The complete idiot's guide to classical music (70 page)

Michael Tilson Thomas
(b. 1944) American conductor, composer, and pianist. Thomas is music director of the San Francisco Symphony, founder and artistic director of the New World Symphony, and principal guest conductor of the London Symphony. He has made over 200 recordings of works ranging from Bach and Beethoven to Mahler and Stravinsky, to Steve Reich, John Cage, and George Gershwin. He has appeared with all the major orchestras, and has done extensive television work. Committed to music education, he has given lecture demonstrations and led the New York Philharmonic Young People’s Concerts from 1971 to 1977.

Christoph von Dohnanyi
(b. 1929) German conductor of Hungarian heritage. Grandson of composer and conductor Ernst von Dohnanyi, Dohnanyi won the Richard Strauss Prize for composition and conducting in 1948. After studies in the U.S., he returned to Germany where he served as conductor and music director to several prominent orchestras. In 1984, he became music director of the Cleveland Orchestra; he also fulfills engagements as guest conductor in the music capitals of Europe. He is recognized as a master technician and a versatile musician, capable to taking on all types of music from Baroque to avant-garde.

Herbert von Karajan
(b. 1908; d. 1989) Austrian conductor. Salzburg’s most famous son since Mozart, a performance of
Tristan und Isolde
at the Berlin Staatsoper in 1937 launched von Karajan’s spectacular international career. In 1955 he was appointed Music Director for Life of the Berlin Philharmonic, which he honed into what many critics call the world’s best orchestra. From the 1950s to 1970s, he was known as the “General music director director of Europe.” A technical perfectionist, he was unsurpassed in a repertoire of orchestral and operatic classics. He remains a formidable presence through more than 800 audio recordings, as well as many superb video recordings.

A capella
Italian for “in the chapel.” Choral music sung without instrumental accompaniment.

Adagio
“At ease” or “leisurely.” A movement with a slow tempo.

Allegro
Quick; a movement in lively tempo.

Andante
Moderately slow; a movement at a moderate or walking pace.

Aria
Italian for “air.” A song which is either independent or part of a larger work (i.e., opera).

Baton
The stick by which the conductor of an orchestra or ensemble beats time.

Bel canto
Literally, “beautiful singing.” Referring to the Italian vocal style of the 17th through 19th centuries, characterized by beautiful tone, florid delivery, shapely phrasing, and effortless technique.

Cadence
The conclusion or punctuation point in a musical phrase; the formula on which such a conclusion is based. Cadences are the most effective way of affirming or establishing the tonality of a passage.

Cadenza
A virtuoso passage near the end of a concerto movement or aria.

Cantata
The most important genre of vocal chamber music in the Baroque period; the principal musical constituent of the Lutheran service. Since the late 18th century, the term has been applied to a wide variety of sacred and secular works, mostly for chorus and orchestra.

Chamber music
Term applied to instrumental (although sometimes vocal) music played by an ensemble of usually three to eight players, with one player per part.

Chord
The simultaneous sounding of two or more notes.

Coda
“Tail.” The last part of a piece or melody; an addition to a standard form or design. In a fugue, the coda is anything occurring after the last entry of the subject; in sonata form, it is anything coming after the recapitulation.

Concerto
A term applied in the 17th century to ensemble music for voices and instruments; since then it usually denotes a work in which a solo instrument (or instrumental group) contrasts with an orchestral ensemble.

Conductor
Person who directs a musical performance by visible gestures designed to secure unanimity of execution and interpretation.

Consonance
The harmonious sounding together of two or more notes, that are “consonant” or pleasing to the ear.

Contrapuntal
Using counterpoint; the term describes music consisting of two or more melodic strands heard simultaneously.

Counterpoint
The art of combining two simultaneous musical lines. From the Latin contrapunctum “against note.”

Crescendo
Italian for “growing;” an instruction to become louder. Its opposite is decrescendo or diminuendo.

Dissonance
Two or more notes sounding together and forming a discord that is not pleasing to the ear.

Double stop
The playing of two notes simultaneously on a bowed string instrument.

Ensemble
Term for a group of players and/or singers. Also applies to the music they play and the degree of precision with which they play together.

Exposition
In a fugue, the opening section in which the voices enter in turn with the subject; in sonata form, the first part of the movement in which the main material is stated, beginning in the tonic and closing in, usually the dominant or relative major.

Falsetto
The treble range produced by adult male singers through a slightly artificial technique whereby the vocal cords vibrate in a length shorter than usual.

Fanfare
A flourish of trumpets or other brass instruments, often with percusssion, for ceremonial purposes.

Forte
Loud.

Harmony
The combining of two notes simultaneously to produce chords and their successive use to produce chord progressions.

Interval
The distance betwen two pitches. Intervals are described according to the number of steps they embrace in a diatonic scale, counted inclusively.

