Musical Terms

The title of Janáček's only piano sonata — named for October 1st, 1905, the date a young carpenter named František Pavlík was bayoneted by Austrian soldiers during demonstrations in Brno demanding a C...

Moscheles's most important and most influential work: twenty-four études for piano, published 1826. They were the dominant teaching and concert study collection of the 1820s and 1830s, filling the rol...

Moscheles's most important and most influential work: twenty-four études for piano, published 1826. They were the dominant teaching and concert study collection of the 1820s and 1830s, filling the rol...

Eight piano pieces composed in 1918, each depicting a different type of doll: Branquinha (celluloid), Moreninha (wooden), Caboclinha (rubber), Mulatinha (composition material), Negrinhas (bisque), Pob...

Return to the original tempo after a deviation.

Abandonedly, with abandon — a Medtner favourite indicating a quality of emotional release or surrender, as if the player gives themselves over entirely to the music.

Evening concerts given by Buxtehude at the Marienkirche in Lübeck on the five Sundays before Christmas — among the earliest public concerts in Europe. The young Bach walked 400km from Arnstadt to atte...

Literally 'pull-off' — the light, quick release of a key after it has been pressed, fundamental to producing a clear, non-blurred staccato or detached touch in Classical keyboard playing.

Gradually speeding up.

A canon in which one or more voices continuously change speed — accelerating or decelerating — rather than maintaining a fixed tempo throughout. First explored by Nancarrow in Study No. 8 and brought ...

Accent — stress placed on a specific note.

A crushed grace note — played as quickly as possible before the main note, without taking significant time from it.

A crushed dissonance added to a chord in Baroque keyboard music, particularly idiomatic in Scarlatti's sonatas and the works of Francesco Geminiani. The added note is released immediately, creating a ...

Chord of resonance — Messiaen's term for chords built from the natural overtone series above a bass note, using major thirds, tritones, and major sevenths in specific configurations. Produces a lumino...

At ease — a slow, stately tempo.

Slow and in a singing style; Scarlatti's own marking for the Sonata K. 208 in A major, one of his most expressive slow movements.

Slow and mournful. Barber's marking for the third movement of the Piano Sonata.

A compositional technique in which a short pattern is gradually expanded or contracted by adding or removing one note at a time, altering the rhythmic grouping with each cycle of repetition.

Farewell, Grandfather — Piazzolla's most personal composition, written in 1959 after learning of the death of his father Vicente ('Nonino') while on tour in New York. One of his most performed works, ...

The Baroque doctrine of the Affections (Affektenlehre) — the idea that each piece or movement should express a single, unified emotional state.

Affection or passion — the doctrine that each piece of music should express a single, unified emotional state throughout. In Froberger's suites and tombeaux, each movement has a clearly defined affekt...

Affect or emotion. In Baroque theory each piece or movement was intended to express a single unified emotional state throughout.

The emotional or expressive content of a piece or movement — the primary feeling the music is designed to convey, according to Baroque doctrine.

The Doctrine of the Affections: the Baroque theory that each movement or piece should embody a single, consistent emotional character or 'affect' — joy, grief, agitation, serenity — which the music ex...

The Doctrine of Affects — the Baroque-era theory that music should express and arouse specific emotions (Affekte). CPE Bach inherited this framework from J.S. Bach but transformed it: where Baroque Af...

In Frescobaldi's toccatas, \"affetti\" designates the meditative, harmonically dense, slow-moving sections that alternate with the faster passaggi (running passages) and contrapuntal bursts. These sec...

With tenderness and feeling; an expressive marking calling for warmth and gentle emotion rather than dramatic intensity. Frequently appears in J.C. Bach's slow movements.

Agitated, restless. Indicates a nervous, unsettled energy, usually conveyed through faster tempos and heightened dynamic contrast.

Agitated, restless. Indicates nervous energy and rhythmic drive.

Agitated; in a state of emotional disturbance or restlessness. As a tempo and character marking it indicates a fast or moderately fast pace charged with inner tension, rhythmic drive, and suppressed u...

Agitated, restless; indicates an unsettled or turbulent character.

Agitated — restless, turbulent, and unsettled.

The French Baroque term for ornaments: the tremblement (trill), port de voix (appoggiatura), coule (slide), mordant, and double, each notated with a specific symbol. Rameaus 1724 collection includes a...

Ornament. The French Baroque system of keyboard ornamentation — trills (tremblements), mordents (pincés), ports de voix, coulés, turns, and other small decorative figures — as distinct from the German...

Winged — light and free, as if floating above the instrument.

A rhythmic concept from Turkish and Balkan folk music characterized by unequal beat groupings — combinations of 2s and 3s that create an \"asymmetric\" or \"limping\" pulse (aksak means \"limping\" in...

A broken-chord accompaniment pattern in which the notes of a chord are played in the order lowest–highest–middle–highest, creating a rocking, harmonic filler beneath the melody.

A broken-chord accompaniment pattern common in Classical keyboard music, named after Domenico Alberti. The left hand alternates between the lowest note, highest note, and middle note of a chord in a r...

A left-hand accompaniment pattern common in Classical piano music, alternating between the bass note, the top note, and the middle note of a chord in a steady rhythmic pattern.

Music in which some element of the composition or performance is left to chance or the performer's choice. Boulez distinguished carefully between chance operations (which he rejected) and controlled i...

Cut time — a 2/2 meter marking indicating a fast, two-beats-per-bar feel.

At the Elevation — the moment during the Roman Catholic Mass when the priest raises the consecrated Host and chalice. In 17th-century Italian practice, the organist played a piece of special devotiona...

In a march-like style — steady tempo, strong rhythmic emphasis, clear articulation.

Moderately fast — somewhat lively, but less so than allegro.

Very lively and fast; a tempo indication slightly faster than Allegro and approaching Presto in speed and character. Frequently used by Scarlatti.

Lively and fast — the most common fast tempo.

Fast and brilliant, with dazzling, virtuosic character. The finale marking of the Piano Concerto.

Fast and energetic. Barber's opening marking for the Piano Sonata implies fierce, driving forward motion.

Used for February (Carnival) in The Seasons; a steady, well-measured Allegro without excessive speed.

Fast and precipitous — headlong, rushing forward with barely controlled urgency.

Fast and lively — more animated than Allegro alone. Implies a light, buoyant character in addition to speed.

A moderate-tempo Baroque dance in 4/4, typically the first movement of a suite — dignified and flowing.

Purcell's spelling of the allemande, a moderate-tempo Baroque dance of German origin in common time. In Purcell's suites the almand is typically the longest and most elaborate movement, often featurin...

Old Vienna — an evocation of the vanished elegance of 19th-century Viennese culture, its cafés, waltzes, and bittersweet nostalgia. Godowsky's Alt-Wien (No. 11 of the Triakontameron) is his most belov...

The musical language of Beach and the Boston/New England school of the late 19th century: tonally grounded, late-Romantic harmony influenced by Brahms and the German tradition, with rich chromaticism,...

A characteristic descending four-chord progression (i – VII – VI – V) central to flamenco and Spanish folk music. In Phrygian or Phrygian dominant colouring, the sequence Am – G – F – E gives the 'Spa...

Walking pace — a moderately slow, flowing tempo.

Warmly flowing — the middle movement of Prokofiev's 7th Sonata, a lyrical contrast to the outer movements' aggression.

At a walking pace, in a singing style. One of Mozart's most characteristic slow movement directions, calling for a lyrical, vocal quality.

Tchaikovsky's marking for June (Barcarolle) in The Seasons: a flowing, singing Andante.

Walking pace, sustained. A moderate tempo with each note held to its full value, creating a connected, flowing texture.

At a walking pace, tranquil. Calls for a calm, undisturbed character — the opposite of Prokofiev's acerbic wit.

Slightly faster than andante (in modern usage); sometimes interpreted as slightly slower.

Animated — lively and spirited, sometimes implying a quickening of pace.

The second presentation of the fugue subject, typically at the interval of a fifth above or fourth below the original statement.

Satie's deliberate rejection of technical display. His music avoids passage-work, arpeggios, and the conventional signs of pianistic brilliance, presenting simple textures that reveal any excess of eg...

An extremely brief, concentrated musical statement that contains a complete expressive idea. Kurtág's output is defined by the aphoristic impulse: his pieces often last under a minute, yet each is a f...

With passion, with intense feeling. Calls for deeply committed, emotionally uninhibited expression.

Passionately — with intense emotional expression.

A grace note played on the beat, taking its value from the main note and resolving by step.

An aria with variations. The structural basis of the Hexachordum Apollinis — a simple, songlike theme followed by a series of increasingly elaborate variations.

The use of the natural weight of the arm — relaxed and falling freely — rather than finger striking to produce tone.

A broken-chord figure in the left hand that provides both harmonic content and rhythmic forward motion; the most characteristic texture of Glass's solo piano writing.

A chord played with notes sounded in rapid succession rather than simultaneously, usually from bottom to top.

The suburban outskirts of Buenos Aires — the working-class neighbourhoods where tango originated. The arrabal represents the social world of tango: knife fights, prostitution, immigrants, poverty, and...

'Attack' — instruction to proceed immediately into the next movement or piece without pause. Used by Medtner at the join between Canzona matinata (Op.39 No.4) and Sonata tragica (Op.39 No.5), which he...

Attack immediately — begin the next movement or section without a pause.

Proceed immediately to the next movement — Beethoven's instruction between the second and third movements of Op. 27 No. 2.

Proceed immediately to the next movement without any pause — Beethoven's characteristic instruction linking movements into a continuous arc.

In the distance. Closely related to très lointain — indicates a sound quality that is spatially remote and tonally diffuse rather than simply quiet.

Invitation — specifically in Weber's concert rondo 'Aufforderung zum Tanze' (Invitation to the Dance), a narrative of a gentleman inviting a lady to dance, depicted through the dialogue between bass a...

Ausführliche theoretisch-practische Anweisung zum Pianoforte-Spiel (Complete Theoretical and Practical Guide to Piano Playing) — Hummel's comprehensive piano method published in 1828, one of the most ...

With humour — a lightness and wit characteristic of Ravel's ironic sensibility.

With great variety of nuance — a call for rich, continuous dynamic shaping within a phrase.

With radiant ecstasy — Scriabin's characteristic late-period instruction for mystical, transcendent passages.

Performer's instructions or \"warnings to the reader\" — the prefaces included by Frescobaldi at the beginning of his major keyboard publications, most notably those in Toccate I (1615/1637) and the C...

A series of nine works by Heitor Villa-Lobos (1930-1945) that attempt to fuse the contrapuntal and structural language of J.S. Bach with the folk, popular, and Amerindian musical traditions of Brazil....

An English Baroque ornament: a single-note appoggiatura falling from the note above. It takes a portion of the value of the main note and resolves downward by step. Also called a plain note and shake ...

Beach's Variations on Balkan Themes, Op. 60 is based on folk melodies she encountered through published transcriptions — primarily from Bulgaria, Serbia, and the broader Balkan region. These melodies ...

A type of concertina developed in Germany in the 19th century and adopted as the defining instrument of Argentine tango. The bandoneón's characteristic tone — nasal, reedy, expressive — and its abilit...

A piece in the style of a Venetian gondolier's song; typically in 6/8 or 12/8, rocking gently between bass and melody.

A Baroque harmonic foundation consisting of a bass line with figures (figured bass) indicating the harmony to be realised by a keyboard player and low string instrument.

A repeated bass pattern over which varied material appears in the upper voices. A defining device in Baroque keyboard music, used in chaconnes and passacaglias.

A traditional Javanese textile art using wax-resist dyeing to create intricate geometric and figurative patterns. Godowsky was deeply influenced by Javanese visual art, and the elaborate layered filig...

A jazz style that emerged in the 1940s characterised by fast tempi, virtuosic technique, complex chromatic chord progressions, and long improvisation-like melodic lines that weave through the harmony.

A vibrato-like effect unique to the clavichord, produced by varying the pressure on a held key. CPE Bach notated it with a slur and dots. On modern piano it cannot be reproduced, but a slight expressi...

Literally 'beautiful singing'; a style of vocal melody originating in 18th and 19th century Italian opera characterised by long, flowing, ornamented lines and smooth legato phrasing. Applied to piano ...

The characteristic Rachmaninoff evocation of Russian Orthodox church bells — deep bass resonances with high overtones shimmering above.

Well-rhythmed, with precise rhythmic articulation. Gershwin's direction for Prelude No. 1, emphasising the jazz-influenced rhythmic drive.

Well sung. Franck's melodic writing is rooted in the French vocal tradition — long phrases, natural rise and fall, and an expressive peak that is arrived at gradually and released naturally.

Well-rhythmed. Saint-Saëns's direction for passages requiring secure, dance-like pulse — especially in the gavotte, gigue, and waltz-influenced movements.

The standard structure of Baroque dance movements: two repeated sections, the first moving from tonic to dominant, the second returning to the tonic. All of Handel's suite dances use this form.

Beach's practice of transcribing actual birdsong and incorporating it into the piano texture. In both Hermit Thrush at Eve and Hermit Thrush at Morn, she notated the hermit thrush's call precisely (in...

The simultaneous use of two different keys or tonal centres, producing characteristic harmonic tension. Most famously heard in the Petrushka chord — C major and F-sharp major sounding together.

The simultaneous use of two different keys or tonal centres. Poulenc (like his colleague Milhaud) used bitonality as a routine harmonic resource, superimposing harmonies that suggest different key are...

Charles Fleury de Blancrocher (c.1605–1652), a celebrated French lutenist who died after falling down a staircase at a gathering in Paris. Froberger witnessed the death and composed his Tombeau de Mon...

A piano technique in which the performer silently depresses certain keys with one hand (or fingers) without sounding them, leaving the dampers raised. When the other hand then plays in the same regist...

A note played at a slightly lowered pitch for expressive effect, typically a flattened third, fifth, or seventh degree of the scale, drawn from the African-American blues tradition and central to jazz...

A note played at a slightly lower pitch than the standard major scale, particularly the flattened third, fifth, or seventh. Characteristic of blues and jazz tonality.

The flattened third or seventh degree that gives Copland's jazz-influenced writing its characteristic modal ambiguity and expressive colour.

A direction in Excursions No. 2 calling for the easy swing and expressive freedom of blues style.

Infused with the expressive character of blues music — melancholic, vocal, improvisatory, with expressive bends and a relaxed rhythmic feel.

A blues-derived piano style characterised by a driving, syncopated left-hand bass ostinato (typically in dotted or rolling eighth-note patterns) over which the right hand plays riffs and improvised me...

A percussive piano style rooted in blues tradition featuring a driving repeated ostinato bass pattern in the left hand, typically built from a twelve-bar blues progression, while the right hand plays ...

An African American piano style originating in the 1920s characterised by a driving, repetitive bass pattern in the left hand (typically broken octaves or a rolling eighth-note figure) over which the ...

Solo piano piece composed in April 1891, among the greatest French piano works of the 19th century and Chabrier's last completed major composition. The bourrée — a lively duple-meter dance from the Au...

Dohnányi represents the strongest line of Brahmsian influence in Hungarian music, contrasting sharply with the folk-music-based nationalism of his contemporaries Bartók and Kodály. While Bartók sought...

Brilliant, virtuosic display — a passage requiring and showcasing technical mastery.

Brilliance, skill, and daring — a term used to describe a manner of playing or writing that displays the performer's technical command conspicuously. In early-19th-century piano music, bravura passage...

Brilliant or glittering — a designation applied by Weber and his contemporaries to concert pieces that foreground dazzling technical display. Weber's Rondo brillant, Polacca brillante, and Aufforderun...

Brilliant — a tempo and character marking indicating that passagework should be played with maximum clarity, speed, and sparkle. In the Romantic salon tradition, brillante passages are opportunities f...

Brilliant — sparkling, dazzling, with technical display.

Broken or arpeggiated texture characteristic of French Baroque lute and harpsichord writing. Notes that would be played simultaneously are instead rolled, creating a fluid, quasi-improvisatory surface...

A chord in which the notes are played in succession rather than simultaneously — similar to arpeggiation but broader in application.

Asymmetric metric groupings derived from Balkan folk music — irregular beat divisions like 2+2+3, 2+3+3, or 3+2+2+3 (as found in Mikrokosmos Book 6 and the Dance Suite). These patterns feel uneven to ...

