form—that is, the contrasting phrase in a song form or in the chorus of a verse-chorus form. Used primarily in traditional popular songs and jazz—the standards.
Broadside: A song written on one large piece of paper with or without music notation. These songs, which flourished during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, described current events and functioned somewhat like newpapers in communities and regions. Originally written down, many broadsides were eventually passed on by word of mouth, thus becoming part of the oral tradition.
C
Cadence: A point of repose at the ending of a musical phrase.
Cadenza: An unaccompanied passage in free rhythm in which the soloist displays his or her virtuosity. Also see concerto.
Cantata: An extended solo or choral work that flourished during the Baroque era. It was intended for the German Lutheran worship service, although some cantatas have secular texts. Choral cantatas, particularly those by J. S. Bach, include harmonized chorales, polyphonic choruses, arias, recitatives, solo ensembles, and instrumental accompaniment.
Cantus firmus: A term meaning “fixed melody” that denotes a preexisting melody, often a Gregorian chant, which a composer from the Renaissance used as the basis of a polyphonic composition.
Chamber music: Works for solo instruments performing together in small ensembles, such as a string quartet, a woodwind quintet, or a piano trio. Each part is played on one instrument (no doubling). In the Classic era, the string quartet (first and second violins, viola, and cello) became the standard chamber music genre. The quartet typically was a four-movement work with a fast-slow-dance-fast pattern, although many exceptions to this pattern exist.
Chance music: A compositional technique whereby a composer does not control all the details of a composition, allowing the performer to make creative choices through improvisation or other means of selecting sounds within the structure of the composition. John Cage was a major influence in developing chance music.
Chant: A simple song found in many cultures and traditions. It is a monophonic song without accompaniment, of relatively short duration, of limited melodic range, and with a fluid pulse reflecting the rhythm of the text. Gregorian chants, sung in Latin, are used in the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church. They date from the end of the sixth century G.E., when Pope Gregory I is believed to have ordered the collection and classification of chants to be used throughout the far-flung Roman Church.
Character piece: See miniature.
Chart: (1) A weekly record of sales of songs in a variety of categories, such as rock, jazz, rhythm and blues, and country. A chart is used to measure a song’s popularity. The most widely used charts are produced by Billboard. (2) The written or printed arrangement of a popular song or a jazz tune for an ensemble, such as a rock group, studio orchestra, or a jazz band.
Chorale: Originally a hymn tune of the German Lutheran Church sung by the congregation in unison and in German (rather than Latin). It was an outgrowth of the Reformation and the rise of Protestantism. Chorale tunes, especially during the Baroque era, were used as the basis for other compositions: They were harmonized in four-part settings for singing by choirs and congregations; they were used as the basis of sacred polyphonic compositions for trained choirs; and they formed the basis of organ pieces known as chorale preludes.
Chord: A meaningful (as opposed to random) combination of three or more tones. The primary chords in western European harmonic practice are the tonic (I chord), the subdominant (IV chord), and the dominant (V chord).
Chordophone: A stringed instrument. The sound-producing agent is a stretched string that is plucked or bowed. (See the appendix, p. 335.)
Chromatic: Proceeding by half steps, using sharps or flats. Notes outside a standard major or minor scale. A melody is chromatic if many of its pitches are not derived from the standard major or minor scale.
Church modes: Scales consisting of seven tones with a variety of patterns different than major and minor scales. Commonly used in medieval and Renaissance church music. Also see scale.
Combo: A small jazz group, usually from three to six musicians.
Comping: The syncopated chords and melodic figures played by a jazz pianist while accompanying a solo improvisation, adding rhythmic punctuation and vitality.
Concerto: A three-movement work for solo instrument and orchestra that emerged during the Baroque period and has been a common instrumental genre ever since. The concerto grosso was an important genre of this period that featured a small group of soloists with orchestra. The arrangement of the movements is fast-slow-fast. Many concertos since the Baroque era include a cadenza. Also see cadenza.
Conjunct: See melody.
Consonance: A relatively stable, comfortable sound that seems to be at rest in contrast with a dissonant, restless sound. Also see dissonance.
Consort: A group of similar instruments—such as soprano, alto, tenor, and bass recorders—that provide a homogeneous sound.
Context: Social, economic, and political circumstances prevalent in a society that may influence the nature of a creative work.
Continuo: A technique for providing a harmonic basis in the new homophonic music of the Baroque period. It was a style of accompaniment for a singer or one or two solo instruments. The basso continuo, or bass line, provided the underlying structure for the harmonies, and it usually was played on a cello. The chords were not completely notated and were improvised on a keyboard instrument, usually a harpsichord. The performer determined what chords to play from the bass line and the figured bass. The figures were numbers written below certain notes of the bass line as a musical shorthand to indicate the harmonies.
