Glossaries:
		800-1200
		1200-1300
		1300-1400
		1400-1500
		1500-1600
		Index
	Contributors

Useful Resources:

• Online Dictionaries, Glossaries, & Encyclopedias [Acadia Early Music Resources]
• Vaughan Memorial Library, Research Guides: Music, Reference Shelf
  [guide to printed reference resources]
• Links to History of Musical Instruments [Acadia Early Music Resources]
• Glossary of Baroque Terms [Brief definitions] [At: The Canons and Fugues of J. S. Bach (Dr. Tim Smith, Associate Professor Music Theory, School of Performing Arts, Northern Arizona University)]
• Performance Practice Encyclopedia [Roland Jackson, Performance Practice Review]
• Virginia Tech Multimedia Music Glossary

Music 1253

Glossary, 1600-1700:

• Abendmusiken: (German, "Evening music") concerts that were held in the Marienkirche, Lübeck, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The earliest (beginning ca. 1640) presented a variety of vocal music and organ compositions. The most notable series were those presented each year on the five Sundays before Christmas during the time Dietrich Buxtehude was organist (1667–1707). In addition to the vocal and organ music, Buxtehude and his successors also composed oratorios for these concerts. They were discontinued around 1810 due to the Napoleonic wars. The term is now used to describe concerts in churches anywhere and usually refers to music played in the evening. [WAC; GJC]
• Agréments: French word meaning embellishments or ornaments in music, introduced in the seventeenth century. The ornaments may be indicated by small notes or stenographic signs in the notation or left to be improvised by the performer. [MKH]
• Allemande: A German dance in binary form, usually in moderate duple time, normally beginning with short anacrusis. Originating in the middle of the sixteenth century as a fairly quick dance, late in the sixteenth century and during the seventeenth century the Allemande was developed by English virginalists and French lutenists and clavecinists, the texture becoming richer, with often idiomatic arpeggiated figuration and imitation, resulting in a more moderate tempo. It often was used as the first movement of the Sonata da camera or Baroque dance suite. [SRM; GJC]

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  Glossary 1600-1700
  Index

• Archlute: A tenor lute with extended bass courses or diapasons. The archlute is tuned with standard Renaissance tuning. It has a smaller body than the theorbo and its first and second courses are at normal lute pitch instead of being an octave lower. [KRB]
• Aria: a movement for solo voice and instrumental accompaniment, often a section of a larger work, such as an opera, oratorio, or cantata. In the early seventeenth century the term also was applied to independent pieces for solo voice, generally strophic or set to strophic basses. The term may be applied to instrumental music that has as its main feature a singable melody. [LEB, TMC; GJC]
• Ballet de cour
• Baroque
• Basso continuo
• Basso ostinato
• Bel canto: (Italian, beautiful singing) a term used in the seventeenth century meaning smooth and easy vocal lines and rhythm to show off and compliment a singer's voice. [MKH]

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  Glossary 1600-1700
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• Canario, canaries
• Cantata (sacred)
• Cantata (secular)
• Canzona
• Catch
• Catch Club
• Cembalo
• Ceterone
• Chaconne: A triple meter dance, originally a dance-song from Latin America, usually in a major mode, often performed at a brisk tempo. In the seventeenth century the chordal patterns associated with the dance became popular as ground bass ostinatos for arias and instrumental variations, sometimes in the minor mode. By the early eighteenth century, the distinction between the chaconne and other ground bass variations were lost, so many chaconnes were called "passacaglia" or "passcaille". [JW; GJC]
• Chitarrone
• Comédie-ballet
• Concertato
• Concertato Madrigal
• Concerto (vocal)
• Concerto grosso: a new form of orchestral composition that appeared in the late seventeenth century.
• Cori spezzati
• Corrente
• Courante
• Da capella; A capella
• Da capo aria
• Double [in the sense of embellished variation]
• Fitzwilliam Virginal Book
• Florentine Camerata
• Folia
• Fugato: is a section in a piece of music that has characteristics of a fugue, but is not a separate fugue movement itself. The term is also used to describe a fugue-like piece that lacks most of the usual contents of a fugue. [SE]
• Fugue: (a late 16th century term coming from the Latin word "flight") a highly developed contrapuntal form, in which the subject (theme) is first stated, then imitated in all parts, the first (and third, etc.) imitation being the "answer", usually in or at the dominant (at the fifth above or fourth below). The subject is then used throughout the fugue as a source of musical development, the subject varied with accompanying contrapuntal lines. [JAS, LF]
• Full anthem

