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

  • niente [Italian] Literally, “nothing”. With almost no sound.
  • sight-singing The practice of singing a composition at sight, without previous preparation.
  • dispersed harmony Harmony in which the notes which form the various chords are widely dispersed.
  • nicht [German] “Not“.
  • system The collection of staves, two or more, as used for writing down of keyboard, chamber, choral, or orchestral 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.
  • flat An accidental symbol that lowers the pitch of a note by a semitone.
  • downbeat The first beat of a measure, the strongest in any meter.
  • tailgate A slang term for a trombone Glissando in Dixieland jazz.
  • new wave Subgenre of rock popular since the late 1970s, highly influenced by simple 1950s-style rock and roll; developed as a rejection of the complexities of art rock and heavy metal.
  • part song A vocal composition for two or more voices, usually unaccompanied.
  • M.M. Marking typically found at the beginning of a composition, identifying the tempo of the composition in terms of beats per minute. This marking originally stood for “Mälzel Metronome”, but has since come to designate “Metronome Marking”.
  • swing A style of jazz playing whose flexible, improvised rhythms resist notation.
  • isorhythmic motet Medieval and early Renaissance motet based on a repeating rhythmic pattern throughout one or more voices.
  • invention Mostly in reference to baroque music, a short, contrapuntal composition, usually implying an originality of idea.