| C |
the first note in the scale of C major; in
'fixed do' solfeggio the note called do;
the third of three sections in ternary form |
| C |
after Richard Charteris the cataloguer of
music by Giovanni Gabrieli (1557-1612) |
| Cabales |
a special kind of flamenco siguiriyas |
| Cabaletta, Cabbaletta |
(Italian, from cobola meaning
'couplet') in nineteenth century opera, a short
aria in rondo form, the last section of an
operatic duet; earlier, a simple animated
operatic aria, and later the fast concluding
section of an operatic aria that brings an act
to an end |
| Cabalistic numerological symbolism |
a method of embedding hidden messages in
music, by using a code of numbers based on which
notes are used, their durations, arrangement,
subdivision, etc., whereby the composer made
symbolic reference to specific persons, places,
or things and/or events in some way associated
with the music |
| Cabasa |
South American rattle. It’s a stainless
steel cylinder with metal ball chains wrapped
around it, which are scraped against it |
| Cabrette, Cabreta |
bagpipe from Auverne (France) |
| Caccia |
(Italian, literally 'chase' or 'hunt')
usually describing an animated scene, the caccia
flourished in Italy between 1345 and 1370.
Written for two equal voices in canon, the
Italian version added a supportive instrumental
part |
| Cachucha |
a graceful Spanish dance from the southern
region of Andalusia, in triple meter, related to
the fandango and not unlike the bolero |
| Cacophony |
discordant or dissonant sound |
| Cadenas |
Spanish iron chains used as a percussion
instrument |
| Cadence |
see
music theory lesson 22 |
| Cadential extension |
the prolongation (post-cadential extension)
or delay (pre-cadential extension) of a cadence
by the addition of material beyond (i.e. before
or after) the point at which the cadence is
expected. |
| Cadential 6/4 |
often at cadences, the root position
dominant is preceded by a chord that has the
same bass note as the dominant, but contains the
notes of the tonic triad. Since the chord
contains the notes of the tonic, it seems
logical to label the chord I6/4. However, this
label implies that the chord is somehow
functioning as a tonic. Unfortunately, while the
label may appear to classify the chord, it
obscures the actual harmony and the function of
the sixth and fourth above the dominant bass.
The purpose of the sixth and fourth above the
bass is to embellish and therefore intensify the
dominant harmony. The fourth is a suspension
that delays the entrance of the leading tone
over the dominant bass. The fifth can also be
delayed by suspending the sixth above the bass.
The double suspension produces an apparent tonic
chord in second inversion, but the underlying
harmony is still V. Consequently, the apparent
tonic triad is simply the product of voice
leading motions, and therefore does not serve
any tonic function. In fact, the cadential 6/4
produces an interesting reversal. Since scale
degree 1 produces the interval of a perfect
fourth above the dominant bass, scale degree 1
is a dissonance requiring resolution rather than
a stable goal of motion. The leading tone, scale
degree 7, becomes the note of resolution and the
goal of motion. The notation V6/4-5/3 captures
the double suspension function over a dominant
harmony |
| Cadenza |
originally a vocal flourish, extemporized at
a cadence by the performer, later also featured
in instrumental performance, nowadays a cadenza
is that part of a concerto shortly before the
end when the soloist plays alone to demonstrate
their virtuosity. At the close of the cadenza,
the soloist falls silent and the orchestra
completes the movement. Cadenzas may have be
written out by the composer or they might have
been written by a noted performer as with
Joachim's cadenza for the Brahms Violin
Concerto. Nowadays, few performers improvise
their own cadenza nor these days is room left in
the score where a cadenza might be inserted.
Operatic cadenzas generally began from a second
inversion, tonic chord and finished on the
dominant followed by the tonic. |
| Cadenzato |
(Italian) cadenced, rhythmic |
| Caesura (sing.), Caesurae (pl.) |
(Latin) a term derived from poetry, caesura
is a pause somewhere in the middle of a verse.
Some lines have strong (easily recognizable)
caesurae, which usually coincide with
punctuation in the line, while others have weak
ones.
In music, the term is applied to a double line
// placed on the top line of the staff,
where the music may pause a little. Also called
fetura, 'tramlines', or 'railroad tracks' |
| Cafurna |
a rhythm of the Fulni-o Indians of Brazil,
with which they tell stories about their
ancestors |
| Cahier |
(French) part or section of a book |
| Ca hue |
(Vietnam) Hue-style song from Vietnam |
| Caisse |
(French) drum |
| Caisse chinoise |
(French) wood block |
| Caisse claire |
(French) snare drum |
| Caisse, Grosse |
(French) bass drum |
| Caisse roulante |
(French) tenor drum |
| Caisse sourde |
(French) tenor drum |
| Caixeta |
Portuguese or Brazilian wood block |
| Caja |
snare drum of Spain and Spanish America |
| Caja china |
(Spanish) wood block |
| Cajita |
a small trapezoidal box from Peru. The lid
is opened and closed with one hand, while the
other hand hits the box with a wooden stick |
| Cakewalk |
a strutting duple meter (2/4) dance
including high steps and lively movement, which
originated in the nineteenth-century with the
slaves on the plantations of the southern states
of America, in imitation of the mannerisms of
the plantation owners. The name is said to
derive from a prize cake offered to the most
innovative dancers |
| Calabash |
dried hollow shell of a gourd, used as a
rattle; large dried hollow shell of a gourd,
used as a bass drum (West Africa) |
| Calando |
(Italian) diminuendo |
| Calcando |
(Italian) accelerando |
| Calebasse |
(French) calabash |
| Calesera |
Andalusian style with flamenco
influences developed by the caleseros to
entertain themselves during long treks |
| Call and response |
see 'respond' |
| Calliope |
steam-blown mechanical organ |
| Calmato |
(Italian) calmed, calming |
| Calme |
(French) calm |
| Calore, caloroso |
(Italian) passion, warmth or animation |
| Calvarios |
Spanish Easter songs |
| Calypso |
a Caribbean popular musical form often
humorous or satyrical traditionally sung by a
single guitarist or by bands some consisting of
a drummer, bass player, guitar player, keyboards
and horns |
| Cambiare |
(Italian) to change, as for example,
changing one's instrument or, for a stringed
instrument, retuning |
| Cambiata |
in counterpoint, a nonharmonic tone inserted
between a dissonance and its resolution |
| Camera |
(Italian) chamber, as in 'chamber music',
the term normally indicating the inclusion of
dance movements, as opposed to the chiesa
or 'church' style |
| Camerata |
small art or music school dating from the
sixteenth-century |
| Camminando |
(Italian from camminare, to walk) a
flowing style, a walking pace |
| Campana, Campane, Campanella |
(Italian) bell, bells, little bell |
| Campanetta |
(Italian) glockenspiel |
| Campanile |
(Italian) a bell tower, a building generally
associated with a church in which bells were
hung |
| Campanology |
the study of bell-ringing |
| Caña |
a melancholic kind of flamenco
singing, closely related to soleares |
| Caña rajada |
slit reed used in popular Andalusian folk
music |
| Canarie(s) |
a very fast gigue-like dance, in triple or
duple-compound meter, with a 'skipping' feel to
it |
| Canaveira |
a cane with a slit in the middle. It is held
tightly and the lower half is struck
rhythmically to obtain a certain kind of
clapping sound (Galicia, Spain) |
| Cancel |
 |
natural sign, used to remove a
previously applied accidental
|
|
| Can-can, Chahut |
boisterous Parisian quadrille-like dance,
originating in Paris in the 1830s, involving a
line of high-kicking women |
| Canción |
(Spanish, literally 'song') a refrain song
of the period between c.1450-1530; a
sixteenth-century song set to Italianate poems
in Castilian; a sixteenth-century arrangement of
French chansons |
| Cancioncica, Cancioncilla, Cancioncita |
(Spanish) diminutive of canción |
| Canción de cuna |
(Spanish) lullaby |
| Canciones infantiles |
(Spanish) children's songs |
| Cancrizans |
(Latin, literally 'crab-wise') a tune
repeated so that the original order of notes is
reversed, i.e. the last note become the first,
the penultimate note becomes the second, and so
on until the first becomes the last |
| Candombe |
both a rhythm and a dance of African origin
from Uruguay, the name deriving from the Bantu
