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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Some random terms

  • molto [Italian] “Very”, “much”.
  • intermezzo [Italian] Short lyric piece or movement, often for piano. Also, a comic interlude performed between acts of an eighteenth century opera seria.
  • half note A note that has half the duration of time of a whole note.
  • foxtrot Ballroom dance popular in the 19th century.
  • con passione [Italian] “With passion”.
  • fortepiano [Italian] A dynamic marking (fp) directing the performer to attack the written note at the dynamic level of forte (loud) followed by an immediate decrease in volume to piano (soft).
  • dolce [Italian] Sweet, soft, with tender emotion.
  • yodel A style of singing or calling that involves switching the registers of the voice rapidly from head voice to chest voice (or falsetto and natural voice). Although this type of singing is typically associated with the high warbling of the Swiss and Tyrolean mountaineers, forms of yodeling can be found in several cultures, including African, Persian, and cowboy singers in the United States.
  • trio [Italian] A composition for three performers.
  • lai [French] A song form composed in northern Europe, mainly France and Germany, from the 13th to the late 14th century.
  • Feldmusik [German] Music performed outdoors on wind instruments.
  • musique concrète [French] Music made up of natural sounds and sound effects that are recorded and then manipulated electronically.
  • reggae Jamaican popular music style characterized by offbeat rhythms and chanted vocals over a strong bass part.
  • similar motion In part-writing, similar motion is the situation in which two voices of the composition move in the same direction, either ascending or descending, but they do not necessarily cover the same interval.
  • dal segno [Italian] A directive to go back to a specific place of a composition, marked by a sign.