Glossary

37 musical terms you will meet in the notes, in plain words. In a guide, the first use of a term links here.

Adagietto: A short, fairly slow piece or movement, a little lighter than an adagio. The best-known is the fourth movement of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, for strings and harp.
Adagio: Italian for “at ease”: a slow tempo, and by extension a slow movement.
Allegro: Italian for “cheerful”: a fast, lively tempo. Many first movements are marked allegro.
Cadenza: A passage near the end of a concerto movement where the orchestra stops and the soloist plays alone, showing off the themes and their technique. Some cadenzas are written by the composer, others by the soloist or by later performers.
Cantus firmus: Latin for “fixed song”: an existing melody, often a plainchant or chorale, held in long notes while other voices weave around it.
Catalogue numbers (K., BWV, Hob., D., WAB): Numbers that identify a composer’s works in a scholarly list, used where the composer’s own opus numbers are missing or confusing: K. (Köchel) for Mozart, BWV for Bach, Hob. (Hoboken) for Haydn, D. (Deutsch) for Schubert, WAB for Bruckner.
Chorale: A hymn tune of the German Lutheran church, sung by the congregation. Composers from Bach to Mahler quote chorales or write chorale-like passages: slow, steady and in full harmony, often for brass.
Coda: Italian for “tail”: the closing section of a movement, after the main material has been heard, which brings it to an end.
Concerto: A work for one or more soloists and orchestra, usually in three movements. The soloist and the orchestra take turns, answer each other and play together.
Counterpoint: Two or more independent melodies played at the same time, each making sense on its own and all fitting together. A fugue is the strictest kind.
Cyclic form: A way of building a work in several movements so that a theme from one movement comes back in later ones, tying the whole work together.
Development: The middle part of a movement in sonata form, where the themes are broken up, combined and moved through different keys. Usually the most restless part of the movement.
Exposition: The first part of a movement in sonata form, where the main themes are presented, usually in two contrasting keys. In older works it is often repeated.
Fugue: A piece built on one short melody (the subject) that enters in each voice in turn and is then worked out in counterpoint.
Key: The home note and scale that a piece or passage is built on, as in “Symphony in D minor”. A change of key (modulation) changes the colour and the sense of distance from home.
Leitmotif: A short musical idea tied to a character, object or idea, which returns whenever it appears or is thought of. Associated above all with Wagner’s operas.
Major and minor: The two main kinds of scale and key in Western music. Major often sounds bright and settled, minor darker or more troubled, though composers use both for every mood.
Minuet: A stately dance in three beats to a bar. In Classical symphonies it is usually the third movement, with a contrasting middle section called the trio.
Motif: The smallest recognisable musical idea: a few notes or a rhythm, like the four-note opening of Beethoven’s Fifth, that a composer repeats and transforms.
Movement: A self-contained part of a longer work, such as a symphony or concerto, with its own tempo and character. Audiences traditionally wait until the last movement to applaud.
Opus (Op.): Latin for “work”: a number given to a composition, usually by the composer or publisher, in roughly the order works were published.
Ostinato: A short pattern of notes or rhythm repeated over and over, often in the bass, while other music changes above it.
Overture: An orchestral piece that opens an opera or a play. A concert overture is a stand-alone piece in the same form.
Pizzicato: Plucking the strings of a violin, viola, cello or double bass with the fingers instead of using the bow.
Programme music: Instrumental music that tells a story or depicts a scene, a painting or a poem, often described by the composer in a title or a printed text.
Recapitulation: The part of a movement in sonata form where the themes of the exposition return, now in the home key, after the development.
Rondo: A form in which a main tune keeps coming back between contrasting episodes (A-B-A-C-A). Common in the last movements of Classical concertos and symphonies.
Scherzo: Italian for “joke”: a fast, often playful movement in three beats to a bar, which took the place of the minuet in symphonies from Beethoven on. It usually has a contrasting middle section, the trio.
Sonata form: The most common plan for the first movement of a symphony, concerto or sonata from about 1750 on: exposition (the themes), development (the themes worked out) and recapitulation (the themes return), sometimes with a coda.
Suite: A set of separate pieces played in sequence: in Baroque music a series of dances, later often movements drawn from a ballet, opera or film score.
Symphony: A large work for orchestra, usually in four movements: a fast first movement, a slow movement, a minuet or scherzo, and a fast finale. Later composers stretched the form in length, number of movements and forces.
Theme: A melody or musical idea that a movement is built on, which returns and is developed. A movement often has two main themes of contrasting character.
Theme and variations: A form in which a theme is stated and then repeated several times, each time changed in melody, harmony, rhythm or mood.
Tone poem (symphonic poem): A single-movement orchestral work that follows a story, a poem or a picture. The form was named by Liszt and taken up by Strauss, Sibelius and others.
Tremolo: A very fast repetition of one note, or fast alternation of two, which makes a shimmering or trembling sound. On strings it is played with rapid strokes of the bow.
Trio: The contrasting middle section of a minuet or scherzo, usually lighter in texture, after which the opening section returns. Also a piece for three players.
Tutti: Italian for “all”: the whole orchestra playing together, as against a soloist or a small group.

Sources

Joyce Kennedy, Michael Kennedy and Tim Rutherford-Johnson (eds.), The Oxford Dictionary of Music, 6th edition, Oxford University Press, 2013
Don Michael Randel (ed.), The Harvard Dictionary of Music, 4th edition, Harvard University Press, 2003