MUS 238 Midterm Review Terms

Symphony: the principal orchestral genre of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, usually
consisting of four movements: a fast, sonata form movement; a slow movement (various possible
forms), a minuet, and a fast concluding movement (usually a set of variations on a theme).

Sonata form: a structural design often found in the first movements of symphonies. It tends to be
parsed in three sections, an exposition, development, and recapitulation.

Melodrama: spoken dialogue with modest orchestral accompaniment

Program Music: Instrumental music that has extra-musical associations drawn from nature,
biography, history, literature, and so on. It is the opposite of abstract or absolute music.

Fugue: A work of music for three, four, or five parts played or sung by voices or instruments. It
begins with a presentation of a theme, or subject in imitation in each part. This section is the
exposition. Following the exposition, the work continues with modulating passages of free
counterpoint and further reappearances of the subject. The passages of free counterpoint are
known as episodes. Many fugues combine the subject with a second theme known as the counter
subject.

Fugue (reminder): an imitative polyphonic composition of seventeenth-century origins. Within a
fugue, two or more voices state and develop a single melodic fragment called a subject, using it
many times and in varied combinations.

Strophic Lied: a song in which the music of the first stanza is repeated for all subsequent stanzas

Through-composed song: a song whose music projects the details of poetic declamation and
meaning; the music changes from stanza to stanza

Dramatic Lied: a song with features taken from such staged vocal genres as an operatic scene,
concert tableau, and oratorio

Passacaglia: An instrumental work often in triple meter that comprises variations over a
repeated, scalar bass line (descending or ascending) and/or harmonic pattern (I IV V I).

Arpeggio: the pitches of a chord played quickly one after the other instead of together (a broken
chord)

Double, Triple, and Quadruple Stops: the sounding of two, three and four notes at the same time
on a string instrument

Harmonics: In acoustics, a high pitch heard faintly above a fundamental pitch (the pitch that is
being played by the instrumentalist), representing a multiple of the fundamental frequency

Scordatura: the usual tuning of the violin strings is G, D, A, E; scordatura means tuning the
instrument differently for a particular piece. Several of Paganinis compositions require the
soloist to tune all its strings a semitone sharp, providing a brighter foil

Flattened Submediant Relationships: Modulations from the home key to the key a major third
below (the flattened submediant) are code in 19
th
century music for turning inward, for the
expression of intimate feelings. Beethovens String Quartet in B flat Major, Mvt 5, offers an
example in the shift from E flat Major down to C flat Major.

Ostinato: a motif or phrase that persistently repeats in the same musical voice, usually at the
same pitch. It is always a succession of equal sounds, where each note has the same weight or
stress