Multilingual Music Glossary

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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

  • Leben [German] Life, vivacity.
  • sight-reading The practice of playing or singing a composition at sight, without previous preparation.
  • encore [French] “Again”.
  • jarabe [Spanish] Traditional Mexican dance form with multiple sections in contrasting meters and tempos.
  • flebile [Italian] “Plaintive”.
  • spagnoletta [Italian] An Italian dance of the late 16th century.
  • phrygian The mode based upon the third note of the major scale. In the key of C major, phrygian mode would start on the key of E, and include all the notes of the C major scale.
  • chord progression Series of chords played in order.
  • fugue [French] Polyphonic form popular in the Baroque era in which one or more themes are developed by imitative counterpoint.
  • serialism A method of composition in which various musical elements such as pitch, rhythm, dynamics, and tone color may be put in order according to a fixed series.
  • subito [Italian] At once, immediately.
  • radical bass An bass line produced by linking the fundamentals of the chords in a progression.
  • fundamental The base note upon which a chord is built.
  • half note A note that has half the duration of time of a whole note.
  • bene [Italian] “Well” or “good”.