The F-sharp minor theme from Robert Schumann's Bunte Blätter Op. 99 No. 4 (1841), which Clara Schumann used as the basis for her Op. 20 variations, composed as a birthday gift for Robert in 1853.

A virtuosic solo passage, typically near the end of a concerto movement, in which the performer plays freely and often improvises or performs a written-out ornamental passage.

Pärt's own performance direction printed in the score of Für Alina: 'in calm, uplifted manner, listening to one's inner self'. It encapsulates the meditative quality required for all tintinnabuli pian...

A dense thicket of cane plants — the tall grass and reed habitats common in the American South, particularly in the Mississippi Delta region. In Price's Dances in the Canebrakes, the title evokes the ...

In a singing style — smooth, lyrical, with legato connection between notes and natural phrase shaping. The fundamental expressive quality of Thalberg's melodic writing, directly derived from his study...

Singing, song-like — an instruction to play in a smooth, lyrical style that imitates the human voice. In Burgmüller's études and character pieces, cantabile passages require a full, singing tone in th...

Singing — in Rachmaninoff, indicating the wide-arching, deeply sustained melodic line that is the hallmark of his style.

In a singing style. Indicates a smooth, lyrical melodic line that imitates the qualities of the human voice.

In a singing style — melodically expressive and lyrical.

In a singing style; the melody should be projected like a vocal line.

Singing in the open air — Grieg's melodic lines often have the directness and clarity of outdoor music, without the indoor intimacy of Chopin or Schumann's salon writing.

In a simple, song-like manner — flowing and expressive without over-ornamentation.

Instruction found in Frescobaldi's Capriccio obligo di cantare la quinta parte (Capricci, 1624, No. XII): the performer is required not only to play the four written voices but to sing a fifth, hidden...

The deep song of Andalusian flamenco; the most intense and expressive vocal style, characterized by ornamental runs, Arabic-influenced modal scales, and raw emotional power.

Deep song — the most intense, ancient, and emotionally raw form of flamenco singing, associated with grief, death, and spiritual longing. Characterised by melismatic ornamentation, micro-tonal inflect...

'Deep song': the oldest and most serious forms of Andalusian flamenco singing, characterised by extreme vocal intensity, microtonal inflection, Moorish and Gypsy melodic elements, and a spiritual weig...

A smooth, flowing, song-like melodic line — the vocal ideal translated to the piano.

A pre-existing melody — typically a plainchant or Lutheran chorale — presented in long, sustained notes while other voices move in counterpoint around it. The structural foundation of Pachelbel's chor...

Janáček's work for piano left hand and wind ensemble (1926), subtitled 'Vzdor' (Defiance), written for the Czech one-armed pianist Otakar Hollmann who lost his right arm in World War I. The title carr...

Capricious, whimsical; in a fanciful, unpredictable manner.

Capricious — whimsical, unpredictable, fantastical.

The type of large French Romantic organ built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll (1811–1899), for which virtually all of Franck's organ music was conceived. Characterised by powerful Reeds, expressive swell di...

Gently relax the forward motion.

Before Debussy established French Impressionism as a defined style, Chabrier's Pièces pittoresques (1880) anticipated many of its harmonic and coloristic innovations. The parallel chords, whole-tone i...

A set of variations over a repeating harmonic progression or bass line, originating in the Baroque era. Gubaidulinas Chaconne (1962) uses a 23-note serial tone row as its ground, subjecting it to inve...

A Baroque variation form built over a repeating harmonic progression or bass line (basse de chaconne). Slower and more stately than the passacaglia (with which it overlaps in Baroque practice), the ch...

Singing applied to the piano — Thalberg's principle that the piano can and should imitate the human voice, sustaining and shaping a cantabile melodic line above (or within) its accompaniment with the ...

Character piece. A short piano work with a distinct expressive character or mood, often with a programmatic title. The defining genre of Romantic piano miniature writing.

The choro (choros, choro) is a distinctly Brazilian popular music form that emerged in Rio de Janeiro in the second half of the 19th century, blending European harmonic and melodic traditions with Afr...

Harmony that moves through non-diatonic (out-of-key) chords and altered tones, creating richness, tension, and colour beyond what a purely diatonic style allows. Beach used chromatic harmony extensive...

Franck's dense, modulatory harmonic language, derived partly from Liszt and Wagner but shaped into a distinctly personal style. Chromatic inner voices and unexpected enharmonic pivots are constant fea...

The use of notes outside the diatonic scale of the prevailing key, creating harmonic colour and tension. In the 20th-century context, intense chromaticism often destabilises tonal centres entirely. Gu...

A traditional Brazilian children's round dance-song in which participants form a circle and sing while moving. The ciranda is associated with the folk music traditions of northeastern Brazil, where th...

Clear and fluid. A two-part direction combining the French clarity ideal with an uninterrupted flow of motion — no bumps, no accents unless marked, no clinging to expressive moments.

Clarity. Saint-Saëns's fundamental aesthetic value — transparency of texture, precision of articulation, and avoidance of sentimentality or excessive pedal.

The regular, balanced phrase organization typical of the Classical style: typically four-bar or eight-bar phrases in antecedent-consequent pairs, creating a question-and-answer architecture.

Prokofiev's deliberate neo-classical aesthetic — the use of Classical formal clarity and diatonic melody in combination with sharp dissonance and modernist harmonic language.

The period roughly 1800–1830 during which the formal clarity and harmonic stability of Classical style gave way to the more expressive, harmonically adventurous, and individually characterised languag...

Keyboard practice — the title Bach gave to four volumes of keyboard music, representing the most demanding and comprehensive keyboard writing of the Baroque era.

A percussive English folk dance in which the dancer's wooden-soled shoes strike the floor rhythmically; the subtitle Grainger gave to Handel in the Strand.

The simultaneous sounding of several adjacent notes played with the palm, fist, or forearm rather than individual fingers; a core sonority in Kurtág's piano writing, used throughout Játékok.

Tail — a concluding section that follows the main structure of the piece.

A concluding section following the main structural plan of a movement — extends and finalizes the cadential feeling.

\"With the wood.\" Instruction to strike or bow strings with the wooden back of the bow. In Crumb's piano writing, the analogous effect is achieved by strumming or striking the piano strings directly ...

Like a bird — a performance direction indicating a passage should evoke birdsong: rapid, light, highly ornamented, rhythmically free, and sharp in articulation.

Like a breeze. An atmospheric indication calling for a gentle, flowing quality with no sense of pulse or weight.

Like a distant horn call — evoking the resonance of horns heard from far away.

A Cuban carnival ensemble of singers, musicians, and dancers. In Lecuona's La comparsa the piano imitates the processional character of a comparsa: a gradual build from distant to close, then fading a...

The aesthetic principle of achieving maximum expressive content within minimum musical space; the defining quality of Kurtág's style, allied with Webern's approach to brevity.

With abandon — a complete surrender to the expressive moment, holding nothing back.

With abandon — with uninhibited, free expression.

With soul, with feeling. A frequent Mendelssohn direction asking for deeply expressive, internally motivated playing.

With soul, with feeling. A direction asking for deeply expressive, soulful playing.

With soul or feeling; indicating an expressive, soulful character.

With vigour, brilliance, and energy. Indicates sparkling, vital character.

With spirit, vigour, and energy.

With vigour, with brilliance. Indicates an energetic, spirited character.

With vigour, spirit, and liveliness.

With delicacy — refined, careful, and tender in approach.

With desperation; one of Clementi's most vivid expression marks, appearing in the Didone abbandonata sonata.

With expression. A direction asking the performer to bring out the emotional content of the passage.

With expression. A pervasive marking in Dussek's sonatas that signals elevated emotional content and requires the performer to shape phrasing with explicit feeling rather than mechanical execution. In...

With fire — in Chopin, indicating passionate, impulsive energy with a specific brilliance of tone.

With fire; a character marking calling for passionate, energetic intensity.

With fire. Indicates fierce, passionate energy with a burning, driven quality.

With fire; with passionate intensity.

With fire — passionate and fiery in character.

With lamentation; in a mournful, lamenting style.

With motion. Indicates a forward-moving pulse that prevents slow passages from becoming static or sentimental.

With motion — in Beethoven, indicating a flowing, forward-driven quality that prevents andante or adagio from becoming too slow.

With motion, with movement. A directive to maintain forward momentum, often used by Schubert in slow movements to prevent them from becoming static.

With motion — implying an energetic, forward-moving pace.

With flexible motion — a recurring instruction in Medtner indicating that the tempo should breathe and flex with the phrase rather than remaining metronomically constant.

With mute. On the piano this historically indicated use of the soft pedal (una corda). Mozart used it in slow, introspective movements for a veiled, intimate tone.

With mute — using the soft pedal, or in some historical contexts, indicating the absence of sustain pedal.

With spirit, with vitality. Used in the fugue finale of the Piano Sonata to indicate drive and wit.

With extravagance — the tempo and character marking of Scriabin's Fifth Sonata.

With tenderness — a characteristic expressive marking in CPE Bach's slow movements, calling for a singing, intimate tone quite different from the ornate surface of Baroque slow movements.

With variations; a movement structure in which a theme is followed by a series of elaborated repetitions that ornament, re-harmonize, or reinterpret its melodic or rhythmic content.

Concerto for two pianos and orchestra in D minor, composed summer 1932. Commissioned by Princess Edmond de Polignac, it was premiered in Venice in September 1932 with the composer and Jacques Fevrier ...

Concerto for two pianos and orchestra in D minor, composed summer 1932. Commissioned by Princess Edmond de Polignac, it was premiered in Venice in September 1932 with the composer and Jacques Fevrier ...

An Afro-Cuban street-percussion genre originating in Santiago de Cuba, characterised by driving repeated rhythmic patterns, off-beat accents, and an insistent forward momentum.

A piece written specifically for use as a sight-reading or set piece at the examinations (concours) of the Paris Conservatoire, typically commissioned from established French composers. Dutilleux comp...

Counterpoint: the art of combining independent melodic lines simultaneously. Busoni's mature works — especially the Fantasia contrappuntistica and the 5 Kurze Stücke — demand a high level of contrapun...

Godowsky's technique of adding one or more new melodic lines to an existing composition, weaving original countersubjects into the texture of the source work without obscuring its original character.

In a Nancarrow tempo canon, the structural moment at which two or more voices moving at different tempos arrive simultaneously at the same point in their shared melodic material. This creates a moment...

Purcell's spelling of the courante, a lively Baroque dance in triple metre. The English corant tends to be faster and lighter than its French cousin, with clear rhythmic momentum and a dance-like buoy...

Colour — Messiaen experienced genuine synaesthesia, perceiving specific colours when hearing particular chords or modes. He notated colour associations in his scores and Traité, and these guided his h...

The art of combining two or more independent melodic lines simultaneously.

A lively Baroque dance — the Italian Corrente is fast and in simple triple metre; the French Courante is more complex, shifting between 6/4 and 3/2.

Abbreviation for Howard Allen Craw's thematic catalogue of Dussek's works, developed in his 1964 University of Southern California dissertation \"A Biography and Thematic Catalog of the Works of J.L. ...

Gradually growing louder.

Progressive growth — Dutilleux's concept of formal construction through continuous organic development, in which material never literally repeats but is always transformed, extended, or viewed from a ...

The simultaneous use of conflicting rhythmic patterns — Brahms characteristically places three notes against two, or shifts the metric accent through syncopation.

Medtner's music is characterised by constant interplay between conflicting rhythmic patterns — two-against-three, three-against-four, and more complex combinations — often sustained for long passages ...

Franck's structural principle of recalling earlier themes in later movements, creating an organic unity across an entire work. A defining feature of virtually all his mature compositions.

The sustained reiteration of a short melodic or harmonic cell, which accrues emotional weight through accumulation rather than development or variation.

The two cycles of piano dances composed by Smetana in 1877 and 1879, widely regarded as the pinnacle of his piano writing. Czech Dances I consists of four large concert polkas. Czech Dances II contain...

The artistic movement in 19th-century Bohemia that sought to express Czech cultural identity through music, drawing on folk dance rhythms (furiant, polka, dumka), folk melodies, and national subjects....

With a supple rhythm — flexible but not structureless; a subtle elasticity of pulse.

From the head — return to the beginning and play again.

From the sign — return to the segno (S) symbol and play again from that point.

The tradition of late Classical and early Romantic composition centred in Copenhagen, of which Kuhlau was a leading figure. Along with Johann Peter Emelius Hartmann and Niels Wilhelm Gade, Kuhlau help...

In a mist — a veiled, hazy sonic atmosphere.

A stylised Spanish dance piece; in Granados, each of the 12 Danzas españolas evokes a different regional dance tradition.

Three piano pieces composed in August 1919, each inspired by a passage from Jose Mas's novel 'La Copla': Exaltacion (the passion of the fandango), Ensuenos (a dreamy, impressionistic mood), and Orgia ...

Two sets of five gypsy dance pieces for solo piano: Serie 1 (Op. 55, c. 1930) and Serie 2 (Op. 84, 1934). Together they form one of the most vivid evocations of the Gypsy-Andalusian musical world in t...

The national dance of Cuba: a refined, stately dance form derived from the habanera, characterised by a specific formal structure with a repeated introductory refrain (paseo) alternating with melodic ...

The Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music, a series of summer schools held in Germany from 1946 that became the central forum for the post-war European avant-garde. Boulez attended as both student an...

The League of David — Schumann's imaginary fraternity of musical progressives battling against the Philistines of mediocrity. The Davidsbündlertänze are dances 'by' this league.

Work for speaking pianist (1992) by Frederic Rzewski, setting passages from Oscar Wilde's prison letter 'De Profundis' (1897). The pianist simultaneously plays and recites the text across eight sectio...

Work for speaking pianist (1992) by Frederic Rzewski, setting passages from Oscar Wilde's prison letter 'De Profundis' (1897). The pianist simultaneously plays and recites the text across eight sectio...

Smetana lost his hearing completely in October 1874, at the age of fifty. Unlike Beethoven, who had several years of partial hearing before total deafness, Smetana's loss was sudden. Despite this, his...

Gradually growing softer. Synonymous with diminuendo.

In the evening — the first of the Fantasiestücke Op. 12, with a characteristic polyrhythmic texture (3 against 2).

Entwickelnde Variation — Schoenberg's term for a compositional technique in which all subsequent material in a piece is derived by continuous transformation from an opening cell or motive, without lit...

In sonata form, the central section in which themes from the exposition are fragmented, transformed, and explored through various keys.

Gradually growing softer. Synonymous with decrescendo.

Pedaling in which the pedal is depressed exactly as the chord or bass note sounds.

An ancient Greek lyric poem or song of passionate, irregular character, originally associated with the cult of Dionysus. Medtner titled both his Op.10 piano pieces and the final piece of Forgotten Mel...

In English Baroque music, the practice of elaborating a simple melody or bass line by dividing its note values into shorter figurations. Division on a ground refers specifically to variations composed...

A 20th-century compositional technique in which all twelve pitches of the chromatic scale are treated as equally important and arranged into a tone row used as the basis for the entire work. Pärt expl...

Ernst von Dohnányi was one of the supreme pianist-composers of the early 20th century, the heir to a tradition running from Beethoven through Brahms and Clara Schumann. His piano writing combines Brah...

Sweet — gentle, soft, and tender in tone.

Sweetly; a character marking calling for a gentle, soft, singing tone.

Sorrowful, painful — expressing grief or anguish.

Double the speed — a tempo marking requiring the performer to double the prevailing pulse. Appears in Shostakovich's scherzo and dance contexts to create a sudden acceleration of energy.

Ornamental variation. In French Baroque practice, a double is a written-out variation of the preceding piece in which all or most of the notes are subdivided and ornamented — the original's rhythm and...

A variation or decorated repeat of a preceding piece, preserving the harmonic outline while elaborating the melody with faster note values. Rameaus Les Niais de Sologne (RCT 3) includes two doubles; t...

Parallel sixths played in one or both hands — a common virtuosic texture in Romantic piano writing.

The playing of parallel thirds in both hands simultaneously, or a rapid succession of thirds in one hand as a technical study.

