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

  • Wiederholung [German] Repetition.
  • perfect pitch The ability of certain people to identify a given pitch without reference to any other pitch.
  • concert pitch The tuning pitch of an ensemble, typically A440.
  • concertmaster The term used to address the principal first violinist of an orchestra.
  • quarter note A note having the time duration of one fourth of a whole note.
  • pensoso [Italian] Thoughtful, pensive.
  • fugue [French] Polyphonic form popular in the Baroque era in which one or more themes are developed by imitative counterpoint.
  • lointain [French] “Distant”, “faraway”.
  • temperament The division of an octave into twelve equal parts.
  • légèrement [French] Lightly.
  • mesto [Italian] Sad.
  • Nachahmung [German] Imitation.
  • lament A song of mourning the dead or of leave-taking. The funeral lament is one of the most common, dating back to antiquity.
  • canzone [Italian] Literally, “song”. An Italian or Provençal song or ballad. It is also used to describe a type of lyric which resembles a madrigal. Sometimes a composition which is simple and songlike is designated as a canzone, especially if it is by a non-Italian.
  • comic opera A sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.