words ka and ndonge which together
means a 'meeting of blacks' |
| Cannada |
a Sardinian metallic container used by
shepherds to replace the guitar |
| Canon |
(literally, 'rule') a musical form in which
a (second, third, fourth, etc.) line starting
later than the one before it matches it note for
note but such that the parts overlap; the Greek
name for the monochord |
| Canonical hours |
see 'divine office' |
| Canso |
a strophic two-part troubadour song in which
the first part is repeated and second played
only once for each stanza (the form is pes
- meaning 'foot', pes, cauda -
meaning 'tail'), where each pes is formed
of two phrases, the first inconclusive or
'open', the second conclusive or 'closed'
(termed clos) - the cauda is
musically free although it ends with a
conclusive cadance; at the end of the final
stanza, the composer may add a partial stanza
called the envoy; the term canso
is also used to describe any troubadour song |
| Cantabile, Cantando |
(Italian) in a singing style |
| Cantaor (masc.), Cantaora (femin.) |
(Spanish) a flamenco singer |
| Cántaras |
Spanish drum made from a clay pitcher |
| Cantare |
(Latin) to sing, praise or celebrate |
| Cántaro |
Spanish drum made from a clay pitcher |
| Cantata (It.), Cantate (Ger.) |
generally a seventeenth- or
eighteenth-century sacred or secular
non-theatrical work which might include sung,
recitative and instrumental sections
more... |
| Cantatrice |
(Italian) female singer |
| Cant de la sibila |
traditional Christmas song from Majorca
(Spain) about the second coming of Christ |
| Cante chico |
light or frivolous flamenco song |
| Cante grande |
profound Flamenco song style |
| Cante hondo, Cante jondo |
(Spanish) a type of serious Spanish
flamenco song frequently making use of the
Phrygian cadence and the word ole |
| Cantes de las minas |
flamenco style that has as theme the
mines, its men and their difficulties |
| Cantes extremeños |
flamenco songs from the Extremadura
region |
| Canti carnascialeschi |
(Italian) fifteenth- and sixteenth-century
Florentine carnival songs |
| Canticle |
a Biblical hymn |
| Cantiga(s) |
a Spanish or Portuguese folk song; also a
thirteenth-century monophonic Spanish vernacular
song, often dedicated to the Virgin Mary |
| Cantilena |
(Latin) smooth, melodious vocal style,
although the term can be applied also to
instrumental music; originally a medieval term
meaning 'song' which was applied to both
religious and secular songs |
| Cantillation |
unaccompanied chanting in free rhythm as in
Jewish liturgical chant |
| Cantio |
(Latin) a religious, monophonic, Latin song
of the later Middle Ages |
| Canto (Italian), Cantus (Latin) |
song, melody |
| Canto de velada |
Spanish evening song |
| Canto fermo |
(Italian) see cantus firmus |
| Canto hondo |
see cante hono |
| Cantor, Cantrix |
the director of music in a Lutheran church
(in German, Kantor); the leading singer
in a synagogue; a singer or chanter who in the
Mass, is the one who calls out the first part of
the song or hymn, to which others respond |
| Cantoris |
a term applied in Anglican church music that
refers to the half of the choir sitting on the
cantor's side of the church, that which sits on
the left side of the congregation, i.e. the
north side. The other half of the choir is
referred to as the decani which is to the
right of the congregation, i.e. the south side,
nearest the dean |
| Cantos de vaquería |
Colombian cowboy songs |
| Cantus |
the melody at the top of a polyphonic piece,
often set over a tenor line, popular in the
sixteenth- and seventeenth-centuries |
| Cantus firmus |
a borrowed melody, generally from Gregorian
chant, used as the slow moving basis for a new
work in which upper faster moving melodies are
set in counterpoint against it, particularly
common during the period from the fourteenth- to
seventeenth-centuries |
| Canzona, Canzone (plural form) |
(Italian) (1) sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century instrumental genre in the
manner of a French polyphonic chanson,
characterized by the juxtaposition of short
contrasting sections; (2) term applied to any of
several types of secular vocal music |
| Canzonet, Canzonetta |
(Italian) diminutive of canzona |
| Caoine |
Irish funeral song |
| Capachos |
Colombian maracas |
| Capelle |
(French) chapel |
| Capellmeister |
see Kapellmeister |
| Capoeira |
a Brazilian martial arts/dance style,
developed by the slaves to teach one another how
to defend him or herself, in which the music is
as unusual as the instruments used to perform it |
| Capotasto (It.), Capo d'astro (It.),
Capodastro (It.), Capodastère (Fr.), Capodaster
(Ger.) |
a barre; a device that clamps to the
neck of a plucked string instrument (e.g. a
guitar) and which change its tuning by
shortening the sounding length of every string |
| Cappella (sometimes incorrectly Capella) |
chapel |
| Capriccio (It.) Caprice (Fr., Eng.) |
a quick, light, sometimes fanciful
composition; madrigal |
| Capriccioso (It.), Capricieux (Fr.) |
capricious |
| Capricciosamente |
(Italian) capriciously |
| Cará |
South American maracas |
| Carabalèn |
see laras |
| Caracachás |
South American scraper |
| Caracoles |
a flamenco style from Cadiz that
belongs to the cantiñas group |
| Carajillo |
small clapper (Spain) |
| Carcelera |
(Spanish) prisoner's song |
| Caressant |
(French) caressing |
| Carezzando, Carezzevole |
(Italian) caressing, caressingly |
| Carillon |
an organ stop, a bell or set of bells |
| Carmagnole |
a French revolutionary round dance named
after a short coat from Carmagnola in northern
Italy |
| Carmen |
(Latin) vocal line in a Middle Ages or
Renaissance composition; an opera in four acts
by Georges Bizet (1838-1875) produced in Paris
in 1875 |
| Carol |
English medieval strophic song, dramatic,
lyrical or narrative formed of verses coupled
with a refrain, called a 'burden'; a term
applied today to any Christmas song |
| Carole |
a social dance of the twelfth- and
thirteenth-centuries of which there is no
surviving example, which was replaced in the
mid-fourteenth-century by the basse dance (q.v.) |
| Carolingian era |
c.742-814, the time of
Charlemagne, a period when the Roman liturgy
spread through the Frankish empire |
| Carrée |
 |
(French) a breve (double whole note)
equal to two semibreves (whole notes)
|
|
| Cáscara |
the shell or sides of the timbales |
| Cassa, Cassa grande, (sometimes Gran
cassa) |
(Italian) any large drum |
| Cassa rullante |
(Italian) tenor drum |
| Cassation |
an instrumental work resembling the serenade
(q.v.) or divertimento (q.v.) |
| Cassettina |
(Italian) wood block |
| Castagnette (It.), Castagnettes (It.),
Castanets (Eng.) |
(from the Spanish casstano, meaning
'chestnut') a pair of shell-like pieces of wood
linked with a cord and worked with the fingers
to produce a 'clicking' sound particular in
Spanish flamenco dance
more... |
| Castañetas |
Galician castanets |
| Castanhetas |
Portuguese castanets |
| Castanholas |
Portuguese castanets |
| Castañuelas |
Spanish castanets |
| Castillane |
(Spanish) a dance from Castille |
| Castrato |
a male emasculated before puberty, whose
voice was then trained to produce a powerful
soprano or contralto voice, popular in the
seventeenth- and eighteenth-centuries in Italian
churches, because women were not permitted to
sing there, and opera; the role originally
intended for castrati are performed today by
women. The castrato's vocal range was from
middle C to the A above the treble clef
more... |
| Catacá |
Brazilian wooden blocks |
| Catalán (Sp.), Catalane (Fr.) |
a dance from Catalonia |
| Catch |
a round for unaccompanied voices often with
humorous or bawdy lyrics |
| Catgut |
see 'gut' |
| Ca tru |
(Vietnamese) also called hat a dao or
hat noi (literally, 'song of the women
singers'); associated with a geisha type of
entertainment, attractive young singers
entertained men in a relaxed environment,
sometimes serving drinks and snacks. Men might
have visited a hat a dao inn with friends
to celebrate a successful business deal or the
birth of a son. Ca tru flourished in the
fifteenth-century in northern Vietnam when it
was popular with the royal palace and a favorite
hobby of aristocrats and scholars. Later it was
performed in communal houses, inns and private
homes. These performances were mostly for men.
When men entered a ca tru inn, they
purchased bamboo tally cards. In Chinese, tru
means card. Ca means song in Vietnamese.
Hence the name, ca tru which means 'tally
card songs'. The tallies were given to the
singers in appreciation for the performance.