Key
The quality of a musical passage or composition that causes it to be sensed as gravitating toward a particular note, called the key note or tonic. Key is also taken to mean pitch.

Leitmotif
“Leading motif.” A clearly defined theme or musical idea, reperesenting or symbolizing a person, object, idea, etc. that returns in its original or an altered form at appropriate points in a dramatic (mainly operatic) work.

Lieder
Literally means “songs” in German. The term generally used for romantic art songs.

Lyric
Term that is used (usually in the plural) for the words of a song; also to describe a voice, usually soprano or tenor, of a light and unforced quality.

Measure
American term, equivalent to the English “bar” for the metrical units marked off along the staff by vertical lines.

Melody
A series of musical notes arranged in succession, in a particular rhythmic pattern, to form a recognizable unit.

Meter
The organization of notes in a composition or passage (with respect to time) in such a way that a regular pulse made up of beats can be perceived and the duration of each note can be measured in terms of these beats. The beats are grouped regularly into bars or measures (see above).

Mode
A term in Western music theory used for the scale or the selection of notes used as the basic for a composition; the selection has implications about where melodies will end, the shapes they may take, and the expressive character of a piece.

Modulation
In tonal music, it is the movement of one key into another as a continuous musical process.

Motif
A short musical idea that is melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, or all three. Generally one of the shortest subdivisions of a theme or phrase.

Movement
A term applied to any portion of a musical work sufficiently complete in itself to be regarded as a separate entity.

Octave
The interval between the two notes seven diatonic scale degrees apart giving a frequency ratio of 1:2. The term usually applies “perfect octave”—the sum of five whole tones and two diatonic semitones—but a diminished or augmented octave is equally possible.

Opera
A musical dramatic work in which the actors sing some or all of their parts; a union of music, drama, and spectacle, with music normally playing a dominant role.

Operetta
A term used in the 17th and 18th centuries for a variety of stage works shorter than opera, and in the late-19th and early-20th centuries for a light opera with spoken dialogue and dances.

Oratorio
An extended musical setting of a sacred, usually nonliturgical text. Except for greater emphasis on the chorus, forms and styles of oratorio tend to approximate opera of a given period, albeit without scenery, costumes, or action.

Overture
An orchestral piece introducing an opera or other longer work, or one written for concert performance.

Percussion
Instruments played by shaking or striking. Percussion instruments are divided into those that produce a sound of definite pitch (tuned) and those that do not (untuned).

Pianissimo
Very quiet, the superlative of piano.

Piano
Soft—play softly.

Pitch
The quality of a sound that fixes its position in the scale.

Polyphony
From Greek meaning “many-sounding,” used for music in which two or more strands sound simultaneously.

Quartet
A piece for four voices or instruments, or a group that performs such a piece.

Recapitulation
The third main division of a movement in sonata form, in which the thematic material of the first section is restated, normally all in the tonic key. In general, the return to the original theme in the original key in any work.

Requiem
A Mass for the dead in the Roman Catholic church consisting of the Introit, Kyrie, Gradual and Tract, Sequence, Sanctus and Benedictus, and Communion.

Rhythm
The subdivision of a span of time into perceptible sections; the grouping of musical sounds, principally by means of duration and stress. With melody and harmony, rhythm is one of the three basic elements of music.

Roulade
A decorative passage, usually in vocal music.

Scale
A sequence of notes ascending or descending in order of pitch. It is long enough to define unambiguously a mode or tonality and begins or ends on the fundamental note of that mode or tonality.

Sonata
A piece of music, almost invariably instrumental and usually in several movements, for a soloist or a small ensemble.

Strings
Instruments sounded by the vibration of strings. String instruments are set in vibration by striking, plucking, or bowing the strings.

Suite
An ordered set of instrumental pieces meant to be performed at a single setting.

Symphonic poem
An orchestral form in which a poem or program provides a narrative or illustrative basis.

Symphony
An extended work for orchestra, usually in four movements. It is traditionally regarded as the central form of orchestral composition.

Syncopation
The shifting of stressed beats in a measured pattern ahead of or behind its normal position in that pattern.

Tempo
The “time” of a musical composition, therefore the speed of its performance.

Theme
The musical material on which part or all of a work is based; usually the term implies a recognizable melody. A theme may be used to identify a work and may be the melody on which a set of variations is based.

Timbre
Term describing the tonal quality of a sound.

Tonic
In the major-minor tonal system, the tonic is the main note of a key (its key note), after which the key is named; the name of the scale-step or degree of that note; the triad built on that note.

Vespers
The seventh service of the Divine Office, traditionally performed at twilight. It begins with the versicle and response, with Deus in adjutorium following, in the Roman Catholic church use by five psalms (chosen according to the day or feast).

Vibrato
A fluctuation of pitch (less often, intensity) on a single note in performance, especially by string players and singers.

Woodwind
Term for wind instruments whose air column is set in vibration either by the impinging of a stream of air on an edge or by a reed.