Glossary

A 78 rpm record is a disc designed to turn at roughly seventy-eight revolutions per minute.

These discs were usually made from a shellac compound, and each side held only a few minutes. A symphony occupied several records, which had to be turned and changed as the music progressed. The Hall’s Koussevitzky recording of Haydn’s “Surprise” Andante originally filled two sides in Victor set M-55. Its digital transfer joins them into one movement.

See also: Acoustic recording · Matrix number · Transfer

Acoustic recording uses a horn and diaphragm to move a cutting stylus directly, without microphones.

A singer faced the recording horn, and instrumentalists gathered close enough for their sound to reach it. The sound shook a diaphragm connected to a stylus, which cut the vibrations into a wax master. The system registered only a narrow band, roughly 350 to 3,000 Hz, and the need to crowd around one horn limited the size of ensembles. In the spring of 1925 Victor and Columbia began issuing records made with microphones; the range widened to about 100–⁠5,000 Hz, and orchestral recording grew rapidly. Edison’s first electrically recorded Diamond Discs went on sale in 1927. Rachmaninoff recorded his C♯ minor Prelude acoustically for Edison in 1919. Koussevitzky’s recording of the Andante from Haydn’s “Surprise”, made for Victor on 22 April 1929, is electrical.

See also: 78 rpm · Matrix number · Transfer · Public domain

An appoggiatura is a non-chord note that delays a chord note, usually on a strong beat, and then resolves by step.

The Italian appoggiare means ‘to lean’. The melody moves to a note outside the chord and stresses it before moving by step to a chord note, which delays the point of rest inside a phrase. An F held over C–E–G and resolving to E is an example. A suspension is tied over from the previous chord; the leaning note is not. The long string phrases of the Adagietto of Mahler’s Fifth use such delayed resolutions.

See also: Suspension · Tristan chord · Ornament

An aria is a substantial solo song in an opera, oratorio or cantata.

An aria gives a singer room to set out what a character feels or wants. Recitative carries the plot forward, and the aria stops it. A Baroque da capo aria returns to its opening section after a contrasting middle section, with scope for new ornaments. Puccini’s Sì, mi chiamano Mimì grows more freely out of conversation. In Act I of La bohème (Turin, 1 February 1896), Mimì answers Rodolfo’s account of his life as a poet with an account of her own. “Sola mi fo il pranzo da me stessa”, ‘I make my own dinner’, is set in a light 2/4 Allegretto moderato that halts on a held note at “in cielo”. At “ma quando vien lo sgelo”, ‘but when the thaw comes’, she stands, and the music broadens into common time and Andante molto sostenuto. “Il primo bacio dell’aprile”, the first kiss of April, rises to a D major fortissimo marked con grande espansione.

See also: Recitative · Lied · Metre change · Fermata

Atonality is music without an established home key or the usual pull of dominant chords towards a tonic.

In atonal music, a phrase can be held together by a recurring interval or rhythm while chords move freely; dissonance is not expected to resolve. Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet, Op. 10, lies on the boundary between tonal and atonal writing. The first movement is in F♯ minor, the third, Litanei, is loosely in E♭ minor, and the finale, Entrückung, opens with an instrumental introduction that establishes no home key before the soprano enters with Stefan George’s “Ich fühle Luft von anderem Planeten”, ‘I feel the air of another planet’. The quartet ends on an F♯ major triad. At the first performance, in the Bösendorfer-⁠Saal in Vienna on 21 December 1908, with Marie Gutheil-⁠Schoder and the Rosé Quartet, one critic heard “a convocation of all the neighbourhood cats”; Schoenberg later recalled “riots which surpassed every previous and subsequent happenings of this kind”.

See also: Chromaticism · Twelve-note row · Tristan chord

Attacca tells performers to continue straight into the next movement or section without a break.

The instruction means that the next movement follows without a pause. Mendelssohn joins the movements of his E minor Violin Concerto. A bassoon holds B after the first movement’s closing chord, then moves to C as the Andante begins. A short passage also links the slow movement to the finale.

See also: General pause · Link passage · Fermata

An augmented sixth chord contains two notes that usually move outwards by a semitone to an octave on the dominant.

In C major or minor, the defining notes are A♭ below and F♯ above. A♭ falls to G and F♯ rises to G, so the augmented sixth opens into an octave on the dominant. The Italian sixth adds C between them. The French sixth also adds D; the German sixth adds E♭. These inner notes change the sound of the chord, and the two outer notes still resolve to G. In Beethoven’s Bagatelle, Op. 119 No. 1, an Italian sixth falls on the third beat of bar 3, immediately before the dominant. A French sixth precedes the cadence at bar 14 of the finale of Mozart’s “Dissonance” Quartet, K. 465. A German sixth falls on the last beat of bar 7 in the third movement of Beethoven’s Op. 109 and leads to the half cadence at bar 8.

See also: Tristan chord · Neapolitan sixth · Enharmonic reinterpretation · Diminished seventh

A bar is a span of music between bar lines, normally containing the number of beats shown by the time signature.

American musicians call it a measure. Bar numbers give players a shared address in the score. Repeats mean that one address can be visited twice. In this recording the exposition of Beethoven’s Fifth runs across bars 1–⁠124, then starts again. The Hall distinguishes the visits as occurrences, so ‘bar 1, occurrence 2’ means the second playing of the opening bar.

See also: Score alignment · Catalogue number

A basset clarinet extends the clarinet’s range downwards to written low C.

The extra length and keys add a major third below the ordinary clarinet’s lowest note, written E, down to written C. Mozart wrote his Clarinet Concerto for Anton Stadler’s extended instrument. When the concerto was published after his death, the low passages were transposed up an octave for an ordinary clarinet. Stadler lost the autograph, so it is not known exactly which notes were changed, and modern editors reconstruct the extended line. In the Hall’s Adagio recording, William McColl plays a basset clarinet he built himself.

See also: Concerto · Period instruments

Basso continuo is a bass line with chords supplied by a keyboard or plucked-string player, often joined by a bass instrument.

A harpsichordist, organist or lutenist builds chords above the written bass. Figures beneath the notes can specify the intervals: a 6 calls for a sixth above the bass, for instance. A cello, viol or bassoon may reinforce the line, and the keyboard’s realisation differs at each performance. Couperin’s La Piémontaise, from Les Nations (1726), gives two treble instruments this support; the Hall’s performance pairs violin and flute above viol and keyboard. In Bach’s Fifth Brandenburg Concerto the harpsichord has a written-out solo part as well as its continuo role, and Bach’s scoring calls it an obbligato harpsichord.

See also: Clavichord · Recitative · Concerto

Binary form divides a piece into two main sections, usually both repeated, with the second section returning to the home key.

Binary form has two sections, each usually repeated. The first often ends away from the home key; in a major-key piece that is commonly the dominant. The second begins with contrasting material, moves through other keys and returns to the home key. In rounded binary form, the opening tune also returns within the second half. Scarlatti’s Sonata in D major, K. 119, reaches A major at the end of its first half. When the repeat is taken, the music goes directly from that A major close back to D. (The K. numbers are Ralph Kirkpatrick’s catalogue of 1953.)

See also: Ternary form · Sonata form · Catalogue number

Bitonality is the use of two keys at the same time in the same passage.

One part of the music is in one key while another part is in a different key. The best-known example built from chords is in Stravinsky’s Petrushka, where C–E–G, a C major triad, sounds against F♯–A♯–C♯, an F♯ major triad. The two chords are a tritone apart, the furthest-removed pair possible. The passage belongs to the unhappy puppet’s music in the ballet’s second scene, ‘Petrushka’s Room’.

See also: Octatonic scale · Atonality · Ostinato

A cadence is a melodic and harmonic arrival that marks the end of a phrase or section.

A cadence ends a phrase. A perfect cadence, dominant to tonic, is a full close; a half cadence stops on the dominant; a deceptive cadence moves to another chord; a plagal cadence, subdominant to tonic, is the ‘Amen’ close. Cadences also mark the divisions of a form, such as the end of an exposition or the start of a coda. The final cadence of Bach’s B minor fugue reaches B major. Its D♯ replaces the D♮ of the minor key. This is called a Picardy third, and it changes the mode without changing the tonic. The last chord is held under a fermata.

See also: Perfect cadence · Half cadence · Deceptive cadence · Plagal cadence · Elision

A cadenza is a solo display, usually unaccompanied, within a concerto, aria or other work.

Cadenza is Italian for ‘cadence’. The custom probably began with singers, who used the pause before the final close of an aria to display their flexibility and range. A concerto cadenza may be improvised or written out, and may turn the movement’s themes into scales, trills and other virtuoso passages. Bach gave the harpsichord a long solo near the end of the first movement of the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, bars 154–⁠218, before the tutti returns at bar 219. Schumann wrote a long cadenza into his Piano Concerto. Beethoven used the device for the solo oboe Adagio at bar 268 of his Fifth Symphony.

