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Academic Decathlon 2024-2025 > Music Glossary > Flashcards

Music Glossary Flashcards

1
Q

absolute pitch (perfect pitch)

A

the innate ability to identify pitches by name without using any instrumental aid as a reference

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2
Q

arpeggio

A

– a chord whose individual pitches are played in an upward or downward succession rather than simultaneously, in the manner that one would strum a guitar or harp

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3
Q

augmentation

A

lengthened note values of a melody
heard earlier in a piece

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4
Q

Baroque era

A

– a designation for the period of
western European music history spanning the seventeenth century and the first third of the eighteenth

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5
Q

viola de gamba (bass viol)

A

an instrument with (usually) six strings and frets, played with a bow

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6
Q

crotales / antique cymbals

A

small disks of brass that produce extremely resonant bell-like sounds when struck

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7
Q

bodhran

A

a single-headed drum used in Irish folk music

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8
Q

bridge

A

a nickname for the “B” phrase of a 32-bar
form (A-A-B-A)

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9
Q

cadenza

A

a section during a solo concerto in which
the unaccompanied soloist performs virtuosic (and sometimes improvised) material while the orchestra stops playing

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10
Q

call-and-response

A

performance technique in which a soloist or small group presents a short motif that is answered (with similar or contrasting material) by another musician or a larger group

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11
Q

canon

A

technique in which a single melody
is performed by multiple musicians, but at staggered, overlapping intervals of time, thus producing imitative polyphony; a synonym is round, and an example is the customary performance technique of the childhood tune “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”;

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12
Q

celesta

A

a small keyboard instrument with metal
bars that are struck by felt hammers operated by a piano-like keyboard

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13
Q

chant

A

a single-line (monophonic) melody with
religious text

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14
Q

character piece

A

a composition that conveys a particular image or sensation without trying to depict a programmatic storyline

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15
Q

chromatic mediant

A

an altered version of the mediant or submediant triad, achieved either by reversing the customary mode of that triad (i.e., turning a minor iii triad into a major III) or by building a triad on the chromatic neighbor to the mediant or submediant rather than the normal diatonic scale degrees (i.e., building a triad on E♭ rather than E♮ when in the key of C major)

This is a long way to say you play 3 notes, some of which aren’t in key

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16
Q

Classic era

A

a designation for the period of western European music history spanning the last two- thirds of the eighteenth century and persisting into the early nineteenth century

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17
Q

concerto

A

an instrumental genre that juxtaposes
an orchestra against (most often) a soloist, or possibly a small group of soloists

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18
Q

conjunct

A

a melody in which successive pitches
rise or fall primarily in small, stepwise intervals

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19
Q

conservatory

A

a school that focuses solely on training in a particular discipline in the arts, such as music, theater, dance, or the visual arts

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20
Q

cover

A

a recording or performance of a piece by someone other than the first person to perform the work

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21
Q

delicato

A

an instruction to play a piece “delicately”

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22
Q

disjunct

A

a melody in which successive pitches rise
or fall primarily in large intervals

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23
Q

Dorian mode

A

a scale pattern containing half-steps
between scale degrees 2 and 3 and scale degrees 6 and 7

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24
Q

double-stop

A

a technique used on string instruments in which the player bows (or plucks) two strings simultaneously to produce an interval

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25
Q

drop (verb)

A

to release a recording, whether audio
or video, in the popular music world

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26
Q

drum roll

A

a technique of sustaining a drum’s
sound by playing it with rapidly alternating beaters or drumsticks

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27
Q

ecology

A

a field of biology that examines the
relationships between organisms and their physical environment

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28
Q

electronic dance music (EDM)

A

a heavily percussive electronic musical style designed for dancing at nightclubs, festivals, etc.

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29
Q

elegy

A

a piece with a melancholy or sorrowful
character, often intended to mourn for someone who has died

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30
Q

encore

A

a repeated or additional performance of
music in response to audience demand; it is the French word meaning “again.”

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31
Q

EP

A

an “extended play” recording with multiple tracks, but not as many as would appear on a full album

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32
Q

fauna

A

a Latin word pertaining to the animal life
within a particular environment

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33
Q

fermata

A

a symbol (dot with curve over it) indicating that a note (or silence) should be sustained longer than its notated value, briefly halting the underlying pulse of the music

34
Q

flora

A

a Latin word pertaining to the plant life
within a particular environment

35
Q

fx

A

artificially created or enhanced sounds. Stands for “effects”

36
Q

glissando

A

a rapid, sweeping glide up or down
through the pitches of an instrument (players of string instruments can slide up or down the strings, parallel with their fingerboard)

37
Q

grace note

A

a short note played as an embellishment just before a longer pitch

38
Q

guiro

A

a hollow gourd with notches on one side
that produces a raspy sound when the notches are scraped with a stick

39
Q

hemiola

A

the sensation of temporarily shifting
from an established duple meter to the feeling of triple meter, or vice versa

40
Q

intelligent dance music (IDM)