Ornamental variations on a dance movement, written out in full with added passagework. Handel and his contemporaries used doubles to elaborate a simple binary dance into a more varied and technically ...

Sweet and fluid — one of Debussy's characteristic expression marks indicating a smooth, dissolved quality of tone.

Soft and mysterious. A characteristic marking in Fauré's later piano works calling for an inward, veiled quality — not quiet for lack of expression, but hushed by intention.

A set or collection of twelve pieces; used by Telemann to label the three groups of twelve within his 36 Fantaisies pour le clavessin.

A four-note musical monogram — D, E♭, C, B — derived from the German spelling of Shostakovich's initials: D. SCH. (D. Sch. = D, Es, C, H in German musical nomenclature, where Es = E♭ and H = B natural...

A quality of dark passion and mysterious power in Spanish artistic expression; an untranslatable spirit of authentic and deeply felt emotion.

Piano Trio No. 4 in E minor, Op. 90 (B. 166), nicknamed 'The Dumky Trio' because all six of its movements are in dumka form. Composed 1890–91, it is unique in the chamber music literature for sustaini...

Harsh dissonances — in Baroque keyboard practice, a compositional technique of deliberately introducing suspended dissonances that are held and resolved in unexpected, harsh ways. Frescobaldi's \"Capr...

Simply, plainly. A marking calling for directness and absence of exaggeration, characteristic of the restrained lyricism in Clara Schumann's later piano style.

Simple — plain and unaffected in character, without ornamentation or exaggeration.

An improvised cadenza-like insertion at a structural pause, typically before the return of the main theme in a rondo. Mozart notated some but left others to the performer's invention.

Grainger's term for flexible instrumentation in which a single work is scored to permit performance by a wide variety of instrumental forces, from solo piano to full orchestra.

Elegy; a lament for the dead or for loss. In music, an elegy is a work or movement of grieving character, typically slow, lyrical, and harmonically dark. Dussek's \"Élégie harmonique sur la mort de Lo...

A whimsical character marking calling for lightness and speed suggestive of a fairy or sprite. Found in MacDowell's Sonata Eroica.

The Hill of the Elves — Kuhlau's incidental music for Johan Ludvig Heiberg's play (Op. 100, 1828), which became Denmark's de facto national opera. It incorporates folk melodies alongside Kuhlau's own ...

Schoenberg's term for the principle, realised in his music around 1908–09, that dissonant intervals need not resolve to consonances in the traditional way — that dissonance is no longer functionally s...

The 'sensitive style' — the dominant keyboard aesthetic of mid-18th-century North Germany, associated above all with C.P.E. Bach and W.F. Bach. Characterised by sudden dynamic contrasts, unexpected ha...

Sensibility — an aesthetic ideal of the mid-18th century (associated especially with C.P.E. Bach) prizing subtle emotional nuance, spontaneous expression, and individual feeling over Baroque formality...

Sensitivity or sensibility — the mid-18th-century German aesthetic of expressive, intimate keyboard writing that influenced Haydn's slow movements, characterised by sighing figures, sudden dynamics, a...

The \"sensitive style\" (Empfindsamkeit) — a North German aesthetic of intense, direct emotional expression through singing melody, sudden harmonic surprises, and rapid changes of affect. C.P.E. Bach ...

The quality of feeling and sensitivity in Mozart's slow movements — a directness of emotional communication.

Feeling, sensation — Beethoven's own word for the emotional directness he sought in his slow movements.

Prominent, standing out — a voice or line marked to project clearly above the texture.

Suspended, in suspense. Used to mark moments of harmonic or temporal suspension — a note or chord held beyond its notated duration while the musical time seems to stop.

Energetic — forceful and driven.

Rameaus term for a passage exploiting enharmonic equivalences (e.g. C-sharp and D-flat). L'Enharmonique (RCT 6) is built around a shocking enharmonic modulation in the middle section, which Rameau use...

The aesthetic programme of Albéniz, Granados, and Falla: the incorporation of Spanish folk idioms — flamenco, regional dances, Moorish scales, guitar sonority — into the framework of European concert ...

Expressively — with feeling and emotional nuance.

Wit, spirit, lightness of touch. The defining aesthetic quality of the French neo-classical style championed by Les Six — a preference for clarity, irony, and lightness over Germanic earnestness.

Exercise or study; the title Scarlatti gave to his published collection of 30 keyboard sonatas (1739), echoing Bach's Clavier-Übung. Though presented as a teaching tool, the pieces demand considerable...

The academic study of music from cultural and social perspectives, often focusing on folk and non-Western traditions. Bartók and Kodály were pioneering ethnomusicologists who made phonograph cylinder ...

One of Schumann's two fictional alter egos — the introspective, poetic, dreaming side of his musical personality.

The fundamental goal of Czerny's étude system: each finger producing identical tone, timing, and key-depth, regardless of which finger is playing. No finger should sound louder, softer, or slower than...

The quality of equal finger strength, speed, and tone across all five fingers in a passage.

A quality of heightened spiritual intensity that Franck's music aims for at climactic moments — not theatrical drama, but a sense of transcendent elevation.

In sonata form, the opening section in which the principal themes are introduced, typically with a tonic theme and a contrasting theme in a related key.

Piano-playing methods beyond standard finger technique, including clusters played with the palm, fist, or forearm; playing directly on the strings; or use of the full body weight on the keys. Kurtág's...

Performance approaches that go beyond standard key-striking to produce unconventional sounds from the piano. Includes playing directly on the strings (prepared piano, plucking, strumming), striking th...

Forte — loud.

Mad Rush vacillates throughout between F major and A minor in a modal manner, so that the listener is never certain which is the true tonic until the final bars resolve to A minor.

Haydn's favourite structural trick: a premature return of the opening theme in the wrong key during the development section, which then dissolves back into development before the true recapitulation a...

Dutilleux's signature compositional device — a melodic or figural pattern that expands outward from a central note in both directions symmetrically, like an opening fan, creating an expanding arc that...

A free compositional form structured by imagination rather than by prescribed formal conventions. In Busoni's hands, the fantasia becomes a vehicle for extended, quasi-improvisatory argument — as in t...

In W.F. Bach's output, a free keyboard piece without strict formal structure, characterised by dramatic harmonic excursions, sudden textural contrasts, and an improvisatory quality that pushes against...

Black Fantasy — Price's title for her four concert fantasies based on African American spiritual material. The form combines the improvisatory freedom of the fantasia with the expressive depth of the ...

A pause — a note or rest is held beyond its written duration at the performer's discretion.

Fierce, wild — savage and untamed in character.

Fortissimo — very loud.

Fortississimo — as loud as possible.

John Field spent the greater part of his adult life in Russia — first in St. Petersburg from 1803, and later in Moscow — working as a concert pianist and teacher. His move to Russia came about through...

John Field's piano nocturnes were the direct model for Chopin's own twenty-one nocturnes — the most celebrated and frequently performed works in the nocturne repertoire. Chopin encountered Field's noc...

An intensity marking indicating wild and powerful playing without restraint. Used in the final movements of MacDowell's sonatas.

Notation below a bass line using numerals and accidentals to indicate the intervals and chords to be realised by the keyboard player.

End — the piece concludes here.

The ability of each finger to move freely and at full strength without causing involuntary movement in the adjacent fingers. The basis of Czerny's entire technical pedagogy.

Legato achieved through careful overlap of adjacent fingers, maintaining key contact throughout the phrase, without relying on the sustain pedal.

The performance challenge specific to Beach's Fireflies (Op. 15 No. 4): rapid, delicate repeated-note and broken figuration in both hands depicting the flickering light of fireflies. The entire piece ...

The art form of southern Spain integrating song (cante), dance (baile), and guitar (toque); rooted in Romani, Moorish, and Andalusian folk traditions.

Rhythmic patterns derived from the flamenco tradition — including the 12-beat soleares cycle, the syncopated bulería, and the sevillanas pattern. Albéniz absorbed these rhythms from the cafés cantante...

Flatteringly, cajolingly; with a coaxing and insinuating quality.

An ornamental figure in Spanish keyboard music; a rapid decorative flourish, often imitating guitar ornamentation.

Schumann's other fictional alter ego — the impulsive, extroverted, passionate side of his personality.

Schumann's two literary alter egos: Florestan the passionate, extrovert, and impulsive; Eusebius the introspective, dreamy, and tender. Many of his pieces are signed with one name or the other.

Floating. Takemitsu frequently uses this marking to indicate a weightless, suspended quality in which individual notes seem to hover rather than land.

Rapid repeated depression and release of the sustain pedal to clear harmonics without producing a fully dry sound.

A scale or tonal system derived from folk music — pentatonic scales, Dorian mode, Phrygian mode, whole-tone scales, and others that fall outside Western major-minor tonality. Bartók used folk modes bo...

Literally 'folk tone' — Grieg's term for the distinctive modal, pentatonic, and rhythmic quality borrowed from Norwegian folk music and woven into his composed works.

Folk ballad tone — the particular quality of simplicity, directness, and unsentimental expression associated with Norwegian folk ballads, which Grieg cultivated especially in Op. 66 and the slower Lyr...

Melted, blended — a blurred, fused quality of tone in which individual notes lose their edges.

Boulez's term for the five movements of his Piano Sonata No. 3. Unlike a conventional movement, each formant is designed to be playable in different orders and with optional internal sections, realisi...

The early piano of the late 18th century, with a lighter action, shallower key depth, thinner tone, and faster decay than the modern instrument. J.C. Bach was among the first to introduce and champion...

The predecessor instrument to the modern piano, in use from approximately 1700 to 1850. The fortepiano has a lighter action, thinner strings, and a more transparent tone than the modern grand piano, w...

Haydn's later sonatas were written for the English fortepiano rather than the harpsichord — an instrument with a lighter, more transparent tone than the modern concert grand, capable of subtle dynamic...

Forzando (fz) — forced; a strong accent, similar to sforzando.

The Op. 11 Rhapsodies (1902–1903) are among the most popular of Dohnányi's piano works and among the finest Romantic rhapsodies outside the Brahms–Liszt tradition. Each is in a single movement and tak...

Music that avoids establishing a tonal centre but does not yet use the systematic twelve-tone method. Free atonality emerged in the works of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern around 1908–1909 as the logica...

With rhythmic freedom; at the performer's discretion regarding tempo and pacing.

Free improvisation — the art of extemporising a keyboard fantasia without barlines or fixed metre. CPE Bach was celebrated as the finest improviser of his day; his notated fantasias (Wq. 67, Wq. 58/6-...

The dramatic, atmospheric orchestral style associated with Weber's opera Der Freischütz (1821) — characterised by vivid scene-painting, sudden dynamic contrasts, augmented chords and diminished sevent...

The French Baroque harpsichord tradition of the mid-17th century, to which Louis Couperin belongs, is characterised by: unmeasured preludes, elaborate ornamentation, the suite as the primary formal un...

The system of ornaments — trills (tremblement), mordents (pincé), turns (double cadence), appoggiaturas — used in French and North German Baroque keyboard music. Buxtehude's harpsichord suites use Fre...

A Baroque form in two sections: a slow, majestic opening with dotted rhythms and a faster fugal section. Used by Handel as the opening movement of Suite No. 7 and as the model for his opera and orator...

Fugue. A compositional procedure — not a fixed form — in which a subject (Thema) is introduced alone, then imitated at pitch and in other voices, with episodes of free development between subject entr...

Fleetingly, in a fleeting manner. Used in the Visions fugitives to indicate an evanescent, momentary quality.

Furious — with wild, unrestrained energy.

Musique d'ameublement — Satie's 1917 concept of music designed to blend into the sonic environment of a room, like wallpaper or furniture, rather than demand attention. The direct precursor of ambient...

Dvořák's Humoresque No. 7 in G♭ major from Op. 101 (1894) — one of the most universally recognised piano melodies in the entire repertoire. Its characteristic lilt (the famous dotted rhythm in the mel...

Gay, cheerful, high-spirited. A tempo or character indication in French scores calling for brightness and energy. Stronger than joyeux (joyful) in implying a light, bouncing quality.

Boldly, heartily, vigorously; from 'gaillard' meaning lively and robust.

An 18th-century musical style characterized by elegant simplicity, tuneful melody, clear phrase structure, and a light homophonic texture — a deliberate reaction against Baroque complexity. J.C. Bach ...

The elegant, light-textured keyboard style characteristic of the late 18th century, emphasising singable melody, clear phrase structure, and simple accompaniment patterns. Woelfl was a master of the g...

A lighter, more melodically elegant style that emerged in the mid-18th century in reaction to the learned complexity of the Baroque. W.F. Bach occupies an uneasy position between his father's strict c...

The elegant, light, ornamental style of mid-18th-century European music, prioritising pleasing melodic writing over contrapuntal complexity.

A traditional ensemble of pitched percussion instruments — gongs, metallophones, xylophones, and drums — from Java and Bali. Its tuning systems (pélog and sléndro) do not correspond to Western equal t...

A traditional ensemble of tuned percussion instruments originating in Java and Bali, Indonesia, consisting primarily of metallophones (metallic keyboards), gongs, and drums. The term also refers to th...

A lively Argentine folk dance in 6/8, typically in an ABABA choreographic pattern. Used explicitly by Ginastera in the second movement of the Suite de Danzas Criollas (Allegro rustico), where tone clu...

Gaily, cheerfully; in a light and animated manner.

Utility music or \"music for use.\" A tendency — more a critic's label than a formal movement — associated with Hindemith and other Weimar-era composers who wrote functional music for specific practic...

Warmth, cosiness, a sense of comfortable ease and contentment.

Light, ethereal, slightly eerie. Used in the Graceful Ghost Rag to evoke something delicate and otherworldly.

A lively, compound-time Baroque dance — the standard final movement of a suite.

Playfully, humorously — in a light-hearted and witty manner.

Playful, merry, humorous.

Young Classicism (Italian form of Busoni's Junge Klassizität): the aesthetic of restraint, clarity, and formal mastery that Busoni advocated in his later years, visible in the sonatinas and the Toccat...

Gypsy mannerisms or characteristics — the Romani-influenced musical and gestural elements of Andalusian flamenco, including ornamentation, rhythmic freedom, and sharp accents.

A rapid slide through a series of notes, producing a continuous sweep of sound.

A sliding gesture along the piano strings near the hitch pins, producing a continuous glissando with a bright, metallic timbre.

The Austrian imperial hymn melody by Haydn, used as the theme for Clara Schumann's Souvenir de Vienne, Op. 9. The same tune later became the German national anthem.

The 'mixed taste'; Telemann's term for his synthesis of German, French, and Italian stylistic elements within a single work or collection.

Relating to the style evoked by the paintings of Francisco de Goya; in Granados, a rich, ornate keyboard texture imbued with Spanish character.

The specifically Mozartian quality of natural, effortless elegance.

Graceful, elegant. A character marking appearing in several Mozart sonata movements calling for refinement and natural charm rather than weight or display.

Czerny's systematic approach of beginning every new étude at a slow tempo and increasing the metronome marking by small increments over days or weeks until the target tempo is achieved.

A process by which the harmonic field shifts slowly and almost imperceptibly over a long span of time, so the listener cannot easily pinpoint the moment of change.

Composed in 1959, the Grand Duet is one of Ustvolskaya's largest and most sustained works. The piano part demands a near-orchestral approach: massive, hammered chord clusters at extreme dynamics, sust...

Thalberg's characteristic large-scale form: a concert piece based on operatic themes, typically comprising a slow, ornamented introduction; a set of variations or elaborations on the principal themes;...

Calm grandeur. Franck's characteristic combination of monumental weight and inner stillness — the opposite of theatrical bombast. His fortes are full but never aggressive.

With grandeur and magnificence — broad, ceremonial, and architecturally scaled.

Grand, majestic. One of Liszt's most characteristic directions, calling for a broad, sweeping, imperial character.

Grandiose — with grandeur, magnificence, and ceremonial dignity.

Gracefully; with elegance and gentle charm.

Slow, solemn, heavy — the slowest of the standard tempo markings, conveying weight and gravity. In Dussek's slow introductions (e.g. the \"Introduzione: Grave\" of Op. 44 \"The Farewell\") it establis...

Gravely, solemnly; with weight and deliberate pacing.