See also: Concerto · Half cadence · Standing on the dominant · Fermata

A canon is a melody imitated by another voice at a fixed distance in time.

In a canon one voice leads and another follows with the same melody. In a round such as Frère Jacques, each group sings the same notes, entering later and continuing while the next group begins. More elaborate canons start the following voice at another pitch, turn the melody upside down or stretch its note values. Bach’s Goldberg Variations include nine canons, with the interval between their entering voices increasing from the unison to the ninth. The third movement of Mahler’s First Symphony is a funeral march on Frère Jacques in the minor. A solo double bass plays the subject first, followed by bassoon, tuba and eventually the whole orchestra, with an oboe counter-melody above.

See also: Imitation · Stretto · Fugue · Counterpoint

A catalogue number identifies a particular work within a composer’s output.

An opus number often reflects publication order. Other numbers come from catalogues, and the compiler’s initials became part of each work’s name: BWV for Bach (Wolfgang Schmieder, 1950), K. for Mozart (Ludwig von Köchel, 1862), D. for Schubert (Otto Erich Deutsch, 1951) and Wq for C. P. E. Bach (Alfred Wotquenne). The same letter can belong to different catalogues depending on the composer. Mozart’s K. numbers refer to Köchel’s catalogue; Scarlatti’s refer to Ralph Kirkpatrick’s, of 1953. Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 is therefore K. 550, and Scarlatti’s D major keyboard sonata heard in the Hall is K. 119.

See also: Bar · Binary form

A chaconne is a set of variations built on a recurring bass or chord pattern, usually in triple time.

The chaconne began in Spain in the late sixteenth century, reputedly brought from the New World, as a fast dance-song with suggestive movements and mocking texts. By the early eighteenth century it had become a slow instrumental piece in triple time, built on the same short foundation repeated throughout while the upper parts are varied. Bach’s D minor Chaconne fills the last movement of his Second Partita for solo violin, BWV 1004. His Cantata No. 150, Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich, ends with another chaconne. In 1880 Brahms played friends its bass line and asked: “What would you think of a symphonic movement written on this theme someday?” He adapted it for the finale of his Fourth Symphony, stretching the pattern to eight bars and adding a chromatic note.

See also: Passacaglia · Modelling · Theme and variations · Lament bass

A chromatic slide moves a note or chord by a semitone into a new harmonic setting.

A change of a semitone in the bass can alter the harmony under a whole phrase. In Debussy’s La cathédrale engloutie, the bass drops from C to B while the rising figures continue above it. The music moves towards B major, with left-hand triplets under the chords.

See also: Chromaticism · Modulation · Pedal point

Chromaticism uses notes outside the prevailing scale, often bringing semitone movement into melodies and chords.

A chromatic note belongs to the twelve-note scale but not to the seven-note scale of the current key. In C major, F♯ is a chromatic note; a melody rising F–F♯–G passes through it between two notes of the scale. A small amount of chromaticism colours a diatonic melody; a large amount loosens a key’s hold, as in Wagner’s Tristan and the early works of Schoenberg. Chromatic lines can still be tonal. The subject of Bach’s B minor fugue contains all twelve notes, joining semitone pairs with wide leaps, and the fugue remains in B minor as its home key.

See also: Atonality · Chromatic slide · Tristan chord · Twelve-note row

A clavichord is a quiet, touch-sensitive keyboard instrument whose metal tangents strike the strings and remain against them.

The tangent stays in contact with the string for as long as the key is held, so the player can control the volume through key velocity and rock the key to produce Bebung, a small vibrato. The instrument is very quiet. In Hamburg in 1772 Charles Burney persuaded C. P. E. Bach to play after dinner; Bach continued, Burney wrote, “with little intermission, till near eleven o’clock at night”, and “looked like one inspired”. Joan Benson plays the F♯ minor Fantasia, Wq 67, on clavichord in the Hall.

See also: Fantasia · Ornament · Recitative

A coda is a closing passage added after a piece’s main sections, ranging from a few chords to a substantial final section.

Coda is Italian for ‘tail’. It follows the last main section of a movement, or the last variation of a set. A coda may settle the key, visit a new one or revisit earlier material. In Beethoven’s Fifth, the first movement’s coda occupies bars 374–⁠502 and is longer than the exposition. It starts on the cadence that closes the recapitulation, with no pause. The violins hold a high C while the bass moves beneath them through C, A♭, E and F, so the held note no longer sounds over settled harmony. The four-note motto continues to be developed in the coda. Chopin’s First Ballade ends with a fast coda marked Presto con fuoco, in cut time.

See also: Sonata form · Recapitulation · Elision · Perfect cadence

Col legno tells string players to use the wooden stick of the bow against the strings.

Col legno battuto means tapping the strings with the stick of the bow, which makes a dry, pitched rattle. Col legno tratto means drawing the wood across them, which produces a faint, rough sound. Berlioz asked for the tapping kind in the Witches’ Sabbath finale of Symphonie fantastique, where the strings play the dance with the wood of their bows.

See also: Pizzicato · Tremolo · Programme music

Common-tone modulation connects two keys through a note that belongs to both the old and the new harmony.

A held note stays in place while its surroundings change. C, for example, is the root of C major and the third of A♭ major. Fauré used that shared pitch in the Agnus Dei of his Requiem. The sopranos hold C alone; when the other voices enter beneath them, the note belongs to A♭ major and Lux aeterna has begun.

See also: Modulation · Pivot chord · Enharmonic reinterpretation

Concert pitch is the agreed reference pitch to which musicians tune their instruments.

The reference is usually A above middle C. At A=440, that note vibrates 440 times a second, and ISO 16 sets this as the international standard. An international conference in London recommended 440 Hz in 1939, and the International Organization for Standardization took it up in 1955 and confirmed it in 1975. Before that, A=435 had been fixed in Paris in 1859 as the diapason normal and confirmed at a Vienna conference in 1885. Ensembles can choose another pitch, especially when playing historical instruments. Early-music players often use A=415, about a semitone below modern pitch, as a convenient Baroque standard. Tuning pitch sets how high the music sounds. Temperament sets the sizes of the intervals within it.

See also: Period instruments · Equal temperament · Well temperament

A concerto brings one or more soloists into musical partnership and competition with an orchestra.

The soloist may lead, answer the orchestra or play alone in a cadenza. In the Baroque concerto a solo group is set against the full ensemble, or tutti, which opens the movement and returns between the soloists’ episodes. Bach’s Fifth Brandenburg Concerto has three solo instruments: flute, violin and an obbligato harpsichord whose part is written out in full. Later in the movement the harpsichord plays a long unaccompanied passage. In Schumann’s Piano Concerto the piano enters immediately, descending in a rapid figure after the orchestra’s opening chord. Mozart wrote his Clarinet Concerto, K. 622, for Anton Stadler’s extended-range basset clarinet; it was first played in Prague on 16 October 1791.

See also: Ritornello · Cadenza · Basset clarinet · Sonata form

Counterpoint combines melodic lines that keep their own shape and rhythm while sounding together.

Each part has a melodic line that can be heard on its own, and each affects the others. One may hold a note while another moves, or answer a rising phrase with a falling one. At bar 9 of Bach’s B minor fugue, the bass begins the subject, the tenor continues the countersubject and the alto plays a quicker line above them. The pianist has to sustain three voices with two hands.

See also: Fugue · Imitation · Canon · Homophony · Countersubject

A countersubject is a recurring melody written to accompany a fugue’s subject or answer.

When the first voice of a fugue finishes the subject, it may begin a second melody against the next voice’s answer. If this companion returns with later entries, it is a countersubject. It usually contrasts in rhythm with the subject and is written to work above or below it, because the two change places. In Bach’s B minor fugue, descending crotchets in the alto accompany the tenor’s answer. At bar 9 the tenor carries that companion above the bass’s subject while the alto adds a quicker line, and three different rhythms sound at once.

See also: Fugue · Fugue subject · Counterpoint

A crescendo build is a passage that grows gradually louder towards a climax.

The score may mark cresc. or show a hairpin opening from left to right. A composer can strengthen the rise by bringing in more players or moving the melody higher. Ravel’s Boléro is built for nearly its whole length on this process. The snare-drum pattern continues while solo wind instruments are followed by groups, and then by the full orchestra.

See also: Decrescendo · Ostinato · Orchestration

Cyclic form links the movements of a work by bringing back themes heard in earlier movements.

A familiar theme returns in a new setting. In Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, the melody representing the beloved appears in all five movements. It is heard at the ball and becomes grotesque at the Witches’ Sabbath. In the March to the Scaffold, a solo clarinet plays it just before the full orchestra cuts it off.

See also: Programme music · Motif · Leitmotif · Quotation

A deceptive cadence moves from the dominant to a chord other than the tonic, usually the chord on the sixth degree, delaying the close.