Contour: The shape of a melody, whether smooth (made up primarily of small intervals) or jagged (characterized by wide skips).
Contrast: A departure from that which has been presented. A phrase or section that is different from what preceded it. To achieve contrast, the music has different tonality, rhythm, melody, tempo, dynamic level, articulation, or mood.
Cool jazz: An outgrowth of and reaction to bebop. Cool jazz arrangers and performers strived to maintain the musical qualities of bebop while making their music more accessible to their audience. They adopted many elements from classical music, including the use of orchestral instruments not commonly used in jazz, such as the flute, oboe, and French horn. Also see bebop.
Counterpo: The compositional technique of creating polyphonic texture. The word is frequently used as a synonym for polyphony. Imitative counterpoint is the creation of two or more independent melodic lines, with each entrance beginning with the same melodic shape at the same or a different pitch level.
Culture: A group of people, a society, characterized by the totality of its arts, beliefs, customs, institutions, and all other products of work and thought.
D
Dance suite: A multimovement work for keyboard or orchestra. It includes contrasting, stylized dances popular in the Baroque period. The principal dances are the allemande, courante, sarabande, and gigue.
Diatonic: In Western music the eight tones of a standard major or minor scale. A melody is diatonic if most of its pitches are derived from these eight tones.
Disjunct: See melody.
Dissonance: An active, unstable sound. Also see consonance.
Dixieland: The first popular jazz style. It was characterized by group improvisation (clarinet, trumpet, and trombone) supported by a steady ragtime rhythm.
Dominant: A chord built on the fifth degree of the major or minor scale.
Downbeats: The first beat of each measure in Western notated music.
Drone: An instrument whose primary purpose is to play a low sustained pitch, perhaps a constantly repeated pitch that produces a trance-like quality. In Hindustani music of India, the pitch is achieved by playing the open strings of the tambura, helping to establish the main notes of a raga.
Duple meter: A rhythmic pattern in which alternate beats are stressed (strong-weak-strong-weak). Also see meter.
Duration: The length of time a pitch sounds. Also see rhythm.
Dynamics: The level of loudness. Also see loudness.
E
Electrophone: An electronic instrument. The tone is produced, modified, or amplified by electronic circuits. (See the appendix, p. 338)
Embellishment: See ornamentation.
Ethnic: Pertaining to people who are not part of a mainstream population but are recognized as a group on the basis of certain distinctive characteristics, such as religion, language, ancestry, culture, or national origin.
Ethnomusicologist: A scholar of music in culture—of world music; one who studies ethnomusicology; one who pursues research on the music of a culture, writes about it, and teaches others about it.
Ethnomusicology: A study of music in culture, considering the context of music in a society, music as it relates to human behavior, and the general attitudes of a people about their music.
F
Fasola system: A system in which the initial letters of four syllables—Ia, sol, Ia, and mi—are placed on the staff, each representing a different pitch. The fasola system was used in nineteenth-century America to aid in the immediate recognition of scale degrees and to help people read musical notation. Also see notation.
Fermata: To hold a tone or chord longer than is indicated by its note value.
Fiddle tune: A song from oral tradition used to accompany country dances. The song has a shape and character more appropriate for playing on the fiddle than for singing. Fiddle tunes are frequently played by string bands, bluegrass groups, or solo fiddlers.
Field recording: A scholarly or professional recording of folk or traditional music made in the environment where the performers typically make music, rather than in a professional recording studio.
Figured bass: See continuo.
Fill Melodic: movement and embellishment in jazz while the main melody sustains a tone, such as at the end of a pattern or a phrase.
Folk music: Usually of unknown origin and enjoyed by the general population, it is informal, aesthetically and musically unsophisticated music that communicates directly and obviously to large groups within a culture or a subculture, such as a nation or an ethnic minority. It is usually preserved and transmitted by memory (oral tradition). Also known as traditional music.
Follies: See vaudeville.
Form: The shape or structure of a piece of music. Form is determined primarily by patterns of contrast and repetition. A two-part form is binary (a b)— no repetition. A three-part form is ternary (aba)— the first theme is followed by a contrasting section, after which the first phrase or section is repeated. A 32-bar song form is a aba—four phrases with the third phrase in contrast to the first two, after which the first phrase is again repeated. Also see minuet and trio; rondo; sonata form; theme and variations; 12-bar blues; verse-chorus.
