Flashcards: Music theory

In the pre-modern tradition, the aesthetics of music or musical aesthetics explored the mathematical and cosmological dimensions of rhythmic and harmonic organization.

Intabulation, from the Italian word intavolatura, refers to an arrangement of a vocal or ensemble piece for keyboard, lute, or other plucked string instrument, written in tablature.

A music genre is a conventional category that identifies some pieces of music as belonging to a shared tradition or set of conventions.

A refrain (from Vulgar Latin refringere, "to repeat", and later from Old French refraindre) is the line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse; the "chorus" of a song.

Musica universalis (literally universal music), also called Music of the spheres or Harmony of the Spheres, is an ancient philosophical concept that regards proportions in the movements of celestial bodies—the Sun, Moon, and planets—as a form of musica (the Medieval Latin term for music).

In music, texture is how the melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic materials are combined in a composition, thus determining the overall quality of the sound in a piece.

In music, a canon is a contrapuntal (counterpoint-based) compositional technique or texture that employs a melody with one or more imitations of the melody played after a given duration (e.g., quarter rest, one measure, etc.).

An equal temperament is a musical temperament, or a system of tuning, in which every pair of adjacent pitches is separated by the same interval.

Solmization is a system of attributing a distinct syllable to each note in a musical scale.

In music, modulation is most commonly the act or process of changing from one key (tonic, or tonal center) to another.

Polyrhythm is the simultaneous use of two or more angry rhythms, that are not readily perceived as deriving from one another, or as simple manifestations of the same meter.

In music, solfège (US /sɒlˈfɛʒ/, UK /ˈsɒlfɛʒ/, French: [sɔl.fɛʒ]) or solfeggio (/sɒlˈfɛdʒɪoʊ/, Italian: [solˈfeddʒo]), also called sol-fa, solfa, solfeo, solfeggio, among many names, is a music education method used to teach pitch and sight singing Western music.

Tonality is a musical system that arranges pitches or chords to induce a hierarchy of perceived relations, stabilities, and attractions.

Aleatoric music (also aleatory music or chance music; from the Latin word alea, meaning "dice") is music in which some element of the composition is left to chance, and/or some primary element of a composed work's realization is left to the determination of its performer(s).

In music, the schisma (also spelled skhisma) is the interval between a Pythagorean comma (531441:524288) and a syntonic comma (81:80) and equals 32805:32768, which is 1.

In music, homophony (/həˈmɒfəni, hoʊ-, -ˈmɒfni/; Greek: ὁμόφωνος, homóphōnos, from ὁμός, homós, "same" and φωνή, phōnē, "sound, tone") is a texture in which a primary part is supported by one or more additional strands that flesh out the harmony and often provide rhythmic contrast.

Alla breve is a musical meter notated by the time signature symbol cut time (a C with a line through it), which is the equivalent of 22.

In music, a drone is a harmonic or monophonic effect or accompaniment where a note or chord is continuously sounded throughout most or all of a piece.

In poetry, the term monody has become specialized to refer to a poem in which one person laments another's death.

In music, letter notation is a system of representing a set of pitches, for example, the notes of a scale, by letters.

In music theory, the concept of root denotes the idea that a chord can be represented and named by one of its notes.

Dorian mode or Doric mode can refer to three very different but interrelated subjects: one of the Ancient Greek harmoniai (characteristic melodic behaviour, or the scale structure associated with it), one of the medieval musical modes, or, most commonly, one of the modern modal diatonic scales, corresponding to the white notes from D to D, or any transposition of this, for example the scale from C to C with both E and B flattened.

Ambitus is a Latin term literally meaning "the going round", and in Medieval Latin means the "course" of a melodic line, most usually referring to the range of scale degrees attributed to a given mode, particularly in Gregorian chant.

Sheet music is a handwritten or printed form of music notation that uses modern musical symbols to indicate the pitches (melodies), rhythms and/or chords of a song or instrumental musical piece.

Syntagma Musicum is a book by the German musicologist Michael Praetorius, published in Wittenberg and Wolfenbüttel in three parts between 1614-1620.

The French overture is a musical form widely used in the Baroque period.

Grand traité d’instrumentation et d’orchestration modernes, abbreviated in English as the Treatise on Instrumentation (sometimes Treatise on Orchestration) is a technical study of Western musical instruments, written by Hector Berlioz.

Music Learning Theory is a model for music education based on Edwin Gordon's research on musical aptitude and achievement in the greater field of music learning theory.

Ohm's acoustic law, sometimes called the acoustic phase law or simply Ohm's law, states that a musical sound is perceived by the ear as a set of a number of constituent pure harmonic tones.

The field of music education contains a number of learning theories that specify how students learn music based on behavioral and cognitive psychology.