Vocal music without instrumental accompaniment.

Notes that are not normally found in a given key.

A person who works in the area of acoustic technology.

A person who studies the theory and science of acoustics.

The study of how sound behaves in physical spaces.

Refers to how high the wave form appears to vibrate above zero when seen on an oscilloscope; louder sounds create higher oscilloscope amplitude readings.

A musical composition of celebration, usually used as a symbol for a distinct group, particularly the national anthems of countries. Originally, and in music theory and religious contexts, it also refers more particularly to short sacred choral work and still more particularly to a specific form of Anglican.

A genre of sacred music featuring multiple choirs, or a choir that has been divided into different groups that can perform call and responses.

Homophonic compositions featuring a solo singer over orchestral accompaniment. Arias are very melodic primarily utilized in operas, cantatas, and oratorios.

A composition setting a poem to music, generally for one solo voice and piano accompaniment; in German, a Lied.

See "measure".

Continuous realization of harmony throughout a musical piece, usually played by a harpsichord and/or cello. The Basso continuo provides a framework/template for harmonic accompaniments.

The basic unit of time in music.

Instruments traditionally made of brass or another metal (and thus often producing a “bright” or “brassy” tone) whose sound is generated by blowing into a mouthpiece that is attached to a coiled tube.

The ending of a musical phrase providing a sense of closure, often through the use of one chord that resolves to another.

A section of a concerto in which the soloist plays alone without the orchestra in an improvisatory and virtuosic style.

A major composite church choral form of music from the Baroque period that involves soloist, choir, and orchestra. Cantatas have several movements and last for fifteen to thirty minutes. Cantatas are performed without staging but they utilize narration, arias, recitatives, choruses, and smaller vocal ensembles.

Music such as art songs, piano character pieces, and string quartets, primarily performed in small performing spaces, often for personal entertainment.

In general any lyric-driven French song, usually polyphonic and secular. A singer specializing in chansons is known as a “chanteur” (male) or “chanteuse” (female). A collection of chansons, especially from the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, is known as a chansonnier.

Text set to a melody written in monophonic texture with un-notated rhythms typically used in religious worship.

Director of music, secular and sacred, for the courts’ official functions and entertainment.

Originally the result from the German protestant church’s reformation, the chorale is the hymn (tune) in a four-part homophonic work that is sung by the church congregation. Some chorales became the foundation for cantatas and chorale preludes for organ.

The simultaneous sounding of three or more pitches; like intervals, chords can be consonant or dissonant.

A series of chords.

Musical pitches which move up or down by successive half-steps.

Use of “colorful,” dissonant pitches, that are not included in the key of the composition.

Sacred music written for performance in church, or any musical setting of ecclesiastical liturgy, or music set to words expressing propositions of a sacred nature, such as a hymn. Church Music Director is a position responsible the musical aspects of the church’s activities.

An optional final section of a movement that reasserts the home key of the movement and provides a sense of conclusion.

The process whereby a musician notates musical ideas using a system of symbols or using some other form of recording.

A composition for a soloist or a group of soloists and an orchestra, generally in three movements in fast, slow, and fast tempos, respectively.

A musical composition for a small group of soloists and orchestra.

The individual who leads an orchestra or ensemble.

A melody that moves mostly by step, in a smooth manner.

Term used to describe intervals and chords that tend to sound sweet and pleasing to our ears; consonance, as opposed to dissonance, is stable and needs no resolution.

A renaissance consort is a group of renaissance instrumentalists playing together. A whole consort is an ensemble performing with instruments from the same family. A broken consort is an ensemble comprised of instruments from more than one family.

A divided choir that is utilized to perform in a polychoral style—able to perform “call and response”. Large churches were designed with multiple choir seating sections to perform such works.

The preservation movement or “Counter-Reformation” against the protestant reform led to the development of the Jesuit order (1540) and the later assembling of the Council of Trent (1545-1563) which considered issues of the church’s authority and organizational structure.

Love for a beloved, without any concern for whether or not the love will be returned, called “courtly” because it was praised by those participating in medieval courts.

A definition of frequency of vibration; replaced by Hertz in 1960.

An instruction, commonly found at the end of the B section or Trio of a Minuet and Trio, that tells the performers to return to the “head” or first section, generally resulting in an A-B-A form.

Music composed specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing.

The middle section of a sonata form in which the themes and key areas introduced in the exposition are developed.

A melody with wide leaps and rapid changes in direction.

Intervals and chords that tend to sound harsh to our ears; dissonance is often used to create tension and instability, and the interplay between dissonance and consonance provides a sense of harmonic and melodic motion in music.

A form of the first movement of a Classical period concerto that combines the exposition, development, and recapitulation of sonata form with the ritornello form used for the first movements of Baroque concertos; also called first-movement concerto form.

A sustained pitch or pitches often found in music of the Middle Ages or earlier and in folk music.