A

a type of electronic music meant for home listening rather than dancing

41
Q

leitmotif

A

a melodic idea representing a particular
person, object, or idea

42
Q

manuscript

A

a handwritten document

43
Q

medieval era

A

a time period in Western music
spanning roughly from the sixth century through the fourteenth (also called the Middle Ages)

44
Q

melismatic text-setting

A

a type of singing in which multiple notes in a melody correspond to a single syllable of poetry

45
Q

Mellotron

A

an early electronic keyboard instrument (manufactured between 1964 and 1986) that sampled pre-recorded analogue sounds

46
Q

Mixolydian mode

A

a scale pattern containing half-steps between scale degrees 3 and 4 and between 6 and 7

47
Q

multi-tracking / over-dubbing

A

the process of taking separate recordings and assembling them to play simultaneously

48
Q

mute

A

a device that quiets or muffles an
instrument’s sound in some way

49
Q

opera

A

a genre originating in the Baroque era that resembles a play, but which requires characters to sing their roles

50
Q

ornithologist

A

a scientist who studies birds

51
Q

outro

A

a synonym for “coda,” frequently used in
popular music

52
Q

overture

A

a short piece for an orchestra; sometimes it precedes a theatrical work, but many overtures are created to be concert compositions

53
Q

pedal tone

A

a sustained low pitch, similar to long
notes played by an organ’s pedals

54
Q

pre-chorus

A

a transitional section added to many
verse-chorus (verse-refrain) forms; it occurs after the verse and before the chorus

55
Q

prepared piano

A

an acoustic piano which has had
objects inserted between its strings to alter its tone color

56
Q

program

A

1) a description of the events or ideas
portrayed by a programmatic composition; 2) a printed listing of the repertory to be performed during a concert or recital

57
Q

programmatic

A

instrumental music that conveys a
sense of a specific storyline but without the use of lyrics

58
Q

progressive (prog) rock

A

a style of rock with songs that feature multiple sections, a wide array of instruments (especially orchestral), and blended styles; sometimes called “symphonic rock”

59
Q

quintuplet

A

a group of five notes that occupy the
same duration of time that four notes of the same value would normally require

60
Q

Renaissance Era

A

a designation for the period of
western European music history spanning the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries

61
Q

Renaissance Man

A

a person with skills and/or talents in many different areas; similar to “polymath”

62
Q

rhythm and blues (R&B)

A

an evolving style label that, by the late 1950s, referred to Black music with energetic and hard-swinging rhythms that made it suitable for dancing

63
Q

Romantic Era

A

a nickname for western European music that emphasized expressivity, encompassing the majority of the nineteenth century

64
Q

rondellus

A

a medieval polyphonic genre in which
two or more voices sing in harmony and then trade parts, with each person singing the line that the other person had previously sung

65
Q

rota

A

a medieval polyphonic genre in which
two or more voices sing in harmony and then trade parts, with each person singing the line that the other person had previously sung

66
Q

round

A

a vocal genre that employs exact imitative polyphony (each successive voice sings the same melody that the initial vocalist sang); also called canon

67
Q

sacred

A

an adjective for something that is intended for religious practices

68
Q

sampling

A

taking a section of audio from another source and then reworking it into the creation of a new track

69
Q

sawari

A

The japanese musical tradition of trying to imitate sounds of nature as accurately as possible. Often just considered noise in western cultures

70
Q

secular

A

an adjective for something that is intended for religious practices

71
Q

sforzando

A

suddenly loud

72
Q

stopped horn

A

a technique of inserting a fist within the flared bell of a French horn in order to create a nasal, “buzzy” timbre

73
Q

syllabic text-setting

A

a type of singing in which each syllable of poetry is paired with a single note

74
Q

symphony

A

an orchestral genre originating in the
Classic period, comprised (customarily) of three or four contrasting movements

75
Q

through-composed

A

a term for a piece of music without clearly repeated sections

76
Q

tremolo

A

a rapid repetition of a pitch or an oscillation between two pitches that creates a “trembling” effect

done with the bow of a stringed instrument

77
Q

trio

A

a piece designed to feature three performers

78
Q

Tristan Chord

A

a four-note dissonant harmony that
initially consisted of the pitches F, B, D♯, and G♯, taken from the prelude to Richard Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde”

79
Q

vibrato

A

a slight wavering or oscillating sound added in performance by various means (back-and-forth movements of the hand, air support, etc.); the effect adds intensity to the note

80
Q

virtuosic

A

an adjective to describe technically
challenging music

81
Q

waltz

A

a nineteenth-century ballroom couple’s
dance in a moderate tempo and triple meter

strong downbeat in lower instruments, two light upbeats in higher with a melodical line over all that

82
Q

word-painting

A

a compositional technique in which a composer tries to illustrate the literal meaning of a particular word or phrase with musical elements, such as setting the word “mountain” or “sky” on a high pitch

Academic Decathlon 2024-2025 (23 decks)

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