Glossary

Aleatory, adj.
Depending on an uncertain event or contingency as to both profit and loss (eg. an aleatory contract).

Anthropomorphic, adj.
Attribution of human motivation, characteristics, or behavior to inanimate objects, animals, or natural phenomena.

Atonal, adj.
Lacking a tonal center or key; characterized by atonality.

Attacks, n. pl.
The beginning or manner of beginning a piece, passage, or tone.

Avant-Garde, n.
An intelligentsia that develops new or experimental concepts especially in the arts.

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Bauhaus, n.
A 20th century architecture school founded by Walter Gropius, the aesthetic of which was influenced by and derived from techniques and materials employed especially in industrial fabrication and manufacture.

Cantata, n .
A composition for one or more voices usually comprising solos, duets, recitatives, and choruses and sung to an instrumental accompaniment.

Chorus, n.
1) A part of a song or hymn recurring at intervals. 2) the part of a drama sung or spoken by the chorus. 3) a composition to be sung by a number of voices in concert. 4) the main part of a popular song; also : a jazz variation on a melodic theme

Closure, n.
One of the Gestalt principles - shapes that are completely enclosed tend to be seen as separate units.

Composition, n.
An intellectual creation: as 1) a piece of writing; especially : a school exercise in the form of a brief essay 2) a written piece of music especially of considerable size and complexity.

Continuation, n.
One of the Gestalt principles - lines that run straighter or smoother are grouped over lines with sharp angles.

Coplanar, n.
Refers to the artwork produced by avant-garde Argentinian artists in the 1940s.

Clef, Bass, n.
A symbol indicating that the fourth line from the bottom of a staff represents the pitch of F below middle C. Also called F clef.

Clef, Treble, n.
A symbol indicating that the second line from the bottom of a staff represents the pitch of G above middle C. Also called G clef.

Cubism, n.
A nonobjective school of painting and sculpture developed in Paris in the early 20th century, characterized by the reduction and fragmentation of natural forms into abstract, often geometric structures usually rendered as a set of discrete planes.

Diastematic, adj.
An adjective describing notation that indicates the pitch of notes by their vertical placing on the page.

Duration, n.
A period of existence or persistence. The length of a tone or other musical event.

Electronic music, n.
Music created with the aid of electronic devices or instruments. Most commonly associated with analog synthesizers and early compositional techniques such as Musique Concrete.

Fluxus, n.
International movement of artists, musician, and writers, embraced by chance and non traditional interdisciplinary happenings from the 1960s to the late 1970s (collective definition) .

Functionalism, n.
The doctrine that the function of an object should determine its design and materials.

Futurism, n.
An artistic movement originating in Italy around 1910 whose aim was to express the energetic, dynamic, and violent quality of contemporary life, especially as embodied in the motion and force of modern machinery.

Genus, n. (Genera, pl.)
A class of objects divided into several subordinate species.

Gestalt (principles), n. pl.
A series of principles relating to perception. They were first described by the Gestalt school of psychologists, who originated in Germany in the early twentieth century. (See Proximity, Similarity, Continuation, Closure).

Harmony, n.
1) the combination of simultaneous musical notes in a chord. 2) the structure of music with respect to the composition and progression of chords. 3) the science of the structure, relation, and progression of chords.

I Ching, n.
An ancient Chinese text, one of the Five Classics (Wu Ching) of Confucianism.

Indeterminacy, n.
The state or quality of being indeterminate - Not fixed or known in advance. Music in which the composer and/or performer cannot foresee the greater part of the result of a performance, which is made up of non-intentional sounds.

Interpretation, n.
1) An explanation or conceptualization by a critic of a work of literature, painting, music, or other art form; an exegesis. 2) A performer's distinctive personal version of a song, dance, piece of music, or role; 3) a particular adaptation or version of a work, method, or style.

Improvisation, n.
1) To compose, recite, play, or sing extemporaneously. 2) to make, invent, or arrange offhand.

Jazz, n.
1) American music developed especially from ragtime and blues and characterized by propulsive syncopated rhythms, polyphonic ensemble playing, varying degrees of improvisation, and often deliberate distortions of pitch and timbre. 2) popular dance music influenced by jazz and played in a loud rhythmic manner.

Lyricism, n.
An intense personal quality expressive of feeling or emotion in an art (as poetry or music).

Melody, n.
A rhythmically organized sequence of single tones so related to one another as to make up a particular phrase or idea.

Mensural, adj.
Of, relating to, or being polyphonic music originating in the 13th century with each note having a definite and exact time value .