Forward energy: The tendency in some music to have momentum—that is, to move from one point to the next, such as from the beginning of a phrase to its conclusion.
Free jazz: A style that is almost pure improvisation without adherence to predetermined chord structures, meter, or melodic motives. Musicians interact musically with each other, build on what others in the group are doing, and are free to create according to their musical instincts.
Frequency: The rate of speed of sound waves.
Fuging tune: A four-part hymn with a short middle fugal section in which each voice enters at a different time, one after the other. Also see fugue.
Fugu: An imitative polyphonic composition that originated as a keyboard genre during the Baroque period. It is, however, a compositional technique used during and since the Baroque in both choral and instrumental music. A fugue is built on a single theme whose entrances appear imitatively in several voices (melodic lines at different pitch levels), usually three or four, and then are developed in intricate contrapuntal interplay. Also see counterpoint.
Funk: A distinctive style using polyrhythms, syncopated bass lines, and short vocal phrases.
Fusion: A synthesis of elements of jazz and rock. A style of modern jazz.
G
Gagaku: An instrumental music genre of the imperial courts of ancient Japan. It is the oldest documented orchestral music in the world.
: Gamelan : An Indonesian orchestra, particularly from the islands of Bali and Java, composed of various-sized drums, metal xylophones, and gongs. Gamelan music has a long history and has influenced composers of Western classical music as well as jazz and rock performers.
Genre: A category of music, such as symphony, hymn, ballad, mass, march, and opera.
Glissando: Producing a sliding contour on an instrument or voice.
Global perspective: A worldwide point of view, including awareness of and respect for the lifestyles, traditions, values, and arts of nations and cultures.
Gospel music: Protestant religious music usually associated more with rural, folk roots than with urban, European traditions. American gospel music has evolved in such a way that distinct stylistic differences exist between the gospel music of white and black Americans. We now distinguish between black gospel and white gospel styles. White gospel includes camp meeting songs, hymns and songs for revival services, and music from the pentecostal tradition.
Gregorian chant: See chant.
H
Hard bop: The bebop style of the 1950s and 1960s. Hard bop retained the intensity, complexity, harmonic imagination, and speed of the bebop of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Counted among this second generation of bebop musicians are John. Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Clifford Brown, Ornette Coleman, and Cannonball Adderly. Some musicians and scholars use the word hard bop to describe any of the jazz styles that followed bebop, including the funky, gospel jazz of Horace Silver, Art Blakey, and Herbie Hancock, and the cool jazz of Miles Davis, Gerry Mulligan, and the Modern Jazz Quartet. None of these musicians, however, played in only one style.
: Harmony: Pitches heard simultaneously in ways that produce chords and chord progressions.
Head arrangements: Arrangements that are not notated but are worked out in rehearsal and, eventually, played by memory in traditional jazz style.
Hillbilly: A style of popular song derived from the rural, southern folk tradition and from sentimental songs of the late nineteenth century. It represents a merging of rural and urban influences and a regional, ethnic music made popular nationally and successful commercially.
Homophony: See texture.
Homorhythmic: Multiple horizontal lines moving with the same rhythm in all parts.
Hymnody: A body or a collection of hymns of a time, place, or church.
I
Idiophone: A percussion instrument that is struck, shaken, plucked, or rubbed. (See the appendix, p. 337.)
Imitative counterpoint: See counterpoint. Immigrant A citizen of a foreign nation who emigrates to another nation and establishes residence, finds employment, becomes part of the culture of that economy, and brings to the host nation part of his or her past culture, whether food, music, dance, language, or religion. The United States is, to a large extent, a nation of immigrants or the descendants of immigrants.
Impressionism: A style of music, exemplified in the works of Debussy, that avoids explicit statement and literal description but instead emphasizes suggestion and atmosphere, evokes moods, and conveys impressions of images and feelings.
Improvisation: The process of simultaneously composing, performing, and listening to music.
Indigenous: Native to a culture; the original people in a region.
Instab: See tension.
Intensity: The energy that generates the amplitude or height of sound waves.
Interval: The difference in pitch between two musical tones. Also see pitch.
J
Jam session: An informal, usually “after hours” gathering in which jazz musicans come together to improvise and enjoy themselves making music. Because the jamming musicians are not obligated to an employer or to a paying audience, they have the freedom to explore and share their musical ideas.
K
Kabuki: A Japanese theater style with music that is considered a genre of traditional Japanese music. Important components of Kabuki music are the narrative gidayu songs with shamisen accompaniment, and the nagauta ensemble of drums, a flute, several shamisens, and singers. The nagauta became an important concert genre, independent of Kabuki theater.
