Multilingual Music Glossary
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Some random terms
- Leben
Life, vivacity. - sight-reading The practice of playing or singing a composition at sight, without previous preparation.
- encore
“Again”. - jarabe
Traditional Mexican dance form with multiple sections in contrasting meters and tempos. - flebile
“Plaintive”. - spagnoletta
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
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
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
“Well” or “good”.