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

  • sgarbato [Italian] Rude, unkind, impolite.
  • lenteur [French] “Slowness”.
  • one hundred and twenty-eighth note A note having the time duration of one hundred twenty-eighth of the time duration of a whole note.
  • encore [French] “Again”.
  • lydian The church mode based on F, containing the notes of the C major scale, yet using F as the tonic.
  • downbeat The first beat of a measure, the strongest in any meter.
  • doppel [German] “Double”.
  • sheet music A generic term to mean any piece of paper with the notation of a composition printed on on it.
  • intermedio [Italian] In the Renaissance, a musical entertainment between the acts of a play.
  • pietoso [Italian] Pitiful, merciful, compassionate.
  • tenuto [Italian] A directive to perform a certain note or chord of a composition in a sustained manner for longer than its full duration.
  • traurig [German] Sad.
  • march A military piece characterized by strongly accented duple meter and clear sectional structures.
  • perfect pitch The ability of certain people to identify a given pitch without reference to any other pitch.
  • voce piena [Italian] “Full voice”.