Key: See tonality.
L
Lead: The soloist in a jazz arrangement or performance.
Lead sheet: A notated melody with chord symbols, usually of a popular song or jazz tune, on which a musical performance is based. A means of structuring a performance in lieu of notating all parts for the entire piece.
Libretto: The words to an opera or other musical stage production. The person who writes the story is the librettist.
Lied: (plural: lieder) See miniature.
Lining out: A call-and-response style of hymn singing whereby a minister or song leader sings one line at a time and the congregation sings it back, usually adding embellishments and often at a much slower tempo. Lining out is derived from rural, folk traditions and was brought to the United States from the British Isles.
Loudness: The degree of intensity or energy producing a sound. The loudness or softness of a tone.
Lyrics: The words to a popular song. The person who writes the lyrics is a lyricist.
M
Madrigal: A Renaissance secular contrapuntal work for several voices that originated in Italy and later flourished in England.
Mainstream: Having the prevailing characteristics of a society.
Mariachi: A popular Mexican folk music ensemble that includes a harp, violins, various sizes of guitars, and sometimes trumpets.
Mass: (1) The Roman Catholic worship service. A High Mass is composed of the Proper and the Ordinary. The Proper varies from Sunday to Sunday throughout the church year. The Ordinary remains the same and consists of the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Benedictus, and A gnus Dei. Much of the great choral literature in Western music is polyphonic settings of various sections of the Ordinary. (2) A musical setting for the Ordinary.
: Measure: See meter.
Melisma: A setting of a text to music in which one syllable of text is given a series of musical notes. Also see syllabic setting.
Melody: A succession of musical tones usually of varying pitch and rhythm that has identifiable shape and meaning. A melody may be characterized by its smooth, conjunct shape that moves mostly stepwise or by its disjunct, angular shape resulting from frequent use of wide intervals (skips). It may comprise a wide or a narrow range of pitches.
Membranophone: A percussion instrument whose sound is produced by the vibration of a stretched membrane, either skin or plastic. (See the appendix, p. 337).
Mestizo: Natives of Mexico and South America haying mixed Indian and Spanish blood.
Meter: The organization of rhythm into a pattern of strong and weak beats. Each pattern constitutes a bar (a measure in notated music). Each strong beat is the downbeat of a bar. Groups of patterns can compose a phrase (such as an eight-bar phrase). Music is nonmetric if no rhythmic pattern can be perceived. Also see duple meter; mixed meter; triple meter.
MIDI: (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) MIDI is a means for providing electronic communication between synthesizers and computers or other synthesizers. It enables sounds to be stored in memory until needed.
Miniature: A small-scale composition, such as the art song and character piece, that became popular in the Romantic era, perhaps as an alternative to the massive size and sounds of the symphony orchestra. The art song is a solo song with piano accompaniment. Commonly known by the German word, lied, (plural, lieder) it is exemplified by the songs of Schubert that he set to German poetry. The character piece is a one-movement work for solo piano. It is exemplified by the works of Chopin, such as his impromptus, nocturnes, mazurkas, etudes, polonaises, and preludes.
Minimalism: A style of composition whose creator attempts to achieve the greatest effect from the least amount of material. It is typically based on many repetitions of simple patterns, creating slow, subtle changes in rhythm, chord movement, or other musical elements. Phillip Glass, a contemporary American composer, has been considered the leading exponent of minimalist music.
Minstrel show : A variety show, popular in the nineteenth century, that included songs, dances, and comical skits. Lively, syncopated minstrel songs formed the nucleus of the minstrel show. A product of the merging of rural American folk traditions with urban, composed music, the minstrel song can be considered the first distinctively American musical genre. Also see vaudeville.
Minuet and trio: A stately dance movement in triple meter in aba form. It is often the third movement of a symphony or string quartet. A scherzo and trio form is similar but has a faster tempo and increased rhythmic energy; its function is the same as that of the minuet and trio.
Mixed meter: Combinations of duple and triple meter (shifting strong beats). Also see duple meter; triple meter.
Mode: A scale, key, or tonality.
Modulation: To change from one key to another, frequently by harmonic progression. Also see tonality.
Monophony: See texture.
Motet: A sacred, polyphonic composition with a non-liturgical text. It flourished during the Renaissance and was sung without accompaniment (a cappella) in Latin by trained choirs, typically in four or five parts. Polychoral motets were written for multiple choirs or choirs divided into two or three distinct groups performing singly (in alternation) and jointly in the full ensemble.
Motive: A short melodic pattern or phrase that is used for further development and sometimes as the basis of a section of music or a complete composition.
