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

  • Lombard rhythm A rhythm associated primarily with baroque music, generally consisting of a stressed sixteenth note followed by a dotted eighth note.
  • hairpin The symbol, made up of two joined lines, used to indicate a crescendo or a decrescendo.
  • volta subito [Italian] A directive to turn the page quickly.
  • popular music Music of the common people.
  • toujours [French] Always.
  • wind instrument Any instrument that produces sound by means of a column of air.
  • disjunct A melodic line that moves by leaps and skips rather than in steps.
  • tune An air or melody, a succession of sounds that has definite character and shape and is pleasing to the ear.
  • cent A logarithmic unit used in measuring the difference between two pitches in an equal-tempered scale. One cent is one one-hundredth of an equal-tempered semitone.
  • vocalese A style or genre of jazz singing wherein lyrics are written for melodies that were originally part of an all-instrumental composition or improvisation.
  • whole tone An interval of two semitones, a major second.
  • body The middle section of a flute, with the majority of the keys.
  • 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”.
  • family A grouping of instruments which produce sound in the same manner and are constructed in the same way but in different sizes, such as the flute family, the clarinet family, the violin family and so on.
  • rumba [Spanish] A dance originating in Cuba as a combination of the musical traditions of Spanish colonizers and of Africans brought to Cuba as slaves.