After the performance, each singer received
payment in proportion to the number of cards
received
[taken from:
The Exotic Sounds of Ca Tru by Barbara Cohen
|
| Caval |
Bulgarian wind instrument. Its size varies
from 50 to 80cm long, with different tunings |
| Cavaquinho |
a small 4-stringed instrument from Portugal
and the Portuguese-speaking countries, widely
used in samba music. It was the
inspiration for the Hawaiian ukulele |
| Cavata, Cavatina (It.) |
in the seventeenth- and early
eighteenth-century, a cavata was a
setting in aria style of the last line or
couplet of a recitative text. By the first half
of the eighteenth-century the diminutive of
cavata, cavatina, described a
specially composed aria, with instrumental
accompaniment, set to blank or rhymed verse and
not in da capo form. By 1750 the words
cavata and cavatina were used without
distinction |
| Cavatine |
(French) cavatina |
| Cauchie |
after Maurice Cauchie the cataloguer of
music by François Couperin (1668-1733) |
| Cauda |
(Latin, literally 'tail') stem of a note in
medieval notation |
| Caxambú |
Brazilian conga drum |
| C clef |
 |
a clef sign which marks the position
of the note C on the staff, for example,
the alto clef |
|
| Cebell |
a quicker gavotte-like dance |
| Cecilia, St. |
the patroness of music, Cecilian festivals
were held and odes by composers such as Purcell
and Boyce were performed in celebration of her
and of music; in the ninteenth century, the
movement to a simpler style of church music was
named after her |
| Cédez |
(French, literally 'give way') slow down
generally just before a return to an earlier
tempo |
| Ceilidh |
communal Celtic dances with a live band |
| Cejilla |
a device that can be moved to adapt the
pitch of the flamenco guitar |
| Celempung |
large plucked zither used in the Javanese
gamelans |
| Celere |
(Italian) quick, speedy |
| Celerità |
(Italian) speed |
| Celeramente |
speedily |
| Celesta, Celeste |
a percussion instrument invented in 1886 by
Auguste Mustel of Paris and further developed by
the Schiedmayer family in Stuttgart, consisting
of a set of steel bars, fastened over wooden
resonators, struck by hammers operated by a
keyboard; the instrument's range is c' on the
bass clef staff to c''''' above the treble clef
staff. The celesta sounds one octave higher than
written |
| Celeste |
an organ stop with two ranks of pipes
important in ninteenth century French organs |
| 'Cello |
abbreviation of 'violoncello' |
| Celtic harp |
a small harp 24 to 34 strings, around 1
metre tall, with curved neck and pillar but
without pedals, that can be played resting on
the knee; sometimes called the 'minstrel harp'
or the 'troubadour harp'
|
| Cembali |
Italian harpsichord; small Italian cymbals |
| Cembalist |
harpsichordist |
| Cembalo |
(Italian) harpsichord |
| Cembalom |
see cimbalom |
| Cencerro |
a Spanish and Spanish American cowbell (with
the clapper removed), struck with a wooden stick |
| Cent |
a logarithmic unit used when measuring the
difference between two pitches in an
equal-tempered scale; one cent is one
one-hundredth of an equal-tempered semitone
(half step) |
| Centa |
a two-headed cylindrical stick drum from
Indonesia |
| Cent-vingt-huitième |
(French) a semihemidemisemiquaver; a one
hundred and twenty-eighth note or a note having
the time duration of one hundred twenty-eighth
of the time duration of a semibreve (whole note) |
| Centoventottavo (nota) |
(Italian) a semihemidemisemiquaver |
| Ceol |
(Gaelic) music |
| Ceol beag |
(Gaelic, literally 'small music') the jigs,
reels, and strathspeys of traditional Scottish
pipe music |
| Ceol mór |
(Gaelic, literally 'big music') the pibroch
or classical Highland bagpipe repertoire |
| Cervalat à musique |
(French) a racket |
| Ces |
(German) the note 'C flat' |
| Ceses |
(German) the note 'C double flat' |
| Cesura |
(Italian, Spanish) alternative form of
'caesura' |
| Césure |
(French) caesura |
| Cetera |
Romanian term for violin |
| Ceterone |
a sixteenth- and seventeenth-century large
cittern with anything from nine, twelve or even
fourteen courses of metal strings, used
primarily in the playing of continuo parts |
| Cetvorka |
Croatian quadruple flute, with four pipes |
| cf. |
(Latin) abbreviated form of conferatur
meaning 'compare' |
| Chaabi |
popular Arabic music, also known as
shaabi |
| Chabreta |
bagpipe from Lemosin (France) |
| Chácaras |
castanets from the Canary Islands (Spain) |
| Chacarrá |
fandango dance from Tarifa, in southern
Spain, performed by two women and one man |
| Chace |
(French) a fourteenth-century French term
for 'canon', particularly two- and three-voice
canons that imitated bird calls or the sounds of
instruments, etc. |
| Cha cha cha |
a popular ballroom dance that developed in
Cuba around 1953, it derives from the rumba
and the mambo. It is in 4/4 time and
follows a rhythmic pattern two crotchets
(quarter-notes), three quavers (eighth-notes)
and a quaver rest (eightth-rest) |
| Chaconne, Chacony (Old Eng.), Ciacona
(It.) |
a slow stately dance with variations,
popular during the seventeenth- and
eighteenth-centuries, generally in triple time,
played over a ground bass, also called
'passacaglia' or 'passecaille' |
| Chakacha |
traditional rhythm from Kenya |
| Chaleur, Chaleureusement |
(French) warmth, with warmth |
| Chalameau |
an early seventeenth-century single-reed
precursor of the clarinet; the lowest register
playable by instruments of the clarinet family |
| Chamber |
a prefix used to describe small-scale
musical activities, for example, chamber
orchestra (a small orchestra), chamber opera (an
opera of intimate character), chamber symphony
(a symphony for a small ensemble of players),
chamber music (music generally written to be
played one-to-a-part) |
| Chamber sonata |
also called, in Italian, sonata da camera;
a suite from the seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century composed mainly of dance
movements, generally for two or more soloists
with accompaniment
more... |
| Champara |
Kosovar Albanian small metallic finger
cymbals |
| Champeta criolla |
Afro-Colombian music style and dance from
Cartagena, on the Caribbean coast, it is a
combination of indigenous rhythms, Caribbean
beats and African influences, with lyrics that
are usually satirical; also known as terapia
criolla |
| Champêtre |
(French) rustic |
| Chamrieng |
Cambodian vocals |
| Chan-chiki |
see atarigane |
| Change-ringing |
the ringing of a peal of church bells by a
team of ringers, developed in England around 300
years ago. It is a method of ringing tower bells
or handbells for producing changes in the note
sequences in sets of bells of various sizes.
With four bells there are 24 possible changes;
with eight, 40,320; and with twelve,
479,001,600. It is estimated that it would take
nearly 36 years to ring, sequentially, the full
number possible on a set of 12 bells; each bell
rope is pulled by one member of the team; the
term is also used to describe a peal performed
by a team of hand-bell ringers |
| Changed note |
also called nota cambiata, a device
in strict counterpoint where a non-harmonic note
is used on an accented beat |
| Changes |
the set of chord changes, or harmonies,
contained in the central theme or melody around
which a piece has been built. In jazz, for
example, changes refers to the set of harmonies
around which an improvisational performance of
that piece will be based |
| Changez |
(French) change (imperative) |
| Changing notes |
non-harmonic notes; two notes, one that
leaves the chord note by a tone or semitone,
then leaps to the next non-harmonic note by
skipping over the chord note, before resolving
to the same chord note by a tone or semitone |
| Changüí |
an early form of Cuban music, featuring an
instrumentation which includes the tres, bongos,
güiro, maracas, and the marímbula |
| Channel |
see 'release' |
| Chanson |
(French) song; a style of 14th-16th century
French song for voice or voices, often with
backing instrumental accompaniment; the
structure could be like the troubadour canso
(see above), through-composed (i.e. free form)
or by the fourteenth century, normally following
one of the formes fixes
more...
|
| Chant |
(from Plainchant, Plainsong) - Plainchant
manuscripts began to survive in some quantity in
Western Europe from about 890. There were some
isolated and intriguing examples prior to this
period, but they pose many difficulties of
interpretation. Generally speaking, as chant
evolved from the medieval era into modern times,
its rhythm became more regular and less varied.
This fact is partly conjectural, as early chant
notation did not include rhythm. The medieval
era saw the creation of many varieties of
plainchant, especially if one includes those of
Byzantine provenance. Even restricted to Western
Europe there was Roman chant, Ambrosian
(Milanese) chant, Mozarabic (Spanish) chant,
Sarum (English) chant, and even Cistercian (a
monastic order) chant. The type of chant mainly
identified with "Gregorian" today is what might
be called Carolingian chant, the style installed
in France under Charlemagne, with the help of
advisors from Rome
[taken from:
Medieval and Renaissance Music - A Brief Survey] |
| Chantant |
(French) cantabile |
| Chanter |
one who chants; the fingered melody pipe on
a bagpipe, as opposed to the drones |
| Chanterelle |
(French) the highest string of the violin |
| Chants des marins |
Breton sailor songs |
| Chanty |
alternative spelling of 'shanty' |
| Chanz |
Mongolian long-necked spiked lute with an
oval wooden frame and snakeskin covering
stretched over both faces. The three strings are
fixed to a bar, which is inserted in the body.
