Terms Flashcards
Define: Key (music)
The tonic note and chord which gives a subjective sense of arrival and rest. Other notes and chords in the piece create varying degrees of tension, resolved when the tonic note and/or chord returns.
Define: Sonata
A musical composition for one or a few instruments, one of which is frequently a piano, in three or four movements that vary in key and tempo
Define: Suite
A musical form, popular before the time of the sonata, consisting of a string or series of pieces all in the same key, mostly in various dance rhythms; or the instrumental music alone from a larger work like a ballet
Define: Symphony
An extended piece of music of sophisticated structure, usually for orchestra
Define: Counterpoint
A melody added to an existing one, especially one added to provide harmony whilst each retains its simultaneous identity; a composition consisting of such contrapuntal melodies
Define: Syncopation
The quality of a rhythm being somehow unexpected, in that it deviates from the strict succession of regularly spaced strong and weak beats in a meter
Define: Meter (music)
An increment of music; the overall rhythm; particularly, the number of beats in a measure.
Define: Opus
A work of music or set of works with a specified rank in an ordering of a composer’s complete published works
Define: Cantata
A vocal composition accompanied by instruments and generally containing more than one movement, typical of 17th and 18th century Italian music.
Define: Timbre
The quality of a sound independent of its pitch and volume; the different sounds made by different instruments when playing the same pitch
Define: Rhapsody
An instrumental composition of irregular form often incorporating improvisation
Female voice types (opera)
Soprano - Highest - Between C4 (middle C) and C6 (high C); Mezzo-soprano - Middle - Between A3 (the A below middle C) to A5 (two octaves higher); Contralto - Lowest (rare) - Between F3 (the F below middle C) to F5 (the second F above middle C)
Male voice types (opera)
Tenor - Highest (besides almost extinct countertenor) - Between C3 (one octave below middle C) to C5 (one octave above middle C); Baritone - Middle (most common) - Between A2 (the second A below middle C) to A4 (the A above middle C); Bass - Lowest - between E2 (the second E below middle C) to E4 (the E above middle C)
Define: dominant (music)
The fifth major tone of a musical scale (five major steps above the note in question); thus G is the dominant of C, A of D, and so on - the triad built on the dominant tone
Define: diatonic scale
Relating to or characteristic of a musical scale which contains seven pitches and a pattern of five whole tones and two semitones; particularly, of the major or natural minor scales