In C major, G–B–D normally resolves to C–E–G. In a deceptive cadence an A minor chord follows instead: A–C–E, which shares two notes with the tonic chord but is not the tonic. The melody can still reach C, but the bass has moved to A, and the phrase continues. In a minor key, the usual sixth-degree chord is major. British musicians also call this an interrupted cadence. In the first movement of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony, Kelly Dean Hansen identifies an expected arrival on B at bar 73, and again at bar 184, thwarted by “a deceptive motion to G”, after which the fanfares return.

See also: Cadence · Perfect cadence · Dominant

A decrescendo is a gradual decrease in loudness.

Diminuendo usually means the same thing; a closing hairpin is the common sign. A player can soften a phrase without changing its pace. In the development of Beethoven’s Fifth, the wind and string replies become quieter as they shrink from short phrases to isolated chords. In Elgar’s Nimrod the long melody descends from the climax and grows quiet.

See also: Crescendo build · Liquidation · Fade-out

The development is the middle section of a sonata-form movement, where earlier themes are altered and taken through other keys.

A development works on music already heard. A tune may be cut down to its opening notes, and two instruments may exchange the same fragment. Composers repeat the fragments in sequence, pass them between instruments and move the harmony through keys far from the home key. In Beethoven’s Fifth, bars 125–⁠247 return again and again to the four-note motto. The horns restart it, and wind and strings exchange pairs of chords from bar 196 and single chords from bar 209, until very little of the tune remains. The full opening returns at bar 248. In the development of Mozart’s G minor Symphony, only the first few notes of the opening tune are left, repeated on different instruments. A development usually ends by preparing the return, often by settling on the dominant.

See also: Sonata form · Liquidation · Retransition · Sequence · Imitation

A diminished seventh chord consists of four notes a minor third apart. It is a tense chord with several possible resolutions.

B–D–F–A♭ divides the octave into four equal minor thirds, so only three different diminished seventh chords exist. In C minor, B rises to C and the chord can resolve to the tonic; respelled, its notes can lead to other keys, which makes it a staple of retransitions and sudden modulations. Beethoven’s Fifth uses it twice. Bar 56 cuts off a diminished seventh over C, A–C–E♭–G♭, and bar 57 is silent; in bars 233–⁠240, winds and strings exchange B–D–F–A♭ in quiet blocks.

See also: Augmented sixth chord · Retransition · General pause · Enharmonic reinterpretation

Direct modulation moves into a new key without a connecting passage or pivot chord.

A section closes, and the next begins in another key, with no pivot chord or shared note to prepare it. The change is audible even when the keys are related. Bruckner’s Seventh ends its A minor scherzo before the F major trio begins; F major shares A and C with A minor. The persistent fast string figure stops, and the trio has a slower pace and a sustained melody. In the Poco allegretto of Brahms’s Third, a C minor cadence is followed by an A♭ minor chord within the same bar, and the trio begins directly.

See also: Modulation · Pivot chord · Minuet and trio

Divisi tells the players in an instrumental section to divide between separate parts.

A violin section marked divisi may split in two, with half the players on an upper line and half on a lower one. This lets one section make chords or carry several melodies. Unisono, often shortened to unis., brings the players back to one part. Verdi opens the Prelude to La traviata with divided violins playing quietly in their high register.

See also: Orchestration · Tremolo · Pizzicato

The dominant is the fifth note of a key, or the chord built on it, which commonly leads back to the tonic.

In C major, G is the dominant and G–B–D is its chord. B lies a semitone below C and tends to rise towards it; adding F makes a dominant seventh, G–B–D–F, the chord that most strongly requires resolution. Composers use it to end phrases on the dominant (a half cadence), to hold a section back or to prepare a return. Before the opening tune comes back in Schubert’s G♭ major Impromptu, a D♭ dominant seventh is held under a fermata at bars 54–⁠55.

See also: Tonic · Half cadence · Dominant pedal · Standing on the dominant · Perfect cadence

A dominant pedal holds or repeats the fifth note of the key while the music above it changes.

In C major, a low G can be held beneath several different chords, delaying the arrival of the expected C. In Bach’s B minor fugue, F♯ is held in the bass at bar 74 under the alto’s last subject fragment. Near the end of the harpsichord cadenza in the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto the pedal is on A, and the orchestra returns in D major.

See also: Pedal point · Tonic pedal · Standing on the dominant · Retransition

Elision overlaps the end of one musical phrase or section with the beginning of the next.

A single chord completes a cadence and begins a new phrase. The music continues past the point where the cadence would otherwise have closed it. At bar 374 of Beethoven’s Fifth, the final cadence of the recapitulation reaches C major at the moment the coda begins. The violins hold a high C while the bass starts to move beneath it.

See also: Perfect cadence · Coda · Link passage

Enharmonic reinterpretation gives a note or chord a new spelling and harmonic role while keeping its sounding pitch.

D♭ and C♯ are played on the same piano key, but their spellings point to different harmonic routes through a score. A composer can respell one as the other at a turning point. Chopin’s D♭ major Nocturne, Op. 27 No. 2, respells its home note as C♯ for a turn to C♯ minor. The tonic stays the same while its major third, F, falls to E.

See also: Modulation · Modal mixture · Augmented sixth chord · Diminished seventh

An episode is a passage between statements of a fugue subject or returns of a refrain.

In a fugue, an episode is a stretch with no full statement of the subject. It usually works with fragments of the subject or its companions in sequence, and often changes key. Bach’s B minor fugue has episodes at bars 16, 24, 50 and 64. In the first, the bass descends in repeating four-note shapes while the upper voices imitate a quicker figure; the alto briefly plays F♯–D–B, three notes only, at bar 19. In a rondo, episodes contrast with the returning tune; in a Baroque concerto they are the solo passages between orchestral ritornellos. In Vivaldi’s Spring, the first solo episode is for three violins, the soloist and two from the orchestra, which exchange short trills and calls representing the birds of the accompanying sonnet.

See also: Fugue · Sequence · Ritornello · Rondo

Twelve-note equal temperament divides the octave into twelve equal semitones, giving every key the same pattern of intervals.

Each semitone is the same size, a frequency ratio of the twelfth root of 2. In this tuning a melody moved from C major to D♭ major keeps exactly the same interval sizes. The compromise is small but audible in chords. A fifth is about two cents narrower than a pure fifth, and a major third, at 400 cents, is about fourteen cents wider than a pure 5:4 third. Through the nineteenth century keyboard tuning moved steadily closer to equal temperament, and it is the usual starting point for modern piano tuning. The Hall’s recordings of Rameau’s Gavotte and Scarlatti’s K. 119 are played on a piano, although both composers wrote for harpsichord, which was tuned in other ways.

See also: Well temperament · Concert pitch

Evidence status tells the reader whether a claim is documented, inferred or disputed.

Documented means that a cited source states the fact. Inferred means that the available evidence supports a conclusion reached by the editor. Disputed means that sources disagree. A record label, a session ledger and a later catalogue may give conflicting dates; the status keeps that disagreement visible. Unknown marks a detail that the sources consulted leave unanswered.

See also: Public domain · Level trace · Score alignment · Matrix number

An exposition introduces the main themes of a sonata-form movement or the first round of subject entries in a fugue.

The exposition is the first substantial account of a piece’s main ideas. In sonata form it also establishes a second key. A first group in the home key leads, through a transition, to a second group in another key. Beethoven’s Fifth moves from C minor to E♭ major across bars 1–⁠124, with a silent bar at 57 between the groups, then repeats the whole stretch. Classical expositions are usually marked to be repeated, so a recording may play the same bars twice. In a fugue, the exposition introduces the voices one by one. Bach’s B minor fugue from Book I of The Well-⁠Tempered Clavier opens with four entries across bars 1–⁠16, alto first, then tenor, bass and soprano.

See also: Sonata form · Fugue · Fugue subject · Medial caesura · Bar

A fade-out ends a passage by letting its sound die away gradually.

A composer can bring the players down to pianissimo and leave the last notes to die away. In a recorded fade-out, an engineer gradually lowers the sound while the performance continues. At the end of La cathédrale engloutie Debussy wrote the fade into the score. The chords return as a distant echo, and the closing bells die away into silence.

See also: Decrescendo · Tonic pedal · Clavichord

A fantasia is a freely shaped piece, often written to sound improvised, with sudden changes of tempo and direction.

A fantasia gives the composer room to make an unexpected turn. A keyboard run may stop on a held chord, followed by a phrase as short and broken as speech. C. P. E. Bach’s F♯ minor Fantasia, Wq 67, moves between these kinds of writing, alternating running passagework with sparse, recitative-like gestures and silences. It dates from 1787 and was his last composition for solo keyboard in the catalogue of his estate (1790); he later arranged it for keyboard and violin under the title ‘C. P. E. Bachs Empfindungen’. Schumann’s Piano Concerto began as a one-movement Fantasy for piano and orchestra, completed in May 1841; in 1845 he added a slow movement and finale. Its opening sets an orchestral chord against a falling piano flourish.

