Definitions I
A series of notes arranged in order to make a distinctive musical unit; the tune.
What is melody?
The term used for the place where music is performed.
What is venue?
The most common musical instrument found in households during the 19th century.
What is the piano?
The two groups that are in competition in an instrumental concerto.
What are a small group against the orchestra?
A classical symphony typically has this many movements.
What is four?
Ludwig van Beethoven is best known for this malady.
What is being deaf?
The sounds that provide the support and enrichment for the melody; multiple sounds heard at once.
What is harmony?
A musical texture involving two or more simultaneously sounding lines that are independent and create counterpoint.
What is polyphony?
A style of Italian opera singing that features the beautiful tone and brilliant technique of the human voice.
What is Bel Canto?
A one-movement work for orchestra that gives musical expression to the emotions and events associated with a story, play, political event, personal experience, etc.
What is a Symphonic/Tone Poem?
The movement in a symphonic cycle is typically the slow movement.
What is the second movement?
Who is Franz Joseph Haydn/Wolfgang Mozart/Ludwig van Beethoven?
The organization of time in music.
What is rhythm?
The term used for the rate of speed at which the beats occur.
What is tempo?
A piece of instrumental music, usually for symphony orchestra, that seeks to re-create in sound the events and emotions portrayed in some extramusical source such as a story or painting
What is program music?
A short piece of music, intended for solo piano and focused on a single mood.
What is a Character piece?
The principal section in a Sonata form in which the thematic material is developed by extension, transformation, or reduction to its essence.
What is the development?
The Russian composer of the three ballets Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring.
Who is Igor Stravinsky?
The character or quality of a musical tone produced by a voice or instrument; the color.
What is timbre?
A part of opera that conveys emotional release rather than plot direction.
What is an Aria?
The term used in the 20th century for music that sounds unlike anything ever composed before or after it.
What is Modernism?
A song for solo voice and piano based on a previously composed poem with high artistic aspirations.
What is an art song?
The principal section of a sonata form in which the themes are presented.
What is the exposition?
The American composer who composed the ballets Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid, and Rodeo.
Who is Aaron Copland?
The purposeful organization of music; the general shape of a composition.
What is form?
The gathering of beats into regular groups of two or three.
What is meter?
The four/five instrumental families in Western Music.
What are strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion (keyboards)?
The five/six sung portions of the Mass for which the texts are invariable from day to day.
What is the Ordinary?
The movement in a symphony that is typically the dance/Minuet and trio form.
What is the third movement?
The best known composer of Italian Opera after 1850.
Who is Giuseppe Verdi?