Absolute Music: Instrumental music that is not illustrative or connected with words. Opposite program music.

Atonality: The absence of any defined key in a composition, with no tonal center nor preference given to any note. Opposite tonality.

Chamber Music: Instrumental music written for a small ensemble with two or more equal parts, becoming prominent during the time of Viennese Classical master Franz Joseph Haydn.

Concerto: A work in which an instrument is blended with orchestra or contrasted as a soloist.

Counterpoint: Derived from the expression meaning "note against note," this term is the combination of two or more melodic lines sounding together in a linear sense; the musical ability to hear and understand two lines at once. Beginning in the 9th century, counterpoint reached its height between the 16th and 17th centuries.

Dissonance: A chord that sounds restless and unstable, usually resolved to justify the sound for the listening ear. Opposite consonance.

Divertimento (It. "amusement"): An 18th-century suite comprised of light movements for entertainment purposes; secular instrumental works for chamber ensemble or soloist in the late 18th century.

Fugue: One type of contrapuntal composition for a certain number of voices, each entering one at a time in imitation of each other. The theme of the first voice is known as the subject, whereas the next voice to enter would be the answer. When all voices have stated their theme, the exposition is complete. Subjects alternate with brief episodes, or short independent sections, throughout the piece.

Mode: Scales that dominated European music until about 1500, which were then revived in the 20th century; a rhythmic pattern making up the set of medieval music modes; a series of related concepts in scales and melodies.

Neoclassicism: A 20th-century musical style developing in the 1920s in which composers utilized styles of the 17th and 18th centuries. Characterized by objectivity, clarity, balance, and emotional restraint and detachment. Directly associated with works of Igor Stravinsky, as well as music between the world wars.

Pandiatonicism: Term introduced by Russian-born American musicologist, conductor, and composer Nicolas Slonimsky. The free use of the seven-note diatonic scale degrees in construction of chords.

Polychord: In 20th century music, a chord comprised of two or more simple and often familiar chords.

Polyrhythm: Several different rhythms sounding at once but not necessarily associated with one another.

Polytonality: The use of more than one key at once in different contrapuntal combinations.

Program Music: Instrumental composition depicting nonmusical ideas, concerning literary ideas, or telling a story.

Serialism: 20th-century musical structure of a composition in which a series of elements (notes, rhythm, duration) are placed in a certain order that develops the work.

Sonata ("to sound"): Instrumental composition in several movements for piano solo or instrumental combination with piano accompaniment. Originated in the 16th century to mean any work played and not sung.

Suite: Originally an instrumental composition in dance style and in several unified movements. During the Baroque period, a typical suite would have featured movements called allemande, courante, sarabande, and gigue.

Syncopation: Contradicting the predominant meter or pulse, syncopation is a rhythmic tool that changes the stressed beats to avoid regularity, thus accenting the weak beats. In addition to shifting which notes are accented, this term applies to a change in the entire meter. Associated mainly with jazz music, and with the works of Igor Stravinsky and Béla Bartók.

Toccata (It. "touched"): An early form of keyboard composition in which the performer’s touch is displayed through passagework in an improvisatory style. The name was first association with organ preludes, and expanded to include orchestral music in the 20th century.

Tonality: In Western music, the center or defined key around which the other notes are organized. This defined key serves as the base for the entire composition.

Tone Row: Music based on a serial arrangement of all twelve chromatic pitches, or half steps. Begun in the 1920s with music of Arnold Schoenberg, a tone row is the chosen order in which all the notes are arranged within in the octave in twelve-tone music. In strict usage, no note within the octave is repeated until the row is complete, and the row is the foundation for the entire composition.


Suggested Listening

Antonin Dvorák: Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95, From the New World
Claude Debussy: Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun
Arnold Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night)
Béla Bartók: Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta
George Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue
Aaron Copland: Appalachian Spring
Leonard Bernstein: West Side Story


More Information

To learn more about the 20th Century Period click on the link below!

The 20th Century (1900-present)