Graceful — in Brahms, indicating an elegant simplicity that avoids heaviness despite the dense harmonic texture.

Graceful, elegant. Calls for a refined, light touch with natural, unforced charm.

Graceful — elegant, light, and refined.

Gracefully; with elegance and charm.

Graceful — in Schubert, indicating a natural, unaffected elegance often found in his dance movements.

Grotesque — a stylistic mode in Shostakovich's music combining the comic, the macabre, and the satirical. Often expressed through jarring juxtapositions of register, exaggerated rhythmic articulation,...

A repeated bass line of fixed length over which variations are built. The basis of Handel's Passacaille (Suite No. 7) and Chaconnes, derived from Baroque ostinato practice.

A compositional technique in which a short bass line repeats continuously while the upper part develops varied figurations above it. Purcell was a supreme master of the ground bass, composing some of ...

A Cuban peasant or rural farmer, associated with the traditional countryside and folk music of the island. Canto del guajiro evokes this rustic, lyrical character.

The open-string tuning of the Spanish guitar (E2–A2–D3–G3–B3–E4), used by Ginastera as a recurring harmonic and melodic fingerprint to evoke the payador — the gaucho troubadour tradition of improvised...

The pianistic imitation of guitar techniques — rasgueado strumming, plucked melodic lines, percussive body taps, and campanella (bell-like) arpeggios. Albéniz's piano writing is saturated with guitarr...

The particular quality of nostalgic, distanced lyricism associated with Satie's Gymnopédies — slow, modal, unhurried, suggesting an imagined ancient world rather than depicting it. Neither sad nor hap...

Chabrier's Habanera for solo piano in D♭ major was composed in October 1885, three years after his five-month journey to Spain. The habanera rhythm — a slow two-beat pattern with characteristic syncop...

A syncopated rhythmic pattern in 2/4 time: a dotted eighth, sixteenth, then two eighths. The defining pulse of the habanera and a pervasive undercurrent throughout Lecuona's Cuban pieces.

A technique in which the sustain pedal is only partially depressed, allowing some strings to vibrate while reducing the full resonance of the open pedal.

The Halle Bach — W.F. Bach's nickname, derived from his long tenure as organist at the Marktkirche Unserer Lieben Frauen in Halle (1746–1764), the city most associated with his career. Used to disting...

A vigorous Norwegian folk dance in 2/4 time, typically featuring strong off-beat accents and leaping figures. Grieg incorporates hallings throughout the Lyric Pieces and Slåtter.

A technique in which one hand crosses over (or under) the other to reach notes outside its normal range.

The strategic reallocation of notes between the hands in complex passages to achieve technical clarity or expressive effect.

Schubert's characteristic technique of departing suddenly and unexpectedly to remote harmonies — typically a third relationship — before returning to the home key.

Chabrier's most distinctive compositional trait is a harmonic audacity deployed with comic timing: unexpected modulations, unresolved dissonances, and boldly coloured chords that arrive with the preci...

Pitches produced by lightly touching a vibrating string at a nodal point rather than stopping it fully, producing a pure, flute-like overtone rather than the fundamental pitch.

The quality of surprise, incongruity, and humour that Haydn deliberately cultivated in his music — sudden silences, unexpected key changes, false recapitulations, and endings that refuse to end. Descr...

Homesickness, nostalgic longing for the familiar.

Robert Schumann was Stephen Heller's most important early champion. As editor of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik — the most influential music journal of its era — Schumann reviewed Heller's works repea...

Stephen Heller (1813–1888) held a distinctive and historically influential view of the piano étude. Where Clementi and Czerny had treated studies as mechanical exercises in which musical content was s...

A six-note scale segment used in Renaissance and early Baroque counterpoint as the basis for modal solmisation. The ascending hexachord Ut–Re–Mi–Fa–Sol–La appears as the subject of Froberger's most fa...

Heavenly length. Schumann's description of Schubert's C major Symphony, but equally applicable to the late piano sonatas — their expansive time scale is a deliberate artistic quality, not a structural...

A technique in which a melody or melodic fragment is split between two voices that alternate rapidly, each filling in the other's rests. Originally a medieval polyphonic device, it re-emerged in the 2...

An English Baroque dance in triple or duple metre, with a characteristically dotted-note rhythmic profile. In Purcell's keyboard suites the hornpipe has a robust, slightly rustic character, often draw...

Hummel represented one of the two dominant schools of early-19th-century pianism: the elegant, fluid, finger-based style descending from Mozart, as opposed to the arm-weight, orchestral approach of Be...

A rondo finale in Hungarian-Romani folk style, featuring modal scales, dotted rhythms, and whirling figuration characteristic of the verbunkos tradition. Used by Haydn in the finale of the D major Con...

Iberia is widely considered among the three or four most technically demanding piano works in the standard repertoire, alongside the Brahms Paganini Variations, Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit, and Sorabji...

Bartók's use of piano timbre to evoke natural sounds — not through romantic pictorialism but through precise textural design. The most famous example is the Night Music from Out of Doors, which recrea...

A contrapuntal technique in which each voice successively enters with the same or similar melodic idea before combining freely. Pachelbel's characteristic method of composing the accompanying voices i...

Poulenc's fifteen Improvisations (1932-1959) are carefully crafted character pieces despite their improvisatory title. They range widely in mood, from the playfully piquant to the deeply lyrical, and ...

Poulenc's fifteen Improvisations (1932-1959) are carefully crafted character pieces despite their improvisatory title. They range widely in mood, from the playfully piquant to the deeply lyrical, and ...

A compositional dedication to a deceased person; Kurtág uses the in memoriam format pervasively throughout Játékok, naming individual pieces after friends, colleagues, and composers who have died.

Unequal. A French Baroque performance convention in which pairs of equal written notes are performed slightly unequally — the first note lengthened and the second shortened — giving a gentle lilt.

See notes inégales — the rhythmic alteration of pairs of equal notes in French Baroque music.

A French performance practice in which pairs of notated equal notes are performed with a slight inequality — the first note lengthened and the second shortened — to give dance music a subtle lilt. Fro...

Inequality; the principle underlying notes inégales. More broadly, the French Baroque aesthetic preference for subtle rhythmic inflection over metronomic regularity — not only in the literal applicati...

Inward, heartfelt — a quality of deep, undemonstrative feeling; intimate rather than public.

Heartfelt, deeply felt, inward. One of the defining expressive qualities of the German Romantic piano style, calling for an intimate, singing tone.

Inwardness, intimacy, deep sincerity of feeling. One of the most characteristic qualities of Schubert's lyrical writing.

Inwardness, deep sincerity of feeling. A cornerstone of Schumann's lyrical style, calling for playing that feels intensely personal rather than publicly projected.

Inwardness, intimate expressiveness — a quality of deep, heartfelt emotion held inwardly rather than expressed outwardly.

A performance instruction requiring the pianist to directly manipulate the piano strings, either by plucking, striking, bowing, or muting them by hand — bypassing the keyboard action entirely.

A compositional device in which two or more voices share the same rhythmic material but are displaced against each other — each voice fills the rhythmic spaces left by the other, creating a dense, sea...

The characteristic emotional atmosphere of Brahms's late intermezzi — contemplative, autumnal, intimate, and harmonically searching.

A short introductory piece played by the organist at the beginning of a church service or before a psalm, providing the choir with the correct pitch and mode in which they are to sing. In early Baroqu...

The informal title and programmatic content of Weber's Aufforderung zum Tanze, Op. 65 (1819) — the first programmatic concert waltz, in which a slow introduction depicts a scene of social invitation b...

A fast Irish dance form in 4/4 or 2/4 time, typically comprising two eight-bar strains repeated. Grainger used two contrasting reels in Molly on the Shore.

The verbal commentaries Satie embedded in the scores of his 1912–1917 collections — texts printed between the staves that comment on, contradict, or elaborate the music. Satie explicitly forbade these...

A tempo relationship between two voices that cannot be expressed as a ratio of simple whole numbers — for example, e/π (approximately 0.865), √2/2, or the cube root of 13/16. Such ratios cannot be per...

Copland's assimilation of blues scales, syncopation, and jazz harmony into an art-music context — not imitation of jazz, but absorption of its rhythmic and harmonic character.

Infused with jazz idiom — relaxed rhythmic feel, blues-influenced harmony, improvisatory flavour.

A more elaborate form of brise texture in which both hands produce flowing broken lines that interweave, creating an illusion of multiple voices from a continuous melodic thread. Closely associated wi...

Pearlied touch. A French keyboard ideal of light, even, and brilliantly articulated passagework, each note perfectly distinct and equally weighted.

A fast Spanish dance in triple meter from Aragon, characterized by strong rhythmic accentuation and an exuberant, leaping character.

A traditional African American percussive dance, also called 'Pattin' Juba,' in which rhythmic patterns are created by slapping the thighs, chest, and hands. The juba rhythm — a driving syncopated dup...

Young Classicism: Busoni's aesthetic concept, articulated around 1920, calling for a music that rejects Romantic sentimentality and returns to clarity, economy, and objectivity — not by imitating the ...

The Finnish national epic, compiled by Elias Lönnrot from oral folk poetry and published in 1835 and 1849. The Kalevala provided Sibelius with subjects for several of his major orchestral works (Kulle...

Chamber Concerto — Berg's title for his concerto for piano, violin, and 13 wind instruments (1923–25). The work is dedicated to Schoenberg on his 50th birthday and is saturated with biographical symbo...

Weber's most celebrated piano work with orchestra (J. 282, 1821) is not cataloged here as a solo piano work but provides the context for his piano style: a four-movement programmatic concert piece dep...

A character in Finnish mythology appearing in the Kalevala, where she is captured by the hero Lemminkäinen and becomes his bride. Sibelius's three lyrical piano pieces Op.41, named Kyllikki, do not fo...

The same tempo — the pulse remains constant even if the meter changes.

A 1920 collaborative piano album containing one piece by each of Les Six, conceived by Jean Cocteau. Tailleferre's contribution was her Pastorale, one of her most-performed early piano works.

Op. 45 No. 2 in A minor, the most famous of all Heller's studies and one of the most widely played piano pieces in 19th-century parlours and teaching studios. The piece depicts an avalanche through a ...

A famous French secular melody from the mid-15th century — its text concerns 'the armed man' — which became the most widely used cantus firmus in the history of Western music, the basis for over 40 po...

A famous French secular melody from the mid-15th century — its text concerns 'the armed man' — which became the most widely used cantus firmus in the history of Western music, the basis for over 40 po...

The Storm — Burgmüller's most dramatic and technically demanding étude in Op. 109. The piece depicts a storm through rapid figuration, forte dynamics, and agitated rhythmic patterns. It is one of the ...

Buxtehude's keyboard variation set BuxWV 250 in G major — 32 variations on a theme attributed to Giovanni Kerll. Bach later used the same theme for his Canonic Variations BWV 769, almost certainly hav...

The fifteen domestic portraits of Op. 245 (1944) are among the most intimate and personal of Milhaud's piano works — a portrait of his wife Madeleine and their daily life together in Californian exile...

The Styrian Dance — a piece in the style of a ländler from the Austrian province of Styria. In Op. 100 No. 14, Burgmüller uses the lilting 3/4 rhythm of the Styrian folk dance to create one of the col...

\"Let vibrate.\" An instruction not to damp the sound after striking — allow the resonance to decay naturally. Abbreviated l.v. in scores.

Let vibrate — allow the note or chord to resonate fully without damping.

A descending chromatic or diatonic melodic figure associated with lamentation, grief, or inexorable downward motion. In Ligeti's music the lamento motif specifically refers to a characteristic falling...

An Austrian country dance in 3/4, the folk predecessor to the waltz. Schubert elevated it into an intimate, nostalgic art form in hundreds of short piano pieces.

Somewhat broad — slightly faster than largo.

Broad and very slow — the slowest conventional tempo marking.

Slow, pathetic (in the Classical sense of deeply felt), and sustained. A compound direction combining tempo, character, and touch.

Piano music composed in the Soviet Union and Russia from approximately 1960-1991, encompassing the final decades of the Soviet cultural system and the period of its collapse. Key composers include Sch...

The Gallows — the programmatic subject of the second piece of Gaspard de la nuit: a hanged man swinging at sunset, accompanied by a distant tolling bell.

Copland's aesthetic of using fewer notes than a Romantic composer would, leaving space in the harmony and trusting the listener to fill it.

Lively, animated. One of Schumann's characteristic German tempo markings, preferred over Italian terms in his mature works.

A body of solo piano literature written exclusively for the left hand, exploring the hand's complete technical and expressive range without assistance from the right. Godowsky's late left-hand pieces ...

As legato as possible; the most connected and smooth touch, with each note overlapping very slightly with the next.

Smooth, connected playing in which notes are joined without perceptible gaps. From the Latin ligare, to bind. Gubaidulina used the concept of legato philosophically: she described her entire artistic ...

Smooth and connected — notes are played with no gap between them.

A pedaling technique in which the pedal is released and re-depressed after the new harmony sounds, creating seamless connection between chords without blurring.

Fauré's melodic lines require an absolute legato where one note flows imperceptibly into the next, with an evenness of touch borrowed from the French vocal tradition.

Light, delicate. A direction for touch and texture common in French piano music of the early 20th century, calling for a non-percussive, effortless tone with minimal sustain pedal.

Lightness; a quality of touch and articulation suited to fast, transparent passagework. Closely related to the galant ideal, leggerezza describes the feather-light brilliance Woelfl was celebrated for...

Lightly — a characteristic instruction in Chopin's ornamental passages indicating a feather-light touch.

As light as possible — the superlative of leggiero. Indicates the most delicate, weightless touch imaginable.

Light, nimble. Indicates a delicate, fleet touch with minimal weight, essential in Mendelssohn's fast scherzando passages.

Light, nimble. Indicates a delicate, fleet touch with minimal weight.

Lightly; with a featherweight touch and clear articulation.

Light — with a delicate, feathery touch.

Slowly; at a deliberate, unhurried pace.

Slow.

Les Six was a loose association of six young French composers — Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, Arthur Honegger, Georges Auric, Louis Durey, and Germaine Tailleferre — who were grouped together by th...

A loose association of six French composers — Poulenc, Honegger, Milhaud, Auric, Durey, and Tailleferre — grouped by the critic Henri Collet in 1920 under the influence of Erik Satie and Jean Cocteau....

A group of six French composers working in Paris in the early 1920s: Tailleferre, Poulenc, Milhaud, Honegger, Auric, and Durey. Championed by critic Henri Collet and writer Jean Cocteau, they reacted ...

A loose association of six French composers — Poulenc, Honegger, Milhaud, Auric, Durey, and Tailleferre — grouped by the critic Henri Collet in 1920 under the influence of Erik Satie and Jean Cocteau....

The English Baroque term for a keyboard piece — equivalent to the French pièce or German Stück. Purcell used this title for the movements of his harpsichord suites, reflecting the pedagogical traditio...

Song Without Words. Mendelssohn's own term for his series of 48 lyrical piano pieces, each evoking the character of a song — melody, accompaniment, and expressive warmth — without text.

The influence of Schubert's vast song output on his piano writing — vocal melody, text-driven phrasing, and the independence of an accompaniment that participates emotionally.

A natural, swinging rhythmic buoyancy in folk-influenced melody; a quality Grainger prized and frequently notated through his flexible barring and phrase markings.

Copland's gift for melodic writing that breathes in long phrases, often spanning many bars before resolving — a quality shared with his teacher Nadia Boulanger.

The Afro-Cuban name for the Yoruba people and their language, brought to Cuba through the slave trade. Lucumí music is characterised by call-and-response patterns, polyrhythm, and ceremonial intensity...

Mournful, lugubrious, funereal. A characteristic marking in Liszt's late works, especially La lugubre gondola.

Lugubrious — mournful, gloomy, even funereal in character.

Luminous — a bright, glowing, radiant tone quality.

Coaxingly, flatteringly; a tender and insinuating character.

A congregational hymn of the German Lutheran church with a fixed melody and text known to the entire congregation. Buxtehude's organ works frequently use these as structural foundations — the listener...

A diatonic scale with a raised fourth degree compared to the major scale — in C: C D E F♯ G A B C. The raised fourth gives the Lydian mode a floating, bright quality; it lacks the gravity of the subdo...

