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

Hint: Don't worry about accents over letters, just skip them.

Found a word you don't know? No problem. Look it up in the Music Glossary!

We are currently providing explanations for 2456 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

  • più [Italian] “More”.
  • bossa nova [Portuguese] Brazilian dance related to the samba, popular in the 1950s and 1960s.
  • marziale [Italian] Martial, with a military feeling.
  • con fuoco [Italian] Literally, “with fire”. A directive to play with vehement energy or fervid emotion.
  • con slancio [Italian] With energy.
  • riflessivo [Italian] Reflective, thoughtful.
  • camminando [Italian] Literally, “walking”. With easy and gentle progression.
  • disco Commercial dance music popular in the 1970s, characterized by strong percussion in a quadruple meter.
  • rabbia [Italian] Rage, fury, anger.
  • scherzando [Italian] Literally, “joking”. A directive to perform in a lively, playful, animated manner.
  • ensemble [French] A group of musicians that perform as a unit.
  • bluegrass A form of American country music, inspired by the music of immigrants from the United Kingdom and Ireland as well as jazz and blues. In bluegrass, as in jazz, each instrument takes its turn playing the melody and improvising around it, while the others perform accompaniment.
  • thirty-second note A note having the time duration of one thirty-second of a whole note.
  • ma [Italian] “But”.
  • lamentoso [Italian] Like a lament, plaintive.