Music Terms Flashcards
Atonality
Atonality – a characteristic of much avant-garde music composed without regard for key
Avant-garde
Avant-garde – art forms that defy traditional guidelines; avant-garde music employs much dissonance and atonality
Baroque
Baroque – term applied to the artistic style of the mid-17th to mid-18th centuries; marked by elaborate ornamentation and complexity; original meaning; irregular pearl
Chamber music
Chamber music – composition for small ensembles, such as four violins
Chromatic scale
Chromatic scale – considers of twelve tones; if played on a piano, a consecutive run using both black and white keys
Counterpoint
Counterpoint - two melodic lines played against each other; characteristic of Bach’s work
Diatonic scale
Diatonic scale – consists of seven tones; white piano keys only; the fundamental but not he only scale in Western music
Dissonance
Dissonance – in music, two or more uncongenial notes sounded or sung at the same time, producing an unfamiliar and, for some, unpleasant effect
Fugue
Fugue – lengthy musical composition or section within a larger composition in which two melodic lines are played against each other
Half-tone
Halt-tone – half of one interval between two notes in the diatonic scale; on a piano, half-tones are produced by the black keys
**Harmony
Harmony – two or more tones, congenial or otherwise, sounded or sung at the same time
Hip-hop
Hip-hop – contemporary style of music that includes rap; a lifestyle marked by baggy clothes, idiomatic speech, graffiti, and break-dancing
Improvisation
Improvisation – spontaneous set of variations on a stated musical theme; once performed, it may be written down and repeated by other performers.
Key
Key – a particular scale that dominates a musical composition, identified by the first note of that scale and whether the scale is major or minor; e.g. C major, B-flat minor
**Melody
Melody – any arrangement of tones in a definite sequence that constitutes a unity
Pentatonic scale
Pentatonic scale – five-tone musical scale that preceded the familiar seven-tone scale dominant in the West; remains the basic scale of much non-Western music
Ragtime
Ragtime – musical genre, forerunner of jazz, invented in the later 1890s by African American composers, notably Scott Joplin; strongly influenced by slow and stately European dances.
Rap
Rap – major subgenre of hip-hop in which rhyming lyrics are half-sung, half-spoken rapidly
**Rhythm
Rhythm – alternation of stress and unstress in music, usually created by a percussion instrument
Rock
Rock – generic name covering a variety of styles that have a loud and insistent beat
Rock n’ Roll
Rock ‘n’ roll – style of music introduced in the 1950s and popularized by Elvis Presley; grew out of a fusion of rhythm and blues, gospel;, and country and western styles.
**Scale
Scale – the orderly progression of sound-wave frequencies, from low to high
Symphony
Symphony – a major orchestral form from the late eighteenth century to the present, usually consisting of four separate sections or movements, with contrasting tempos, sometimes constituting a unity, often not.
Syncopation
Syncopation – a form in which the melodic line of a piece is played against, not with, the accented beats of the rhythmic accompaniment, as in Gershwin’s “Fascinatin’ Rhythm” and the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby.”