See also: Clavichord · Recitative · Toccata · Concerto

A fermata is a sign that extends a note, chord or rest beyond its written duration.

The usual sign is a dot under an arc. It leaves the length of the held note or rest to the performer or conductor before the music continues. Beethoven’s Fifth begins with two fermatas: three short Gs fall to a held E♭, then three Fs fall to a longer D.

See also: General pause · Cadenza · Motif

A fugal answer repeats the subject in another voice, usually a fifth higher or a fourth lower.

When the second voice enters a fugue, it answers the subject in a different pitch range, usually on the dominant: a fifth higher or a fourth lower. A real answer transposes every interval exactly; a tonal answer adjusts some intervals. In Bach’s B minor fugue the subject begins on F♯, the fifth degree of B minor. The tenor’s tonal answer at bar 4 begins B–A–F♯, so the fifth degree is answered by the tonic; an exact transposition would have begun on C♯. Above it, the alto continues with the countersubject. The subject then returns in the home key in the bass, and subject and answer alternate until all four voices have entered.

See also: Fugue · Fugue subject · Countersubject · Modulation

A fugue is a piece built from a theme that enters in successive voices and returns throughout the music.

A fugue is a procedure. One voice states the subject alone; another answers it while the first carries on; the other voices enter in turn, and later statements of the subject alternate with passages called episodes. The subject may overlap itself in stretto. A fugue keeps to a set number of voices, which may be instruments, singers or the hands of a keyboard player. In Bach’s B minor fugue, BWV 869, the alto starts alone. The tenor enters at bar 4, the bass at bar 9 and the soprano at bar 13. A pianist plays all four voices with two hands.

See also: Fugue subject · Fugal answer · Countersubject · Episode · Stretto · Counterpoint · Imitation

A fugue subject is the main melody that the different voices introduce and repeatedly take up.

The subject is the melody by which a fugue is recognised. It is short and built to combine with itself. Its opening implies the key, and its shape leaves room for another voice to enter above it. Bach’s B minor fugue begins F♯–D–B and continues in pairs of notes a semitone apart. Over its full length it uses all twelve notes of the chromatic scale, and its move towards F♯ gives it a tonal direction. ‘First subject’ and ‘second subject’ are also the names of themes in sonata form. In the first movement of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto, the piano introduces the second subject in E♭ major.

See also: Fugue · Fugal answer · Countersubject · Sonata form · Motif

A general pause is a rest for the whole ensemble at once.

The score may mark it G.P., or give every part rests. A sudden silence can separate sections or hold back an expected ending. Bar 57 of Beethoven’s Fifth is empty. The orchestra cuts off a diminished seventh at bar 56, and a short B♭ major chord at bar 58 releases the horn call. Bars 123–⁠124, before the development, are also silent. Handel places a general pause before the final declaration of the Hallelujah chorus.

See also: Fermata · Medial caesura · Plagal cadence

A half cadence ends a phrase on the dominant chord.

In C major or minor, a phrase that stops on G major has reached a half cadence. The dominant chord leads back towards C. In the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth the orchestra pauses on a half cadence at bar 268: it stops on G major, and the oboe continues alone in a short Adagio. The violins then resume the movement’s fast tempo.

See also: Cadence · Dominant · Cadenza · Medial caesura

An homage is a piece written in honour of someone, sometimes borrowing their style or favourite forms.

A tombeau, literally a tomb, is a musical memorial. Ravel composed Le Tombeau de Couperin between July 1914 and November 1917. It honours French keyboard music through a prelude, fugue, forlane, rigaudon, minuet and toccata, and each movement is dedicated to the memory of a man who fell in the First World War. Debussy’s Hommage à Rameau is also a tribute. It is a slow piano piece marked to be played in the manner of a sarabande.

See also: Quotation · Modelling · Toccata

Homophony is a texture in which one part carries the melody and the other parts supply its harmony.

A tune over piano chords is homophonic; so is a hymn whose voices move together beneath a leading melody. The accompaniment can be busy or plain. Handel’s Hallelujah chorus alternates chordal passages with overlapping entries. In the finale of Brahms’s Fourth, trombones, bassoons and horns play a chorale among the variations.

See also: Counterpoint · Imitation · Orchestration

Imitation occurs when one voice repeats a melody or fragment already stated by another voice.

A phrase begins in one part and is taken up by another, often at a different pitch. The first voice can carry on, so the entries overlap. Imitation is the means by which a fugue is built from one subject, and it can also appear in a few bars of otherwise chordal music. In Handel’s Hallelujah chorus, imitative entries follow one another between passages where the singers move together.

See also: Canon · Fugue · Stretto · Counterpoint

A lament bass descends from the tonic to the dominant, often repeating beneath a song of grief.

In A minor, the simplest version is A–G–F–E. The chromatic version fills in the semitones: A–G♯–G–F♯–F–E. Used as a ground bass, it repeats beneath changing vocal phrases. In Baroque music this bass, nearly always in a minor key, accompanied songs of lament. Purcell’s When I am laid in earth from Dido and Aeneas sets Dido’s farewell over a chromatic descending bass, and the Crucifixus of Bach’s Mass in B minor is built on a similar one.

See also: Passacaglia · Chaconne · Ostinato

A leitmotif is a recurring musical idea associated with a character, object or thought in a drama.

A leitmotif can refer to a character who is absent from the stage, or to something a character has not said. It can be altered as the story develops: played slower or more harshly, or harmonised differently. Wagner’s Ring makes extensive use of these associations. In Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel, the prankster has two themes, a winding horn tune and a clipped clarinet figure, which return through his adventures.

See also: Motif · Cyclic form · Tristan chord · Symphonic poem

A level trace is a graph showing the changing strength of the sound captured in a recording.

The Hall’s graph rises during louder passages of the recording and falls during quieter ones. It can help locate an orchestral outburst or a sudden drop in volume. Each trace has its own scale. Microphone placement, surface noise and the engineer’s settings all affect it, so the graph describes that particular recording.

See also: Score alignment · Evidence status

A Lied is a German-language song, especially an art song for solo voice with piano or orchestra.

The plural is Lieder. In the art song, of which Schubert was the leading composer, the accompaniment sets as much of a poem as the voice does. The piano may supply a recurring figure or an interrupted phrase, or it may continue after the voice has stopped. Song cycles such as Schubert’s Winterreise, D. 911 (1827), set a sequence of poems as one story. In the later nineteenth century the Lied was orchestrated, as in the songs of Mahler. His Urlicht (‘Primeval Light’), from the folk-poetry collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn, is scored for orchestra. A brass chorale answers the alto solo. Mahler placed the song as the fourth movement of his Second Symphony.

See also: Aria · Recitative · Transcription · Programme music

A link passage connects two musical phrases or sections.

A few running notes can bridge a gap; a longer link may change key or bring in the rhythm of the next theme. In Mendelssohn’s The Hebrides, the transition moves from the B minor of the opening to D major. Its fast-moving figures lead to the long second subject, played by cellos and bassoons. In the finale of Brahms’s Fourth, a short oboe descent leads from one variation into the next.

See also: Elision · Modulation · Texture change

Liquidation gradually removes a motif’s distinctive features until only a simple figure or chord remains.

A phrase loses its ending, then its opening, and finally its recognisable rhythm. This can clear the way for a cadence or a return. In the development of Beethoven’s Fifth, the repeated notes are replaced by pairs of slow chords exchanged by winds and strings in bars 196–⁠207. From bar 209 each reply is reduced to a single chord (B♭ minor, C♭ major and D♭ major in bars 209–⁠214), and the harmony moves to F♯ minor, then D major.

See also: Development section · Decrescendo · Motivic link

A matrix number identifies a recording master, and an accompanying take number distinguishes separate attempts.

The matrix number identifies the recorded performance; the catalogue number identifies the record sold to the public. Companies numbered matrices in their own series, often with a letter prefix. Columbia’s D 12801 carries Sibelius’s Valse triste from matrix FX 51, recorded on 5 June 1925. The National Park Service lists Rachmaninoff’s 1919 Edison recording of his Prelude under matrix 6742-C-2-3 [2-1], issued as record 82187-R. With these numbers a collector can match a disc to an archive’s session details even when the label gives little information.

See also: 78 rpm · Acoustic recording · Evidence status

A medial caesura is the break between the transition and the second theme in a sonata exposition.

The transition builds towards an arrival, often on the dominant of the coming key, then breaks off, and the second theme enters after the break. Caesura is Latin for ‘cut’, and the medial caesura is a central term in James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy’s Elements of Sonata Theory (2006). Mozart’s G minor Symphony prepares B♭ major with F major harmony before its quiet second theme. In Beethoven’s Fifth, bar 56 cuts off a diminished seventh, bar 57 is silent, and a short B♭ major chord at bar 58, the dominant of E♭, precedes the horns’ call in E♭.