The Japanese aesthetic concept of negative space or meaningful pause between sounds. In music it refers not to absence but to a charged silence that carries as much weight as the surrounding notes.

My Homeland — the cycle of six symphonic poems for orchestra by Smetana composed 1872–79. Arguably the single most important work in Czech music, it depicts scenes and legends from Bohemia: Vyšehrad (...

An artists' retreat in Peterborough, New Hampshire founded in 1907. Beach was a frequent summer resident from 1921 onward, and the colony's natural surroundings directly inspired several of her late p...

Majestic, stately. A tempo and character marking calling for grandeur and dignity.

One of the eight Gregorian psalm tones to which the Magnificat canticle was chanted at Vespers. Pachelbel's 95 Magnificat fugues provided keyboard versets for each tone, to be played alternately with ...

Hand-crossing: a technique in which one hand must pass over or under the other to reach notes on the opposite side of the keyboard. Les Trois Mains (RCT 5) is named for this effect, creating the illus...

A female figure from 18th-century Spanish popular culture, associated with Goya's paintings of vibrant street life.

A male counterpart of the maja; a gallant, stylishly dressed young man in Goya's Madrid.

A flamenco-derived vocal and dance form from Málaga in Andalusia, characterised by an insistent ostinato bass, escalating tension, and a climax of great intensity. Lecuona's Malagueña is the most perf...

A virtuosic Argentine gaucho dance, traditionally performed as a solo improvisation to demonstrate endurance and competitive skill. Structured on relentless ostinato rhythms in 6/8, often hemiolic. A ...

Melancholic — a character indication calling for a brooding, introspective quality, with slightly veiled tone and a tendency toward the minor mode even within major-key passages.

Melancholy — tinged with sadness and introspection.

CPE Bach's collective term for ornaments and embellishments (Manieren) as codified in the Versuch. These include the trill, mordent, turn, Schneller (inverted mordent), Doppelschlag, and various appog...

A rapidly ascending arpeggio figure, typically forte and in unison, associated with the Mannheim orchestra style of the 1770s. Mozart absorbed this gesture early and it appears in several sonata expos...

In tango, the characteristic rhythmic pattern — strongly accented, staccato chords — that forms the rhythmic backbone of the tango texture. In Piazzolla's quintet writing, the piano often carries the ...

Marked, stressed. Each note or chord is given a clear accent, standing out from the surrounding texture.

Marked — notes played with clear emphasis and definition.

Hammered. Indicates forceful, heavily accented repeated notes or chords, like hammer blows.

Hammered; each note struck with a sharp, percussive attack, the key released almost immediately.

Hammered — a percussive articulation requiring each note to be struck with a firm, detached impact. Common in Shostakovich's toccata-like passages and mechanical dance sequences.

Martial, in a military style. Indicates a strong, decisive, march-like character.

Moderate; restrained. Appears frequently in Hindemith's tempo markings — \"mässig bewegt\" (moderately moving), \"mässig schnell\" (moderately fast) — indicating a tempo that is neither slow nor rushe...

A popular tune of the 17th century, sometimes translated 'the farmer's wife' or 'the May dance.' Froberger's Partita auff die Maÿerin (FbWV 606) is his only set of keyboard variations on a popular mel...

In Ligeti's usage, \"meccanico\" (machine-like) describes passages or entire pieces that must be played with extreme rhythmic precision, without expressive deviation of tempo — as if performed by a ma...

In Pärt's tintinnabuli style, the M-voice is the stepwise melodic line that moves through the notes of a given scale, often expanding and contracting symmetrically around a central pitch.

Inner melody. Fauré frequently hides the most expressive melodic line inside the texture — in an inner voice or in the left hand — while the outer voices move more neutrally.

Melodiously; with sustained, singing tone quality.

Sad, mournful — a characteristic emotional marking in Chopin, indicating a specific quality of melancholy.

Sad, mournful; a character marking indicating grief or melancholy.

Sad, mournful — with a quality of melancholy or grief.

Mezzo-forte — moderately loud.

A compositional technique developed by György Ligeti in the late 1950s and 1960s in which a large number of voices — each moving in strict counterpoint — combine to produce a dense, continuously shift...

Milhaud's two years in Brazil (1917–1919), serving as secretary to Paul Claudel at the French Legation in Rio de Janeiro, transformed his compositional language. He encountered the choro (a Brazilian ...

Threatening, menacing. Used by Medtner in the Campanella (Op.20 No.2) and as part of the title of the Sonata minacciosa (Op.53 No.2).

Spare, reduced to essentials, with repetitive or static elements typical of Minimalist style.

A minuet; a graceful triple-metre dance movement in moderate tempo. In the Classical keyboard repertoire, the minuet appears as a standalone character piece, a middle movement within a sonata, or as a...

Mysterious — in Rachmaninoff, a specific hushed quality often associated with bell-like harmonics and veiled inner voices.

Mysterious — with a hushed, enigmatic quality.

With humour — a characteristic Schumann instruction indicating wit, whimsy, and gentle irony.

With humour. In Schumann this often implies whimsical, capricious, even self-mocking wit rather than simple playfulness.

With intimate expression — Brahms's characteristic instruction for his most heartfelt, private passages.

Adams's structural technique in Phrygian Gates: the music exists in a fixed mode (either Lydian or Phrygian), and at certain moments an abrupt 'gate switch' changes the mode entirely — no gradual tran...

Fauré's characteristic use of modes — Dorian, Mixolydian, Lydian — alongside or in place of tonal harmony, giving his music its distinctive archaic shimmer.

Harmonic language based on the ancient Greek modes (Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, etc.) rather than the major/minor tonal system.

The use of notes from modal scales (Dorian, Mixolydian, Lydian) in an otherwise tonal context, producing Grieg's characteristic harmonic shimmer and folk-like colour.

A movement between two closely related diatonic modes (e.g. from E minor to A minor) without classical preparation or resolution; a hallmark of Glass's harmonic language.

The deliberate avoidance of tonal direction and harmonic goal in Satie's music. Chords are juxtaposed without functional progression, creating a static, timeless quality quite unlike the directional h...

At a moderate pace — neither slow nor fast.

At a moderate pace. In Prokofiev's War Sonatas this marking often belies the emotional intensity beneath — moderate in speed only.

Tchaikovsky's marking for January (By the Hearth) in The Seasons; moderate and simple in character but with expression.

Messiaen's system of seven modes (scales) that can be transposed only a limited number of times before returning to the same pitch-class content. Mode 2 (the octatonic scale, alternating whole tones a...

Continuous modulation. Franck rarely stays in one key for long, moving through related and remote keys in a flowing, logical chain. His harmony is always in transit.

\"Very mysteriously.\" A character marking indicating a hushed, enigmatic quality with a sense of something hidden or otherworldly.

Capricious moment — an improvisatory, whimsical character piece in rapid motion. Weber's Momento capriccioso in B♭ major is an early concert piece of perpetual-motion character, a showpiece built from...

The folk musical tradition of Moravia, the eastern region of the Czech Republic where Janáček was born, lived, and worked throughout his life. Janáček spent decades collecting and transcribing Moravia...

A short ornament consisting of a rapid alternation between the written note and the note immediately below (lower mordent) or above (upper mordent/inverted mordent).

A mordent; a rapid alternation between a main note and the note immediately below it. One of the most common ornaments in Baroque keyboard music.

Dying away — becoming softer and slower simultaneously.

An English ritual folk dance, typically performed in lines or circles with handkerchiefs or sticks, in vigorous duple or triple meter. The basis for Shepherd's Hey and Mock Morris.

Moscheles's relationship with Beethoven is one of the defining connections of his career. In 1814, at the age of twenty, he was asked to make the piano arrangement of Beethoven's opera Fidelio under B...

Moscheles's relationship with Beethoven is one of the defining connections of his career. In 1814, at the age of twenty, he was asked to make the piano arrangement of Beethoven's opera Fidelio under B...

The relationship between Moscheles and Felix Mendelssohn is one of the most artistically productive teacher-pupil connections in music history. Moscheles began teaching the twelve-year-old Mendelssohn...

The relationship between Moscheles and Felix Mendelssohn is one of the most artistically productive teacher-pupil connections in music history. Moscheles began teaching the twelve-year-old Mendelssohn...

Ignaz Moscheles (1794–1870) occupies a unique historical position as the primary bridge between the Classical piano tradition of Mozart, Clementi, and Hummel, and the emerging Romantic aesthetic of Ch...

Ignaz Moscheles (1794–1870) occupies a unique historical position as the primary bridge between the Classical piano tradition of Mozart, Clementi, and Hummel, and the emerging Romantic aesthetic of Ch...

The tempo marking — a moderate, flowing pace without a precise metronomic definition.

The term 'mouvement perpetuel' (perpetual motion) denotes a musical piece or passage of continuous rapid notes in a single, unwavering figuration. Poulenc's three pieces under this title (FP 14, 1918)...

The term 'mouvement perpetuel' (perpetual motion) denotes a musical piece or passage of continuous rapid notes in a single, unwavering figuration. Poulenc's three pieces under this title (FP 14, 1918)...

Mezzo-piano — moderately soft.

Silent music or Music of Silence: Mompou's title for his late masterpiece in four books, taken from a line in the mystical poetry of St John of the Cross. The phrase describes music heard in interior ...

The practice of writing extremely short musical works — lasting seconds or a very few minutes — in which maximum concentration of expression is achieved in minimum time. Webern is the supreme exponent...

A compositional device in which the letters of a person's name are converted into musical note-names to create a thematic cell. The tradition goes back at least to Bach's B-A-C-H motif (in German note...

Mysterious — hushed and enigmatic.

Scriabin's characteristic harmonic formation: a quartal chord built in fourths (C–F♯–B♭–E–A–D) that generates most of the harmonic language of his late works.

Mystical — the dominant atmosphere of Scriabin's late piano works.

Emphasis, stress, weight. Used by Schubert to indicate a note or chord that should be given particular expressive weight, often at moments of harmonic intensity.

A short ornamental note or notes appended at the end of a trill or other ornament.

Narrating; in the manner of a storyteller. Used by Medtner as a tempo and character instruction in several Tales, particularly in Op.26 No.3 and Op.35 No.3.

A recurring thread in Beach's piano music — she consistently drew on natural subjects (birdsong, fireflies, water, seasons, flowers) for her programmatic titles. The connection is not merely literary:...

Nature sound — Grieg's depiction of the Norwegian landscape through sustained harmonics, bell effects, open fifths, and static harmony suggesting the timelessness of fjord and mountain.

Nebulous, cloudy. Takemitsu uses this marking to describe passages with an intentionally blurred or hazy tonal quality, often achieved through overlapping sustain pedal and quiet dynamics.

In the Russian manner. Mussorgsky's own direction for the opening Promenade, evoking a folk-inflected, slightly irregular gait.

French neo-classicism: a 1920s aesthetic reaction against late Romanticism, drawing on 18th-century clarity, Satie-influenced simplicity, and a characteristically French wit and economy of means.

Clean, precise — Ravel's characteristic demand for crisp articulation and harmonic clarity.

New Objectivity. The aesthetic movement that emerged in Weimar Germany in the early 1920s as a reaction against the excesses of Expressionism. In music, it prized clarity, irony, economy of means, and...

Nothing — silence, or a dynamic so soft it nearly disappears (o).

Bartók's term for a texture he pioneered in Out of Doors (1926) and many subsequent works: a static, atmospheric nocturnal soundscape built from irregular chromatic clusters, trills, and motifs in dif...

Nobly, with nobility of bearing. Calls for dignified, elevated expression without bombast.

Poulenc composed eight nocturnes (FP 56) between 1929 and 1938. Unlike Field's or Chopin's nocturnes, Poulenc's are varied in mood and approach — from gentle lyricism to ghostly irony. Several bear pr...

Poulenc composed eight nocturnes (FP 56) between 1929 and 1938. Unlike Field's or Chopin's nocturnes, Poulenc's are varied in mood and approach — from gentle lyricism to ghostly irony. Several bear pr...

Field's Nocturne No. 1 in E♭ major is the founding example of the genre and one of the most eloquent melodies in the piano repertoire. Composed around 1810–1812 and published c.1812, it establishes ev...

Field's Nocturne No. 2 in C minor is one of the most expressive and frequently performed of the early nocturnes. The minor key gives it a quiet pathos that is unusual in Field's generally warm and pas...

The characteristic piano texture of the Romantic nocturne — a singing, ornamental melody in the right hand over a wide, arpeggiated accompaniment in the left.

Not legato — notes played with slight separation but without the shortness of staccato.

Literally \"nothing further beyond\" — a phrase meaning the pinnacle or utmost limit. Woelfl applied it as the subtitle to his Op. 41 piano sonata, signalling its extreme technical demands. The gestur...

Not fast but at a dance tempo; Scarlatti's own marking for Sonata K. 430 in D major, indicating a moderate dance character without rushing.

\"Not too much\" — a qualifying direction added to a tempo or expression marking in musical scores to moderate its extremity. For example, \"Allegro non troppo\" means fast, but not excessively so; \"...

Not legato; a slightly separated touch that leaves a small space between notes without a full staccato separation. The default articulation in Baroque keyboard style.

The characteristic sound world of Finnish and Scandinavian Romantic music — austere, harmonically ambiguous, with a gravity and inwardness associated with the Nordic landscape. In Sibelius's piano mus...

Four piano pieces composed 1978-1979 by Frederic Rzewski, each an extended fantasy-paraphrase on an American folk or labor song. The four songs are: 'Shady Grove' (basis of Dreadful Memories), 'Which ...

Four piano pieces composed 1978-1979 by Frederic Rzewski, each an extended fantasy-paraphrase on an American folk or labor song. The four songs are: 'Shady Grove' (basis of Dreadful Memories), 'Which ...

A large-scale organ work based on a Lutheran chorale melody, in which successive lines of the hymn are elaborated in contrasting styles — cantus firmus in the pedal, ornate melodic variation, imitativ...

Unequal notes: a French Baroque performance convention in which pairs of equal written notes are performed with a long-short inequality, creating a lilting rhythmic sway. Applied to certain stepwise p...

Unequal notes. The central performance practice of French Baroque music: pairs of written equal notes in certain contexts are performed with a long-short inequality, giving the music its characteristi...

A performance practice in which pairs of equal notes are played slightly unequally — the first slightly longer, the second shorter — to create a lilting, dance-like flow.

New Tango — the musical style created by Astor Piazzolla from 1955 onwards, blending traditional Argentine tango with jazz harmony, classical counterpoint, and extended formal structures. The term dis...

Eighteen lyric character pieces for piano, Op. 82 (1853). The title 'Nuits blanches' (Sleepless Nights) and the Jean Paul–derived German subtitle 'Blumen-, Frucht- und Dornenstücke' (Flower, Fruit and...

Ginastera's own term for his first compositional period (1934–1948), in which Argentine folk materials — dances, melodies, rhythms, regional idioms — are incorporated in a relatively direct and unabst...

The playing of rapid successive octaves, requiring a free wrist and relaxed arm to avoid injury and produce a full, resonant sound.

Po zarostlém chodníčku — the cycle of 15 piano pieces (10 in Book I, 5 in Book II) composed 1900–1911, Janáček's most beloved piano collection. The Czech title suggests a pathway through life half-hid...

The water-spirit — the programmatic character of the first piece of Gaspard de la nuit, depicting a siren-like creature beckoning from the water.

Dutilleux assigned the designation 'Op. 1' to his Piano Sonata (1947–48) to mark it as the first work he considered worthy of his mature standards — a deliberate act of self-criticism that resulted in...

Hummel's Piano Sonata No. 5 in F♯ minor, Op. 81, widely regarded as his finest solo piano work and one of the neglected masterpieces of the early 19th century. The choice of F♯ minor was bold — a remo...

Copland's characteristic use of wide intervals — fourths, fifths, and octaves — to create a spacious, unhurried, distinctly American sonic landscape.

Suite; a French Baroque keyboard collection. Couperin's term for what German composers called a \"Suite\" and Italian composers called a \"Partita\" — a grouped set of dance movements and character pi...

Boulez's own phrase describing his compositional approach in the Piano Sonata No. 1 and early works. Serial organisation provides the rational framework; the character that emerges — violent, fragment...