The instrument is struck or plucked with a
plectrum made of horn or with the fingers. As
the tones do not echo, every note is struck
several times |
| Chanzy |
three-stringed Tuvan bowed string instrument |
| Chapel master |
English form of kapelle meister, the
director of music in a church |
| Chaque |
(French) each, every |
| Character piece |
a musical piece representing a mood,
location or personality |
| Charanga |
a popular Cuban musical style featuring
violins, flute and rhythm section |
| Charango |
small, 5-course, double strung guitar from
South America, traditionally made with the shell
of an armadillo
more... |
| Charger, Se |
(French) to undertake |
| Charivari, Chiasso (It.), Calthumpian
Concert (U.S.) |
(French) to extemporise music of a violent
nature, also 'rough music' (Eng.), Scampanata
(It.), Katzenmusik (Ger.), Shivaree (U.S.) |
| Charkula |
every aspect of the culture of the Braj
region of Uttar Pradesh is associated with Lord
Krishna, so it would have been impossible for
any dance form or song, story or legend of Braj
to have remained untouched by the Krishna
legend! So with the charkula dance, a
folk dance of the Braj area, which has also
finds its origin in this legend. It is believed
that the charkula dance celebrates the
happy victory over Indra by Krishna and the
cowherd community of Braj. This dance,
therefore, became a symbol of happiness as well
as joyful rapture. Krishna raised the mount
Gobardhan and as if to re-enact the Gobardhan,
Leela the dancing damsel of Braj, raises the 60
kg charkula on her head while performing
the charkula dance. Wearing long skirts
that reach her toes and a blouse, the dancing
damsel covers her body and face with the
odhani and with its lighted lamps on her
head and lighted lamps in both the hands, she
dances, synchronizing her steps with the beat of
the drum. Her movements are limited because of
the heavy load on her head. She cannot bend her
body, nor can she move her neck. In spite of
these limitations the slim, sturdy and
courageous dancer dances, gliding, bending,
pirouetting to the tune of the song. The climax
is reached when enraptured by the collective
merriment of the occasion, the singers also
starts dancing and, with the swift beat of music
and movement, the onlookers find themselves
carried away by the rejoicings |
| Charleston |
a social dance characterized by a lively
syncopated rhythm, cut-time with rhythmic
pattern repeating over two bars (measures)
quaver (quarter note), quaver rest (eighth note
rest), followed by a quaver tied to a minim
(eighth note tied to an half note) |
| Chart |
colloquial or jazz term for a score or
arrangement |
| Chase |
chases are most often associated with blues
and jazz performances, occurring during
improvisations where one player performs a
melodic riff and other members in the band take
up the theme, often adding additional phrases,
each trying to outplay the others |
| Chasse |
(French) in a hunting style |
| Chasse, Cor de |
(French) hunting horn |
| Chassé |
(French) in ballet, to 'chase' away one foot
with a touch from the other |
| Chassidic |
related to a Jewish sect (Chassidism) that
developed in the eighteenth- and
nineteenth-centuries in Poland and the Ukraine.
The theoretical structures and conceptual
framework for music are found in the Zohar
which includes angelic harmonies, secret
melodies, a disregard for art music and inspired
melodies and rhythms as music is spontaneously
sung while participants revel in a state of
ecstasy |
| Chau van |
(Vietnam) mediums' trance songs, an ancient
form of goddess worship |
| Che |
(Italian) who, which |
| Chef d'attaque (Fr.), Concert master
(U.S.) |
orchestral leader |
| Chef d'orchestre |
(French) conductor |
| Chékere |
a beaded gourd instrument of African origin
used in Cuban music |
| Chelys lyra |
(ancient Greek) using a tortoise shell
covered by leather and the instrument used at
weddings (epithalamia), symposia,
and komoi (activities where men danced),
it was played by women (hetairai or
courtesans who entertained at the symposia)
or by respectable women who played at weddings
or for their own entertainment. It was believed
to have been discovered by Hermes when, at the
age of one day, he climbed out of his cradle and
he found the shield of a turtle. He stretched
the skin of a cow around it, fixed two horns
through the holes were once the paws of the
animal stood and he tied strings at the
horizontal connection between the arms |
| Cheng |
smallest and highest-pitched of Chinese
zithers, related to the ch'in and the
Japanese koto; Chinese gong |
| Chengi |
Turkish female dancer |
| Chest of viols |
a set of six viols of various sizes - used
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for
consort playing |
| Chest voice |
the lowest register of a particular voice,
where the singer feels the voice coming from the
chest as opposed to the head |
| Chevalet |
(French) bridge of a stringed instrument |
| Cheville |
(French) peg of a stringed instrument |
| Chhing |
Cambodian finger cymbals |
| Chiaro, Chiara |
(Italian) clear, unconfused |
| Chiaramente, Chiarezza |
(Italian) clearly, clarity |
| Chiave |
(Italian) clef |
| Chiave di basso |
(Italian) bass clef |
| Chiave di tenore |
(Italian) C clef |
| Chiave di violino |
(Italian) treble clef |
| Chica |
early form of fandango |
| Chicahuaztli |
Mexican rain stick of Nahuatl origin |
| Chicha |
an Afro-Peruvian music style with African
and Andean elements |
| Chichas |
Colombian maracas |
| Chico |
Afro-Uruguayan candombe drum |
| Chiesa |
(Italian, literally 'church') baroque
chamber music, usually implying a four movement
style of composition, alternately a slow, a
fast, a slow and a fast movement, that contrasts
with camera or chamber style (q.v.) |
| Chieuve |
bagpipe from Berry (France) |
| Chiflo |
Spanish three hole flute from Aragon |
| Chiftelia |
a Kosovar Albanian three-stringed instrument
from the same family as the saz |
| Chifonie |
hurdy-gurdy |
| Chigovia |
wind instrument similar to the ocarina
(Mozambique) |
| Chikara |
a simple spike fiddle played with a bow in a
fashion somewhat like a sarangi or
saringda. There is also a smaller version
known as chikari |
| Chililihtli |
large pre-Hispanic Mexican flute |
| Chimes |
suspended from a frame, a set of tubular
bells arranged like a keyboard, each tuned to a
definite pitch (from c' to f'' on the treble
clef), sounded by means of a hammer |
| Chimta |
a percussion instrument from India. It
consists of a long strip with jingles |
| Chimurenga |
popular style of music from the Shona people
of Zimbabwe, based on the sound of the mbira |
| Ch'in |
long narrow Chinese zither with very smooth
top surface. Traditionally the most honored of
Chinese instruments |
| Chin chin |
Chinese 4 string banjo with aluminum body |
| Chinese block |
wood block |
| Chinese mouth organ, Chinese panpipe(s) |
see sheng |
| Ching |
Cambodian finger cymbals |
| Ching-hu |
smallest of Chinese bowed lutes |
| Chirimía |
Spanish reed instrument; Guatemalan wind
instrument |
| Chitarra |
(Italian) guitar |
| Chitarra batente |
guitar from Calabria (southern Italy), also
known as 'Renaissance guitar'. The body is made
from walnut or chestnut wood. It has four or
five metal strings |
| Chitarrone |
(literally, 'big guitar') also called the
arch-lute; a long-necked member of the lute
family fitted with extra bass strings, used to
accompany solo singers, which was popular in the
sixteenth- and seventeenth-centuries |
| Chiuso, Chiusa |
(Italian, literally 'closed') stopped (as
when a horn player places his hand in the
instrument's bell), see also clos |
| Chö |
a contemplative system of Tibetan Buddhism
meaning 'cutting', it involves the yogi or
yogini mentally offering his or her own body as
a means of severing attachment, literally
'cutting through ego-clinging and the
traditional four demons'. The training is based
on the tradition of Prajnaparamita
(transcendent knowledge), in which the
practitioner sees through the illusion of a
solid reality by recognizing the insubstantial
nature of all things. The religious songs that
accompany this tradition have been passed from
accomplished masters to worthy students for
hundreds of years. Tibetans do not regard this
music as folk music, but rather perceive the
depth of meaning in these songs as capable of
enhancing understanding and transforming
ordinary experience |
| Chocalho |
an Angolan shaker made of either many small
cymbal like metal pieces or large metal cans
filled with rocks, sand or other materials. |
| Chocolate, el |
Chilean dance from the Quellón region that
combines Spanish music and dance forms with
aboriginal Chilean music and dance |
| Choeur |
(French) chorus, choir |
| Choir |
an ensemble especially of singers, although
in sixteenth-century polychoral music any group
of performers can be so termed, viz. choir 1,
choir 2, and so forth; the part of the church
where the choir sings |
| Ch'ojok |
Korean grass flute, made from blades of
grass |
| Cholaho |
a large tube shaker from Brazil, filled with
small pellets. Most are made out of metal and
some are multiple tubes attached together |
| Chongouri |
see chonguri |
| Chonguri |
long four-stringed fretted lute from Georgia |
| Cho'or |
Kyrgyz end blown flute |
| Chops |
the cheeks and lips of a particular wind
instrumentalist and his or her embouchure, but
also any part of an instrumentalist's body
required to play that instrument and, in a more
general context, to include the performer's
technique when playing riffs, improvisations and