See also: Exposition · Half cadence · General pause · Sonata form

Metre groups musical beats into recurring patterns, such as the three beats in a waltz.

A time signature shows how the beats fit into a bar. In simple metre each beat divides into two (2/4, 3/4, 4/4); in compound metre it divides into three (6/8, 9/8), so 6/8 usually has two main beats, each divided into three quavers. Accents can conflict with the pattern. The third movement of Brahms’s Third Symphony is in 3/8, but its middle section is metrically displaced throughout. Held wind chords and a syncopated cello line make upbeats sound like downbeats. Near the end, longer note values superimpose 3/4 on the written 3/8. In the finale of Brahms’s Fourth, a slower variation changes 3/4 into 3/2, doubling the length of each bar while the note values keep the same speed.

See also: Metre change · Polyrhythm · Tempo change

A metre change alters the grouping or division of the beat, usually shown by a new time signature.

Music in 3/4 has three crotchet beats to the bar; 2/4 regroups them in pairs. A change of note value can broaden the bar too. Brahms’s Fourth Symphony finale moves from 3/4 to 3/2 for its quieter central variations, giving each bar three minims. Chopin’s First Ballade leaves the introduction’s 4/4 for the two groups of three in 6/4. In Puccini’s Mimì aria, the 2/4 account of her solitary life changes to common time at a held pause.

See also: Metre · Tempo change · Fermata

A minuet and trio pairs two contrasting dances in triple time, then repeats the minuet.

A minuet is a stately dance in three beats, and in a symphony it became the third movement. In the paired form, it is followed by a contrasting trio, then returns under the instruction da capo, ‘from the beginning’, usually without its repeats. The two dances commonly have their own repeated halves. The trio takes its name from Lully’s time, when the middle dance was often scored for three instruments, two oboes and a bassoon. The scherzo inherited this plan. In Bruckner’s Seventh, the fast A minor music surrounds an F major trio marked Etwas langsamer, ‘somewhat slower’, with a sustained melody over a quieter accompaniment.

See also: Scherzo · Ternary form · Direct modulation · General pause

Modal mixture borrows notes or chords from the major or minor scale that shares a piece’s tonic.

C major and C minor share the tonic but differ in their third, sixth and seventh. A composer can move between them without changing the home note. C major can borrow F–A♭–C from C minor, and this F minor chord changes the sound of the key. Switching a whole theme from major to minor is a larger version of the same contrast. Haydn did this in the Andante of the “Surprise” Symphony, where the second variation restarts the C major theme in C minor. C and G remain, E♭ replaces E♮, and loud unison phrases make the switch conspicuous. Ending a minor piece on a major triad, as Bach’s B minor fugue does, is called a Picardy third.

See also: Modulation · Enharmonic reinterpretation · Cadence · Theme and variations

Modelling uses another work’s musical plan or pattern as a starting point for a new composition.

A composer who models a piece on another keeps the scaffold and writes new music on it. The model can be the shape of a movement, the working of a fugue or a repeating bass. Brahms took the bass of the closing chaconne in Bach’s Cantata No. 150 as the model for the finale of his Fourth Symphony. He stretched it to eight bars and added a chromatic note, and the movement consists of thirty variations on the altered pattern.

See also: Chaconne · Passacaglia · Quotation · Transcription

Modes are ways of arranging a scale around a home note, each with its own pattern of tones and semitones.

D Dorian uses the white piano keys from D to D: D–E–F–G–A–B–C. Its B♮ distinguishes it from D natural minor, which has B♭; Dorian is a minor scale with a raised sixth. E Phrygian uses the white keys from E to E, with a semitone immediately above its home note, so it is minor with a lowered second. F Lydian begins on F and has B♮, so it is major with a raised fourth. Major and natural minor correspond to the Ionian and Aeolian modes. In Satie’s first Gymnopédie, a later phrase brings C♮, F♮ and B♮ above a D in the bass, which gives D Dorian colour. Kelly Dean Hansen hears suggestions of the Phrygian mode in the slow movement of Brahms’s Fourth.

See also: Whole-tone scale · Octatonic scale · Modal mixture

Modulation is a change from one established key to another within a piece.

A modulation is a change of key, after which another note serves as the tonic. The new key may be reached through a chord both keys share (a pivot chord) or a note held across the change (a common-tone modulation), or it may come suddenly (a direct modulation). Large forms depend on it. A sonata exposition moves from the home key to a second key, and the development moves further. In the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth, the exposition leaves C minor for its relative major, E♭. A short B♭ major chord, the dominant of E♭, closes the first group at bar 58; a horn call introduces the new key at bar 59, and a quiet violin melody follows. In Bach’s B minor fugue, descending sequences in the episodes take the music to E minor (bars 24–⁠30) and F♯ minor (bars 50–⁠53) before the next entries.

See also: Pivot chord · Common-tone modulation · Direct modulation · Enharmonic reinterpretation · Sequence

A motif is a short, recognisable musical idea that can be repeated, altered and combined with other ideas.

A motif is smaller than a theme and more adaptable. It can be turned upside down, stretched, shrunk, passed between instruments or placed in a different harmony without losing its identity. Three short notes and a long one can make a motif. Beethoven’s Fifth opens, after a quaver rest, with G–G–G falling to a held E♭, then F–F–F falling to D, held through bar 5. The rhythm returns in different voices and at different pitches throughout the movement. At bar 59 the horns play it as a call, B♭–B♭–B♭ falling to E♭, with wider intervals and the same repeated-note rhythm. Charles Ives worked the short-short-short-long rhythm into the melody of The Alcotts, the third movement of his Concord Sonata.

See also: Motivic link · Leitmotif · Cyclic form · Quotation

A motivic link carries a recognisable musical fragment from one phrase or section into the next.

A rhythm or interval can survive a change of key or instrumentation. In Beethoven’s Fifth, the horn call at bar 59 keeps the opening motto’s repeated-note rhythm as the music enters E♭ major. When the quiet violin melody follows, the lower strings continue the short-short-short-long pattern underneath it. In the Poco allegretto of Brahms’s Third, the clarinet and bassoon enter quietly at bar 93 with the first three notes of the movement’s main tune, in A♭ minor and then B♭ minor, before the return in C minor.

See also: Motif · Sequence · Retransition

A Neapolitan sixth is a major chord on the flattened second note of a key, with its third in the bass.

In C minor, the Neapolitan chord is D♭–F–A♭, a major triad on the flattened second degree, a semitone above the tonic. With F in the bass, it is a Neapolitan sixth; the name describes the interval from F up to D♭. It commonly leads towards the dominant, as when D♭–F–A♭ over F resolves to G–B♮–D. Chopin opened his G minor First Ballade by outlining A♭ major in bare octaves, with C in the bass, so that the flattened second degree is heard in the opening gesture, before the home key has been established. The introduction ends on a chord with the dominant note in the bass, which resolves to a dominant seventh at the start of the Moderato.

See also: Chromaticism · Cadence · Augmented sixth chord

A nocturne is a night piece, most often a lyrical piano work with a singing melody over flowing chords.

John Field’s nocturnes, first published in St Petersburg in 1812, established the usual layout of the piano nocturne, with a melody above a left hand of broken chords. Chopin elaborated the melodic line. His D♭ major Nocturne, Op. 27 No. 2, is marked Lento sostenuto. A single melodic line runs over broken chords; then a second voice joins the right-hand melody in a duet. A passage in C♯ minor, the enharmonic tonic minor, follows before the opening melody returns. Later returns decorate the tune with runs.

See also: Ternary form · Rubato · Ornament · Enharmonic reinterpretation

An octatonic scale has eight notes, with tones and semitones alternating.

One octatonic scale runs C–D–E♭–F–G♭–A♭–A–B. Moving the whole scale up a minor third produces the same collection of notes, so there are only three distinct collections. The scale contains interlocking diminished seventh chords and several major and minor triads. Messiaen called it his second mode of limited transposition.

See also: Whole-tone scale · Modes · Bitonality

Orchestration assigns music to instruments and combines their sounds.

Orchestration is a compositional decision. A flute and a trumpet can play the same notes and sound different, and combining them makes a third sound; giving a melody to the cellos instead of the violins, or dividing a section, changes how the line sounds and how far it carries. Ravel orchestrated Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition in 1922, and Boléro is built on this principle. Its melodies pass from flute to clarinet to bassoon and on through the orchestra over a fixed accompaniment. In the sixth melodic statement, a flute plays an octave above a muted trumpet. In the ninth, a horn plays the tune with celesta and two piccolos high above it.

See also: Orchestration change · Transcription · Divisi · Pizzicato

An orchestration change gives the music to different instruments or alters their combination.