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  Glossary 1600-1700
  Index

• Gigue (jig)
• Grand motet
• Ground; Ground bass
• Hemiola
• Historia
• Homophony
• Incidental Music: music written for plays or other dramatic works. The music helps to create an atmosphere or mood. Incidental music is often used as background music and is played during and between scenes. [ALR]
• Intermedio
• Intrada
• Kit; Pochette
• Lamento: a vocal piece based on a mournful or sorrowful text, often built over a descending tetrachord ostinato and common in cantatas and operas of the Baroque period. [LEB, MDN]
• Lyra Viol
• Madrigal
• Madrigal Cycle
• Masque
• Monody
• Motet
• Motive
• Le nuove musiche

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  Glossary 1600-1700
  Index

• Oratorio: A musical drama or narrative or operatic-like work, normally performed without costumes or scenery, with a Biblical text, composed for soloists and chorus (with alternating pieces such as arias, narrator, recitative, choruses, etc.), accompanied by instruments. [KRB, PAL]
• Opera
• Opera-ballet
• Ordres
• Organ chorale
• Overture (French Overture)
• Parthenia
• Passacaglia
• Passion: a musical setting of one of the Gospel accounts of the Crucifixion. Originally presented on Palm Sunday and during the Holy week in Gregorian chant as part of the Liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church, by the thirteenth century the parts were divided among three singers with the congregation acting as the crowd. From the fifteenth century, some or all of the parts other than the words of Christ were set in polyphony. In the sixteenth century, the entire Passion text was sometimes set as a single polyphonic motet. The Passion became especially prominent in the Luthern Liturgy, beginning in the sixteenth century. In the seventeenth century, German composers began expanding Passion settings through the introduction of supplementary texts, chorales, and instrumental interludes. [MLD; GJC]
• Petit motet
• Prima prattica
• Récitatif mesuré
• Récitatif simple
• Recitative
• Recitative accompagnato
• Ritornello

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  Glossary 1600-1700
  Index

• Sacrae symphoniae
• Sacred concerto
• Sarabande: A triple meter dance, usually in binary form, originating during the sixteenth century as a wildly exuberant dance song in Latin America, that became one of the most popular dances of the Baroque. One charactersitic feature of many early sarabandes is extensive use of hemiola and cadences on the third beat of the measure. The sarabande went through many changes during the Baroque, initally being a light, cheerful dance of moderately quick tempo. Gradually new forms were introduced; the late seventeenth-century form, used extensively in eithteenth-century France and Germany, generally was much slower, more deliberate, and serious, with a heavy accent on the second pulse of the measure. Composers often provided heavily embellished written-out doubles for this slow sarabande. The sarabande became one of the standard movements of the sonata da camera and the dance suite (along with the allemande, the courante, and the gigue). [DGS; GJC]
• Seconda prattica
• Semi-opera
• Sinfonia
• Singspiel
• Sonata
• Sonata da camera
• Sonata da chiesa
• Stile antico
• Stile concitato
• Stile moderno
• Stile rappresentativo
• Strophic bass

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  Glossary 1600-1700
  Index

• Theorbo
• Thoroughbass
• Toccata
• The Triumphs of Oriana
• Vingt-quatre violins du roy
• Violone
• []

This page last updated: 7 October 2001.
This page Copyright © 2001 by Gordon J. Callon. All rights reserved.

Music 1253 Medieval Music through the Early Baroque Period

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