Multilingual Music Glossary

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

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Found a word you don't know? No problem. Look it up in the Music Glossary!

We are currently providing explanations for 2484 terms from 12 languages, including English, Italian, French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, Latin…

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Please note: a music glossary is just like a dictionary. It contains explanations to musical terms. If you are looking for a piece, please go here instead: search tunes.

Some random terms

  • larigot [French] A shepherd's flute or pipe.
  • sin' al fine [Italian] Literally, “to the end”. Usually attached to another directive, implying that whatever the other directive stated should be carried out to the end of the composition.
  • sforzando [Italian] Literally, “forcing”. Dynamic marking indicating a strong, sudden accent.
  • maestoso [Italian] Majestic.
  • verse anthem Anglican devotional composition for solo voices with a choral refrain.
  • parody A humorous or satirical composition which exaggerates the features of some other composition.
  • augmentation Statement of a melody in longer note values, often twice as slow as the original.
  • villancico [Spanish] A 15th and 16th century form of Spanish poetry that was often set to music.
  • new age Style of popular music of the 1980s and 1990s, characterized by soothing timbres and repetitive forms that are subjected to shifting variation techniques.
  • interlude Any piece of music played or sung between the movements of a larger composition.
  • timbre [French] The quality of a sound; that component of a tone that causes different instruments (for example a flute and a violin) to sound different from each other while they are both playing the same note.
  • soprano [Italian] The highest female voice.
  • con malinconia [Italian] With melancholy.
  • sonata da chiesa [Italian] A baroque instrumental work intended for performance in a church, generally in four movements, arranged slow, fast, slow, fast.
  • choral prelude Short baroque organ composition in which a traditional melody is embellished.