A familiar tune can sound different when another instrument plays it. In the exposition of Beethoven’s Fifth, horns play the call that opens the second group in E♭ major. In the recapitulation, bassoons play the corresponding call in C major.

See also: Orchestration · Texture change · Register change

An ornament is a note or group of notes that decorates and shapes a melody.

A trill alternates a principal note with its upper neighbour; a turn circles the main note from above and below. Ornaments may be written out, shown by signs or supplied by the performer. French harpsichord music uses them heavily, and François Couperin published a treatise on harpsichord playing, L’Art de toucher le clavecin, in 1716. Ornaments can also extend well beyond a short figure. In the last variation of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata, Op. 109, long trills are sustained while other melodic lines move through them.

See also: Appoggiatura · Suspension · Basso continuo

An ostinato is a short musical pattern repeated persistently while the music around it changes.

The repeated pattern can be a rhythm, a melody or a bass line. Melody and harmony change over it. Ravel’s Boléro opens with a two-bar snare-drum rhythm that continues unchanged as successive instruments take up its two melodies. A recurring line in the bass is called a ground bass; passacaglias and chaconnes often build their variations on one.

See also: Passacaglia · Lament bass · Pedal point · Tonic pedal

Musical parody can mean reworking an existing composition or imitating music for comic effect.

In a Renaissance parody Mass, a composer took several voices from a motet or chanson and made new music from them. Bach’s reuse of his earlier cantatas in the B minor Mass belongs to this older practice of adaptation. The word also has its familiar comic sense. Mozart’s A Musical Joke makes deliberate blunders, and Berlioz turns the Dies irae into a grotesque dance in Symphonie fantastique.

See also: Quotation · Modelling · Transcription

A passacaglia is a set of continuous variations over a recurring bass line or sequence of chords.

The word comes from the Spanish pasacalle, from pasar, ‘to walk’, and calle, ‘street’. Baroque composers used it as a form for serious music, in which a short pattern in the bass or in the harmony returns again and again while the music around it changes. Bach’s organ Passacaglia in C minor, BWV 582, is a well-known example. The line between passacaglia and chaconne is blurred. In the finale of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony an eight-bar theme supports thirty variations and a coda; Kelly Dean Hansen notes that Brahms called it a chaconne. The pattern continues through the slower flute solo and the trombone chorale.

See also: Chaconne · Theme and variations · Ostinato · Lament bass · Modelling

A pedal point is a note held or repeated while the chords around it change.

The name comes from the organ, where the foot pedals sustain a bass note under changing chords. A pedal is usually in the bass, though it can appear above the other parts. The changing chords are sometimes consonant with the held note and sometimes dissonant against it, and the dissonances resolve when the pedal becomes consonant again. A dominant pedal builds tension. A tonic pedal gives stability and often closes a piece. At bar 74 of Bach’s B minor fugue, the bass holds F♯, the dominant, while the alto plays the subject. In Debussy’s La cathédrale engloutie, a low C sustains under the moving chords of the cathedral’s bells.

See also: Dominant pedal · Tonic pedal · Standing on the dominant · Ostinato

A perfect cadence closes a phrase by moving from the dominant chord to the tonic.

In C major, G–B–D moves to C–E–G. The bass goes from G to C, and the leading note B rises to C. The close is especially firm when the melody also ends on the tonic; this is called a perfect authentic cadence. At bars 373–⁠374 of Beethoven’s Fifth, that G major to C major arrival ends the recapitulation and begins the coda.

See also: Cadence · Elision · Dominant · Tonic

Period instruments are instruments of a historical period, or copies built to its designs.

A gut-strung violin, a wooden flute or a natural horn has its own strengths and difficulties in a given score. A fortepiano responds differently to the player’s touch from a modern concert grand. Historically informed performance combines these instruments with the study of old scores and of treatises on how musicians tuned, phrased and ornamented the music.

See also: Concert pitch · Basso continuo · Clavichord

A pivot chord belongs to both the old key and the new one, and the music modulates through it.

An A minor chord is vi in C major and ii in G major. It can be approached as a chord of C, then lead through D major to G, where it functions as ii. Vivaldi uses the same principle near the end of the first movement of Spring. The F♯ minor seventh chord belongs to both C♯ minor and E major, and it links the two keys as the music returns to E major.

See also: Modulation · Common-tone modulation · Direct modulation

Pizzicato means plucking the strings of a bowed instrument with a finger.

A plucked note begins sharply and fades as the string’s vibration dies away. The marking pizz. lasts until arco tells the players to use their bows again. Ravel opens his String Quartet’s scherzo with plucked strings, then sets their dry attacks against a bowed tune. Brahms uses pizzicato in the first variation of his Fourth Symphony’s finale, where horns and timpani strike the first beat and the strings answer on the second.

See also: Col legno · Tremolo · Divisi

A plagal cadence moves from the subdominant chord to the tonic, as in many settings of ‘Amen’.

In C major, F–A–C moves to C–E–G. The common C can be held while F falls to E and A moves to G. The progression has no leading note, and hymns often use this close for the last two syllables, ‘Amen’. Handel uses it on a larger scale at the end of the Hallelujah chorus, where, after the pause, G major harmony moves to D major. The first movement of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony closes with a broad plagal cadence, a sustained A minor chord over four timpani beats moving to the final E minor. In the finale, a descending oboe line delays the plagal resolution at the join into the chorale-like variations.

See also: Cadence · Perfect cadence · Elision · General pause

Polyrhythm combines different divisions of the same span of time, such as two even notes against three.

In two against three, one part divides a beat or bar in half while another divides it into thirds. Both layers share the same underlying pulse and divide it differently, so they begin together and then fall out of step until the next group. Prokofiev’s Second Piano Sonata opens with a melody in pairs over triplet accompaniment. The scherzo of Ravel’s String Quartet uses a related conflict, in which six quavers can be heard as three pairs or as two groups of three.

See also: Metre · Ostinato

A prelude is an introductory piece, or a self-contained piece that keeps the freedom of an introduction.

A prelude can open an opera, prepare a fugue or stand alone. Players have long improvised a brief prelude before the music proper begins. Bach placed a prelude before each fugue in The Well-⁠Tempered Clavier; Chopin’s 24 Preludes, Op. 28, and Debussy’s Préludes are independent piano pieces, each built on one idea. Rachmaninoff wrote his C♯ minor Prelude, Op. 3 No. 2, when he was nineteen. It opens with three low notes, A–G♯–C♯, answered by softer chords. His publisher Gutheil paid forty roubles for it. Verdi’s La traviata opens with a prelude for high strings in thin scoring.

See also: Toccata · Fugue · Nocturne · Pedal point

Programme music is instrumental music linked to a story, scene or other subject beyond the music itself.

The programme may be printed in the score, as a sonnet beside each concerto, or handed to the audience as a prose scenario. It can name a character or place, or describe a sequence of events the music follows. The opposite is called absolute music. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons was published in Amsterdam in 1725 with a sonnet for each concerto. Berlioz supplied a programme for Symphonie fantastique, in which an opium-dazed musician dreams that he has killed his beloved and is led to execution. Near the end of the March to the Scaffold, the fourth movement, a clarinet plays her melody. The orchestra then cuts it off, depicting the fall of the blade.

See also: Symphonic poem · Cyclic form · Quotation · Leitmotif

A work in the public domain is free of copyright protection in the country concerned.

A composition and a recording have separate copyright histories. Mozart’s notes are in the public domain, while a new recording of them can belong to its performers or producer. A recording’s status depends on the law of the country where it is used and on such details as its publication date. In the European Union, performers’ and producers’ rights in a recording run for 70 years (Directive 2011/77/EU, extended from 50). In the United States, recordings published before 1923 entered the public domain on 1 January 2022 under the Music Modernization Act, and recordings from 1925 on 1 January 2026. The Hall records rights information separately for the music and the recorded performance.

See also: Transfer · Evidence status · Acoustic recording

A musical quotation brings a recognisable passage from an existing tune or work into another piece.

A borrowed tune can bring its old associations into a new context. Berlioz puts the funeral chant Dies irae into the Witches’ Sabbath of Symphonie fantastique, where it forms part of a grotesque ceremony. Debussy quotes the opening of Wagner’s Tristan in Golliwogg’s Cake-walk, from Children’s Corner (1908). In The Alcotts from Ives’s Concord Sonata, the short-short-short-long rhythm of Beethoven’s Fifth sounds within Ives’s own broad melody.

See also: Parody · Modelling · Homage · Motif · Tristan chord

The recapitulation brings back a sonata-form movement’s opening themes, usually with the later themes now in the home key.

