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

  • comp Jazz term used to describe the accompaniment backing up a soloist.
  • arioso [Italian] A short, melodious composition in the style of an aria.
  • embouchure [French] The placement of the lips, lower facial muscles and jaws in playing a wind instrument.
  • con mala grazia [Italian] Ungracefully, awkwardly.
  • 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.
  • symphonic poem A piece of orchestral music in one principal self-contained section called a “movement” in which a program from a poem, a story or novel, a painting, or another source is illustrated or evoked.
  • part song A vocal composition for two or more voices, usually unaccompanied.
  • libero [Italian] Literally, “free”. A directive to perform in a free, unrestrained style.
  • languendo [Italian] Languishing.
  • double trill A simultaneous trill on two notes, usually in the distance of a third.
  • triple meter A metrical pattern having three beats to a measure.
  • basse dance [French] A graceful, stately court dance of the early Renaissance.
  • Werke ohne Opuszahl [German] “Works without opus number”. A catalogue prepared in 1955 by Harry Halm and Georg Kinsky, listing all of the compositions of Ludwig van Beethoven that were not originally published with an opus number, or survived only as fragments. The abbreviation is also used sometime to refer to works without opus by other composers.
  • à la [French] In the manner of.
  • verse anthem Anglican devotional composition for solo voices with a choral refrain.