| 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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| 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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| adagio | A leisurely tempo, literally, "at ease."
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| additive meter | Metric patterns that are created by several smaller beat groupings, all added together. For example, a 10-beat meter that is accented as 3 + 3 + 2 + 2.
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| ad libitum | Music to be played freely or even omitted depending on the performer's wishes.
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| aerophones | A general term for wind instruments in world music.
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| aleatoric music | 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 music.
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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 con brio | Fast, with vigor and spirit.
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| allegro moderato | Moderately fast.
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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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| 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 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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| 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. Also called bop.
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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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| 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 on 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 | Music in which the composer sets out to remove the decision-making process from his or her control. See also aleatoric music and indeterminacy 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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| 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 a brass choir.
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| chromatic scale | The scale containing all twelve tones within the interval of an octave.
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| clarinet | A high-sounding woodwind instrument that uses a mouthpiece with a single reed.
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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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| 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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| coloratura | A high female soprano voice capable of singing fast, florid ornaments.
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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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| concert overture | A one-movement self-contained orchestral concert piece, often in sonata form.
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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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| 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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| 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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| 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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| 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 | Music produced by such means as magnetic tape, synthesizer, or computer.
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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, 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, musics.
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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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| fermata | 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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| 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 flutes were made of wood.
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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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| 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 just one is more common.
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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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| glissando | A rapid sliding up or down the scale.
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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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| 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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| guitar | A plucked stringed instrument with a fingerboard that exists in both acoustic and electric versions.
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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 stringed 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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| 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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| idée fixe | A single, recurring motive; for example, 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 musics 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 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 | Music in which the composer sets out to remove the decision-making process from his or her control. Chance operations, such as throwing dice, are employed to obtain a random series of musical events. See also aleatoric music and chance music.
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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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| 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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| 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 song | A song sung with accompaniment played on a lute.
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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 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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| 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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| 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 (mp) | 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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| 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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| 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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| 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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| nocturne | A "night piece" that is gentle and reflective.
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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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| 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 seria | Italian opera with a serious (i.e., noncomic) subject.
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| operetta | Short, small-scale operatic works popular during the nineteenth century.
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| opus | "Work." The term is usually followed by a number that identifies the particular work in the catalog 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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| 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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| 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 keys.
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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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| quadruple meter | A meter in which each measure has four beats.
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| quintuple meter | A meter in which each measure has five beats.
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| raga | An ancient melodic pattern still employed in Indian music.
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| ragtime | A composed music of the 1890s, usually for piano.
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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 from the Middle Ages through the baroque.
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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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| repetition | Music is played again, or repeated.
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| rhythm | The element of music that encompasses all aspects of musical time.
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| rhythm section | In jazz or rock bands, the instruments that supply the harmonic and rhythmic accompaniment.
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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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| 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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| 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 two, 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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| septuple meter | A meter in which each measure has seven beats.
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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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| sextuple meter | A meter in which each measure has six beats.
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| side (snare) drum | A drum with two heads, the bottom head having snares or metal wires that can be tightened to rattle against it when the upper head is hit.
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| sight sing | Sing by looking at musical notation instead of having memorized the music in advance.
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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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| sonata | An instrumental work consisting of three or four contrasting movements.
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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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| Sprechstimme | Literally, "speech voice." A vocal technique in which a pitch is half sung, half spoken. Developed by 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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| 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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| 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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| swing | A big-band jazz style particularly popular for dance music during the 1930s through the middle 1940s.
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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 still 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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| 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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| thematic 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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| 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 | 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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| 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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| tom-toms | 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 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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| 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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| 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) | A system of composition developed by Schoenberg that consists of arranging the twelve pitches of the chromatic scale in a particular order (known as a tone row, series, or set). Also called dodecaphony.
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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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| 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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| 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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| xylophone | A pitched percussion instrument with tuned wooden bars that produce a hollow sound when struck by mallets.
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