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

  • chromaticism Use of tones extraneous to a diatonic scale (major or minor).
  • pianississimo [Italian] Extremely soft, softer than pianissimo.
  • toccata [Italian] Virtuoso composition, generally for organ or harpsichord, in a free and rhapsodic style; in the Baroque, it often served as the introduction to a fugue.
  • bass The lowest part in a musical composition.
  • whole note The note with the longest duration in currently used Western music notation.
  • irato [Italian] Irate, angry.
  • sempre [Italian] Always.
  • maestoso [Italian] Majestic.
  • volando [Italian] Flying.
  • lamentevole [Italian] Plaintive, mournful.
  • lament A song of mourning the dead or of leave-taking. The funeral lament is one of the most common, dating back to antiquity.
  • piccolo [Italian] Literally, “small”. A small flute that sounds an octave above the regular flute, and also an octave above its written music.
  • difference tone A lower tone that is heard when two higher notes are played in such a way that the frequency of the difference tone is the difference of the frequencies of the other two notes.
  • fortississimo [Italian] Extremely loud, louder than fortissimo.
  • non-harmonic note In part writing, a note that is dissonant with other notes in the same chord.