Multilingual Music Glossary

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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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Some random terms

  • whole tone scale A scale built entirely of whole tone intervals. Used commonly by the French impressionists.
  • modérément [French] “Moderately”.
  • estampie [French] A type of early instrumental music of the 13th and 14th centuries, consisting of independent sections strung together.
  • luttuoso [Italian] Mournful.
  • militare [Italian] Military.
  • prelude An instrumental composition intended to introduce a larger composition or a set of compositions.
  • meter The basic scheme of note values and accents which remains unaltered throughout a composition or a section of it.
  • genre Term used to identify a general category of music that shares similar performance forces, formal structures and/or style.
  • Handel-Werke-Verzeichnis [German] The numbering system identifying compositions by George Frederic Handel.
  • animato [Italian] Animated or spirited.
  • decibel A logarithmic unit for measuring the intensity of sound, corresponding to the listener's perception of loudness.
  • passacaglia [Italian] Baroque form in moderately slow triple meter, based on a short, repeated base-line melody that serves as the basis for continuous variation in the other voices.
  • tierce de Picardie [French] A practice from the baroque era of ending a composition with a major chord, when the rest of the composition is in a minor key, thus giving the composition a sense of finality.
  • wind ensemble An instrumental ensemble consisting of woodwind, brass and percussion instruments.
  • major Term referring to a sequence of notes that define the tonality of the major scale. This series consists of seven notes: the tonic, followed by the next note a whole step up from the tonic, the third is a whole step from the second, the fourth is a half step from the third, the fifth is a whole step from the fourth, the sixth is a whole step from the fifth, the seventh is another whole step, followed by the tonic, a half step above the seventh.