After the development, the opening themes return with their route through the keys redrawn. The transition is often recomposed, since it no longer needs to leave the home key. In Beethoven’s Fifth, the second group first appeared in E♭ major. At bar 303 it returns in C major, introduced by bassoons playing the call previously given to the horns. The B♭ of bar 59 has become G, a minor third lower. The movement began in C minor, so the home note is restored, here briefly with a major third. A minor-key movement can also stay in the minor. In Mozart’s G minor Symphony the second theme comes home in G minor, with its chromatic semitones intact.

See also: Sonata form · Development section · Retransition · Medial caesura

Recitative is singing shaped by the rhythm of speech, often used for dialogue or narrative.

The singer delivers the words at about the pace of speech, slowing or speeding up as the sentence requires. In secco (‘dry’) recitative, continuo instruments supply the chords; in accompagnato or accompanied recitative, the orchestra supplies chords or commentary. Handel’s Comfort ye, the tenor’s first number in Messiah, is accompanied recitative. Instrumental music can also adopt the manner: C. P. E. Bach’s F♯ minor Fantasia alternates running passagework with short, separated phrases broken by pauses.

See also: Aria · Basso continuo · Fantasia

A register change moves the music into a higher or lower pitch range.

A melody can keep its shape while moving an octave lower, where the same instrument may sound darker or fuller. It can also change register through a single leap. At bar 19 of Satie’s first Gymnopédie, the melody drops to a low E and holds it for three bars. The accompaniment changes beneath this low phrase.

See also: Orchestration change · Texture change · Divisi

A retransition leads back from a contrasting passage to the return of the opening music.

The retransition often settles on the dominant of the home key before the main theme returns. In the first movement of Mozart’s G minor Symphony, fragments gather over D before the opening tune comes back. Beethoven’s Fifth takes another route. Quiet diminished-seventh chords pass between winds and strings, then fragments of the four-note rhythm prepare the return at bar 248, where the bass moves from F to three G attacks.

See also: Recapitulation · Dominant pedal · Standing on the dominant · Diminished seventh

A ritornello is a returning instrumental passage, often the orchestral refrain between solo episodes in a Baroque concerto.

The Italian word means ‘little return’. In the concertos of Vivaldi and his imitators, the full ensemble opens in the home key with a ritornello, then stops while the soloists play new figuration. The ritornello returns between solo episodes; later appearances may be shortened or moved to another key, and the last statement is in the home key again. A rondo refrain is always heard in the home key. Vivaldi’s Spring (RV 269) brings back only parts of its E major refrain between the birdsong and storm episodes: a single phrase in B major at bars 40–⁠44, then C♯ minor at bars 55–⁠59. Bach’s Fifth Brandenburg Concerto opens with a D major ritornello for the strings; when the tutti returns at bar 219 after the harpsichord’s long solo, the full ensemble plays the opening music again.

See also: Concerto · Episode · Rondo · Cadenza

A rondo brings its main tune back between contrasting episodes, often in the pattern A–B–A–C–A.

The returning tune is called the refrain; the passages between its appearances are episodes. The refrain is always heard in the home key, though its accompaniment or scoring may change; the episodes change key, tune and character. In a symphony or sonata a rondo is usually a fast finale or a slow second movement. Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte follows the pattern A–B–A–C–A: its G major tune returns after each of two contrasting episodes. In the orchestral version a solo horn plays the first statement. Strauss gave Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche the subtitle in Rondeauform; the horn tune and clarinet motif that identify Till return between his pranks.

See also: Ternary form · Ritornello · Episode · Leitmotif

Rubato is flexibility of timing in performance, with some notes held longer and others played ahead of the beat.

Italian rubato means ‘stolen’: time taken in one place is given back in another. A singer or player can delay a note, then let the phrase catch up. Sometimes the melody moves freely over a steady accompaniment; sometimes all the parts slow and quicken together. Writing to his father from Augsburg on 23 October 1777, Mozart complained that other pianists let the left hand follow every delay in the right: “When they play the left hand always follows.” His own left hand kept strict time.

See also: Tempo change · Score alignment · Nocturne

A scherzo is a lively piece or movement, often in triple time with a contrasting middle section called a trio.

Scherzo means ‘joke’, though the music can be fierce. Haydn’s Op. 33 string quartets (1781) are the first in which a dance movement is called a scherzo, in place of the minuet. Beethoven made it fast and driving, and later composers kept the plan of an outer section, a trio and a return. Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony has an A minor scherzo marked Sehr schnell, ‘very fast’, in which a trumpet plays a call above a repeated string figure. The F major trio is slower. The scherzo of Ravel’s String Quartet (Assez vif — Très rythmé) opens with a pizzicato theme, and Prokofiev’s Second Piano Sonata has a short Scherzo, Allegro marcato, as its second movement.

See also: Minuet and trio · Pizzicato · Ternary form

Score alignment matches places in a written score to the moments when they are played in a recording.

A bar number identifies a place on the page, and alignment gives the time at which that place is reached in a performance. A repeated bar needs a separate time for each occurrence. With these times, the Hall’s second link to bar 1 of Beethoven’s Fifth goes to the exposition repeat. Software produces the initial matches, which carry a provisional label until they have been checked by ear.

See also: Bar · Level trace · Evidence status

A sequence repeats a melodic or harmonic pattern at successively higher or lower pitches.

A short phrase is repeated, each time a step higher or lower. A tonal sequence adjusts some intervals to stay within the scale; a real sequence keeps the exact intervals. In Beethoven’s Fifth, bars 410–⁠414, a violin figure steps down: E♭–D–F–E♭, then D–C–E♭–D, then C–B♭–D–C. In bars 19–⁠20 of Bach’s B minor fugue, the bass plays a four-note shape, F♯–A–B–D, then repeats it a tone lower as E–G–A–C♯. The upper voices continue their lines while the sequence takes the episode downwards.

See also: Episode · Development section · Modulation

Sonata form presents themes in different keys, develops them, then brings them back in the home key.

A sonata-form movement usually has three main sections: exposition, development and recapitulation. The exposition sets a first theme in the home key against a second in a new one, the dominant in a major-key movement and the relative major in a minor-key one. In the exposition of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, a first theme in C minor is followed by a second in E♭ major (bars 1–⁠124, then repeated). The development opens at bar 125 and breaks up the four-note motto, taking it through other keys. The recapitulation begins at bar 248. When the second group returns at bar 303 it is in C major, on the same home note as the first theme. A long coda brings the movement back to C minor.

The name itself is nineteenth-century. Haydn, Mozart and early Beethoven very probably never used it; the critic A. B. Marx endorsed it in 1838 and 1845. Many of their movements depart from the plan it describes.

See also: Exposition · Development section · Recapitulation · Coda · Medial caesura · Retransition

Standing on the dominant prolongs dominant harmony while the melody and rhythm continue to move.

The music has reached the dominant, and the arrival of the tonic is postponed. A phrase may be repeated, scales spun out or a trill held. Near the end of Chopin’s First Ballade, the opening theme returns over D in the bass. The dominant delays G minor until the cadence leads into the fast coda.

See also: Dominant · Dominant pedal · Retransition · Cadenza

In stretto, entries of a fugue subject overlap: the next voice starts before the previous statement has finished.

Stretto is Italian for ‘narrow’. In a stretto the entries of the subject overlap, with a second entry beginning while the first is still sounding. It usually comes late in a fugue to raise tension, and it is possible only if the subject was written to fit against itself at a short distance. In Bach’s B minor fugue, the alto starts a shortened subject in F♯ minor at bar 34 and the soprano follows one bar later in B minor. From bar 41, soprano (B minor), alto (E minor, bar 42), bass (A major, bar 43) and tenor (D major, bar 44) enter in successive bars, each taking up the subject’s opening before the preceding voice has finished.

See also: Fugue · Fugue subject · Imitation · Canon

A suspension holds a note from one chord into the next, where it clashes before resolving down by step.

In a suspension, a note from one chord is held over into the next. A suspension has three stages. The note is prepared in a consonance, then held while the chord beneath it changes, so that it becomes a dissonance, and then resolves down by step. For example, an F in the melody can be held over a new C major chord and then fall to E. In Bach’s B minor fugue, the soprano’s E is tied across bars 19–⁠20 over D in the bass and resolves down to D. Near the close, at bar 75, the soprano holds B over the dominant F♯, then steps down to A♯ before the final chord.

See also: Appoggiatura · Cadence · Sequence

A symphonic poem is a usually single-movement orchestral work inspired by a story, poem, picture or idea.

A symphonic poem is an orchestral work with a subject outside the music. Liszt began his series with Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne, composed in 1847–⁠48 on a poem by Victor Hugo and first performed at Weimar in February 1850; the last, Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe (1881–⁠82), was based on a drawing by Mihály Zichy. Themes can stand for characters and are varied as the characters’ fortunes change. Richard Strauss later combined the colours of a large orchestra with an exact narrative in Don Juan and Till Eulenspiegel. Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, Op. 28, was first performed in Cologne on 5 November 1895, conducted by Franz Wüllner. A winding horn tune and a clarinet figure introduce the prankster, and his adventures end in a trial and execution. The Hall presents the piece in Herb Weber’s transcription for concert band.