Sustained organ tone. Franck spent his career as an organist and his piano writing frequently imitates the sustained, layered sonority of the instrument — long pedal tones, overlapping harmonies, and ...

In an Oriental or Eastern style. Refers to the modal, exotic-sounding scales and ornamentation characteristic of Armenian and broader Middle Eastern musical traditions.

The performance of written ornament signs (trills, mordents, turns, appoggiaturas) according to Baroque conventions. Handel's ornaments follow predominantly French and Italian practice as codified in ...

Haydn did not leave a systematic ornament table, but his ornamentation follows broadly the C.P.E. Bach tradition: trills begin on the upper auxiliary, appoggiaturas are given significant rhythmic weig...

Bach's systematic table of ornament realisations from the Notebook for Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, explaining how each symbol should be played.

The practice of embellishing a melodic line with trills, mordents, turns, appoggiaturas, and other ornamental figures.

Decorative notes added to a melody — trills, mordents, turns, appoggiaturas. In Baroque keyboard music ornaments are semi-obligatory, indicated by signs above the notes.

The inner-voice accompaniment figure in Metamorphosis One and Five consisting of ascending major thirds alternating steadily in the left hand, underpinning the entire cycle.

Or else — an alternative version of a passage, typically easier or different.

A persistently repeated rhythmic or melodic pattern, typically in the bass or inner voices.

A persistently repeated rhythmic or melodic figure. Mompou uses ostinato bass patterns throughout his piano music — bell-like repeated notes and rocking accompaniments that create a hypnotic, ritualis...

A persistently repeated rhythmic or melodic pattern that anchors the texture. A defining feature of Stravinsky's rhythmic language across all periods.

A persistently repeated musical figure or phrase throughout a composition.

A persistently repeated rhythmic, melodic, or harmonic pattern used as a structural and expressive device. Central to Ginastera's style, most prominently in finale movements (Piano Sonata No. 1 IV, Pi...

A repeating bass pattern over which upper voices construct variations — the structural principle of the chaconne and passacaglia. In Buxtehude's three ostinato works (BuxWV 159–161) the bass repeats w...

A persistently repeated bass figure — rhythmic, harmonic, or melodic — that underpins a contrasting upper voice. Shostakovich uses ostinato bass extensively in his toccata passages, passacaglia-like s...

Piano — soft.

Pachelbel's distinctive approach to the chorale prelude: fore-imitation in all voices before the chorale enters in the top voice in long notes, creating a layered texture that became the template for ...

The movement of two or more voices in the same direction by identical intervals.

A free, speech-like rhythmic style, unbound from strict metric pulse, in which the performer shapes time as a speaker shapes language. Inherited from Bartók's ethnomusicological work and central to Ku...

A Baroque suite of dance movements, typically for keyboard.

In early Baroque keyboard practice, a set of variations on a popular melody or harmonic formula — the Italian equivalent of the English \"divisions\" or the German \"Partita\" before that term was rep...

A strolling or promenading figure in Cuban dance music — a brief introductory or transitional passage during which couples take a walking step before the next melodic section begins.

A Baroque form built on a repeating bass line (ground bass), over which the upper voices vary freely. Related to the chaconne, though the distinction was not always strictly observed historically. Gub...

A compositional form built on a repeating bass line or harmonic progression, over which the upper voices vary freely. One of the most important structural forms in Baroque keyboard music, the passacag...

The eight-note bass motto drawn from the opening of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony that underpins all 44 variations of Godowsky's Passacaglia. Recognising it in its many transformations is essential t...

Louis Couperin's Passacaille in C major is one of his largest and most admired keyboard works — a set of continuous variations on a repeating harmonic progression in triple metre. Each variation is br...

Rapid scalar or arpeggiated figures requiring smooth thumb crossings, even tone, and fluid hand position changes. The bread-and-butter of Czerny's technical system.

A gentle, pastoral character; in Scarlatti associated especially with the Sonata K. 9 in D minor, which features a lilting compound meter evoking rural tranquility.

Pathetic — in the 18th-century sense of deeply moving, stirring strong emotion. Not pejorative.

Pathetic in the original sense — deeply felt, expressive of suffering or pathos. Not theatrical self-pity but concentrated emotional intensity.

Pathetic; full of pathos, evoking deep feeling or tender suffering. In Dussek's slow movements marked \"Adagio patetico\" (e.g. Op. 45 No. 1), the term calls for a tone of dignified grief — not theatr...

Louis Couperin's Pavane in F# minor is one of the most extraordinary keyboard works of the 17th century. Written in the stately duple meter of the Renaissance pavane, it is set in the remote and unusu...

Depress the sustain pedal (right pedal).

One of the central technical challenges in Albéniz: his harmonically restless writing — chromatic inner voices, flamenco cadences, bell-like treble pedal points — requires careful pedalling to sustain...

Discreet pedal. Fauré's piano writing is marked by restrained, carefully placed pedalling that blends harmonies without obscuring inner voices or the clarity of the melodic line.

A five-note scale without semitones, associated with folk music and with the exotic colouring of Impressionist writing.

A five-note scale found throughout African and African American folk music. Price frequently uses pentatonic melodic material in her piano works to evoke the character of spirituals and folk songs whi...

Bartók's treatment of the piano as a percussion instrument rather than a singing melodic instrument — a deliberate 20th-century reaction against the Romantic cantabile ideal. In works like Allegro Bar...

Losing itself — gradually fading into silence.

Perpetual motion — a passage or piece in which rapid, equal-valued notes (typically sixteenth notes or thirty-second notes) are maintained without interruption. Weber's piano writing frequently employ...

Heavy, weighty; sink into the keys with the full weight of the arm rather than driving from the fingers.

Heavy, weighty. Indicates a deliberate, pressing quality of touch.

Heavy, weighty. Indicates a pressing, deliberate quality, as though bearing physical weight.

Heavy — with weight and gravity.

A minimalist technique in which two or more voices play the same or similar material at a slight temporal offset, creating interference patterns, echo effects, and rhythmic complexity from simple sour...

A diatonic scale with a lowered second degree compared to the natural minor scale — in E: E F G A B C D E. The Phrygian mode has a dark, ancient, Spanish-inflected character (it is the basis of the An...

Field's Second Piano Concerto in A♭ major (H. 31) is historically the most significant of his seven concertos — its direct influence on Chopin's two piano concertos (both also in a dreamy, singing mod...

The 'Fantastique' concerto in B♭ major, Op. 90 (1833), is the most progressive of Moscheles's seven concertos and the point at which his style moves most decisively into Romantic territory. The nickna...

The 'Fantastique' concerto in B♭ major, Op. 90 (1833), is the most progressive of Moscheles's seven concertos and the point at which his style moves most decisively into Romantic territory. The nickna...

Piano Sonata No. 1 (1987-88), dedicated to Vladimir Feltsman and constructed partly on Feltsman's musical monogram. The work represents Schnittke's mature polystylistic piano style at its most concent...

Piano Sonata No. 2 (1990), composed as a birthday gift for the composer's wife Irina. Three movements: sonata-allegro, intermezzo, and invention with chorale sections. Among Schnittke's most approacha...

Piano Sonata No. 3 (1992), the last major piano work of Schnittke's life and one of his most uncompromisingly austere. Composed in the final years of his life when he had suffered multiple strokes, th...

Piano Sonata No. 5, composed 1986, is one of the most extreme piano works of the 20th century. After a compositional silence of nearly three decades, Ustvolskaya returned with an even more reduced and...

A short character piece that evokes a specific image, scene, or object through musical means. Gubaidulina described each of the 14 pieces in Musical Toys as a pictorial miniature. The pieces use rhyth...

Character piece. A keyboard work with a descriptive or programmatic title indicating a mood, person, animal, scene, or social type rather than a dance form. Couperin's pièces de caractère — Les barica...

Character pieces - keyboard works with descriptive titles evoking a mood, scene, person, or animal. Rameau popularised the form alongside Couperin, and many of his most celebrated harpsichord works (L...

Chabrier's set of ten solo piano pieces composed in 1880 and published 1881 — one of the most historically consequential piano collections in French music. The set shocked and delighted its first audi...

Op. 21 (1912) — Schoenberg's cycle of 21 melodramas for Sprechstimme and chamber ensemble (piano, flute doubling piccolo, clarinet doubling bass clarinet, violin doubling viola, cello). Settings of Ge...

A compositional technique in which the composer limits the available pitches to a defined subset of the chromatic scale, using this constraint as the primary structural and expressive device. György L...

Rather; somewhat — a qualifier modifying a tempo or character instruction. In \"Tempo di minuetto più tosto allegro\" (Op. 44, third movement) it means \"in minuet time, but rather on the fast side\" ...

The Impressionist technique of moving an entire chord or voicing in parallel motion without concern for traditional voice-leading or resolution.

A self-playing piano mechanism in which a perforated paper roll controls note selection and duration, driven by pneumatic pressure. Nancarrow used a modified 1927 Ampico reproducing player piano and h...

Full organ — all stops drawn including principals, mixtures, and reeds. The maximum sonority of the instrument, used for climactic moments and fugue subjects in Franck.

Dvořák's most substantial piano cycle, Op. 85, B. 161 (1889) — thirteen programmatic character pieces composed at his Vysoká estate. Often called the great forgotten work of the Romantic piano reperto...

By analogy with the painting technique of Seurat and Signac, musical pointillism refers to a texture in which individual notes or chords are isolated by silences, extreme register changes, or contrast...

A tradition of piano music that engages explicitly with political struggle, revolutionary movements, or social commentary. Associated above all with Rzewski, whose works draw on protest songs, labor a...

A lively Czech dance in 2/4 time originating in Bohemia around 1830. The polka became the most internationally popular dance of the mid-19th century. For Smetana it was the quintessential Czech form —...

In the keyboard music of W.F. Bach, a short stylised dance movement in triple meter with characteristic rhythmic patterns — not the grand concert polonaise of Chopin, but an intimate character piece, ...

A stately Polish dance in triple metre, typically with a characteristic dotted rhythm on the first beat and a cadence on the third. In the Classical keyboard repertoire it appears as a short, elegant ...

Godowsky's term for his approach to piano writing in which multiple independent melodic and harmonic voices are sustained simultaneously within a single hand, requiring each finger to function as an i...

The simultaneous use of two or more contrasting rhythmic patterns, typically in different voices or hands, creating a composite rhythm that is more complex than any single strand. In Ligeti's piano Ét...

In Iberia, Albéniz frequently layers two or three independent rhythmic streams simultaneously — a melody in one metre, an accompaniment in another, and a bass pedal in a third. Triana, for instance, s...

The deliberate use of multiple contrasting stylistic idioms within a single work — Baroque counterpoint, Soviet march music, jazz-influenced dance, lyrical Romanticism — as a compositional strategy. S...

A compositional technique associated above all with Alfred Schnittke, in which musical styles from different periods and traditions — Baroque counterpoint, Romantic tonal harmony, jazz, folk music, an...

The simultaneous sounding of two or more keys. Bartók used bitonal textures extensively, especially in the 14 Bagatelles (Op. 6) where different key signatures appear in each hand. Rather than produci...

The simultaneous use of two or more distinct key areas. Ginastera described Piano Sonata No. 1 as employing polytonality alongside twelve-tone technique — a personal synthesis that gives the work harm...

Polytonality — the simultaneous use of two or more different keys — is Darius Milhaud's most distinctive compositional fingerprint and one of the defining innovations of early 20th-century music. Milh...

Pompously, grandly; with stateliness and ceremonial weight.

A rising appoggiatura from the note below, resolving upward onto the principal note. One of the most common agréments in French Baroque music, and precisely defined by Couperin in L'Art de toucher le ...

A smooth glide from one note to the next — in piano writing, a legato touch with a slight weight on the point of arrival, imitating the vocal or string portamento.

Carried — an articulation between legato and staccato; each note is slightly separated but not as short as staccato.

Of or relating to Buenos Aires — literally 'of the port'. Piazzolla uses the term to situate his music specifically in the emotional landscape of the Argentine capital: its melancholy, its violence, i...

A term for composers who emerged from the minimalist tradition of Reich, Glass, and Riley but moved beyond its strictest processes — reintroducing dramatic climaxes, narrative arc, harmonic progressio...

For the velvety quality of the sound — Debussy's performance note indicating the desired tone quality.

Pianissimo — very soft.

Pianississimo — as soft as possible.

Headlong, rushing forward — indicating a driven, unstoppable rhythmic energy.

Headlong, precipitously — the tempo marking of the famous finale of Prokofiev's 7th Sonata.

An introductory piece, often improvisatory in character, preceding a fugue or dance suite in Baroque practice.

Louis Couperin's Prélude in B minor is his most extended and celebrated unmeasured prelude — a large-scale piece of extraordinary harmonic freedom, encompassing a wide range of moods from brooding int...

As fast as possible.

Extremely fast; the most extreme standard tempo marking, surpassing Presto. Used by Scarlatti in several late sonatas including K. 517 in D minor.

Very fast.

Very fast. The fastest standard tempo marking, indicating the maximum sustainable speed.

Very fast and agitated — the tempo marking of the Moonlight Sonata finale.

Sight-reading. Czerny was one of the great pedagogues of sight-reading and composed many of his collections partly to develop this skill through regular exposure to new keys, rhythms, and figurations.

Mompou's term for his own aesthetic: a deliberate \"return to the beginning\" — stripping music of development, counterpoint, and conventional formal architecture to arrive at something fundamental an...

Music that depicts or narrates extra-musical subject matter — scenes, stories, characters, or feelings.

A collection of piano études arranged in order of increasing technical difficulty. Burgmüller's Op. 100 is subtitled 'faciles et progressives' — easy and progressive — meaning the pieces are designed ...

A specific type of tempo canon in which all voices use the same melody, but each moves at a different rate — slower voices taking proportionally longer to traverse the material than faster voices. Der...

The three books of 'Promenades d'un solitaire' (Op. 78, 1851; Op. 80, 1853; Op. 89, 1856) are Heller's most ambitious character-piece collections and the works in which his artistic personality emerge...

Guitar plucking technique; single-note melodic lines. Granados uses this concept in piano writing to suggest a guitarist's sound.

Almost a fantasy — Beethoven's own subtitle for both Op. 27 sonatas, indicating a freely structured, improvisatory character.

Like a cadenza — freely and without strict pulse, in the manner of an improvised virtuosic passage.

In the manner of a fantasy. Indicates free, improvisatory treatment of form, tempo, and character, without strict adherence to a fixed structure.

Like a guitar — dry, plucked, somewhat hollow in tone.

As if improvising. Indicates a free, spontaneous quality, as though the music is being invented in the moment.

\"Almost nothing.\" An extreme pianissimo marking indicating a sound that barely exists — at or below the threshold of audibility.

In ragtime style — syncopated, rhythmically lively, with the characteristic off-beat accents of the rag tradition.

Gradually slowing down. Abbreviated rall.

Guitar strumming technique; rapid arpeggiated chords. Granados transfers this idiomatic guitar gesture into his piano textures.

In sonata form, the return of the exposition's themes, now typically both presented in the tonic key.

The expressive swell division of the French organ, equivalent to the Swell on English instruments. Contains the most expressive stops and is enclosed in the swell box.

In a declamatory, speech-like style — the musical equivalent of dramatic recitative, as in opera.

Starting over: Mompou's concept of musical recommencement — the idea that each piece begins again from zero, without reference to what came before. Related to primitivista, it suggests a compositional...

The selection and combination of organ stops to produce a desired timbre and dynamic level. Franck's music implies specific registration schemes derived from the resources of Cavaillé-Coll instruments...

Ornamental iron window grills through which lovers conversed in traditional Spanish custom; referenced in the title Coloquio en la Reja.

Written-out ornamented repeats — the reprises are fully notated with embellishments rather than left to the performer's improvisation. CPE Bach's Wq. 50 is built entirely on this principle, making the...

Resonance — both a physical acoustic phenomenon and a central aesthetic principle of Dutilleux's music. He was fascinated by the way sound continues after its initial attack, how overtones persist and...

A transformation technique in which a melody is both reversed (retrograde: played backwards) and inverted (all intervals flipped up/down). The relationship between the Praeludium and Postludium of Lud...

