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

  • common time 4/4 time.
  • carol A festive song, generally religious but not necessarily connected with church worship, and often with a dance-like or popular character.
  • appassionato [Italian] Passionate, with intense emotion or feeling.
  • amaramente [Italian] Bitterly, mournfully, grievingly.
  • close The ending of a composition or passage.
  • farce A comedy which aims to entertain the audience by means of extravagant and improbable situations.
  • echo A repetition or mimicking of a certain passage, usually with less force and volume than the original statement.
  • triple meter A metrical pattern having three beats to a measure.
  • moins [French] “Less”.
  • lai [French] A song form composed in northern Europe, mainly France and Germany, from the 13th to the late 14th century.
  • art music Music implying advanced structural and theoretical considerations and a written musical tradition. It is frequently used as a contrasting term to popular music and folk music.
  • double tonguing A technique used in playing the flute and brass instruments which allows notes to be played in rapid succession. It is achieved by rapidly forming the consonants “T” and “K” in quick succession.
  • binary form Two-part structure of music; usually each part is repeated.
  • poco a poco [Italian] Little by little.
  • movement Complete, self-contained part within a larger musical work.