melodic lines |
| Choragus |
the leader of the chorus in ancient Greek
drama |
| Choral |
pertaining to a choir, thus, choral music
meaning the music sung by a choir |
| Choral symphony |
a symphony that includes a chorus, for
example, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony |
| Chorale |
(German, meaning 'choral') a traditional
German hymn, with rhymed metrical verses and a
simple melody, sung by the congregation during
Protestant church services
more... |
| Chorale prelude |
an instrumental piece, normally for the
organ, based around a German hymn tune |
| Chorale variations |
baroque organ piece in which a chorale is
the basis for a set of variations |
| Chord |
a group of notes, normally two or more,
played simultaneously |
| Chordal |
a form of music in which a single melody is
accompanied by sets of chords, rather than a
competing counter melody |
| Chord diagrams |
a schematic form of musical notation using
vertical and horizontal lines to represent the
strings and frets on plucked string-instruments
like the guitar that includes the use of
numbered dots to show the position of the
fingers. Chord diagrams for guitar employ six
vertical lines, while those for ukulele or tenor
banjo use four |
| Chordophone |
a generic term used to describe instruments
where the sound is produced by a vibrating
string, for example, lute, guitar, violin, harp |
| Chord symbols |
alpha-numeric abbreviations for chord names
used by players of the guitar, ukulele, tenor
banjo, etc. |
| Choreographer |
a person who arranges the sequence of steps
and movements that make up a ballet or dance |
| Choreography |
the art of arranging the steps and movements
for a dance or ballet |
| Choro |
an early form of popular urban instrumental
music from Brazil |
| Choro novo |
a combination of choro, jazz and
Afro-Brazilian music |
| Chorus |
a fairly large choir; a refrain of a song; a
composition for chorus; a bagpipe; a crwth |
| Chromatic |
(from the Greek, chroma meaning
'colour') a scale in which all the intervals
between succeeding notes is a semitone
(half-note) |
| Chromatic interval |
a note that does not form part of the major
or natural, melodic or harmonic minor scales,
for example, the note C sharp in the scales of C
major and minor
more... |
| Chromatic mediant |
two chords or keys, a third apart that have
the same quality, i.e. both major or both minor |
| Chromatic scale |
|
| Chromatic signs |
accidentals |
| Chromatique |
(French) chromatic |
| Chrotta |
crwth |
| Chruti |
Indian bagpipe |
| Chu |
Burmese jingle |
| Chu-daiko |
general term for a medium sized Japanese
drum |
| Chüeh-hu |
Chinese bowed lute with a fingerboard |
| Chulluchullos |
Bolivian percussion instrument made from
dozens of flattened tin can covers |
| Chum nhac |
a small Vietnamese modern bell tree used to
produce percussion effects |
| Chunggum |
medium-sized Korean bamboo flute |
| Church cadence |
see 'plagal cadence' |
| Church modes |
see
modes |
| Church sonata |
sonata da chiesa; see chiesa |
| Ciaramella |
an Italian double-reed instrument, similar
to an oboe, that comes with 7 to 8 holes. It is
usually played along with the Neapolitan
zampogna (bagpipe) |
| Cifte |
Turkish double reed pipe |
| Cifte nagara |
Turkish kettle drums |
| Cigány |
Hungarian gipsy music played by bands formed
of strings, clarinet and dulcimer |
| Cimbal, Cimbalom, Cimbelom |
Hungarian box zither with forty-eight
strings, which are stretched over a large
sounding board and sounded with small hammers
more... |
| Cimbasso |
a term used to describe the lowest brass
instrument in an operatic score; most commonly,
this is the tuba |
| Cinelli |
(Italian) cymbals |
| Cinq (Fr.), Cinque (It.) |
five |
| Cinq pas |
(French, literally 'five steps') a basic
step pattern in Elizabethan dances such as the
galliard (with which it was most commonly
synonymous), the tourdion and the saltarello |
| Cinquième |
(French) fifth |
| Cioà |
(Italian) that is |
| Ciranda |
slow Afro-Brazilian rhythm and dance from
Pernambuco, inspired by the sea, and performed
by hundreds of people under a full moon sat the
beaches in Recife |
| Circle of fifths |
sometimes called 'cycle of fifths', a chain
of intervals. each interval a fifth. that after
passing through every note of the scale returns
to a note, several octaves different, from that
on which the chain began, at least if equal
temperament is used - if the fifths are pure,
i.e. the ratio of succeeding frequencies is 3:2,
the final note is never exactly the original
note displaced by several octaves because no
power of 3/2 can equal a power of 2 |
| Circular breathing |
a technique used to produce a continuous
sound on a woodwind or brass instrument, where
the player breathes in through the nose while
the cheeks push air out into the instrument. In
this way, the musician is able to produce an
unbroken stream of air, and hold a note
indefinitely, since there is no need to pause
and breathe |
| Cirrampala |
a wooden stick with a rope tied to it. The
mouth is used as the resonance box, vibrating
the rope with fingers (Colombia) |
| Cis |
(German) the note 'C sharp' |
| Cisis |
(German) the note 'C double sharp' |
| Cistro |
Spanish cittern |
| Citara |
Spanish and Latvian zither |
| Cithara |
see kithara |
| Cither, Cithern, Citole, Cittern |
wire-strung plucked stringed instrument,
like a lute, but with a pear-shaped body flat
back, commonly used during the sixteenth-,
seventeenth- and eighteenth-centuries |
| Civetteria |
(Italian) coquetry, flirtatiousness |
| Civettando, Civettescamente |
(Italian) coquetting, coquettishly |
| Claire, Caisse |
(French) side drum |
| Clairon |
(French) bugle |
| Cláirseach, Clársach |
a popular instrument for many hundreds of
years, and still in use today in Ireland,
Scotland, Wales and England, this small Celtic
folk harp encompasses several octaves but is not
chromatic like its orchestral equivalent |
| Clapper |
the beater inside a bell; orchestral
instruments where two objects are brought
together percussively, for example, claves and
cymbals |
| Claque |
(French) members of an audience, hired by a
performer or the management of the opera house,
usually to respond rapturously and loudly during
the performance including calling for frequent
encores, although occasionally by rivals to
ensure a negative audience response |
| Claquebois |
(French) xylophone |
| Clarabella, Claribel |
an organ stop producing a flute-like sound |
| Clarinet, Clarinete (Sp.), Clarinette
(Fr.), Clarinetto (It.) |
a single reed, woodwind-instrument, in use
since the eighteenth century, in symphony
orchestras, military bands and, more recently,
in dance bands and jazz bands, also in solo and
chamber music, for example, in the opening of
Gershwin's 'Rhapsody in Blue'
more... |
| Clarino |
small, or piccolo trumpet; a virtuoso style
of trumpet playing involving the higher
harmonics on a baroque (valveless) trumpet; the
highest register of the trumpet; (Greek) a
clarinet |
| Clarion |
a medieval trumpet with a clear shrill sound |
| Clarsach |
Scottish folk harp, with 25 to 34 strings |
| Classical, Classical music |
a period in music generally taken to be
between 1750 and 1820; music that is has an
enduring quality |
| Clausula |
(Latin, literally 'conclusion') cadence;
short medieval composition in descant
style, the text consisting of one or two words
or a single syllable based on a fragment of
Gregorian chant |
| Clavecin |
(French) harpsichord |
| Claves |
round sticks of hard wood beaten together
and used in Cuban music |
| Clavicembalo |
(Italian, literally 'keyed dulcimer')
cembalo, harpsichord
more... |
| Clavichord |
a soft-sounding rectangular keyboard
instrument in which the depression of a key
brings a tangent into contact with the string
(or, if double-strung, pairs of strings tuned to
the same note) initiating standing waves between
the tangent and the bridge which continue until
the key is released |
| Clavicytherium |
an upright spinet or harpsichord |
| Clavier |
(French) a general term for an keyboard
instrument, although more usually the clavichord |
| Clef |
symbol placed on the left of the stave which
establishes the relationship between notes and
their position on the staff lines and spaces.
The treble clef shows the position of G, the
bass clef the position of F and the alto clef
the position of C. The percussion clef does not
indicate pitch - rather each line and space on
the staff indicates a different percussion
instrument
 |
| Clef de fa |
 |
(French) a clef sign that shows the
position of F on the staff, for example,
the bass clef |
|
| Clef de sol |
 |
(French) a clef sign that shows the
position of G on the staff, for example,
the treble clef |
|
| Clef d'ut |
| |
(French) a clef sign that shows the
position of C on the staff, for example,
the alto clef |
|
| Clempung |
a large floor-standing plucked zither of the
gamelan orchestra, each tuning,
slendro and pelog, needing its own
clempung |
| Climacus |
(Latin, ladder) a neume, one of the category
of compound neumes, representing three pitches |
| Clivis |
(Latin, bend) a neume, one of the category
of simple neumes, representing up to two pitches |
| Cloches |
(French) orchestral bells |
| Clochette |
(French) small bell |
| Clogging |
also called 'Welsh step dancing'; It is the
only type of Welsh dance, which has continued,
in an unbroken tradition. During the eighteenth-
and nineteenth-centuries the puritanical
revivals in Wales almost wiped out many forms of
folk culture, and especially traditional dance.