A character piece evoking a state of dreamy meditation or pleasant abstraction; a mood piece without strict formal requirements, typically flowing and improvisatory in character.

Dreams — six character pieces for piano by Smetana composed 1874–75, immediately after his sudden deafness. The French title was chosen to evoke Liszt's influence and the dreaming, memory-laden charac...

The shifting of a melodic accent so that it falls on a different position within the repeating eighth-note stream than before, creating forward propulsion without a change of tempo.

A polyphonic contrapuntal form for keyboard or ensemble prominent in the 16th and early 17th centuries, related to the fantasia but typically built on a single subject treated in systematic imitation....

Rinforzando (rfz or rf) — reinforcing; a sudden increase in emphasis applied to a note or short group of notes.

Gradually slowing down. Abbreviated rit. or ritard.

Held back — immediately slower. Abbreviated riten.

A French Baroque form built on the alternation of a recurring refrain (the rondeau theme) and contrasting couplets. The refrain is always in the home key; couplets may modulate. Unlike the Classical r...

A Baroque keyboard form in which a fixed refrain alternates with contrasting episodes (couplets). The rondeau returns in full after each episode. Rameau labels many of his character pieces en Rondeau ...

A form in which a recurring main theme (the refrain) alternates with contrasting episodes: A-B-A-C-A or similar.

A musical form in which a recurring refrain (the rondo theme) alternates with contrasting episodes (couplets). In the Classical piano sonata, the rondo typically serves as the final movement, combinin...

A form in which a main theme (refrain) alternates with contrasting episodes. In Classical sonatas the rondo typically appears as the final movement, combining wit and energy with formal clarity.

A form in which a recurring refrain alternates with contrasting episodes (couplets). Standard designation: ABACADA. In late-Classical practice the rondo is typically the final movement of a sonata — p...

A small rondo — a compact instrumental piece in rondo form, typically lighter and briefer than a full rondo. Kuhlau used the term (in his Op. 117 Rondolettos) to indicate brisk, unpretentious characte...

Grainger's own term for intimate chamber and solo piano versions of his works, as opposed to concert hall or outdoor performances. Room-Music Tit-Bits (RMTB) is the series label for several piano solo...

In Debussy, rubato implies subtle, fine-grained flexibility — a gentle breath of the phrase, not sweeping Romantic displacement.

Robbed time — flexible tempo in which the performer freely accelerates and lingers within a phrase.

With a little rhythmic freedom. Used in the Preludes to allow expressive shaping of the melodic line without abandoning the jazz groove entirely.

Composed 1921-1926 and dedicated to Arthur Rubinstein, the Rudepoema (a punning title combining 'rude' in the sense of primitive or raw, and 'poema', poem — but also a pun on Rubinstein's name) is Vil...

Op. 32a (1923), seven pieces for solo piano that represent Dohnányi's most direct engagement with Hungarian musical character. Written in both piano (Op. 32a) and orchestral (Op. 32b) versions, the se...

Rough, harsh, raw. Used by Ginastera as both a character marking and a tempo qualifier — most famously in the finale of Piano Sonata No. 1 (Ruvido ed ostinato). Indicates an uncompromising, primitive ...

Non-retrogradable rhythm — a rhythmic palindrome that reads the same forwards and backwards. Central to Messiaen's rhythmic language, inspired by ancient Greek and Hindu metres. The symmetry is felt a...

A term applied to a style of late 20th-century composition — associated with Pärt, Górecki, and Tavener — characterised by extreme simplicity of means, slow tempos, an absence of developmental complex...

The Sacro-Monte (Sacred Mountain) is a hill district on the edge of Granada, Spain, traditionally inhabited by the Gypsy community and associated with the most authentic and intense forms of flamenco....

A manner of piano writing and performance intended for intimate domestic concerts — emphasising elegance, lyrical beauty, and accessible virtuosity rather than structural depth. The aesthetic context ...

Without expression; an instruction to play objectively, without romantic phrasing or personal emotional interpretation.

Without slowness, without dragging. A common qualifier in French scores meaning the tempo should feel forward-moving even when marked Calme or Modéré.

Without heaviness. A direction to maintain lightness even in loud or technically demanding passages.

Without pedal — the designation on W.F. Bach's 8 Fugues, F. 31, indicating that these keyboard fugues are written for harpsichord or clavichord rather than organ. The absence of pedal confines the wri...

Without rigidity. Fauré's instruction for passages requiring flexibility of tempo — a gentle give within the phrase, not metronomic but not freely improvised.

A slow, dignified Baroque dance in triple metre with emphasis on the second beat.

The characteristic ironic, biting quality in Prokofiev's music — wit with an edge.

Prokofiev's own character descriptor — biting, sardonic, mocking. A hallmark of his early style, especially the Sarcasms Op. 17.

Satie replaced conventional Italian tempo markings with French verbal directions that are simultaneously descriptive and absurdist: 'Très luisant' (very shiny), 'Du bout de la pensée' (from the tip of...

Milhaud's suite of twelve dances for piano, Op. 67 (1920–1921), is his most beloved piano work and a landmark in the French piano repertoire of the 20th century. Each of the twelve short pieces bears ...

A Japanese aesthetic quality of subtle roughness or impurity in timbre. Originally describing a specific tonal quality on the shamisen and biwa, Takemitsu translated this concept into piano writing th...

Suite for two pianos in three movements, Op. 165b (1937), Milhaud's most widely performed work. Originally incidental music for a production of Molière's Le Médecin volant at the Théâtre Scaramouche, ...

The gnome — the programmatic character of the third piece of Gaspard de la nuit, depicting a malevolent, shape-shifting supernatural creature.

Playfully, jokingly — in a light, humorous manner.

Playfully, jokingly — a term indicating a light, humorous, teasing character. In Burgmüller's L'Arabesque (Op. 100 No. 2), the marking 'Allegro scherzando' tells the performer that the etude should fe...

A brief, playful scherzo — a miniature version of the scherzo form, typically light and humorous in character.

An inverted mordent — a quick oscillation beginning on the written note and touching the upper auxiliary: the note above, back to the main note. Notated by CPE Bach as a wavy line without a slash. Do ...

Dry; play without sustaining pedal, producing a clean, detached tone.

The informal name for the group of composers centred on Arnold Schoenberg in early 20th-century Vienna, including Alban Berg and Anton Webern as his two principal students. The term distinguishes them...

The informal grouping of Arnold Schoenberg and his two most important pupils, Alban Berg and Anton Webern, working in Vienna from approximately 1903 to 1933. The three composers developed from late Ro...

A lively Spanish song and dance form in triple meter with regional variants including the Seguidilla murciana; often features guitar-like accompaniment patterns.

Longing, yearning — an aching desire for something unattainable or distant.

Very expressively. A performance direction frequently found in Clara Schumann's mature piano works, calling for heightened emotional engagement and vocal phrasing.

Very lively. A recurring marking in Hindemith's three piano sonatas — the second movement of Sonata No. 3 and a movement in Sonata No. 1 — indicating the most propulsive, scherzo-like energy in each w...

Simply, without embellishment; a marking asking for unaffected, straightforward expression.

Always, continuously — typically qualifying a dynamic or expression mark to indicate it should be maintained throughout.

Always pianissimo and without mute — the combined marking at the opening of the Moonlight Sonata first movement.

Without measure — freely, without a strict pulse.

Without mute — in piano music, meaning without the damper pedal, allowing notes to ring without sustain. Shostakovich uses this marking in his Op. 87 preludes to enforce a transparent, dry texture tha...

Without mute — sustain pedal depressed, allowing strings to vibrate freely.

Without mute — Beethoven's instruction for the first movement of Op. 27 No. 2 to hold the sustain pedal throughout the movement.

A melodic or harmonic pattern repeated at successively higher or lower pitch levels.

Serene — clear, unclouded, and peacefully bright.

A compositional technique, developed by Schoenberg from around 1921, in which all twelve pitches of the chromatic scale are arranged into a fixed series (row or tone-row) and all melodic and harmonic ...

Serious. Mendelssohn's own descriptor for his Variations Op. 54, distinguishing them from lighter salon variations and announcing an intention to write a work of genuine artistic weight.

The rhythmic cross-pattern between 3/4 (three beats of two subdivisions) and 6/8 (two beats of three subdivisions). Both metres share the same number of subdivisions but group them differently, creati...

Sforzando (sfz) — a sudden, strong accent on a single note or chord.

Sforzato (sfz) — forced; a strong sudden accent. Equivalent to sforzando in most contexts.

The standard English Baroque ornament: a rapid alternation between the written note and the note above. In Purcell's context, the shake typically begins on the upper note and has a definite closing tu...

The indigenous Taíno people of Cuba. In Lecuona's song of the same name, the title evokes the pre-colonial island — a romantic, nostalgic invocation of Cuba's origins. At the piano, Siboney is typical...

A Baroque dance in a lilting 6/8 or 12/8 metre, typically in a minor key, with a gentle rocking pulse. Hindemith was drawn to the siciliano's compound metre throughout his career; it appears in multip...

The term for the thirty-year creative silence of Jean Sibelius after the publication of Tapiola (1926) until his death in 1957. After completing his Seventh Symphony and Tapiola, Sibelius worked on an...

Similarly — continue in the same manner as previously indicated.

Without bar lines: a notational practice Mompou adopted in many works, following Satie, to remove the hierarchical accent of the barline and allow the music to flow with complete rhythmic freedom.

Mozart's characteristic fast movements that retain a singing, melodic quality rather than becoming purely motoric.

The quality of piano sound that most closely imitates the sustained, inflected delivery of the human voice — considered the highest ideal of piano playing in the early 19th century. Kuhlau's sonatinas...

The ideal of a sustained, vocal-quality piano sound — the piano imitating the capacity of a singer to sustain a phrase across many notes. Central to Romantic piano pedagogy and to Beach's own playing ...

A direction appearing in Godowsky's scores indicating left-hand playing, from the Italian sinistra. Also carries its secondary meaning — a dark or ominous expressive character, which Godowsky exploite...

The Variationen zur Gesundung von Arinuschka consists of six short variations on a simple rising and falling octave scale theme. The first three are in minor, the second three in major, reflecting a j...

Literally 'tale' or 'folktale' — more precise than the English 'Fairy Tale', which was only applied after Medtner's first American tour in 1924. Medtner's skazki are not descriptive tales or adventure...

Dvořák's two sets of piano four-hand dances (Op.46 and Op.72, 1878 and 1887) that established his international reputation. Inspired by Brahms's Hungarian Dances, they use the rhythmic patterns of Boh...

Dampened, extinguished — fading away in both tone and tempo.

A subject 'carved out' of a set of solmisation syllables derived from words or letters. In Froberger's Fantasia sopra Ut Re Mi Fa Sol La (FbWV 201), the subject is derived from the ascending hexachord...

A musical monologue — a piece in which the piano speaks as a single contemplative voice, exploring one emotional state at length without contrasting sections or traditional development.

'Picturesque sonata': a term used by Turina for Sanlucar de Barrameda, Op. 24 (c. 1922), indicating a multi-movement sonata in which each movement is an atmospheric depiction of a specific place or sc...

The 'Sonate mélancolique' in F♯ minor, Op. 49 (1814), is Moscheles's most personal and introspective piano work — a remarkable achievement for a composer of twenty when published. The title 'mélancoli...

The 'Sonate mélancolique' in F♯ minor, Op. 49 (1814), is Moscheles's most personal and introspective piano work — a remarkable achievement for a composer of twenty when published. The title 'mélancoli...

'Sonata-Tale' — Medtner's hybrid form combining the structural architecture of the sonata with the narrative and imaginative qualities of the Skazka. Op.25 No.1 is the primary example.

Sonata form (or sonata-allegro form) — the structural plan of exposition, development, and recapitulation that underlies most Classical first movements.

A small sonata — a work in sonata form with typically two or three movements, shorter and less technically demanding than a full sonata. The sonatina is the fundamental vehicle of Classical piano peda...

Sustained. An instruction to hold notes to their full written value and beyond — implying a legato of exceptional continuity, where notes are connected not merely without gap but with the sensation of...

Sustained — notes held to their full value, with a continuous singing quality.

The middle pedal on a grand piano — sustains only the notes that are depressed at the moment the pedal is engaged, leaving subsequent notes unaffected.

Under the voice — in a hushed, intimate undertone.

Suppleness, flexibility. A quality of physical ease and rhythmic give in the playing, as opposed to rigidity.

The keyboard toccata tradition of southern Germany and Austria, descending from Froberger, characterised by alternation between free improvisatory sections (with running passagework) and strict fugal ...

The informal network of Soviet composers who wrote in styles officially discouraged or banned under Soviet cultural policy. Gubaidulina, alongside Schnittke and Denisov, was part of this milieu: her m...

A tendency in late 19th- and early 20th-century Spanish composition to develop a concert music language rooted in the folk and popular musical traditions of Spain — flamenco, cante jondo, regional dan...

Janáček's term (in Czech: nápěvky mluvy — 'speech tunes') for the musical motives he claimed to derive from the natural melodic contours of Czech speech and everyday sounds. He notated these motives o...

A sacred folk song originating in the enslaved African American communities of the South, characterised by call-and-response structure, blues inflections, pentatonic or modal melodic lines, and profou...

A loose term sometimes applied to the music of Ustvolskaya, Arvo Part, Henryk Gorecki, and Sofia Gubaidulina — composers from Soviet or formerly Soviet contexts who developed a reduced, intense musica...

In Gubaidulinas music, the underlying theological or mystical narrative that shapes the formal and expressive choices of a work. Her Piano Sonata (1965) maps its three movements onto a cross-shaped ar...

Wittily, with spirit; implying a kind of playful intelligence.

Speech-voice — a vocal technique developed by Schoenberg for Pierrot Lunaire (1912) in which the performer uses pitches notated in the score as approximate guides, but realises them as a kind of heigh...

A fast Norwegian couple dance in triple metre, often with shifting accent patterns that give it an asymmetric, unpredictable lilt distinct from the waltz.

Very detached — even shorter than staccato, almost a dry tap.

Detached — notes are played short, with a gap following each.

An unbroken, metronomically even rhythmic foundation, typically of eighth or sixteenth notes, that persists across surface changes in melody and harmony.

The selection and combination of organ stops (ranks of pipes) to produce a desired timbre for a particular movement or section. In Pachelbel's relatively straightforward organ writing, registration ch...

Strictly in time; crisp. Hindemith's marking for the first movement (Marsch) of Suite \"1922\" — \"Stramm. Energisch\" — specifies both a rigid metric character and an emphatic, aggressive energy dist...

A close imitative passage in a fugue in which the subject entries overlap — each new entry begins before the previous one has finished.

A jazz piano style where the left hand alternates between a low bass note on beats 1 and 3 and a mid-range chord on beats 2 and 4, producing a characteristic striding motion that was a foundation of e...

Storm and Stress — a late 18th-century aesthetic movement emphasising intense emotional expression, dramatic contrasts, and turbulent energy in music and literature.

Storm and Stress — a pan-European literary and musical movement of the 1760s–70s characterised by intense emotional turbulence, minor keys, dramatic dynamic contrasts, and agitated textures. Haydn's \...

Broken style — the texture of French lute music translated to the keyboard: chords spread arpeggiated across the registers, inner voices suspended into neighbouring beats, a texture that seems to floa...

The free, improvisatory style of North German Baroque keyboard writing — alternating between wild toccata passages and strict imitative fugues with no fixed metre. Athanasius Kircher coined the term i...

The 'fantastic style' — Athanasius Kircher's term for the most free and unrestrained keyboard style of the 17th century, typified by Froberger's toccatas. Characterised by unpredictable changes of tex...

A compositional and performance style described by seventeenth-century theorist Athanasius Kircher (1650) as \"the most free and unrestrained method of composing\" for keyboard instruments — character...

Suddenly loud — an abrupt leap to forte.

Suddenly soft. An abrupt dynamic shift to quiet, without a gradual decrescendo. One of Schubert's most characteristic expressive devices.

Suddenly soft — an abrupt dynamic reduction from a louder dynamic without gradual transition. A hallmark of Shostakovich's characteristic ironic gesture, undercutting climaxes unexpectedly.

Suddenly soft — an abrupt drop to piano without a gradual transition.