Motown sound: A style of black popular music derived more from black gospel than from blues or jazz traditions. It featured a studio-controlled sound (Motown Records) designed to make black music widely popular and profitable.
Musique concrete: The compositional technique of manipulating tape-recorded sounds of existing natural resources. The sounds of recorded instruments, voices, or other sound sources are altered by changing tape speed or direction and by cutting and splicing the tape. These altered sounds, perhaps combined with original sounds, serve as the sound source for an electronic music composition. Edgard Varèse pioneered musique concrete, which predated electronically generated or synthesized sounds.
Mute: A device placed on an instrument to alter its tone, usually to soften it; most common in instruments of the violin family (placed on the bridge) and in trumpets (inserted in the bell).
N
Nagauta: An ensemble that provides the basic accompaniment on stage in Kabuki theater, a highly stylized Japanese form of music drama. The ensemble includes perhaps a dozen musicians, including three drums, a flute, several shamisen players, and singers.
Nashville sound: The sound of hillbilly music produced by sophisticated recording techniques and arrangements controlled by the recording studios to ensure the popularity and commercial success of their songs. It minimizes the country twang of the singers, reduces the emphasis on fiddle and steel guitar, and includes background singers.
Nationalistic music: Concert art music that reflects national or regional rather than universal characteristics. The music may describe something derived from the folk or popular traditions of a nation; its history, tales, or legends; its cultural characteristics; or a place that is important to the nation or region. Also see Americanist music.
Neoclassicism: A style of modern composition that is based on established forms and structures of the past and particularly on the aesthetics and musical values of the Classic era.
Nonmetric: See meter.
Notation: The use of written or printed symbols to represent musical sounds. Notation makes possible the preservation and dissemination of music by means of writing.
Note: bending See tone bending.
O
Octave: The musical interval, spanning eight different pitches, between the first and last tones of a diatonic scale.
Opera: A dramatic stage production that involves soloists who sing arias and recitatives, solo ensembles, choruses, dancing, dramatic action, costumes, staging, and orchestral accompaniment. It began at the beginning of the Baroque era and evolved into a genre that continues in popularity throughout the Western world, particularly in Italy.
Oral tradition: The passing down of music by word of mouth from one generation to the next.
Oratorio: An extended, sacred choral work intended for concert performance. It emerged during the Baroque era and has been a common genre since. It is of large proportions, lengthy (many lasting up to three hours), and dramatic in nature, sometimes including the character of a narrator as a soloist. Polyphonic choruses, arias, recitatives, solo ensembles, and orchestral accompaniment are common components of oratorios.
Ornamentation: An embellishment of a melody; adding notes for decoration according to established and commonly accepted performance practices; found in western European classical music, music of many nations and cultures, and all forms of popular music and jazz.
Ostinato: A rhythmic or melodic pattern repeated many times.
Overture: A festive opening to an opera or other musical stage production. It sets the tone, sometimes identifies principal themes and characters, and prepares an audience for the opening scene. Overtures have become popular concert pieces, sometimes achieving popularity and subsequent performances where the stage production did not. Because of this popularity, many composers have written overtures as independent concert pieces. In the Baroque era, the French overture was a popular instrumental genre, and in the Romantic period, the concert overture assumed even greater popularity.
P
Patronage: A common source of income for composers. In the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, the church or the courts provided employment; in the nineteenth century, often a wealthy patron provided employment; and in the twentieth century, the university provided employment for many composers.
Patterns: Groupings of notes having an identifiable character that, when used repeatedly, help to give form and style to a musical work.
Pentatonic scale: A five-tone scale that serves as the basis of much music throughout the world.
Perceptive listening: Listening to music attentively in an attempt to understand the musical processes and structure that give the music its characteristic qualities.
Phrase: A section of music with a recognizable beginning and ending. A complete musical thought.
Piracy: Copying music illegally, whether using cassettes, CDs, DVDs, or downloading.
Pitch: The highness or lowness of a tone produced by a single frequency. A melody consists of sounds perceived as registers: high, middle, or low—or soprano, alto, tenor, or bass. A melody has a range of pitches: the lowest pitch to the highest. Also see melody. Polychoral motets See motet.
Polyphony: See texture.
Program music: Music that depicts images, moods, stories, characters, and other nonmusical associations. It includes all music with text and many instrumental forms common during the Romantic period, including the symphonic poem and some symphonies that were created with programmatic associations. Also see absolute music.
