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| Very soft. One can go on adding ps to the abbreviation and "iss"s to the word: pianississimo, for instance--"very very soft." |
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| (Ital.) : Very loud. One can go on adding fs to the abbreviation and "iss"s to the word: fortississimo, for instance--"very very loud." |
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| "one who puts together") is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media |
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| n artist who plays a musical instrument or sings |
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| a group of people who participate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature , theatre, music or academics in any medium |
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(1) A discrete, identifiable musical sound of a fixed number of vibrations per second: the pitch A=440, for example.
(2) The quality of being in tune with the surrounding musical events, e.g. "the orchestra's pitch last evening was particularly fine." |
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| The subdivision of time, principally by establishing length of notes. |
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| The prevailing metrical pulse. There are three beats in a bar of 3/4; the conductor marks the beats with the baton. (Also a kind of musical ornament. Also an audible acoustic effect produced when two pitches approach perfect concord; the beats disappear when the frequencies match.) |
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| The organization of rhythmic pulses or beats into hierarchies of weak and strong. Meter is indicated by a signature and proceeds by unit of measure (or bar ). |
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| A coherent, pleasing horizontal succession of pitches: a tune. The overall components of music are melody , harmony (simultaneous pitches), and rhythm / meter . (See also counterpoint , which deals in the intersection of melody and harmony.) |
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| The technique of organizing pitch simultaneities (chords), and its study. Generally speaking harmony concerns vertical sonority while melody concerns the horizontal. The study of harmony includes structure and nomenclature of chords, how they function, and how to arrange them pleasingly. Most of the "Scales, Keys, etc." stack deals with simple harmony. |
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| (Ital. for "time") : Speed, rate of speed. Tempo is either by a (rather approximate) direction in Italian (e.g. Allegro non troppo), or a metronome marking ( M.M. ) , or both. Tempo primo, Tempo I = at the original tempo. |
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| Degrees of loudness: piano , forte , and so forth. |
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(1) Group of dances in various national style, usually preceded by an extended prelude or overture, common to the Baroque period. Handel's Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks (GP 88) are Baroque suites; Bach's Badinerie (CD 1) comes from one of his orchestral suites.
(2) Series of movements extracted from a larger work (often a ballet) to make an effective concert work. A good example is Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, extracted from The Nutcracker, a full ballet. |
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| permits a composer to express musical ideas in a musical composition, which can be read and interpreted during performance by a trained musician; there are many different ways to do this (hundreds have been proposed), although staff notation provides by far the most widely used Modern musical symbols |
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| Notation for an ensemble where a staff is given to each part or section. The composer's autograph score is the primary source for most works. |
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(1) In sonata form, the first section, where the main thematic material is presented, always with a modulation to a second key area.
(2) In fugue , the stating of the subject (or answer ) in each of the voices, especially the opening statement. |
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| Section in sonata form, between the exposition and the recapitulation , which investigates the possibilities inherent in the material stated thus far. What's unique about the development is that it does not limit the themes to a particular horizontal succession nor any preconceived notion of key. |
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| In sonata form, the third main section (after exposition and development ), where the main thematic material is presented as it was in the exposition, though with the second group remaining in the tonic key. More generally recapitulation describes any large-scale structural return to the major thematic material. |
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| (Ital. for tail.) : Closing section of a movement , coming after whatever materials are required to conclude the form (the recapitulation in a sonata form, for example). A coda can consist of few summary chords or many minutes' worth of reopening old arguments: usually it is something in between. |
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