The variation in the volume of musical sound (the amplitude of the sound waves).

The process of raising or lowering different frequencies of sound, either in a recording, or within a tone (overtones).

The first section of a sonata form, in which the themes and key areas of the movement are introduced; the section normally modulates from the home key to a different key.

The structure of the phrases and sections within a musical composition.

How quickly or slowly a medium (solid, liquid, gas) vibrates and produces a sound.

A raised strip on the neck of a stringed instrument. Frets usually extend across the full width of the neck and divide the string into half steps for most western musical instruments. Most guitars have frets.

Perfected by J.S. Bach during the baroque period, fugues are a form written in an imitative contrapuntal style in multiple parts. Fugues are based upon their original tune that is called the subject. The subject is then imitated and overlapped by the other parts called the answer, countersubject, stretto, and episode.

The lowest pitch in the harmonic series.

A form of Renaissance dance and music popular all over Europe in the 16th century.

A medieval music theorist who developed a system of lines and spaces that enabled musicians to notate the specific notes in a melody.

Any simultaneous combination of tones and the rules governing those combinations. The way a melody is accompanied is also another way to define harmony.

The momentary shifting from a duple to a triple feel or vice versa.

The unit of frequency defined as one cycle per second and named after Heinrich Hertz (1857–1894) in 1960.

Musical texture comprised of one melodic line accompanied by chords.

Music where the melody is supported by a chordal accompaniment. Homophony is generally the opposite of polyphony where the voices are imitative and weave with each other.

Religious song, most generally having multiple strophes of the same number and length of lines and using strophic form.

A melodic motive that appears in all five movements of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique to represent the beloved from the program.

The process whereby musicians create music spontaneously using the elements of music as building blocks.

The instruments comprising a musical group (including the human voice).

The distance in pitch between any two notes.

The accompanying dance tune for an energetic folk dance usually in a compound meter.

The set of pitches on which a composition is based.

Instruments that are characterized by keyboards, such as the piano, organ, vibraphone, and accordion.

“Guiding motive” associated with a specific character, theme, or locale in a music drama, and first associated with the music of Richard Wagner.

The text or actual words of an opera, musical, cantata, or oratorio, written or compiled by a librettist.

A musical piece for several solo voices set to a short poem. They originated in Italy around 1520. Most madrigals were about love.

Catholic celebration of the Eucharist consisting of liturgical texts set to music by composers starting in the Middle Ages.

A Polish dance in triple time, with emphasis on beat 2.

A unit of time that contains a specific number of beats defined by the meter/time signature.

Multiple pitches sung to one syllable of text.

A succession of single tones in musical compositions.

The way in which the beats are grouped together in a piece.

A form based on the minuet dance that consists of a Minuet (A), then a contrasting Trio (B), followed by a return to the Minuet (A).

Musical texture comprised of one melodic line; a melodic line may be sung by one person or 100 people.

A highly varied sacred choral musical composition. The motet was one of the pre-eminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music.

The smallest musical unit of a melody, generally a single rhythm of two or three pitches.

The constant repeated subdivision of the beat. The motor rhythm provides unity and stability within a musical piece.

A subsection or independent section/piece of a larger work.

Sound and silence organized in time.

Pride in one’s nation or cultural identity, often expressed in art, literature, and music.

A disorganized sound with no observable pitch.

The distance between two musical pitches where the higher pitch vibrates exactly twice as many times per second as the lower

A staged musical drama for voices and orchestra. Operas are fully blocked and performed in costume with sets. Operas utilize arias and recitatives with no narration.

Comic style of opera made famous by Mozart.

Serious style of 18th-century opera made famous by Handel that generally features mythology or high-born characters and plots.

A major work with religious or contemplative characters for solo voices, chorus, and orchestra. Oratorios do not utilize blocking, costumes, or scenery.

An electronic device that displays a visual representation of the different types of sound waves.

Musical tones heard above a fundamental pitch.

The sounds of different frequency that naturally occur above a fundamental (primary) tone.

A slow processional dance common in Europe during the 16th century Renaissance.

Instruments that are typically hit or struck by the hand, with sticks, or with hammers or that are shaken or rubbed by hand.

See instrumentation.

Smaller sub-sections of a melody.

A tone that is composed of an organized sound wave.

The plucking of a bowed string instrument such as the violin, producing a percussive effect.

Ending of a musical phrase or composition that consists of a IV (subdominant) chord moving to a I (tonic) chord and most often associated with church music.

A compositional style where the chorus/choir is divided into two or more groups that can perform independently or independently with each other (see antiphonal).

Musical texture that simultaneously features two or more relatively independent and important melodic lines.

Two or more different rhythms played at the same time.

Instrumental music intended to represent something extra-musical such as a poem, narrative, drama, or picture, or the ideas, images, or sounds therein. A descriptive piece.