Psalm singing: Congregational singing of rhymed, metrical versions of the Psalms set to hymn tunes. Psalm singing was prevalent in early America. The hymnbooks in which the settings were published, with words only or with hymn tunes, were called psalters. The singing of fuging tunes was a type of Psalm singing popular throughout the eighteenth century. Also see fuging tune.
Psalter: See Psalm singing.
Pulse: The recurring beat of the music.
R
Raga: The basic means by which the melodic or pitch aspects of the classical music of India are determined. Ragas convey not only melodic shape but mood and aesthetic character, and they provide the basis for extended improvisations. The moods they represent usually are related to temporal elements, such as seasons of the year or times of day (morning or evening ragas).
Ragtime: A style of music first popular in the first two decades of the twentieth century. It is characterized by a strongly pulsated, nonsyncopated bass line that supports a highly syncopated right-hand melody. Ragtime remains popular today.
Range: Also see pitch.
Rap: A style of black popular music that, in the 1980s, emerged from the inner city to become mainstream— an ethnic style becoming nationally popular. The rhythm is highly repetitive; the poetry is recited in a highly rhythmic manner. Electronic keyboards, sampled sounds and rhythms, drum machines, and prerecorded tracks are common in rap records.
Rasa: An aesthetic basis that underlies much of the art music of India.
Recitative: A vocal solo in opera, cantatas, and oratorios that declaims the text in a sung-speech manner, in free rhythm with minimal accompaniment, so that all listeners can understand the words. It frequently introduces an aria. Also see aria.
Reggae: A synthesis of rock, rhythm and blues, and Latin American and African rhythms. Reggae originated in the poor sections of Jamaican cities and has become an internationally popular music genre. Many of the songs reflect black nationalism and social reform and are rooted in Rastafarianism and its spiritual leader, Haile Selassie, late emperor of Ethiopia. The original superstar of reggae is Bob Marley.
Register: See pitch.
Repetition: A return to previously stated material. A pattern, phrase, or section that is presented again either exactly or modified but retaining basic characteristics.
Resolution: See tension.
Revues: See vaudeville.
Rhythm: The organization of time in music, creating patterns of long and short durations of pitches to achieve desired degrees of rhythmic energy—the rhythmic impulse.
Rhythm and blues: (R&B) A style of black popular music that originally featured a boogie-woogie-style piano accompaniment in blues form, a blues singer, and electric guitar. Later, the term R&B referred to any blues-based black popular music. Today, urban R&B is not necessarily blues based.
Riff Short: , syncopated patterns usually written for specific groups of instruments in a big band jazz arrangement. Riffs provide punctuated background material while another section or soloist is playing the melody or improvising. Occasionally an entire chorus consists of riffs without a recognizable melody.
Rock and roll: An underground, antiestablishment, and protest music that emerged in the 1950s and evolved into a phenomenally successful commercial product. It was derived primarily from a merging of black and white traditions (rhythm and blues and hillbilly) and appealed mostly to teenagers for both listening and dancing. Influenced by the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, and other British groups, rock and roll (now known as rock) assumed a new character that featured advanced electronic technology, sophisticated arrangements, and extreme visual impact and onstage behavior. Rock transformed American popular music and gave rise to the formed study of popular culture.
Rockabilly: The form of popular music in the 1950s that resulted from the influence of hillbilly singers on the new rock and roll music.
Rondo: A musical form consisting of two or more contrasting theme areas, each followed by a return to the opening theme. No common rondo structure may be depicted as abaca and abacaba. The rondo is commonly used as the spirited final movement of Classic-era sonatas, symphonies, and string quartets.
Rubato: A flexible pulse—not restricted by a steady beat. Contributes to a highly expressive style.
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Salon music: A type of piano music popular throughOut the Western Hemisphere during the nineteenth century. Reflecting European practices, salon music was short, simple pieces published as sheet music. Often it was created in the style of marches or dances, such as the tango, habanera, conga, polka, bolero, or waltz.
Salsa: A popular music of Latin American origin that has absorbed characteristics of rhythm and blues, jazz, and rock.
Sampler: By means of MIDI technology, samples of sounds can be recorded and stored in memory to be recalled and performed. The sampled sound is expanded for performance to include the entire range of the keyboard.
Scale: An ascending or descending series of tones organized according to a specified pattern of intervals.
Scat: singing Improvised jazz singing using a variety of vocal sounds rather than lyrics. Its purpose is to improvise a vocal solo line in the manner of a lead instrumentalist.
Score: A printed version of a piece of music. Often refers to the version used by a conductor that depicts the music to be played by all performers—the full score.
Sections: See big band jazz.
Sequence: A melodic pattern repeated several times either a step lower or a step higher than the preceding statement.
