Entertainment / Music Glossary

A Cappella: Choral music performed without instrumental accompaniment.

A Tempo: Return to the previous tempo.

Absolute Music: Music that has no literary, dramatic, or pictorial program. Also pure music.

Accelerando: A symbol used in musical notation indicating to gradually quicken tempo.

Accent: The emphasis on a beat resulting in that beat being louder or longer than another in a measure.

Accessible: Music that is easy to listen to and understand.

Accompagnato: Accompanied: also a recitative that is accompanied by orchestra.

Accordion: A musical instrument with a small keyboard and free-vibrating metal reeds that sound when air is generated by pleated bellows

Acid Rock: Genre of American rock that emerged in the late 1960s, often associated with psychedelic drugs. Its style featured heavy amplification, instrumental improvisation, new sound technologies, an . . . View Full Definition

Ad Libitum: Indication that gives the performer the liberty to omit a section or to improvise.

Adagio: A tempo having slow movement: restful at ease.

Additive Meter: Groupings of irregular numbers of beats that add up to a larger, overall pattern (2 + 3 + 2 + 3 = 10).

Aerophone: World music classification for instruments that produce sound by using air as the primary vibrating means, such as flute, trumpet or whistle. The most common Western instruments of this cate . . . View Full Definition

Agitato: Agitated or restless.

Agnus Dei: A section of the Mass: the last musical movement of the Ordinary.

Aleatory: Indeterminate music in which certain elements of performance (such as pitch, rhythm or form) are left to choice or chance.

Allegro: A direction to play lively and fast.

Allemande: German dance in moderate duple time, popular during the Renaissance and Baroque periods: often the first movement of a Baroque suite.

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