However the popularity of clogging's combination
of infectious rhythms with dynamic style kept
this traditional alive and it continues to
thrive and evolve. The main difference between
Welsh clogging and other Celtic and American
styles of solo percussive dance, is that Welsh
dancers wear wooden clogs, and not merely hard
shoes. The sole and heel of a Welsh clog are
carved from one piece of wood, to form a shaped
"platform"under the whole foot, onto which the
leather upper is fixed, giving it the appearance
of a normal shoe. However the sole does not
bend, creating different movements for the feet,
and different possibilities for percussive
additions to the music. Like American clogging,
the Welsh include a variety of energetic
"feats"or "tricks", and each clogger is eager to
show off his own dexterity and inventiveness.
Welsh clogging commonly includes steps such as a
Coassack-style kicking squat (called the
"Toby"), or high jumping, jumping over a bezum
broom, or even trying to snuff out a lighted
candle with his feet during the dance |
| Clos |
a cadence in which the last note sounds
conclusive; that note, termed the 'final', which
is the central note of the melody; the second
ending of a repeated section; the second section
in the estampie dance form |
| Close |
cadence |
| Closed ending |
second of two endings in a secular medieval
work, usually cadencing on the final |
| Close harmony |
a form of harmony where the harmonizing
notes lie close to the melody |
| Cluster |
a group of notes played together that lie
adjacent on the piano keyboard usually with the
forearm or a piece of wood, a concept pioneering
in 1912 by the American composer Henry Cowell
(1897-1965) |
| Coach-horn |
post-horn |
| Cobla |
traditional Catalan brass orchestra |
| Cobsa |
a short-necked pear-shaped lute from Romania |
| Cobza |
a short Moldavian short lute related to the
cobsa and derived from the kopuz |
| Coco |
South American wooden block |
| Coda |
(Italian, literally 'tail') passage ended
onto the end of a composition |
| Coda uncinata (sing.), Code uncinate
(pl.) |
(Italian) the flag attached to the tail of a
note to show its length, for example, one flag
for a quaver (eighth note), two flags for a
semiquaver (sixteenth note), etc. |
| Codetta |
(Italian, literally 'little tail') a passage
within a composition in sonata form which, while
resembling a coda, occurs at the end of the
exposition rather than at the end of the piece;
linking passage between the entries in a fugue |
| Cogli, Coi |
(Italian) with the (plural object) |
| Col', Coll', Colla, Colle |
(Italian) with the (singular object) |
| Col canto, Colla voce |
(Italian, literally 'with the voice') to
follow the speed of the singer |
| Colascione |
small lute with a circular body, a very long
neck and, generally, three strings |
| Col destra |
(Italian) with the right hand |
| Colinda |
a Rumanian Christmas song |
| Collage |
a technique, drawn from the visual arts,
where musical fragments from other compositions
are juxtaposed or overlapped within a new work |
| Coll'arco |
(Italian) with the bow |
| Collegium musicum |
an association or guild of amateur musicians
originally used in Germanic countries during the
sixteenth-, seventeenth- and
eighteenth-centuries and later used in North
America in the eighteenth- and
nineteenth-centuries to denote a similar
association of musicians |
| Col legno |
(Italian, literally 'with the stick') to
strike the strings with the wood of the bow,
rather than the hair |
| Colofonia |
(Italian) bow resin, bow rosin |
| Colombianas |
flamenco style influenced by South American
rhythms |
| Color (or Colour), Coloration (or
Colouration) |
Philippe de Vitry (1291-1361) suggested
using ink colour to indicate a shift from duple
to triple time or the reverse; the term is also
used to describe a pattern of pitchs (longer
than a motive) in an isorhythmic voice, possibly
repeated but with varying rhythms; the term is
also used to mean 'timbre' |
| Colorato (It. male), Colorata (It.
female), Coloratura (It.), Koloratur (Ger.) |
extemporary or written vocalisation
decorated with runs and cadenzas |
| Colotomic |
a musical form defined by rhythmic cycles,
which may involve major cycles that are
subdivided into smaller cycles; a feature of
gamelan |
| Colpo |
(Italian) stroke |
| Col punta d'arco |
(Italian) with the tip of the bow |
| Col sinistra |
(Italian) with the left hand |
| Columbia |
a Cuban rumba played in 6/8 and sung with a
combination of Spanish and African phrases |
| Combination note |
resultant tone, a third note heard when two
notes are played simultaneously |
| Come (It.), Comme (Fr.) |
(Italian) as, like, as if |
| Come prima |
(Italian) as before |
| Comes |
(Latin, literally 'attendant') see dux |
| Comique |
(French) comic |
| Comma |
a very small difference arising from raising
a note either by octaves or fifths until it
arrives at almost the same note |
| Common chord |
a chord composed of a root, third, and fifth |
| Common meter, Common metre |
the metre of a four-line stanza with eight,
six, eight and six syllables per line, commonly
found in four-line hymn verse, and also known as
ballad metre |
| Common note, Common tone |
a note that remains the same between two
different chords |
| Common time |
the time signature 4/4 or a capital C |
| Communion |
one of the antiphonal chants from the mass |
| Comodamente |
(Italian) comfortably, moderately,
conveniently |
| Comodo |
(Italian) convenient, comfortable, moderate,
at an easy pace |
| Compas |
Haitian dance music |
| Compass |
the range of an instrument or voice |
| Compiacevole, Compiacevolmente,
Compiacimento (noun) |
(Italian) pleasing, pleasingly, pleasure |
| Comping |
in jazz, the practice of supplying
background music comprised of chords while a
soloist is improvising, most often accomplished
by the keyboard or guitar player |
| Complete cadence |
a musical cadence, when the final notes of a
verse in a chant are on the tonic |
| Complex meter, Complex time signature |
a meter (time signature) such as 4+2+3 / 8 |
| Compline |
the eighth service of the Divine Office,
usually performed before retiring to bed,
consisting of several responsories and psalms
which are sung |
| Componiert (Ger.), Composé (Fr.) |
composed |
| Composer |
a person who writes music |
| Composition |
the music that a composer writes |
| Compound harmony |
a standard chord with an added octave in the
bass |
| Compound interval |
an interval greater than an octave, for
example, a ninth, an eleventh, a thirteenth; an
interval of an octave or less is called a simple
interval
more... |
| Compound meter, Compound time |
see
simple and compound time |
| Comprimaria (f.), Comprimario (m.) |
a singer in Italian opera with a supporting
role |
| Compter |
(French) to count |
| Computer music |
see
computer music
|
| Con |
(Italian) with |
| Con amore |
(Italian) with love, lovingly |
| Con brio |
(italian) with spirit |
| Concert |
a musical performance in front of an
audience |
| Concertant (Fr.), Concertante (It.),
Concertino (It.) |
(Italian) in the form of a concerto, where
there is interplay between the performers;
concertino is a shorter work |
| Concertato |
an ensemble work in which the players are
treated equally |
| Concert band |
a wind band or symphonic wind ensemble, a
band made up of woodwind, brass and percussion
sometimes with a string bass |
| Concerted music |
music to be played by several voices or
instruments, heard at the same time as opposed
to one at a time |
| Concertina |
an instrument similar to the accordion but
with no keyboard, operated by buttons or studs |
| Concert master, Concert-meister (Ger.) |
the first violinist or leader of an
orchestra |
| Concerto |
ensemble music for voice(s) and
instrument(s) (seventeenth-century); extended
piece of music in which a solo instrument or
instruments is contrasted with an orchestral
ensemble (post-seventeenth-century)
more...
|
| Concerto grosso |
orchestral form especially popular in the
seventeenth- and eighteenth-centuries featuring
the contrasting lines of a smaller and a larger
group of instruments |
| Concert overture |
single-movement concert piece for orchestra,
typically from the Romantic period |
| Concert pitch |
the pitch at which non-transposing
instruments sound; the pitch to which an
ensemble tunes, typically a'= 440Hz |
| Concertstück |
(German) concert-piece |
| Concitato |
(Italian) roused, stirred, agitated |
| Concitamento, Concitazione |
(Italian) agitation |
| Concord, Concordant |
a chord, or group of notes complete and in
total harmony with each other |
| Conduct |
to direct a performance by an ensemble |
| Conductor |
a person who conducts |
| Conductus |
in its polyphonic form, a twelfth-century
church composition in which extra parts, that
are homorhythmic with and are added to an
existing non-plainsong melody, called canto
fermo; in its monophonic form probably
originally associated with the movement of the
celebrant from station to station within a
church |
| Conductus-motet |
a thirteenth-century form in which the two
upper voices are isorhythmic and sing the same
text, while the tenor moves independently and is
a plainchant excerpt |
| Con forza |
(Italian) vigorously, forcefully |
| Con fuoco |
(Italian) with fire |
| Conga |
an Afro-Cuban dance, now popular in many
Spanish speaking countries, characterized by
hard beats in 2/4 time. The Conga is performed
in a formation known as the conga chain.
