67 articles
Minimal music
Minimal music, also called musical minimalism, is an American style of composition from the 1960s built on repetition and gradual change, associated with Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass.
Minuet
Minuet (menuet): a slow, stately French couple dance in 3/4 time popular in the 17th and 18th centuries, set to music by Lully, codified under Louis XIV, and later a standard minuet-trio-da capo movement of Classical symphonies.
Modernism (music)
Modernism in music: turn-of-the-20th-century period of change in musical language, breaking from Romantic tonality via atonality, Schoenberg's twelve-tone serialism, Impressionism, and neoclassicism (Debussy, Stravinsky, Bartók), dominant after WWII then critiqued by postmodernism.
Motet
Motet: a polyphonic vocal genre, usually on a sacred Latin text and often a cappella, originating in 13th-century France from Notre Dame clausulae, defined by polytextuality, isorhythm, Renaissance imitative counterpoint, and later Baroque and modern choral continuations.
Nadia Boulanger
Nadia Boulanger (Juliette Nadia Boulanger, 1887–1979), French composer, organist, conductor, and composition teacher at the American Conservatory, Fontainebleau; students included Copland, Glass, Carter, Bernstein, and Quincy Jones.
Neapolitan chord
Neapolitan chord (N6, Neapolitan sixth, bII): a major triad on the lowered second scale degree, usually in first inversion, functioning as a pre-dominant that resolves to V in classical harmony, most common in minor keys.
Neoclassicism (music)
Neoclassicism (music), or Neoclassical music, is a 20th-century compositional current reviving 18th-century forms. It is marked by stylistic allusion and is associated with Stravinsky and Poulenc.
New Simplicity
New Simplicity (German: Neue Einfachheit) is a 1970s label for a turn away from serialist complexity toward tonality, melody, and comprehensibility, chiefly in German music and literature.
Nocturne
Nocturne: a short night-charactered composition, chiefly a Romantic piano piece with singing melody over arpeggiated accompaniment; created by John Field (c. 1812–1814), formalised and made famous by Chopin, later extended by Fauré, Debussy, and Britten.
Nocturnes, Op. 9 (Chopin)
Chopin's Nocturnes Op. 9, his first published nocturne set (B-flat minor, E-flat major, B major), written 1830-1832, issued 1833 by Schlesinger, Kistner, and Wessel; No. 2 in E-flat is the famous one, modeled partly on Field.
Oscar Levant
Oscar Levant (1906–1972), American pianist, composer, and wit; leading interpreter of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and Concerto in F; Information Please panelist, Hollywood character actor, and author of A Smattering of Ignorance.
Pianist
Pianist: a person who plays the piano, especially a skilled or professional performer; word first used 1817. Covers technique and biomechanics, playing-related injuries (over 60% report discomfort), performance traditions, and evaluation of pianists.
Piano Concerto (Grieg)
Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16: his only piano concerto, written in Denmark in 1868, premiered in Copenhagen in 1869 by Edmund Neupert, and revised repeatedly until his 1907 death.
Piano Concerto No. 1 (Tchaikovsky)
Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23 (Концерт для фортепиано с оркестром № 1), composed 1874–75, premiered by Hans von Bülow in Boston in 1875 after Nikolai Rubinstein rejected it; revised 1879 and 1889.
Piano Concerto No. 2 (Rachmaninoff)
Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18 (1900–01), also called the "Rachmaninoff Concerto": three movements, dedicated to Dr. Nikolai Dahl, premiered Moscow 1901, one of his most popular works.
Piano Concerto No. 21 (Mozart)
Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467, the "Elvira Madigan" concerto, is a 1785 Mozart piano concerto premiered at the Vienna Burgtheater on 10 March 1785, famous for its F major Andante used in the 1967 film Elvira Madigan.
Piano Concerto No. 3 (Rachmaninoff)
Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30, Rach 3, is Sergei Rachmaninoff's 1909 piano concerto, completed at Ivanovka, premiered November 28, 1909 in New York with Damrosch, dedicated to Josef Hofmann, and famed for its extreme technical difficulty and two alternative first-movement cadenzas.
Piano Concerto No. 5 (Beethoven)
Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73, the "Emperor" Concerto, composed 1809 in occupied Vienna, dedicated to Archduke Rudolph, premiered Leipzig 1811 with Friedrich Schneider; nickname not Beethoven's own.
Piano sonata
Piano sonata: a multi-movement solo-piano work from the Italian sonare, "to sound". Standardized by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven with a sonata-form first movement, slow lyrical second, and fast finale; extended by Schubert, Chopin, Liszt, Bartók, and Prokofiev.
Piano Sonata No. 14 (Beethoven)
Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 27 No. 2, the Moonlight Sonata (Mondscheinsonate), is Beethoven's 1801 'quasi una fantasia' sonata dedicated to Countess Giulietta Guicciardi; its nickname came from critic Ludwig Rellstab in 1832, not Beethoven.
Postmodern music
Postmodern music: late 20th-century music engaging postmodern aesthetics, defined by collage, quotation, style mixing, and listener-centered meaning; central writers include Jonathan Kramer, Lyotard, and John Caldwell.
Program music
Program music (programme music) is instrumental music descriptive of non-musical ideas, contrasted with absolute music; its main genres are the program symphony and symphonic poem, flourishing in the nineteenth century.
Quartet
Quartet: a four-player ensemble or a work for four, one player per part. Best known as the string quartet (two violins, viola, cello), founded as a genre by Haydn's 68 quartets and Op. 33 (1781).
Renaissance music
Renaissance music, the European vocal polyphonic tradition of roughly 1400–1600 (also called the period c. 1430–1600), marked by imitative counterpoint, triadic harmony, Franco-Flemish composers such as Dufay, Ockeghem, and Josquin, musica ficta, and church and court patronage.
Ritornello
Ritornello (Italian, "little return"): a recurring instrumental refrain, chiefly the orchestral passage alternating with solo episodes in Baroque concerto form (ABACA), also used in arias; returns may occur in non-tonic keys, distinguishing it from the rondo.
Romantic music
Romantic music: nineteenth-century Western classical music (c. 1820-1910), also called the Romantic period, defined by expressive emotion, program music, larger orchestras, expanded chromatic harmony, public concerts, parlor music, and nationalist opera.
Round (music)
Round (music), also called perpetual, infinite, or circle canon: voices sing one melody at the unison or octave, entering in sequence and looping endlessly. Earliest example "Sumer is i-cumen in"; distinct from catch, canon, and fugue.
Sarabande
Sarabande (Spanish zarabanda): a slow triple-time dance of Latin American and Spanish origin, banned by Philip II in 1583, restyled stately in 17th-century France, a standard Baroque suite movement, revived by Satie, Debussy, and others.
Serenade
Serenade (sérénade; Serenade, Ständchen; serenata): evening music sung or played outdoors, originally by a lover at a window, later a multi-movement light orchestral genre from Mozart's serenatas to Brahms, Dvořák, Britten, and Stravinsky.
Sprechgesang
Sprechgesang (Sprechstimme) is a vocal technique blending speaking and singing, where performers follow a notated rhythm while treating pitches as an outline to be inflected rather than held.