Program music in the form of a multi-movement composition for orchestra.

The number of pitches, expressed as an intervallic distance.

The third and final section of a sonata form, in which the themes of the exposition return, now in the home key of the movement.

An operatic number of speech-like melodies and rhythms, performed in a flexible tempo to sparse accompaniment which is most often provided by the basso continuo. Recitatives are often performed before arias and have texts that tend to be descriptive and narrating.

A succession and division from the practices of the Roman Catholic Church initiated by Martin Luther which led to the development of Protestant churches.

A repeating musical section, generally also with repeated text; sometimes called a “chorus”.

The low, medium, and high sections of an instrument or vocal range.

The way the music is organized in respect to time.

Rhythm that follows the rhythm of the text and is not notated.

Repeated sections found in between the solo sections of a concerto grosso.

An instrumental form consisting of the alternation of a refrain “A” with contrasting sections (“B,” “C,” “D,” etc.). Rondos are often the final movements of string quartets, classical symphonies, concerti, and sonata (instrumental solos).

The momentary speeding up or slowing down of the tempo within a melody line, literally “robbing” time from one note to give to another.

A series of pitches, ordered by the interval between its notes.

19th-century operatic combination of a "scena" (a dramatic solo typically including a recitative) plus an aria; here the aria generally has two parts, a slower cantabile and a faster cabaletta.

A form that prominently replaced the minuet in symphonies and string quartets of the 19th century. Like the minuet, scherzos are in ternary form and in triple time, although they tend to be somewhat faster in tempo than the minuet.

A form of distinct sections that can be identified because of the changes in texture, or other musical elements and compositional techniques.

A repetition of a motive or phrase at a different pitch level.

A chord that has four pitches stacked in intervals of thirds.

The simplest sound wave that occurs in nature. A pure sine wave contains no partials and is perfectly smooth and rounded in appearance on an oscilloscope.

A musical piece that features one musician either with or without accompaniment. In a larger scored piece, the solo is the main part that should be brought out while performing.

A composition for a solo instrument or an instrument with piano accompaniment, generally in three movements in fast, slow, and fast tempos, respectively.

A form often found in the first and last movements of sonatas, symphonies, and string quartets, consisting of three parts—exposition, development, and recapitulation.

A composition sung by voice(s).

A collection of art songs, unified by poet, narrative, musical style, or composer.

The mechanical movement of an audible pressure wave through a solid, liquid, or gas.

Tongitudinal waves (compression and rarefaction waves) that travel through a solid, liquid, or gas.

The distance between adjacent notes in a musical scale.

A performing ensemble consisting of two violinists, one violist, and one cellist that plays compositions called string quartets, generally in four movements.

Instruments whose sound is produced by setting strings in motion.

Section of a poem or lyric text generally of a set number of lines and line length. A text may have multiple strophes.

Musical form in which all verses or strophes of a song are sung to the same music.

A piece of music that sounds like a dance but is not designed for dancing. In other words, a stylized dance uses the distinct characteristics of a dance and would be recognized as a dance but might be too long or too complicated to dance to.

The main melody or tune of a fugue.

A multi-movement instrumental composition of baroque music—usually in dance form.

Music in which each syllable of a text is set to one musical note.

Program music in the form of a single-movement for orchestra; sometimes called a tone poem.

Multi-movement composition for orchestra, often in four movements.

The act of shifting the normal accent, usually by stressing the normally unaccented weak beats or placing the accent between the beats themselves.

Electronic instruments (often in keyboard form) that create sounds using basic wave forms in different combinations.

The speed at which the beat is played.

A form of three parts, most often featuring two similar sections, separated by a contrasting section and represented by the letters A–B–A.

Distinct, abrupt changes in volume without gradual transitions.

The ways in which musical lines of a musical piece interact.

The presentation of a theme and then variations upon it. The theme may be illustrated as A, with any number of variations following it as A’, A’’, A’’’, A’’’’, etc.

Songs or musical compositions in which new music is composed for each stanza or section with no repetition.

The tone color or tone quality of a sound.

The numeric notation at the beginning of a line of music where the top number indicates how many beats are in each measure and the bottom number indicates which type of note will represent that beat.

The most important pitch of a key; the note from which the other pitches are derived.

A chord that has three pitches stacked in intervals of thirds.

Where the entire musical ensemble performs together as a whole.

A twelve-bar musical form commonly found in American music.

A musical form (sometimes referred to as verse and chorus) in which one section of music is sung to all the verses and a different section of music is sung to the repeating refrain or chorus.

Having to do with the human voice.

Instruments traditionally made of wood whose sound is generated by forcing air through a tube, thus creating a vibrating air column.

Utilized by Renaissance composers to represent poetic images musically. For example, an ascending melodic line would portray the text “ascension to heaven.” Or a series of rapid notes would represent running.