See also: Programme music · Rondo · Leitmotif · Transcription

A tempo change alters the speed of the musical beat.

The change can happen gradually through accelerando or ritardando, or at once under a new marking. Chopin’s First Ballade moves from a broad Largo introduction to a Moderato; its coda is Presto con fuoco, very fast and fiery. Bruckner marked the trio of his Seventh Symphony’s scherzo Etwas langsamer, ‘somewhat slower’, before the fast opening returns.

See also: Metre change · Metre · Rubato

Ternary form has an opening section, a contrasting middle and a return of the opening, often with changes.

The outline is A–B–A. The middle section can change key or introduce another tune; the return may be written out with new details. The plan underlies the da capo aria, the minuet and trio and many short piano pieces. Da capo, ‘from the head’, is the instruction to go back and play the first section again. In Schubert’s G♭ major Impromptu, D. 899 No. 3, a piano melody surrounds an E♭ minor middle section that begins at bar 25, with accented B♭s over broken chords. The accompaniment continues underneath both. Bar 54 holds a D♭ dominant seventh under a fermata before the opening melody returns at bar 55, very softly.

See also: Rondo · Binary form · Minuet and trio · Retransition

A texture change alters the number of musical lines or the way they fit together.

A single tune can be shared between voices, and separate moving voices can join in one chord. Handel’s Hallelujah chorus shifts repeatedly between singers moving together and parts entering one after another. Bach’s Fifth Brandenburg Concerto thins its opening ensemble to a trio of flute, solo violin and harpsichord, and the quick pulse continues across the change.

See also: Orchestration change · Homophony · Imitation

Theme and variations presents a tune followed by altered versions that keep part of its melody, bass or chords.

The theme is usually short and clearly phrased, so that it can be followed through its changes. A variation can ornament a tune, put it in another voice, turn it from major to minor, thin or thicken the orchestra or alter the metre. The Andante of Haydn’s “Surprise” Symphony has a simple C major theme in the manner of a nursery tune, followed by four variations; the second is in C minor. In Rameau’s Gavotte with Six Doubles, each double is another variation, with faster notes running through the theme’s chords. At the end of the finale of Beethoven’s Op. 109 the trills stop and the theme returns without ornament.

See also: Passacaglia · Chaconne · Ostinato · Modal mixture

A toccata is an instrumental showpiece, usually for keyboard, written to display the player’s touch and dexterity.

The name comes from the Italian toccare, ‘to touch’. The earliest, by Merulo and Giovanni Gabrieli, were showy keyboard pieces in flowing notes of equal length, written in the manner of an improvisation. Bach’s D minor Toccata, with its fugue, begins and ends with rapid cadenza-like passages divided between the two hands. Other toccatas keep the fingers moving with few breaks. Prokofiev’s Toccata, Op. 11, is of the second type. He composed it in the spring of 1912 for his fellow student Nikolay Shtember, and Jurgenson published it in Moscow in 1913. Repeated Ds pass between the hands, and chromatic neighbour notes and hard-edged chords are then added to them. The piece has few rests for the pianist. Ravel ends Le Tombeau de Couperin with a toccata, dedicated to the memory of Captain Joseph de Marliave.

See also: Prelude · Fantasia · Ostinato · Homage

The tonic is a key’s home note, and the tonic chord is the chord built on that note.

C is the tonic of both C major and C minor. The major chord is C–E–G; the minor chord lowers E to E♭. Every other note and chord is heard in relation to it. Other chords can lead the music away, and a cadence confirms the tonic. A long piece can postpone the tonic or leave it by modulation. At the end of Chopin’s D♭ major Nocturne, Op. 27 No. 2, the left hand repeats D♭ beneath the right hand’s final duet.

See also: Dominant · Cadence · Tonic pedal · Modulation

A tonic pedal holds or repeats the home note while the chords and melodies around it move.

The bass can remain on C while the upper parts move through C major, F major and other chords. Some of these chords may clash with the held note. A dominant pedal creates tension and a tonic pedal gives stability; a tonic pedal often marks a coda or an introduction. Chopin closes his D♭ major Nocturne, Op. 27 No. 2, over repeated D♭s in the bass, while the right hand continues its duet. In the first birdsong episode of Vivaldi’s Spring, bars 13–⁠27, the violins hold tonic and dominant pedals on E and B under the trills.

See also: Pedal point · Dominant pedal · Tonic · Coda

A transcription adapts a piece for different instruments or voices.

An arrangement keeps the melodies, harmonies and form of the original and gives them to different players. Between 1837 and 1865 Liszt arranged all nine Beethoven symphonies for solo piano. In 1910 Ravel orchestrated his piano piece Pavane pour une infante défunte (1899) and gave its opening melody to a horn. The Hall’s La Mer recording uses Lawrence Odom’s transcription for concert band.

See also: Orchestration · Quotation · Modelling

A transfer copies sound from one medium to another, for example from an old disc to a digital file.

A transfer begins with playback. For a disc, the engineer chooses a stylus that fits the groove and a speed that restores the music’s pitch and pace; at the Library of Congress the monaural transfer is made in two channels, to capture both walls of the groove, before the file is summed. Equalisation adjusts the balance of low and high sounds; restoration may remove clicks and reduce surface noise. Each choice changes the sound, so a transfer credit belongs to a recording’s history. The Hall’s copy of Rachmaninoff playing his Prelude comes from an Edison disc and was cleaned and restored by Adam Cuerden.

See also: 78 rpm · Acoustic recording · Public domain · Evidence status

Tremolo is the rapid repetition of a note or rapid alternation between notes.

String players make a bowed tremolo with quick, short strokes; pianists can alternate two notes or chords. A measured tremolo has a specified rhythm. In an unmeasured one the repetitions are fast and free. In the first-movement coda of Beethoven’s Fifth, the violins’ high C alternates between held notes and tremolo while the bass changes beneath it.

See also: Pizzicato · Col legno · Orchestration

The Tristan chord is the chord F–B–D♯–G♯, heard near the opening of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde.

In the Prelude to Tristan und Isolde, a short cello phrase leads into F–B–D♯–G♯. The notes move by small steps into another dissonant chord, and then the phrase stops. Wagner repeats the pattern at a higher pitch. The harmony does not resolve until Isolde’s Liebestod, in the last act. The chord’s spelling and the movement of its individual notes allow several harmonic readings. The notes themselves were not new. H. A. Harding pointed out a nearly identical chord in bar 36 of the first movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in E♭, Op. 31 No. 3. The chord became the emblem of the opera. Debussy quoted it in Golliwogg’s Cake-walk and Berg in the Lyric Suite, and Britten used it in Albert Herring while the hero hiccups after drinking spiked lemonade.

See also: Chromaticism · Augmented sixth chord · Appoggiatura · Quotation · Leitmotif

A twelve-note row places the twelve notes of the chromatic scale in an order that supplies a piece’s melodies and chords.

A row uses each of the twelve notes once, treating notes in different octaves as the same pitch class. A composer can play it forwards, reverse its order, turn its intervals upside down and transpose it to any of twelve pitches, so there are forty-eight forms to work with. Notes from the row can sound together as chords. Schoenberg’s Piano Suite, Op. 25, builds a prelude and old dance forms from one row; its minuet’s trio works the row into a canon. A theme that happens to contain all twelve notes is not a row. The subject of Bach’s B minor fugue contains all twelve, but it has no system of inversion and retrograde behind it, and it is heard against a home key.

See also: Atonality · Chromaticism · Counterpoint

Well temperament is a family of unequal keyboard tunings that make every key usable while giving different keys different interval sizes.

The tuner distributes small adjustments unevenly among the notes. Some keys have purer thirds than others. Earlier systems, such as meantone, made some keys pure and others unusable; the tuning Andreas Werckmeister described in 1691 spreads the compromise unevenly so that every key can be used. Each book of Bach’s The Well-⁠Tempered Clavier contains pieces in all twenty-four major and minor keys, from the opening C major prelude to the final B minor fugue. Its title does not say which tuning Bach had in mind, and keyboard players still argue the question.

See also: Equal temperament · Concert pitch · Fugue

A whole-tone scale has six notes, with a whole tone between every neighbouring pair.

C–D–E–F♯–G♯–A♯ is one whole-tone scale. Starting a semitone higher gives the other; every further transposition repeats one of those two collections. The scale contains no semitones, so it has no leading note, and no two of its notes lie a perfect fifth apart. A chord made from alternate notes of the scale, such as C–E–G♯, is an augmented triad. Glinka used the scale in Ruslan and Lyudmila, first performed in St Petersburg on 9 December 1842, to depict the evil sorcerer Chernomor.

See also: Modes · Octatonic scale · Chromaticism