The steps are simple, one, two, three, and kick
at which time the partners move away from each
other |
| Conga drum |
a long drum played with fingers and hands,
introduced into the percussion section of
orchestras in the 1950s |
| Con grandezza |
(Italian) with grandeur |
| Conical bore |
a term describing a tube that has a gentle
taper along its entire length, for example the
cornet, the tuba, the recorder and the French
horn |
| Conjunct |
in which a theme moves by no more than a
tone or semitone from one note to the next |
| Conjunto |
accordion-based Texas-Mexican style |
| Connecting note |
a note that is held between adjacent chords |
| Con passione |
(Italian, literally 'with passion') play
with emotion |
| Consecutive interval |
a progression where the harmonic interval
between the parts remains fixed, i.e. in
octaves, in thirds, in fourths, and so on |
| Consequent |
in a fugue, the answer or point of
imitation; the second of two similar musical
statements; in a musical period with two
balancing halves, where the first half is
'completed' by the second, the halves are termed
antecedent and consequent, somewhat analogous to
a rhymed couplet in poetry |
| Conservatoire (Fr.), Conservatorium
(Ger.), Conservatory |
where musicians study |
| Conserver |
(French) to preserve, to retain |
| Console |
that part of the organ within the reach and
control of an organist, i.e. keyboard, stops,
pedals but not the pipes |
| Consonance |
before the thirteenth-century, the fourth,
fifth and octave were consider consonant, while
all other intervals were considered dissonant;
by the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance,
thirds and sixths were being considered
consonant too |
| Con sordino, con sordini |
(Italian) with mute, with mutes |
| Consort |
an English word from the sixteenth century
to describe a group of small musical ensemble;
when the instruments come from different
families, the consort is said to be 'broken',
otherwise the consort is 'whole', as when a
chest of viols is being used |
| Consort anthem |
a consort song, often accompanied by the
organ, to a religious text |
| Consort song |
English song from the sixteenth- and
seventeenth-centuries, often accompanied by a
consort of viols |
| Conte |
(French) tale |
| Continental fingering |
a form of notation for fingerings on musical
instruments where 1 represents the thumb, 2, 3,
4 and 5 the remaining fingers |
| Continuo |
keyboard line in an orchestral work, short
for 'basso continuo' |
| Continuous imitation |
Renaissance polyphonic style where motives
or subjects move between the lines or voices,
often overlapping one another |
| Contra |
a prefix indicating that the pitch of an
instrument is usually one octave lower, e.g.
bassoon and contrabasson, bass recorder in F and
contrabass recorder in F |
| Contra |
Transylvanian (Romanian) three-stringed
viola |
| Contrabass, Contrebasse (Fr.),
Contrabasso (It.) |
double-bass |
| Contradanza (It.), Contredanse (Fr.),
Country dance (Eng.) |
popular eighteenth-century French dance
form, usually written in major keys in 2/4 or
6/8 time, taken from unsophisticated English
country dances that were lively and performed in
lines or in rounds |
| Contrafagotto |
(Italian) contrabassoon |
| Contralto |
the deepest female voice, a range from one
octave above to one octave below low E in the
treble clef |
| Contrapuntal |
(Lat. contrapunctum; Ger. Kontrapunkt; Fr.
contrepoint; It. contrapunto). From punctum,
"point" -- as a note was formerly called in
music -- and contra, "against"; originally,
punctum contra punctum, or nota contra notam --
"point against point", or note against note".
more... |
| Contrary motion |
where two voices move in opposite directions |
| Contrast |
in composition, the use of differentiated
tempi (slow or fast), timbres (strings or
brass), dynamics (loud or soft) or time
signatures (duple or triple) one after another
to produce variety as a way of maintaining the
listener's interest |
| Contratenor |
a voice composed again the tenor line;
during the fourteenth-century, both the tenor
and the contratenor were matched in style, both
slower than the higher voice(s) |
| Contre-bassoon |
(French) contrabassoon |
| Controller |
a MIDI synthesizer with a piano keyboard. It
can be used to control other synthesizers,
called tone generators, which do not have a
piano keyboard |
| Controversia |
an improvising game for two singing poets.
The singers compete in inventing more and more
verses and expressions (Cuba). |
| Cool jazz |
a substyle of bebop, characterized by a
restrained, unemotional performance with lush
harmonies, moderate volume levels and tempos,
and a new lyricism |
| Coperti, Coperto |
(Italian, literally 'covered') muting of
drums with a cloth |
| Copla |
Spanish songs set to popular poems |
| Coplas |
(Spanish) stanzas |
| Coplas de lo divino |
Christmas songs in the Canary Islands
(Spain) |
| Coppel |
(German) coupler (on the organ) |
| Coprifuoco, Coprifoco |
(Italian) a piece with bell-like effects |
| Copula |
a style of organum, associated with Notre
Dame, in which the upper voice is measured (that
is, uses one of the rhythmic modes) and the
lower voice is unmeasured |
| Cor (Fr.), Corno (It.) |
horn |
| Cor anglais (Eng.), Corno inglese (It.) |
see 'English horn' |
| Corda (It.), Corde (it. plural), Corde
(Fr.) |
string, strings |
| Cordas |
(Portuguese) strings |
| Corde à jour, corde à vide |
(French) open string |
| Cor de chasse (Fr.), Corno da caccia
(It.) |
hunting horn |
| Cor de nuit |
(French) watchman's horn, an organ stop |
| Cor d'olifant |
(French) see 'oliphant' |
| Corea |
(Spanish) a dance accompanied by song |
| Cori spezzati |
a performance style, associated particularly
with late Renaissance Venice, that employed a
number of small choirs of voices and/or
instruments placed in different parts of a large
church or cathedral |
| Cornamusa (It.), Cornamuse (Ger.) |
the cornamuse was clearly described
by Michael Praetorius, and is yet a mystery
because none has survived to the present time
and because there is some confusion with
instrument names from this period. Different
names which were used for similar instruments
and similar names used for different
instruments. The name cornamuse from the
Latin cornamusa commonly meant bagpipe as
in the French cornemuse. The use of the
name dolzaina, from the Latin dulcis
(sweet), is thought to be the same or a similar
instrument to the cornamuse, and yet the
name is often intermingled with the dulzan
or dulzian of the curtal families.
These two names were sometimes used in the same
sentence. Praetorius stated that the
cornamuse had no keys. They came in several
sizes, each having a range of a ninth similar to
that of other reed-cap instruments |
| Cornas de cabra |
(Spanish, literally 'goat horn') ancient
Galician instrument used by shepherds |
| Cornemuse (Fr.) |
mouth blown bagpipe with chanter and small
drone in one stock, and a separate large drone,
from the Bourbonnais region of France |
| Cornet |
a brass instrument, with a conical bore and
three valves, looking like a short squat
trumpet. The cornet is pitched in B-flat, and
has a range from f sharp to c''' or above
depending on the skill of the player
more... |
| Corneta (Sp.), Cornet à bouquin (Fr.),
Cornett, Cornetta (It.), Cornetto (It.) |
a Renaissance wooden or ivory wind
instrument, a member of the brass family, with
finger holes like a recorder, but blown like a
trumpet, used to play high, often ornate parts
in polychoral music
more... |
| Corneta china |
Chinese bugle, another name for the
trompeta china (literally Chinese trumpet)
used in Cuban comparsas for carnaval |
| Corno a macchina, Corno a pistoni, Corno
cromatico, Corno ventile |
(Italian) valve horn |
| Corno a mano |
(Italian) the natural French horn |
| Corno di bassetto |
(Italian) basset horn; an organ stop
producing a clarinet-like sound; the music
critic nom de plume of George Bernard
Shaw (1856-1950) |
| Corno dolce |
a soft organ pipe |
| Corno inglés (Sp.), Corno inglese (It.) |
(literally 'English horn') cor anglais or
English horn |
| Cornopean |
an early form of cornet; soft trumpet-like
organ stop |
| Cornu |
an instrument consisting of a long brass
tube twisted into a 'G' shape, used in Roman
political ceremonies |
| Coro |
(Italian) choir, chorus |
| Corps |
(French) the body of an instrument; a
company of performers |
| Corps de ballet |
(French) the whole ballet troupe of a ballet
company |
| Corps de réchange |
(French) brass instrument crook, different
length sections of an early flute allowing it to
perform at different pitches |
| Cor simple |
(French) natural horn |
| Cortège |
(French) procession |
| Corto, Corta, Corti, Corte |
(Italian) short |
| Cosacco, Cosacca |
(Italian) in the Cossack style |
| Cosaque |
(French) Cossack dance in simple dupal time |
| Cotillion, Cotillon |
(French) a formal gathering with a focus on
social etiquette and ballroom dance, geared in
recent years, to encourage the young to acquire
social skills of high society; an eighteenth-
and nineteenth-century formal dance, similar to
a contradance or quadrille, often the final
dance of the evening and consisting of a variety
of complex steps that would be performed by a
lead couple which the other couples imitated,
the music would have included a waltz, polka,
mazurka or galop |
| Coulisse |
(French) trombone slide |
| Council of Trent |
a council of the Roman Catholic Church that
convened in Trent, Italy from 1543 to 1565 and
dealt with matters pertaining to the
Counter-Reformation, including the reform of
liturgical music |
| Countermelody |
a melody designed to fit again a more
important line, called the principal melody |
| Counterpoint |
the technique of setting a melody or
melodies in conjunction with another.
