Major Genres and other Terms

Aleatoric Music: a 20th century compositional style. Music in which the composer introduces elements of chance. In this compositional process, various musical elements such as rhythm, pitches, dynamics may be arranged by dice throwing, interpretations of abstract design or according to certain mathematical laws of chance. In performance, chance may be at the discretion of the performer(s). These elements include playing, in random order, a specific set of pitches, or playing different sections of a composition in a random order.

Alto: Usually a lower female voice, but can also apply to any instrument that generally plays below the highest voice or instrument (called soprano).

Aria: a solo in an opera, cantata or oratorio, usually with orchestral accompaniment.

Ballet: a theatrical performance by a dancing group. Also, the music that accompanies the ballet, usually without words and/or singing. A number of important compositions have been written for the ballet including Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake by Peter I. Tchaikovsky, The Firebird and The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinski, Rodeo and Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copland.

Baroque: a period of western music history lasting from circa 1600 to c. 1740. The Baroque was a highly expressive style of writing that included a considerable amount of counterpoint, and the development and refinement of the basso continuo. Most composers of the Baroque wrote tonal music (as opposed to modal). Fugues, cantatas, oratorio, early concerti and opera were all major Baroque genres. Composers of note include Claudio Monteverdi, Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti, Georg Frederick Handel and Johann Sebastian Bach.

Bass: the lowest voice or pitch. May apply to a family of instruments as well as the voice.

Basso Continuo: the bass line and accompanying chordal instruments used to support singers in early opera and soon adapted for instrumental forms. This style of writing that featured a bass line, melody and “filled out” harmonies dominated the Baroque era unless the composer chose a contrapuntal texture such as found in fugues.

Binary and Ternary form: Two basic musical forms consisting of either two or three sections. Binary form consists of two contrasting sections, often with repetitions of each section (AB or AABB). Ternary form usually made of three sections where the first and third section is nearly or completely identical. Many of the Baroque dance forms are binary, as are the sonatas of D. Scarlatti. Most of the Minuet/Trio or Scherzo/Trio movements of the 18th and 19th century symphony are ternary.

Bitonality: a style of composition mostly found in the 20th century where a composer writes in two different keys simultaneously.

Cantata: a typically multi-movement composition for voice(s) and instruments that is dramatic in content but not meant to be staged. The movements might include arias, duets, recitatives and choruses. A popular Baroque form, most cantatas are sacred in nature (but not all). About 200 hundred cantatas survive by J. S. Bach, who wrote many of them for specific Sundays in the liturgical calendar.

Chamber Music: Instrumental ensemble music where a single player typically performs each part….as opposed to orchestral music where there may be multiple players all playing the same notes. Some types of chamber music include Trio Sonatas, Sonatas, Trios (including the piano trio: piano, violin and cello), Quartets (often for strings: two violins, viola and cello), Quintets (combinations of strings though often for winds: flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn).

Character Piece: a rather generic term for a huge number of shorter pieces, often for piano, written during the 19th century. They can be simple or quite complex structurally, but usually portray a definite mood or programmatic idea. Some titles include ballade, capriccio, intermezzo, nocturne, etude, prelude, impromptu and song without words.

Chorale: a title for a hymn tune or sacred melody.

Classical Era: Popularly all art music, but specifically the stylistic period from roughly 1740 to 1810/20. Includes the compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Joseph Haydn and Ludwig von Beethoven. Less polyphonic than the Baroque era that precedes it, the Classical era can be characterized by symmetry, elegance and refinement. The rise of major instrumental forms transpired during this time including the concerto, the symphony, the sonata (sometimes called the classical sonata to distinguish it from the Baroque versions) and the string quartet.

Coloratura: a rapid, florid and often ornamental style of writing often found in the vocal lines of opera. It also can refer to instrumental writing that strives to imitate that style.

Concerto: Since the late 18th century, a multi-movement composition for a solo instrument with orchestra. During the 17th and early 18th century, a composition for a small group of instruments with orchestra. Typical elements of the concerto are passages that feature the solo instrument, often in some kind of virtuostic display, contrasted with passages for the orchestra without soloist. The typical solo concerto is in three movements (fast slow fast). The Classical era concerti often featured a cadenza towards the end of the first movement. A cadenza is a rather lengthy passage for the soloist that was meant to show off the performer and was originally improvised in performance. The first movements are often in sonata form. The Baroque concerti were often four or more movements.

Fugue: a contrapuntal composition based on a theme or subject, which is stated at the beginning by one voice and then imitated by other voices repeatedly throughout its entirety.

Impressionism: a term applied to the paintings of a group of late 19th century French artists. Applied to French composers of a same period, notably Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, among others. These composers, partly in an attempt to avoid the influence of Germanic composers, developed a style of writing that featured some non- traditional forms and harmony including whole-tone scales, pentatonic scales, parallel chords and other “new” sounds and textures. Their music often had titles that reflected literary and/or painterly influences.

Leitmotiv: a term used for melodies and their usage in opera, specifically the operas of the German composer Richard Wagner. These melodies were used repeatedly throughout an opera and were associated with a character, emotion or object.

Lied or Lieder: in German, song. The term applies to German art song, typically of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Mezzo-soprano: the operatic term for Alto. A soprano with a lower voice.

Minuet: a dance form that became the standard third movement of the Classical symphony and chamber music. In triple time, the minuet was almost always followed by a Trio (in binary form, as was the minuet itself), and then a repetition of the minuet.

Motet: the most important form of polyphonic music during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Because it changed so much throughout history it is difficult to formulate a precise definition, however, we can say a motet is an unaccompanied chorale composition with a Latin sacred text.