Serial composition: (12-tone technique) A set of non-repeated pitches—a tone row—used as the basis for organizing the vertical and horizontal arrangement of pitches throughout a composition. A system created and refined by Schoenberg, rows originally consisted of all 12 tones of the chromatic scale. Serialism was created as an alternative to the major-minor tonal system, and it was a means for organizing the chaotic chromaticism prevalent in late nineteenth-century German Romantic music and early twentieth-century atonal music. An extension of the 12-tone technique includes the serialization of note values, timbres, or dynamics. Music in which all these aspects are serialized, including pitch, is known as totally controlled music.
Shape-note system: An aid in learning to read music popular in nineteenth-century America. Each pitch of a hymn tune was represented on the staff by a note whose head had a distinctive shape. Each shape represented a specific pitch of the scale.
Sidemen: In a jazz combo, a leader typically put the group together (hired the musicians); the hired musicians were known as sidemen.
Singing schools: Schools established to introduce and teach singing from musical notation. Their primary purpose was to improve the state of hymn singing in America—that is, to elevate the rural, folk-based hymn derived from oral tradition to the urban, European, notation-based hymn sung in a refined style.
Sonata: In the Baroque period, a multimovement work written for a solo instrument and continuo, also the trio sonata written for two solo instruments and continuo. Since the Classic era, a multimovement work for piano or for a solo instrument with piano. The typical order of movements is fast, slow, dance, fast.
Sonata form: A structure that composers in the Classic era and since have commonly used for the first movement of a sonata, symphony, concerto, or string quartet (or other similar chamber music work). It includes three main sections—the exposition, development, and recapitulation—and often begins with an introduction and ends with a coda. The exposition has two theme areas in contrasting keys. The development is based on material from the exposition. The recapitulation is a return to previous material stated in the exposition.
Song form: A 32-bar aaba chorus (verse). Also see form.
Soul: Any popular music performed by blacks for black audiences. Soul combines elements of R&B, jazz, and black gospel.
Sound source: Any elastic substance capable of generating sound waves that can be perceived as music, such as any conventional band or orchestral instrument, any instrument identified in the appendix, or any material in the environment used to generate sounds to be incorporated in a piece of music. This material may include pots and pans; taped sounds of water, fire, birds, or whales; or things that people become aware of in a classroom that can be used in an original piece of music.
Spiritual: A religious song usually of a deeply emotional character that was developed especially among African Americans in the southern United States.
Stability: See tension.
Standard: A song that has sustained popularity through decades and generations, transcending changing styles and tastes.
Stride: Originally a solo piano style growing out of ragtime. Its predominant characteristic is the strongly pulsated “boom-chick,” a left-hand rhythmic and harmonic foundation over which, in the right hand, is usually a highly syncopated dazzling display of improvisation with fast runs and arpeggios. Fats Wailer is well known for his stride style. Later pianists such as Art Tatum were rooted in the stride style but incorporated a more advanced harmonic vocabulary and, with both hands, covered the entire range of the piano with their dazzling displays.
Strophic: A musical structure in which the same music is used for each stanza of a ballad, song, or hymn.
Structure: The way in which parts are arranged to form a whole. The form of a piece of music.
Style: External characteristics of music developed through the creative process that distinguish one piece from another, characteristics that are determined by the composer’s use of musical elements, formal design, and emotional expression.
Subdominant: A chord built on the fourth degree of a major or minor scale.
Swing: A manner of performance that, in part, separates jazz from other styles of music. It is a manner that generates heightened energy and rhythmic vitality.
Syllabic setting: A setting of a text to music in which one syllable of text is given one note of music. Also see melisma.
Symphonic poem: A programmatic, one-movement work for symphony orchestra with contrasting moods. It became popular during the Romantic period.
Symphony: A multimovement work for symphony orchestra. The typical order of rnoveinents is fast-slow-dance-fast. This pattern was standard in the Classic period but less adhered to in the Romantic and Modern eras.
Syncopation: The occurrence of accents in unexpected places, usually on weak beats or on weak parts of beats.
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12-bar blues: A musical phrase of 12 bars, usually divided into three 4-bar segments using a specific set of chord progressions. Some blues melodies have 8 or 16 bars. Also see meter.
12-tone technique: See serial composition. Tala The basic means for organizing the durational aspects—the rhythm and meter—of the classical music of India. They involve cycles of counts with regular or irregular subdivisions. For example, a 16-count cycle may be subdivided 4 1 4 1 4 1 4, or a 14-count cycle may be subdivided 5 1 2 1 3 1 4.
Tempo: The rate of speed at which music is performed.
