Music Lit Quiz 1

Front 1

contour

Back 1

shape of melody (ascending/descending)

Front 2

range (of melody)

Back 2

overall distance between the highest and lowest notes of a melody

Front 3

range (of instrument)

Back 3

the distance between the highest and lowest notes that can be played on an instrument

Front 4

transposing instrument

Back 4

an instrument that does not sound the note that is written

Front 5

register

Back 5

segments of the musical landscape (upper, middle, lower)

Front 6

tessitura

Back 6

the predominant register that is used by an individual instrument or vocal part for a major portion of a composition

Front 7

conjunct/disjunct

Back 7

step wise movement/leaping movement

Front 8

phrase

Back 8

small segment used to construct melodies

Front 9

cadence

Back 9

an ending/ harmonic goal of phrase

Front 10

motive

Back 10

smaller building blocks of phrases

Front 11

phrase structure: symmetric / asymmetric

Back 11

phrases of equal length/phrases of considerably different lengths

Front 12

period

Back 12

a passage formed by evenly balanced formal elements

Front 13

antecedent-consequent

Back 13

a thought/musical question than can be answered by a second musical phrase

Front 14

tonal content

Back 14

the notes of a melody that combine to for man identifiable scale or pitch collection

Front 15

key

Back 15

a basic collection of notes for melody and chords

Front 16

chromatic scale

Back 16

the twelve notes of an octave

Front 17

scale degree

Back 17

the position within a scale which defines the role they will serve in the hierarchy establish by the key

Front 18

tonic

Back 18

the I chord of a key

Front 19

modulation

Back 19

to move to a new key

Front 20

diatonic

Back 20

notes inside a key

Front 21

chromatic

Back 21

notes that fall outside a given scale

Front 22

church modes

Back 22

a collection of ascending scales based on he central note (final)

Front 23

modal music

Back 23

music in which the connection between the notes of the melody and chords are not as strict

Front 24

synthetic scale

Back 24

scales hat function like major and minor scales but are based on different patterns of intervals

Front 25

diminished scale

Back 25

synthetic scale with its rootsearly Middle Eastern music

Front 26

octatonic scale

Back 26

eight-note scales use the same letter name for one note twice

Front 27

whole-tone scale

Back 27

six-note scale

Front 28

atonal

Back 28

music that avoids familiar landmakrs of tonal or modal music

Front 29

equal temperament

Back 29

a system of tuning that divides an octave into 12 notes with equal distance between them

Front 30

microtone

Back 30

any musical distance small than a semitone

Front 31

cent

Back 31

an interval that is 1/100th of a semitone

Front 32

sequence

Back 32

a process where a melody is repeated several times in succession with each repetition beginning on a different note

Front 33

motivic development

Back 33

the use of a small motive as the cell or germinal idea for a larger section of music

Front 34

diminution

Back 34

to shorten all durations of a melody

Front 35

augmentation

Back 35

to lengthen all duration of a melody

Front 36

retrograde

Back 36

to play a melody backwards

Front 37

inversion tonal/real

Back 37

to play each note in opposite direction (tonal stays in key/uses only interval number not quality) (real cares about interval number and quality)

Front 38

rhythm

Back 38

the flow or movement of music through time and the way in which the movement is organized

Front 39

beat

Back 39

most basic unit of rhythm

Front 40

tempo

Back 40

the speed at which the beat moves

Front 41

accelerando

Back 41

speed up

Front 42

ritardando

Back 42

slow down

Front 43

metronome marking

Back 43

indication of the speed of some particular note value

Front 44

largo

Back 44

very slow (broad)

Front 45

adagio

Back 45

slow

Front 46

allegro

Back 46

fast, upbeat

Front 47

presto

Back 47

very fast

Front 48

explicit vs implicit

Back 48

clearly felt / just beneath the surface

Front 49

subdivision

Back 49

events occurring at a rate faster than the beat

Front 50

rhythmic unison

Back 50

same pattern simultaneously

Front 51

repetition

Back 51

repeated rhythmic patterns

Front 52

looping

Back 52

rhythmic groove or rhythmic/melodic combination

Front 53

"four on the floor"

Back 53

all four beats are accented

Front 54

swing eighths

Back 54

a jazzy way of interpreting eight notes as two eighth-note - eighth-note triplet

Front 55

measure

Back 55

small units that group beats in a piece of music

Front 56

meter

Back 56

music that has measures

Front 57

downbeat

Back 57

first beat of a measure

Front 58

agogic

Back 58

accent created by a lengthening of a note

Front 59

duple, triple, quadruple meter

Back 59

used to describe meters that contain two three or four beats in a measure

Front 60

simple/compound meter

Back 60

rhythmic durations divided into two equal parts/meter where the basic pulse is most easily divided into three equal parts

Front 61

asymmetric or composite meter

Back 61

meters that can be broken down into smaller uneven units of a recurring alternation

Front 62

mixed meter

Back 62

switching meters within a composition

Front 63

hemiola

Back 63

a type of mixed meter where a grouping of two beats offsets the prevailing meter of three or vise versa

Front 64

polymeter

Back 64

the use of two different meters simultaneously

Front 65

syncopation

Back 65

a shift of the accent from the downbeat to some other part of the measure

Front 66

ostinato

Back 66

a repeating melodic phrase or rhythmic pattern

Front 67

ametric

Back 67

no regular pattern of accents or has no detectable pulses whatsoever