Staccato is a form of musical articulation. In modern notation, it signifies a note of shortened duration, separated from the note that may follow by silence. It has been described by theorists and has appeared in music since at least 1676.
In music, ornaments or embellishments are musical flourishes—typically, added notes—that are not essential to carry the overall line of the melody, but serve instead to decorate or "ornament" that line, provide added interest and variety, and give the performer the opportunity to add expressiveness to a song or piece. Many ornaments are performed as "fast notes" around a central, main note.
In music, a half note (American) or minim (British) is a note played for half the duration of a whole note and twice the duration of a quarter note. It was given its Latin name because it was the shortest of the five note values used in early medieval music notation. In time signatures with 4 as the bottom number, such as 4
4 or 3
4, the half note is two beats long. However, when 2 is the bottom number, the half note is one beat long.
An eighth note (American) or a quaver (British) is a musical note played for one eighth the duration of whole note (semibreve), hence the name. This amounts to twice the value of the sixteenth note (semiquaver). It is half the duration of a quarter note (crotchet), one quarter the duration of a half note (minim), one eighth the duration of whole note (semibreve), one sixteenth the duration of a double whole note (breve), and one thirty-second the duration of a longa. It is the equivalent of the fusa in mensural notation
Aleatoricmusic is music in which some element of the composition is left to chance, and/or some primary element of a composed work's realization is left to the determination of its performer(s). The term is most often associated with procedures in which the chance element involves a relatively limited number of possibilities.
Dorian mode or Doric mode can refer to three very different but interrelated subjects: one of the Ancient Greek harmoniai, one of the medieval musical modes, or, most commonly, one of the modern modal diatonic scales, corresponding to the white notes from D to D, or any transposition of this.
In music notation, a sixty-fourth note (American), or hemidemisemiquaver or semidemisemiquaver (British), sometimes called a half-thirty-second note, is a note played for half the duration of a thirty-second note, hence the name. It first occurs in the late 17th century and, apart from rare occurrences of hundred twenty-eighth notes (semihemidemisemiquavers) and two hundred fifty-sixth notes (demisemihemidemisemiquavers), it is the shortest value found in musical notation.
Genus is a term used in the Ancient Greek and Roman theory of music to describe certain classes of intonations of the two movable notes within a tetrachord.
A multiphonic is an extended technique on a monophonic musical instrument in which several notes are produced at once. This includes wind, reed, and brass instruments, as well as the human voice. Multiphonic-like sounds on string instruments, both bowed and hammered, have also been called multiphonics, for lack of better terminology and scarcity of research.
Alla breve[alla ˈbrɛːve]—also known as cut time or cut common time— is a musical meter notated by the time signature symbol , which is the equivalent of 2
2. The term is Italian for "on the breve", originally meaning that the beat was counted on the breve.
Discant or descant originated as a style of liturgical setting in the Middle Ages, associated with the development of the Notre Dame school of polyphony.
Fioritura is the florid embellishment of melodic lines, either notated by a composer or improvised during a performance. It usually involves lengthy, complex embellishments, as opposed to standardized local ornamental figures such as trills, mordents, or appoggiaturas, and its use is documented as early as the thirteenth century. The alternative term "coloratura" is less accurate. It is closely related to the sixteenth-century practice of diminution or division.
Indeterminacy is a composing approach in which some aspects of a musical work are left open to chance or to the interpreter's free choice. John Cage, a pioneer of indeterminacy, defined it as "the ability of a piece to be performed in substantially different ways".
Portato, also mezzo-staccato, French notes portées, in music denotes a smooth, pulsing articulation and is often notated by adding dots under slur markings.
In music, a sixteenth note (American) or semiquaver (British) is a note played for half the duration of an eighth note (quaver), hence the names. It is the equivalent of the semifusa in mensural notation, first found in 15th-century notation.
Systems of musical notation have been in use in China for over two thousand years. Different systems have been used to record music for bells and for the Guqin stringed instrument. More recently a system of numbered notes (Jiannpu) has been used, with resemblances to Western notations.
Stanley John Sadie was an influential and prolific British musicologist, music critic, and editor. He was editor of the sixth edition of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1980), which was published as the first edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.
John Tyrrell was a British musicologist. Born in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, he studied at the universities of Cape Town, Oxford and Brno. He was a Lecturer in Music at the University of Nottingham (1976), becoming Reader in Opera Studies (1987) and Professor (1996). From 1996 to 2000 he was Executive Editor of the second edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2001). From 2000 to 2008 he was Research Professor at Cardiff University
Ernest Helmut Sanders was a German-born American musicologist.