The principal melodic idea of a fugue, presented initially in a single voice and subsequently imitated by the other voices.

Spanish suite — Lecuona's own subtitle for his Andalucía suite, indicating that the six pieces form a unified portrait of southern Spain despite being playable individually.

An orchestral suite assembled by Chabrier between 1881 and 1888 by orchestrating four pieces from the Pièces pittoresques: Idylle, Danse villageoise, Sous-bois, and Scherzo-valse (in this order in the...

\"Near the bridge.\" In piano music, Crumb uses this term to indicate playing directly on the piano strings near the hitch pins, producing a glassy, nasal tone with prominent upper harmonics.

A specific performance challenge in long-form process-based pieces like Phrygian Gates (~28 minutes) or Glass's études: the music does not develop in the traditional sense of dramatic narrative, but r...

An enclosure around one or more divisions of the organ with shutters (jalousies) that open and close via a pedal, allowing dynamic gradation not otherwise possible on the organ.

A rhythmic feel characteristic of jazz in which notated pairs of eighth notes are played unevenly — the first held longer and the second shortened — creating a lilting forward momentum rather than str...

A rhythmic quality in which pairs of notated equal eighth notes are performed with a slight lilt — the first slightly longer and the second slightly shorter — evoking the feel of jazz and blues.

A performance instruction in Road Movies requiring the pianist to play in 'swing mode': in every group of four notes, the second and fourth notes are played slightly late — creating the lilt of jazz p...

A lively Provencal dance in a quick duple or compound metre, typically featuring a drone bass imitating a long cylindrical drum (tambourin de Provence). Rameau's keyboard tambourins (RCT 2, RCT 9) bec...

A dance form originating in the Río de la Plata region of Argentina and Uruguay, characterised by sharp rhythmic accentuation, habanera-derived bass patterns, and dramatic contrasts between sustained ...

In 19th-century Spanish usage, 'tango' referred not to the Argentine dance but to a flamenco-adjacent dance in 2/4 or 4/4 with a syncopated habanera-like bass pattern. Albéniz's Tango in D (España Op....

Stormy, tempestuous — the character marking for Prokofiev's First Sonata.

A canon in which the voices move at different, fixed speeds simultaneously rather than entering at the same tempo at staggered intervals. The defining structural device of Nancarrow's mature output: o...

In the tempo of a mazurka; a Polish dance in triple metre typically with an accent on the second or third beat.

In waltz time; triple metre with a characteristic one-beat feel per bar.

Strict, exact tempo — in exact time.

Robbed time — in Chopin's style, the melody flows freely while the accompaniment maintains a steady, regular pulse.

An arrangement of multiple simultaneous tempos proportioned to match the frequency ratios of a musical pitch scale. In Study No. 37, Nancarrow uses 12 voices whose tempos are proportional to the justl...

A lyrical character marking indicating an expressive and yearning quality, with emotional warmth and a slight sense of reaching forward.

Tenderly; with warmth and gentle expressiveness.

Dark, shadowy, sombre. Used as a character marking in Op.34 No.3.

Tenderly; with delicacy and affection.

Held — a sustained note or chord held beyond its written value, exploiting the organ's ability to sustain indefinitely. Fundamental to Franck's organ texture.

Held — a note played at its full value, often with a slight emphasis or lingering.

A Baroque approach to dynamics in which volume changes in distinct steps (forte to piano) rather than gradually. Associated with the lack of a sustain pedal on harpsichord.

The Baroque practice of dynamic change in distinct steps (loud/soft) rather than graduated crescendo. Characteristic of harpsichord writing, where the instrument's mechanics produce limited dynamic gr...

The Baroque practice of changing dynamics in distinct steps rather than through gradual crescendi or decrescendi.

Op. 45 No. 1 in C major, the opening study of Heller's most famous étude collection and one of the most charming melodic studies in the intermediate piano repertoire. A flowing right-hand semiquaver f...

John Field (1782–1837) invented the piano nocturne as a genre, composing the first examples in the years around 1810 and establishing the template that Chopin would later transform into the defining R...

36 variations by Frederic Rzewski (1975) on the Chilean protest song 'El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido' by Sergio Ortega and Quilapayun. Written in response to Pinochet's 1973 coup against Salvador ...

36 variations by Frederic Rzewski (1975) on the Chilean protest song 'El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido' by Sergio Ortega and Quilapayun. Written in response to Pinochet's 1973 coup against Salvador ...

Sibelius's most famous piano piece — Granen, the fifth of the Five Pieces, Op.75 ('The Trees', 1914). The image of the lone spruce tree standing in a Finnish winter landscape has made this short piece...

A compositional approach — coined by Gunther Schuller in 1957 — that fuses elements of Western art music (classical forms, counterpoint, notation) with jazz improvisation idioms, harmony, and rhythm, ...

Thalberg's signature illusion in which the melody appears to be played by a third, middle hand while the two actual hands provide accompaniment above and below. Achieved by placing the melody in the t...

The specific realisation of the three-hand effect in the Fantaisie sur 'Moïse' (Op.33), where the prayer theme 'Dal tuo stellato soglio' from Rossini's opera is presented in the middle register surrou...

The technique of passing the thumb under the hand to prepare for the next position in a scale or passage.

Copland's instruction for passages that move outside strict meter — not truly free, but with a loose, improvisatory quality that mimics speech or breath.

Pärt's self-invented compositional technique first used in 1976, named after the Latin word for 'little bells'. Each passage consists of two voices: a melodic (M-voice) moving stepwise and a tintinnab...

In Pärt's tintinnabuli style, the T-voice is the accompanying voice restricted exclusively to the notes of the tonic triad. It shadows the M-voice by always sounding the nearest triad tone below (or a...

A coupler that connects the pedal division to a manual, allowing pedal passages to speak with the full weight of a manual division. Franck's bass lines often require the Great-to-Pedal tirasse.

A keyboard form characterised by rapid passagework, virtuosic display, and a sense of improvisatory freedom. From the Italian toccare (to touch), toccatas typically showcase the full range of the keyb...

A genre of free-form keyboard composition originating in the 16th century, named from the Italian toccare (to touch). In Frescobaldi's hands the toccata became one of the most sophisticated keyboard f...

A perpetual-motion rhythmic texture characterised by relentless, even eighth notes or sixteenth notes with minimal melodic relief — mechanical energy as musical content.

A rhythmically relentless, motorically driven texture in which repeated-note or repeated-chord figuration propels the music forward with almost mechanical energy. Associated with Bartók's Allegro Barb...

A brief toccata — a short, rapid, etude-like piece designed to develop finger dexterity and evenness of touch.

Tomb — a memorial piece lamenting a named individual's death, written in the French lute tradition and adapted by Froberger for harpsichord. In Froberger's hands, the tombeau is typically cast as a sl...

A memorial composition honoring a deceased musician; a practice rooted in French Baroque tradition and revived in the early 20th century. Falla composed tombeaux for both Debussy and Dukas.

A French Baroque keyboard genre — a memorial piece written in honour of a recently deceased person, typically a musician or aristocratic patron. The tombeau emerged from the lute tradition in the earl...

Hindemith's theory of tonality, elaborated in The Craft of Musical Composition (1937), holds that all twelve tones of the chromatic scale relate to a single central pitch (the tonic) according to a na...

A chord formed by playing a group of adjacent notes simultaneously, typically executed with the flat of the palm, fist, or forearm rather than individual fingers. Used by Ginastera in the Suite de Dan...

The differentiation of individual voices within a chord or texture through subtle variation of touch, weight, and finger depth rather than through dynamic extremes. Central to Godowsky's aesthetic of ...

The foundational pitch sequence in twelve-tone (serial) composition, presenting all twelve chromatic pitches in a fixed order. Gubaidulinas Chaconne uses a 23-note row (repeating some pitches) built f...

Also called a twelve-tone row, series, or Grundreihe (basic row). The ordered sequence of all twelve chromatic pitches that forms the structural foundation of a twelve-tone composition. No pitch appea...

A compositional method extending twelve-tone organisation beyond pitch to control duration, dynamics, register, and articulation through parallel tone rows. Boulez applied total serialism rigorously i...

The manner in which a pianist's finger makes contact with the key — encompassing speed of key descent, weight applied, and point of contact.

Tranquil — calm and peaceful.

A term used by critics and scholars to describe a level of piano writing that exceeds conventional notions of advanced technique — requiring simultaneous independence of both hands at extreme tempos, ...

Transcription: in Busoni's philosophy, not merely an act of copying but a creative reinterpretation of another work for a new medium. Busoni argued that all performance and notation is transcription, ...

Transparency: a quality of texture in which individual voices remain clearly audible within a complex polyphonic context. Essential to Busoni's piano ideal and central to his Klavierübung exercises.

Dreaming, reverie. The title of the most famous piece from Kinderszenen and a quality that permeates much of Schumann's slow writing.

Dreaming — the seventh piece of Kinderszenen Op. 15, the most famous of Schumann's childhood scenes.

Three strings — release the soft pedal and return to normal tone.

Trill. The French Baroque trill (tremblement) begins on the upper auxiliary note, not on the principal note — the upper note falls on the beat, generating a dissonance that resolves downward. Couperin...

Rapid repetition of a note or alternation between two notes or intervals.

Very sweet, very soft — a specifically tender, intimate quality.

Very slow, celestial — Messiaen's most characteristic slow tempo marking, typically applied to meditative passages of great stillness in which long melodic lines unfold above sustained resonances.

Very distant. A marking Takemitsu uses to indicate extreme pianissimo with an ethereal, far-away quality — not merely soft but receding, as if heard from another room or across water.

Rapid alternation between a written note and the note one step above.

The practice of preparing a trill by identifying the correct starting note, speed, and evenness before attempting it in context.

A four-note ornament that moves around the written note: upper neighbour, main note, lower neighbour, main note (or in reverse for an inverted turn).

Twelve preludes for solo piano, composed 1953. Though written at a time when Ustvolskaya was still formally associated with the Leningrad Conservatory, the preludes show no accommodation with Soviet a...

Zwölftontechnik — the compositional method developed by Arnold Schoenberg from 1921 in which all twelve pitches of the chromatic scale are arranged into a fixed series (row) and the composition is der...

A compositional method developed by Arnold Schoenberg in the early 1920s in which all twelve chromatic pitches are arranged into a 'row' or 'series', which then serves as the basis for the entire comp...

Bach's characteristic polyphonic writing in which two independent melodic lines are combined, each with its own direction, rhythm, and expressive character.

One string — depress the soft pedal (left pedal) to shift the action so hammers strike fewer strings, producing a softer, more veiled tone.

Satie's early works (Gymnopédies, Gnossiennes, Ogives) are notated with barlines but without any sense of metric stress. The music should flow freely, without the weight of the downbeat.

A type of keyboard prelude unique to 17th-century French music in which the piece is notated entirely in whole notes with no bar lines, time signature, or durational indications other than slurs or ti...

Galina Ustvolskaya (1919-2006) created one of the most severely reduced and uncompromising bodies of work in 20th-century music. Her acknowledged catalogue comprises only 21 works, and she was famousl...

Galina Ustvolskaya studied with Shostakovich at the Leningrad Conservatory from 1939 to 1947 and again 1947-1950. Their relationship was one of the most significant and contested in Soviet musical lif...

Added value — the addition of a short duration (a dot, an extra note, or a short rest) that disrupts an otherwise regular rhythmic pattern, creating asymmetry and preventing mechanical repetition. One...

A compositional technique with particular relevance to politically engaged piano music: the statement and progressive transformation of a given theme, often a pre-existing melody (folk song, popular s...

Webern's only published work for solo piano, composed 1935-1936. Three movements: I. Sehr massig (Very measured): a strict mirror-symmetric movement in which every gesture is reflected at the axis of ...

Op. 25, for piano and orchestra, composed 1914, is Dohnányi's most frequently performed work and one of the most witty and accomplished sets of variations in the Romantic repertoire. Based on 'Ah, vou...

Velocity, speed. Clementi frequently marks rapid passages to emphasise technical fluency as a goal in itself.

The controlled ability to play rapid passages cleanly at high tempos without tension, blurring, or loss of tone quality. Czerny's core pedagogical aim.

Venetian Gondolier's Song. Mendelssohn's title for three of the Songs Without Words (Op. 19 No. 6, Op. 30 No. 6, Op. 62 No. 5) evoking the rocking motion of a gondola on water.

'Forgotten Melodies' — the title Medtner gave to his three cycles Op.38, 39, and 40. The German title was his preferred one; the pieces were published by the German firm Zimmermann. The title implies ...

Veiled. A Schumann direction for a deliberately muted, half-hidden sound quality.

A short organ piece played in alternation with a choir, replacing or commenting on a verse of a liturgical text. Pachelbel's Magnificat fugues are the most systematic set of versets in the German Baro...

Short title of CPE Bach's treatise Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments), published in two parts (1753, 1762). The definitive guide ...

Four pieces for violin and piano, Op. 7 (1910), published 1922. Composed in Webern's free-atonal period, these four miniatures are among the most extreme examples of musical compression in the early 2...

Lively and joyful — Messiaen's characteristic marking for ecstatic fast movements, particularly those depicting birds in full song or the joy of the Holy Spirit. The joy is cosmic and transcendent in ...

Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) is the central figure of Brazilian musical nationalism: a vast output of over 2,000 works in which European formal traditions are fused with the folk, popular, Afro-Braz...

Lively, animated — faster than allegro with a sense of brightness.

Lively, briskly; with animated forward momentum.

Lively — similar to vivace.

Lively, vivacious. A tempo marking indicating a brisk, energetic pace.

The technique of balancing the relative loudness of notes within a chord or texture so that a particular voice (usually the melody) projects above the others.

Forest swing — a colloquial nickname for the rocking 6/8 motion of the Ballade's opening bars.

The Rodman Wanamaker Music Contest, a prestigious annual competition for African American composers sponsored by a Philadelphia department store magnate. Florence Price won First Prize in 1932 for her...

Wanderer's tempo — the walking pace associated with Schubert's song Der Wanderer and the Fantasy D. 760 that quotes it. Implies a steady, unhurried forward motion.

The desire to travel and wander — the Romantic spirit of restless movement and journey that permeates much of Schubert's music.

The traditional Javanese and Balinese art of shadow puppetry, accompanied by a gamelan ensemble. Stories are drawn from Hindu epics. The puppeteer (dalang) controls the puppets behind an illuminated s...

A scale built entirely of whole steps (six pitches before returning to the octave), lacking the dominant-tonic pull of diatonic scales.

Op. 13 (1905), ten bagatelles for piano, each with a programmatic title evoking a character at a winter gathering. The set is one of the most charming examples of the character-piece cycle in Hungaria...

A combined character instruction indicating both physical force and noble bearing. Prominent in the Keltic Sonata Op. 59.

A tempo and character marking used by MacDowell in place of Italian terms. Indicates a dignified and stately bearing, with weight and breadth of phrasing.

A characteristic Barber direction asking for restrained but deeply felt expression — not underplayed, but inwardly concentrated.

A performance direction appearing throughout Copland's piano music, calling for directness and lack of affectation — not simplicity of technique, but of expression.

A Bolcom direction calling for confident, slightly strutting rhythmic energy — relaxed but assured.

A slow, lyrical Argentine folk dance in 6/8 originating in the country's northwest provinces. Characterised by gentle syncopation and long-breathed vocal melodies. Ginastera evoked the zamba's rhythm ...

A traditional Basque dance in 5/8 metre — one of the few 5-beat folk metres in European music. Albéniz used it in España Op. 165 (No. 6) and in Suite Española No. 1 to represent the Basque country. Th...

In time, returning to the original tempo after a deviation. Saint-Saëns was notoriously strict about tempo and disliked lingering.

Elegance. A consistent quality in Saint-Saëns's piano writing — refined, proportionate, never exaggerated in either tempo or dynamics.

Relating to the Abakuá secret society, a fraternal organisation of Afro-Cuban origin. Ñañigo ceremonies are characterised by complex polyrhythm and percussive intensity.

Exercise; study. Hindemith's title for the first part of Klaviermusik Op. 37 — \"Übung in drei Stücken\" (Exercise in Three Pieces) — invokes the pedagogical tradition of the étude while indicating th...