Tension: A perception of instability in traditional Western music that suggests the need for release of tension or resolution. It is often marked by increased harmonic or rhythmic complexity, dissonance, modulation away from the tonic, or a rise in pitch or dynamic level. A lessening of complexity or loudness, a lowering of pitch, a decrease in complexity, and a return to consonance or tonic can create stability, resolution, or release of tension.
Ternary: See form.
Tex-Mex : A style of music originating in southern Texas.
Texture: (1) The density of sound. The number of simultaneously sounding lines. Music can have a full, thick texture or a thin, transparent texture. (2) The manner in which the horizontal pitch sequences are organized. A single-line melody with no accompaniment or other horizontal or vertical sounds has a monophonic texture. Two or more independent, simultaneously sounding melodies having equal emphasis have a polyphonic texture. A melody that is dominant with other lines supporting the main melody has a homophonic texture.
Theme: A short melody or phrase that has a sense of completeness—a complete musical thought; a theme usually ends with a cadence. A theme often is the unifying musical idea of a piece or section of a piece.
Theme and variations: An instrumental form in which a stated theme is followed by a series of variations on that theme.
Timbre: The characteristic quality of the sound of a voice or instrument.
Tin Pan Alley: A period of popular song writing that began in the 1890s and whose most productive years were in the 1920s and 1930s. Many of America’s most beloved songs—the standards—are part of the Tin Pan Alley tradition. The phrase Tin Pan Alley also referred to the part of the music industry devoted to the sale of popular songs. The name comes from the nickname given to the street in New York City where nearly every publisher of popular music was located in the early part of the twentieth century.
Tonality: The gravitational pull of music toward a tonal center. The key of the music—for example, C major or C minor.
Tone bending: Altering a pitch slightly according to established performance practice, such as in pop or jazz music.
Tone clusters: Three or more adjacent tones sounding simultaneously.
Tone quality: See timbre.
Tonic: The first and most important note of the major or minor scale. The tonal center of a piece of music. A chord built on the first note of a scale.
Totally controlled music: See serial composition (12-tone technique).
Traditional music: See folk music.
Tremolo: Rapid repetition of a tone, often produced in string instruments by quick up-and-down strokes of the bow. In Listening Guide 37, p. 166, the tremolo is achieved on the koto by plucking the strings.
Trio sonata: See sonata.
Triple meter: A rhythmic pattern in which the first of every three beats is stressed (strong-weak-weak-strong-weak-weak). Also see meter.
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Unity: Music that has unity does not ramble and is cohesive, and there is an exact or a modified repetition of themes and patterns.
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Vamp: A short, repeated pattern used as an introduction to a song or as a transition between verses or phrases—often a pattern of repeating one or two chords.
Variety: Music that has variety departs from previously stated themes and creates points of contrast.
Vaudeville: A variety show consisting of unrelated acts by singers, dancers, comedians, jugglers, child performers, trained animals, and actors. It replaced the minstrel show as America’s most popular stage show. New York City was the center of vaudeville; the most sophisticated shows were produced on Broadway. These shows were variously known as revues, vanities, scandals, and follies, of which the most famous were the Ziegfeld Follies produced from 1907 through 1932. Also see minstrel shows.
Venue: A place to perform, such as an auditorium, nightclub, bandstand, arena, or church.
Vernacular: The most familiar and most used language of the people of a nation, region, or a cultural group. Vernacular music is the common musical language of a people.
Verse-chorus: A form in which there are different texts to each verse and a return to the chorus after each verse.
Vibrato: An oscillating variation of pitch that enhances a tone, providing richness and warmth particularly to sustained pitches or to a slow, lyrical melody.
Vocables: Words in Native American songs having no meaning and intended only as vocal sounds.
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Walking bass: A jazz bass line played on each beat, frequently with some embellishment and emphasizing the main tones of the underlying chord structure.
Western swing: A style of country music that became popular as the popularity of hillbilly music moved westward. It features a larger instrumental ensemble that includes saxes, brass, and a standard jazz rhythm section.
White gospel: See gospel music.
Word painting: A technique common in the Baroque period of conveying in the music the moods, emotions, images, and meanings suggested by a text.
Z
Zydeco: The popular dance and entertainment music of the black Americans living in southwestern Louisiana. Their songs, often sung in a French dialect, combine Cajun music and the blues. Common instruments include the button accordion and rub board (washboard) in addition to electric guitar, electric bass, and drums. Zydeco has become nationally popular from appearances in the 1970s and 1980s by zydeco artists at folk and blues festivals nationally. The original superstar of zydeco was Clifton Chenier.
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