Meter, n.
The structure of notes in a regular pattern of accented and unaccented beats within a measure, indicated at the beginning of a composition by a meter signature.

Mordent, n.
"Biting." An ornament consisting of an alteration (once or twice) of the written note by playing the one immediately below it (lower mordent ), or above it (upper, or inverted, mordent ) and then playing the note again.

Neume/neuma/neum/Neumae, n.
A sign used in the notation of plainsong during the Middle Ages, surviving today in transcriptions of Gregorian chants.

Notation, n.
1) the act, process, method, or an instance of representing by a system or set of marks, signs, figures, or characters. 2) a system of characters, symbols, or abbreviated expressions used in an art or science or in mathematics or logic to express technical facts or quantities.

Orchestra, n.
A large group of musicians who play together on various instruments, usually including strings, woodwinds, brass instruments, and percussion instruments.

Orchestration, n.
An arrangement of a piece of music for performance by an orchestra or ensemble.

Orthographic, adj.
Of or relating to orthography. Of or pertaining to right lines or angles.

Percussion, n.
Instruments made of sonorous material that produce sounds of definite or indefinite pitch when shaken or struck, including drums, rattles, bells, gongs, and xylophones.

Periodicities, n. pl.
Phenomena (musical or otherwise) with the quality or state of being periodic; recurrence at regular intervals.

Phonetic notation, n.
1) representing speech sounds by means of symbols that have one value only. 2) employing for speech sounds more than the minimum number of symbols necessary to represent the significant differences in a musical notation. 3) representing music using symbols that represent the sound based on each symbols visual representation of that sound rather than its symbolic meaning.

Pitch, n.
The highness or lowness of a tone, as determined by the number of vibrations per second in the sound (frequency).

Promixity, n.
One of the Gestalt principles - elements close together tend to organize into units.

Rest , n. (rests, pl.)
1) A rhythmic silence in music. 2) A character representing such a silence. 3) a brief pause in reading.

Rhythm, n.
The pattern or flow of sound created by the arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables in accentual verse or of long and short syllables in quantitative verse.

Score , n. (Scores, pl.)
1) The copy of a musical composition in written or printed notation. 2) a musical composition; specifically the music for a movie or theatrical production. 3) a complete description of a dance composition in choreographic notation.

Scores (graphical), n.
A notation characterized by non-traditional musical symbols arranged in a visual design rather than conventional musical syntax.

Similarity, n.
One of the Gestalt principles - objects that look alike tend to be grouped together.

Simultaneity, adj.
The quality or state of being simultaneous; simultaneousness. Happening, existing, or done at the same time.

Sonata, n.
An instrumental musical composition typically of three or four movements in contrasting forms and keys.

Tempo, n. (tempi, pl.)
The rate of speed of a musical piece or passage indicated by one of a series of directions (as largo, presto, or allegro) and often by an exact metronome marking.

Tempo Markings, n. pl.
Symbols or numbers indicating the rate of speed in a musical work.

Timbral nuances, n.
Sensibility to, awareness of, or ability to express delicate shadings of the quality of tone distinctive of a particular singing voice or musical instrument.

Timbre, n.
The combination of qualities (frequency distribution) of a sound that distinguishes it from other sounds of the same pitch and volume.

Time Signatures, n. pl.
The numbers placed at the beginning of a composition to indicate the meter of the music. The upper number indicates the beats in a measure; the lower number tells what kind of a note will receive one beat.

Tone, n.
Vocal or musical sound of a specific quality (eg. spoke in low tones, masculine tones); especially : musical sound with respect to timbre and manner of expression.

12-tone row, n.
1) A specific succession of all twelve pitch-class numbers that provide the basis for composing a piece. 2) An ordered set of pitch classes in which a precise series of musical intervals (various distances between notes) or their inversions is maintained throughout a piece, occurring in various transformations.

Tonos, n.
A term with various meanings in the tradition of ancient Greek music theory. It could refer to a pitch (tasis), a note (phthongos), the size of an interval (diastema), or a 'scalar mode' (tropos sustematikos). The last two definitions came to be synonymous as referring to a particular overall pitching of the musical system.

Tremolos, n.
1) A tremulous effect produced by rapid repetition of a single tone. 2) A similar effect produced by rapid alternation of two tones.

Triads, n. pl.
A chord of three tones arranged in thirds, e.g. the C-major triad c-e-g, root-third-fifth.

Trills, n. pl.
A musical ornament performed by the rapid alternation of a given note with a major or minor second above.