Absolute Music
Instrumental music free of a text or any preexisting program; symphonies, sonatas, quartets, and other instrumental music without extramusical or programmatic references
Art Song
A genre of song for voice and piano accompaniment with high artistic aspirations
Ballet
Dramatic dance in which the characters, using various stylized steps and pantomime, tell a story
Bel Canto
A style of singing and a type of Italian opera developed in the nineteenth century that features the beautiful tone and brilliant technique of the human voice
Cabaletta
The concluding fast aria in which the increased speed of the music allows one of more soloists to race off stage at the end of a scene or act
Canon
A contrapuntal form in which the individual voices enter and each in turn duplicates exactly the melody that the first voice played or sang
Celesta
A small, percussive keyboard instrument using hammers to strike metal bars, thereby producing a bright, bell-like sound
Con Legno
To strike the string, not with the usual front of the bow, but with the wooden back, creating a noise evocative of the crackling of hellfire
Chromatic Harmony
Constructing chords on the five additional notes (the chromatic notes) within the full twelve note chromatic scale.
Character Piece
Works of only a brief minute of two, captured essence of a single mood, sentiment, or emotion
Concert Overture
A one-movement work of programmatic content originally intended for the concert hall
Double Stops
When a violinist can hold (stop) two and sometimes more strings simultaneously and sweep across them with a bow