Multilingual Music Glossary

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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

  • tiento [Spanish] A Spanish Renaissance composition resembling the ricercare or the fantasia.
  • triple meter A metrical pattern having three beats to a measure.
  • prologue The introduction or preface to a dramatic work. The prologue usually tells the audience the background to the story about to be presented.
  • stromentato [Italian] Accompanied.
  • Kammer [German] Chamber, room.
  • bar Each of the lines drawn perpendicularly across the staff to divide it into measures. In common usage the term may also mean measure.
  • gymel A Medieval technique of splitting one voice part into two parts, both with the same range. In most cases the voices would start and end together, but would diverge in the middle of the composition.
  • blue note In blues or jazz, a note that for expressive purposes is sung or played at a slightly lower pitch than usual.
  • tierce de Picardie [French] A practice from the baroque era of ending a composition with a major chord, when the rest of the composition is in a minor key, thus giving the composition a sense of finality.
  • courante [French] A family of triple meter dances from the late Renaissance and the Baroque era.
  • divertimento [Italian] Instrumental composition intended for entertainment, usually in a number of movements. The term is used particularly in the second half of the 18th century.
  • incipit [Latin] The beginning of a musical composition.
  • intontito [Italian] Dull, numbed, dazed, stunned.
  • riflessivo [Italian] Reflective, thoughtful.
  • arabesque [French] An ornament or an embellished work. The term is taken from the Arabic art and architecture which is very ornate.