Counterpoint melodies are composed according to
set rules
more... |
| Countersubject, Countertheme |
secondary theme of a fugue |
| Countertenor |
male alto |
| Country dance |
a village dance form originating in early
seventeenth-century England, taken to France and
Germany; dances compiled by John Playford in
1650 |
| Country western two-step |
the two-step originated in the United states
in the 1800's by people who arrived from Europe.
It was an offspring of the minuet. In the old
Western days when women were not allowed to
dance with men, men danced together and that is
the reason for the hand on the shoulder holding
a can of beer and the other hand to the side |
| Coup d'archet |
(France) bow-stroke, bowing |
| Coup de glotte |
(French) a singing method that utilises the
two membranes above the natural volval chords |
| Coupé |
(French) like the chassé but the
displaced foot is raised into the air |
| Couplet |
duplet, a two-note slur, an episode in an
early French rondeau |
| Coupure |
(French) omitted section, a 'cut' |
| Courante, Corrento, Coranto, Corant |
an Italian dance of rapid tempo in simple
triple time, a French dance that mixes simple
triple and compound duple time |
| Courroie |
(French) strap |
| Course |
a pair or more of strings tuned to the same
note or the same note an octave apart |
| Couvert, Couverte |
(French) covered |
| Cowbell |
a thin walled iron bell mounted on a frame,
without its clapper removed, used as an
orchestral percussion instrument, often to mimic
the dry sound of bells worn by animals |
| Craar |
see krar |
| Crab canon |
a piece of counterpoint in which one part is
identical to another, but backwards |
| Cracovienne (Fr.), Krakowiak (Polish) |
a lively duple time Polish dance from Krakow |
| Crash cymbals |
a pair of cymbals held by leather straps and
hit together to make a loud, metalic crashing
sound |
| Crécelle |
(French) rattle |
| Credo |
third item of the Ordinary of the Mass |
| Crescendo |
 |
(Italian) increasingly loud |
|
| Croche |
 |
(French) a quaver (eighth note), one
eighth the time value of a whole note or
semibreve |
|
| Crochet (sing.), Crochets (pl.) |
(French) the flag attached to the tail of a
note to show its length, for example, one flag
for a quaver (eighth note), two flags for a
semiquaver (sixteenth note), etc. |
| Croiser |
(French) to cross |
| Croma |
| |
(Italian) a quaver (eighth note),
one eighth the time value of a whole
note or semibreve |
|
| Cromatico, Cromatica, Cromatici,
Cromatice |
(Italian) chromatic |
| Cromorno |
(Spanish) crumhorn |
| Crook |
metal tube, sometimes holding a reed, that
reaches from the player's mouth to an entry
point on a woodwind instrument, in the case of
the oboe and bassoon the crook forms part of the
acoustic length of the instrument, in the case
of the larger bass recorders it does not; a
length of metal tube used to extend the length
of part of the tubing on a brass instrument |
| Croon |
a soft low form of singing or humming, often
associated with lullabies; a singing style
popular in the 1920-1950 period where the singer
sang into a microphone and was accompanied by a
dance band |
| Crossover |
a merging of styles |
| Cross relation |
a cross relation is a chromatic succession
that has been split between two voices. That is,
one of the notes in the chromatic succession has
been displaced by an octave or more. In
progressions, cross relations can produce a
harsh sound as a result of the interval of the
major 7th formed by the two notes. The
dissonance is most noticable when the notes of
the cross relation are in the outer voices. To
lessen the effect of the dissonant interval, put
one note of the cross relation in an inner voice
|
| Cross rhythm |
the juxtaposition of simultaneous but
conflicting rhythmic patterns |
| Crot |
crwth |
| Crotales (Eng. and Fr.), Crotali (It.),
Crotalos (Sp.) |
antique cymbals, crotales are tuned metal
discs that are constructed mainly of bronze or
brass. Crotales have a very distinctive high,
bell-like sound and can easily cut through the
heaviest orchestrations. Crotales are generally
available in octave sets and are accurately
pitched unlike finger cymbals which do not have
a definite pitch. Antique cymbals can be either
design. The usual crotale range of a two octave
set is C6 - C8 (middle C is C4). Finger cymbals
are lighter than crotales, smaller and are
generally found in pairs.
Repertoire: Debussy - L'Apres Midi d'un Faune;
Adams - Short ride in a fast machine |
| Crotalum |
an ancient Greek, and later Roman,
instrument, similar to castanets or clappers,
made of wood, bone, bronze, etc. and used
particularly to accompany dancing |
| Crotchet |
 |
a quarter note, a note one quarter
the time value of a whole note or
semibreve |
|
| Crotchet rest |
 |
or |
|
a quarter rest, a rest one quarter
the time value of a whole rest or
semibreve rest |
|
| Crowd, Crowth, Cruit |
crwth |
| Crucifixus |
part of the credo of the Mass. |
| Crumhorn |
(German root, krumm meaning crooked)
a wind-capped double-reed hook-shaped instrument
with finger holes
more... |
| Crustic |
a phrase that begins on the downbeat of a
bar and ends at the end of a bar; a phrase that
starts and ends in the middle of a bar is said
to be anacrustic |
| Crwth |
an ancient bowed lyre |
| Csárdás |
a national Hungarian dance in two sections,
the first slow and sad, the other fast and fiery |
| C-Schlussel |
| |
(German) C clef, the clef sign that
marks the position of the note C on the
staff, for example, the alto clef |
|
| Cuadro |
group of flamenco performers, including
dancers, singers, and guitarists |
| Cuatro |
Creole guitar of South America and the West
Indies, made out of pine or cedar wood, with
four nylon strings. The cuatro is usually
strummed rather than plucked. It is derived from
the Spanish guitar; Puerto Rican guitar used in
country music. Originally the Puerto Rican
cuatro had only four strings. Around 1875 it
was changed to five sets of double strings. It
is derived from the Spanish guitar
more... |
| Cuban sticks |
see claves |
| Cuban tom toms |
bongos |
| Cucharas |
spoons used in Cuban rumba to play the clave
patterns |
| Cuckoo |
a simple two-note wind-instrument |
| Cueca |
Bolivian flirting dance. It is slow and
sensual; Chilean dance written in 6/8 time with
the accompaniment in 3/4 time, originally danced
with handkerchiefs only, but recently it has
enjoyed popularity on the ballroom floor |
| Cugenao |
Chinese leaf reed |
| Cuica |
Brazilian friction drum with a stick
attached to the middle of the drumhead, which is
rubbed by the player with a piece of damp cloth
or cotton. The friction on the stick causes the
head of the cuica to vibrate and
'squeak'. The pitch of the squeak can be changed
by applying pressure to the drum head and
changing the tension |
| Cuivre |
(French) copper, brass |
| Cuivré |
(French) brassy |
| Cumbia |
Colombian music and dance form, fusion of
Andean Indian, African and European musical
styles that is also popular in Mexico |
| Cümbüs |
Turkish banjo-like lute |
| Cununú |
Colombian jungle drum |
| Cup |
mute used in brass instruments; part of the
mouthpiece used in brass instruments |
| Cupo |
(Italian) dark, sombre |
| Cura |
smallest of the Turkish saz family,
about 75 cm long |
| Curtal |
see dulcian |
| Cushion dance |
an old dance in which a participant selects
a partner by dropping a cushion before him or
her |
| Custos |
at the end of each staff, or when the clefs
change, the custos indicates the pitch of
the next note. It looks like half a note and the
beam goes up. It is merely a piece of
information, so it need not be sung |
| Cut time |
see alla breve |
| Cycle |
several movements or pieces designed to be
played in succession, for example, a song cycle,
a cycle of operas, the five movements of the
mass (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo,
Sanctus and Agnus dei) |
| Cyclic form |
a work in which some or all of the movements
share related material |
| Cyklus |
(German) cycle |
| Cylindrical bore |
the tube of an instrument which, along its
length, retains a fixed diameter, for example,
the trombone and trumpet (ignoring the flared
bell which forms a relatively short length of
the instrument's bore) |
| Cymbal |
a percussion instrument consisting of a thin
metal plate struck with a beater or used in pair
where the two halfs are brought together sharply
before being held apart |
| Cymbalom |
see cimbalom |
| Cymbalon |
dulcimer |
| Cymbalum orale |
(Latin) Jew's harp |
| Czardas |
see 'csárdás' |
| Czimbal, Czimbalom, Czimbalon |
a Hungarian dulcimer |