Musique concrete: Music made from sounds, often everyday sounds like clocks, locomotives, cars, etc. French composer Pierre Schaeffer who recorded and then manipulated a variety of sounds to create sound canvases, developed the concept and term.

Nationalism: in music, a movement beginning in the last half of the 19th century where composers emphasized national and ethnic musical traits in their compositions. Some important nationalistic composers include Grieg, Dvorak, Smetana, Mussorgsky, Albeniz, Granados and de Falla.

Neoclassicism: a movement of the 20th century where composers adopt various characteristics of 18th century music, especially form. Term often applied towards certain pieces by Igor Stravinski and Sergei Prokofieff.

Opus: in Latin, work. Used with a number to designate the chronological order of a specific composition. Some composers work is chronologically numbered with the abbreviation of the name of the musicologist who did the research.

Opera: a staged drama, usually with sung text throughout. A genre essentially invented in the late 16th century, opera ushered in the Baroque era with its’ use of recitative and accompanying basso continuo. An important art form during the Baroque, Classical and Romantic eras. In addition to recitative, commonly used forms include aria, choruses, overtures and occasionally ballet. Important operatic composers include Monteverdi, A. Scarlatti, Mozart, Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, Wagner, Bizet, R. Strauss and Puccini.

Oratorio: essentially an opera, except that oratorios were not staged and typically were sacred in content. The Messiah by Georg Frederick Handel is one of the most famous.

Overture: an instrumental composition used in opera to prepare the audience for the drama to follow. Designed to set the mood of a piece, 19th century composers would use melodies from the opera as part of the overture. Also an incidental piece of instrumental music, often inspired by a dramatic or literary work.

Program Music: Music that was inspired by a non-musical idea such as a story, poem, event, person or place. Symphonic Poems are usually programmatic.

Recitative: a vocal style that is constructed by imitating natural speech inflections. Developed in the early Baroque era as part of the rise of opera and used throughout the Classical and Romantic eras, recitative often serves to move the action forward or acts as an introduction to an aria, ensemble or chorus. Sometimes this declamatory style of writing is used instrumentally.

Renaissance: the music of this era (c.1450-1600) was still modal in construction (as opposed to tonal), and often times quite polyphonic. Much of the art music of this period was vocal.

Romantic Era: in music, from c.1810 to 1900. The bulk of current concert repertoire comes from Romantic composers. This music of this era can be characterized by a strong sense of individualism, emphasis on the subjective, intense emotionalism, greater freedom of form and long, lyrical melodic lines. Major composers include Schubert, Schumann, Berlioz, Chopin, Liszt, Paganini, Brahms, Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Richard Strauss, and the operatic composers Verdi and Wagner.

Rondo: a form used often in Classical music. Typically used in final movements of sonatas, concerti and symphonies, a rondo features a recurring sections of music often in an A B A C A B A form.

Scherzo: a movement, often the third, found in symphonies, sonatas and chamber music. First used by Beethoven to replace the minuet, the scherzo is in triple meter and fast.

Serial Music: a term often used for twelve-tone music in which music is constructed by a specific ordering of the twelve chromatic pitches. This specific order is called a twelve- tone row, and is usually repeated as a series in some fashion throughout the piece. Serial music has become more complex where other musical elements (i.e. duration, tessitura, orchestration, etc.) are serialized. In twelve-tone music the tone row may be manipulated by playing it backwards, upside down (called inversions), and upside down and backwards (called retrograde inversion). Developed by the composers of the so-called Second Viennese School: Arnold Schoenberg and his disciples Anton Webern and Alban berg. Still an important compositional style today.

Sonata: an instrumental composition for solo instrument with piano or some other keyboard accompaniment, or for piano alone. Sonatas are in sections called movements that are usually ordered fast-slow-minuet or scherzo-finale. Many sonatas are simply three movements with the dance movement omitted. The Baroque sonata can be a single movement work, especially in the harpsichord compositions of Domenico Scarlatti. The typical post Baroque sonata features a first movement in sonata form, though other movements may be in that form as well. First movements may include a slow introduction. Beethoven and subsequent Romantic composers expanded or otherwise altered the form. The sonata was an important part of the output of the Classical composer and the form was essentially used for chamber music works as well as the symphony.

Sonata Form: an esthetic as much as a form, sonata form is made up of an exposition (often repeated) followed by a development section and concluding with a recapitulation. The exposition sets a mood and tonal center (usually with a specific theme or melody) and a departure from that tonal center (often with a new and contrasting melody). The development works with the melodic and/or harmonic material by several different kinds of manipulations and usually features harmonic instability. The recapitulation is a return to the material of the exposition, but usually in the original tonal area. The aim of the recapitulation is to resolve the accumulated harmonic tension. Codas may be added at the end to create a reinforced sense of resolution. Sonata form is most often used in the first movement of a sonata.

Song Cycle: a group of songs related thematically and sometimes musically, designed to create a musical entity.

Soprano: the highest voice or instrumental type.

Suite: a multi-movement work made up of dances. Very popular during the Baroque era, typical dances include the allemande, courante, minuet, bourree, gavotte, saraband, and gigue among others.

Symphonic Poem: an orchestral composition developed by Franz Liszt. Essentially an orchestral work based on or inspired by a non-musical idea such as a poem, novel, play, painting, story, place or person.

Symphony: an orchestral work usually in sections called movements (just like the sonata, except for orchestra). The symphony is a major part of the output of most Classical and Romantic composers. Haydn wrote 107, Mozart 41, Beethoven 9, Schubert 9, Schumann 4, Brahms 4, Bruckner 9 and Mahler 9 (plus part of a tenth).

Tenor: usually refers to the highest male voice but may be a mid-range instrument as well.